As I sit and watch humanity speed through the cosmos at a maddening pace of evolution, in one century conquering gravity, we watched the Wright brothers do the unthinkable. They flew like the gods of old, and we did not pray to them this time. For this time they were us. And in the same century we entered space and began a new age of exploration beyond the planet of earth and into the unimaginable frontier of the cosmos. Mankind had indeed become great. The greatest species ever known to earth perhaps and still, I cannot help but wonder if humanity has been here, at this phase in evolutionary development, before.
The story of Noah and the ark is a very familiar one. Almighty God looks down on creation and decides that the sinfulness of humanity is too great to allow us to continue. He must wipe us out if he is to preserve the integrity of his deity. Yet in his graciousness and love he chooses to spare one man. One man on the entire planet and one man alone was righteous in the eyes of God and so God spared him and his family and charged them with preserving life on earth. Two of every kind of animal was placed on this magnificent craft that God instructed Noah to build and when the rains came, Noah's family and the animals all lived. Understand that I do not cast doubt on this tale of grace and humanity. But I do wonder about its interpretation. Could this be a parable of some sort? Understand what this text is alleging, that out of the entire planet, all of humanity, there was only one man who was righteous in the eyes of God. His name was Noah and for that he was spared. I have two trains of thought when it comes to the story of Noah.
The first is that the tale is literal, in which case should inspire both fear and awe for its audience. The second is that the tale is not literal but a euphemism of sorts, almost in the same way Jesus used parables to get across his message. I arrive at this second train of thought for a few reasons. You must understand that the biblical account of Noah is not an original one. Indeed many of the iconic stories in the bible are not but for the sake of simplicity we will regulate our interest to Noah...for now.
Instead I point to the tale of Gilgamesh. This story is so similar to that of Noah that if I changed the names of the key characters you would think I was reading to you straight from the Torah itself. Yet the story of Gilgamesh was written well before the story of Noah. In fact, the Institute for Creation places the time frame for Gilgamesh in 3300 B.C. Almost 1,000 years before it is believed the story of Noah's flood took place. Understand this is not hearsay I speak of. This is not talk of some alien spacecraft that a handful of certified nut jobs say they saw on their way to UFO abduction. No these are two separate historical accounts of a massive flood which wiped out all of humanity save for one family. In 3300 B.C. the man's name was Gilgamesh. In 2500 B.C. his name was Noah. The flood in 3300 B.C. lasted seven days. Noah's lasted for forty. Do you find this puzzling? Does this mean that one of these stories is a fabrication? Perhaps the bible borrowed from the story of Gilgamesh. After all, what if Noah's ark is merely a parable?
I want to propose an idea. It is a modern idea as I am a modern man but an idea nonetheless. Out of every human being on earth, how many of us have the capacity to build something as complex and nature defying as a spacecraft? Understand the question: we start with every human being on the planet as the premise and as quickly as the question is asked, the number dwindles to what? A few hundred? Maybe not even that many. Now, for the sake of consistency, let us go back to the tale of Noah. The bible says that he was righteous, and for this he was awarded the favor of God. Understand we are talking about a man who knew nothing about the law, the Torah or the Ten Commandments, Moses would come around roughly 1500 years later. So then, this begs the question, what did it mean to be righteous? What did Noah do, and what code of conduct did he live by that set him apart from the rest of humanity that gave him favor with God?
"These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God." Interestingly enough, this is all that is said about Noah's distinction. There is a basic question therefore. What does this mean? You see for me quaint answers and scripted responses are not enough. Let us continue to explore this ever evolving tale. It is safe to say that none of us has ever seen the "ark" as it were. Yet what we are aware of are the massive dimensions necessary to construct such a craft. The incredible craftsmanship needed to do such a thing is truly out of this world. Indeed we would have trouble designing such a crafts with all of our mastery of modern technology. So I must ask you, how in God's name did Noah and his sons create this massive boat with no machinery? Just rudimentary pottery tools at their disposal they created a gigantic ship spectacular enough to save all of humanity and the animals. We are talking about great whales, killer sharks, giraffes, tigers, rhinos, and God knows what else all on the same ship. Think about it. Don't get me wrong, I do believe in miracles. But miracles are only miracles because we don't have the knowledge to understand or explain an experience.
Yet given what we now know about the world in which we live, there is a definitive reason to wonder about the basic literary notion of this tale of Noah and the flood. The highest place on earth is mount Everest. 24,000 feet in altitude. This is approximately 4,000 feet above what we call the death zone. It is called the death zone because it is impossible to survive in such thin air more than two days, Not to mention the freezing temperature. Yet in the story of the flood the rains lasted for forty days. We aren't even counting how long it took for the waters to subside. I am telling you what you already know, just the facts as well. In fact we can get as detailed as the material itself described in the bible. Nobody knows what gopher wood is. It may not have been wood at all. In fact, according to scholars, it wasn't wood, it was something else.
"The Bible says the Ark was to be built of "gopher wood". "Gopher" is the actual Hebrew word. In early English translations the meaning of the word was unknown so it was left untranslated. The NIV translates it "cypress wood", however, this is only a guess. It was undoubtedly translated this way due to the fact that cypress wood is highly resistant to rot. What this material was is still a mystery. It could have been a pre-flood wood with which we are not familiar. It is almost certain that Noah did not construct a standard wooden ship of the kind we are familiar. According to nautical engineers the longest wooden vessel ever built was 360 feet in length and was not seaworthy. Because of the wave action of the sea only wooden ships shorter than this will be seaworthy. Therefore, we must conclude that Noah used some other method of construction to overcome this problem." (Christian Information Ministries).
Here's the truth: no one knows what the ark was. We don't know what it looked like, what it was made of, or how it operated. Was it a boat, a ship, or something else entirely? We don't know but there is something about this tale that simply does not agree with what we know about reality.
Let's go back to the beginning of this article. If only a handful of people have the capacity to operate a spacecraft this would severely narrow down the playing field of who would be saved in a potential world disaster of biblical proportions. Let's just say that scientists tomorrow concede that in 100 years the earth is to be engulfed in a storm so epic that it is doubtful humanity will survive. It is unlikely anything will survive. I want you to let this mental imagery sink in. Now let me ask you a serious question. Do you honestly think the authorities would tell anyone? Or do you think everyone would carry on their daily lives as usual, ignorant of the reality that is coming upon them? To do otherwise would be to invite mayhem of catastrophic proportions so that no one would have a chance to be saved. The imagery of old man Noah faithfully building his gigantic boat with pottery tools in the middle of the desert while the heathens stood around laughing and pointing, entertaining each other with lewd parties and mocking obscenities is nonsense. So what is an accurate picture?
Imagine something so ludicrous that no one even pays it attention. Only the nut jobs and conspiracy theorists believe it and only the scientists pursue it. Look no further than the end of days saga that just left us in 2012. What was everyone doing during this time? What did everyone do when they caught wind of the theory? What did you do? If you believe the bible you must understand that the people in it were people just like you and I, and the human pattern of dealing with events doesn't change. In the same breath I do not dispute the biblical account of Noah and the flood but I do challenge the imagery we have given it along with many of its connotations. Was Noah righteous? Of course why wouldn't he be, and we have no reason to believe he wasn't. But what exactly righteousness meant back then is unknown. There were no recorded codes of conduct, no sacrificial ceremonies of note that were mandatory for consideration.
The modern visual looks something like this: A scientist studying the earth's weather patterns discerns that in 100 years there will be a disaster on earth so massive that it wipes out every living thing on earth. What prompted the scientist to spend hours upon hours revisiting his theory, proving it and modifying it and testing it until he could safely conclude the following: Life will be destroyed? God perhaps? Was it God that kept him in perseverance? Why not? This scientist would surely tell other scientists this theory as well. But what politics of the day would prevent these men from taking action? If the citizens of the earth went into panic imagine how the global markets would plummet. The loss in consumer trust, abandoning all responsibility, global order would descend into chaos. The lone scientist becomes labeled a lunatic. Yet and still he begins designing a craft that he believes will allow life to survive the chaos. While everyone carries on their daily routine as though nothing were wrong, the lone scientist completes his design and hires a crew to build it. He builds a space craft, one that looks like some off breed NASA design and meanwhile he doesn't take two of each living being onto his craft, instead he takes DNA samples from each species and begins carefully storing them onto the craft. Eventually his work is complete and he and his crew board the craft and shut it...
What makes you think any of this is not plausible? What makes you think Noah was some old man in a tunic with a staff and no knowledge of science and technology? What makes you think that the story of Gilgamesh isn't also true and that they are somehow linked together? What makes you think that all our technological advancement wasn't here before a very long time ago? Let me ask you something. If the great flood happened today, after all the waters receded, what evidence would be left that our technological powers existed?
Don't misunderstand me, I am not saying that Noah did not construct a craft of some sort. What I am saying is that the need to build the craft and indeed the craft itself was more than likely a product of scientific study; worldly knowledge as much as it was spiritual revelation. How do I know this? I don't. But to contend otherwise is just as ludicrous. What is interesting to me about the Old Testament is the claim that what is written are the words of God himself. But because God is so holy he cannot interact with man directly so he speaks through prophets. But before the prophets he spoke to mankind how exactly? Nobody knows but I'll wager it was not a booming voice from heaven, let's just be real here. Nobody knows how the prophets got their information from God or how the ancients interacted with God at all. I'll take it a step further; no one knows exactly who or what God is. If we don't know today, I can guarantee they were just as clueless in the B.C. era as well. In fact there seems to be well documented confusion as to the identity of God.
Genesis 32:22-32. Here we have the tale of Jacob wrestling with someone, who, we do not know exactly because the someone never identifies himself. Yet at the end of the struggle Jacob declares that it was God he wrestled with and that he'd seen God face to face. Yet how can this be? For in the New Testament we learn that "No man has EVER seen God" (John 1:18, 1John 4:12) There is no explanation for these conflicting accounts. People will say that it was Jesus whom Jacob wrestled. Others will say it was an angel with a message from God. Still others will say it was a vision. Yes, no, and maybe. These so called scholars are not being honest with you. The truth is they don't know either! No matter what you believe it begs the questions, who, what, and where is God? Do I believe that God exists? Of course I do. But I also believe that the identity of God is misrepresented through religion. This idea that God is somehow a being watching and observing humanity from obscurity on high, in the literal sense is a bit absurd to me. If Jacob wrestled God is this the same god that commanded David in 1 Samuel 15:3 to kill all the women and children and infants of the Amalekites yet more than 400 years earlier commanded, "thou shalt not kill"? This god whom Jacob saw is the same god who commanded these floundering Semitic people to gut pregnant women to death, spilling their guts and entrails on the blood soaked ground leaving them die and their unborn children to bleed out in their wombs, watching through lifeless eyes while their would- be fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts, uncles and entire families were all murdered in cold blood.
Is this the same god who commanded Abraham to kill his only son Isaac? I don't care if a so called prophet told me God said to murder my child, I don't care if it was a booming voice from heaven. I don't care if it was a majestic, shining celestial being; if God told me to kill my son I would look at whoever told me this nonsense and I would say: "Absolutely Not" And any man who would do the opposite is insane and should be locked away for the rest of his natural life. The religious followers among us will tell you that if you wouldn't be willing to sacrifice your child for almighty God then this simply means you aren't saved from your sins and you and your son are going to die anyway, that unless you change your hardened heart you will burn in hell for all eternity. This is madness. People's minds have been turned against basic common sense and morality for the sake of something they literally have no knowledge of yet claim to be God's will. This is indeed profound.
Does none of this seem strange to you? Is it not peculiar even disturbing on an instinctual level? I don't care how much you believe in God or how faithful you are to your religion, you cannot look at these texts and not become morally disturbed. Where the hell are these people getting permission to commit genocide? From God? You're telling me that God is authorizing murder? Come now. Understand the picture: Someone wrestles Jacob. This person never identifies himself, yet Jacob says it is God. Only to find out later on that no one has EVER seen God.
Jacob's descendants are ordered by this same god to kill everyone who is in the land that they have been authorized to live in (Canaan) and they are to feel justified in doing so because these people are wicked and need to be destroyed. Are you understanding now, why some people don't believe in religion? Why many don't believe in God? The things that God is supposedly authorizing is more disgusting than even the greatest war criminals this world has ever known, yet because he is God we are to accept it and love him for it simply because we are human and he is God. Islam, Judaism, Christianity, they all originate from this same violent confusion in the Torah.
We are led to believe that somehow the ancients of old experienced God in an entirely different manner than we experience God today. Perhaps. Perhaps everything was so fresh from creation that the entire world was full of inexplicable events, the like of which mankind may never experience again. Or maybe these events were inexplicable to the individuals of that time because they didn't know any better so they labeled them miracles. To their credit they did their best to explain these events accurately. Yet the notion that these Patriarchs and Matriarchs of monotheism were somehow different than us is ridiculous. The bible was written by men who wrote down the life of their culture from the perspective of the way they chose to experience God. God did not speak to these individuals any different than God speaks to us now. The prophets of Israel were no more immune to corruption than we are today. Just look at the Catholic church and their supreme pontiff and the rest of their ridiculous hierarchy of cardinals, bishops and priests. The only people who listen to the pope and his self righteous cronies are people who do not have the courage to find the truth themselves. Religion has always been man's way of influencing a culture towards a certain designed behavior. And if you doubt the truth in this you must ask yourself, what are we to make of the rest of humanity?
The Torah does not document Europe, Asia, Australia, or Africa or the Americas, not to mention other parts of the world I've omitted. Surely you do not believe that the rest of humanity was irrelevant. How is it that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never shows up in any other culture but those of which came into conflict with the small Hebrew nation? We are led to believe that in all the world only one small sliver of humanity acknowledged the awesome power of this one true God while the rest of the planet stupidly, arrogantly and sinfully worshipped a slew of other gods- the creation not the creator- thus challenging God's supremacy and sealing their own fate in wickedness, thereby grieving his spirit causing him to become so jealous that he authorizes his chosen people, this sliver of fallen humanity, to utterly destroy any and all cultures and civilizations of people they encounter on the journey to their promised land of Canaan, who by the way was himself cursed before he was even born by his grandfather Noah who got drunk and stumbled around naked until his son Ham found him. And for this unforgivable sin of finding his father naked in a drunken stupor Canaan, his son was cursed to serve the rest of his brothers and nephews and somehow this justifies passages like Deuteronomy 20:16-20 where we find that human life, even those of the infant children are not as valuable as the trees which were the only part of the land worthy of salvation.
16 However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. 17 Completely destroy[a] them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—as the Lord your God has commanded you. 18 Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God.
19 When you lay siege to a city for a long time, fighting against it to capture it, do not destroy its trees by putting an ax to them, because you can eat their fruit. Do not cut them down. Are the trees people, that you should besiege them?[b] 20 However, you may cut down trees that you know are not fruit trees and use them to build siege works until the city at war with you falls.
I ask you again my friends: who is God? Where is God and what is God? And I'll listen while you quote the scripted doctrine that you learned in Sunday school to refute the heretics like me. I will indulge the scholars while they lay their case before me, the dogma they learned in apologetics class in seminary on their way to earning the doctorate degree than the rest of us couldn't afford if we spent our entire life's savings. Give me adjectives only to prove my point that we are describing a deity from the construct of human measurements. Thus disproving what we are attempting to prove, that God is greater than humanity. Don't tell me God is great. Of course God is great but what is the word "great" if not a human description. If God is truly God, and I believe this to be true, God defies any human conjecture. God is beyond great. I cannot create a vacuum to capture the wind. I can counteract gravity but I cannot create anti gravity. I can imagine rain but I cannot cause it. If we cannot explain God today with all of our advancement in science and technology, what makes you think the ancients could? What makes you think the ancients weren't just as advanced as we are? If the great flood happened today, right now, what evidence would there be of our existence? If just one man and his family survived destruction, all that would be left when the waters settled on the planet below? Nothing but his family and the great machines orbiting earth above with no hope of ever refueling, no ability to do so would wander around the outer space of our atmosphere, trapped by earth's gravitational pull until eventually they crashed to earth, aliens on a planet of basic humans who can barely read and write. How would you write this story? How would, you, the only surviving family of the human race describe this story so that those coming after you would understand? How do you explain astronauts and spaceships to your children? You die and your children grow up as hunter gatherers on the safari and one day they look up and something they cannot describe comes flying out of the sky and lands a hundred yards from them. Out steps a human being, shining bright, illuminated from the radiation of the craft and he gives you instructions on how to grow your species again, on how to cultivate the planet and prosper. What is this being? Is it an angel? Is it a god? How do you qualify this being with these powers you have never seen before? Understand that in less than a century we went from fighting the civil war on horseback to flying around in outer space and landing on the moon. In 700 years less that span of time Gilgamesh and Noah become separate stories. There is a 1500 year time span between the creation of Adam and Noah. Understand what I am saying: 1500 years before Apollo landed on the moon the Inca Empire had only just been founded. If we are capable of such an evolutionary leap in such a short span of time what makes you think humanity hasn't been so inclined before? The alternative is that Noah and his three sons, the lone builders of this massive craft that has no historical reference or identity, built this thing out of rudimentary tools. Tools that are by design incapable of the precision described in the text describing it!
Why do I keep going back to the notion of the ark plausibly actually being a spacecraft? Simple. There is no reason to believe it wasn't. In the bible we have passages describing boats. Guess what they are called? They are called boats. There are also ships described in the bible. Guess what they are called? They are called ships. The word "ark" is only used to describe two things in the bible. The vehicle that Noah used and the mysterious "supernatural housing device of Israel's covenant.
We know that over 20,000 feet nothing can survive for more than a couple days. Yet the bible clearly states that water rose above the highest mountain. I want you to understand something. Precipitation is nonexistent this high in the air, the atmosphere is too thin. In fact, liquid water itself cannot exist either. If water did rise 22 feet above mount Everest. it would be ice by the time it rose from the atmosphere below got to 13,000 feet. According to the bible then, the waters rose above the latitude from where the rain broke from the sky so that in essence, it was raining beneath the ocean. This is crazy talk. So how then was the ark floating on water this high up in the atmosphere where you cannot even breath?
I will direct your attention to the book of Genesis Chapter 1:6 6 ¶And God said, Let there be a
7 And God made the firmament, and divided the a waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
What we are reading here is the biblical definition of heaven. The biblical definition of heaven is not the definition of heaven that we have today. Biblically speaking heaven divided the water on the earth from the water above the earth, wherever and whatever that was. If Noah's arc floated above the firmament and the waters above it, ask yourself where does this place the ark exactly? Let's be clear on something. You can see mount Everest from space. This is possible in part because mount Everest is so tall that it is actually in space.
This is not some sort of conspiracy theory or some weird occult twist to a biblical story, what you have here are facts. And the facts are that the ark wasn't a boat. It wasn't a ship. It couldn't have been. According to the bible it floated high above the earth and according to science there is no way it could have been liquid water that it floated on. For goodness sake people, by all accounts the literal interpretation of the bible is asking you to believe that the waters from the flood, rose over 10,000 feet about the cloud latitude that the rain was coming from those very same clouds! We know this cannot be true. What then was it floating on? What by the way is an ark in the first place? Nobody knows. Are you still religious? Will your religion even allow you to ask these type of questions and observe these candid possibilities without casting you aside as a heretic? Without pulling you away from the body of believers scorn you to question your faith and its authenticity? Label you as dangerous? If not then you should wonder about the nature of your religion. How is it seeking to influence your behavior? Is it merely a moral concern or a social agenda as well?
Understand that no one is questioning the authenticity of the bible, I certainly am not. It doesn't matter if the ark was a massive boat or an air vessel. It sounds ludicrous to suggest such a thing but years from now when drought and famine sweeps the earth and water only exists as small pockets deep in the earth because all the oceans have dried up and a generation of children have lived without ever experiencing rain or seeing a ship, do you honestly think the description of a massive maritime vessel will sound realistic to them?
But to assume that there is no story along with the story is like a man who looks at a masterpiece and does not allow the painting to speak to him. It is like a woman who reads sheet music but cannot discern the melody. The truth about religion is that we humans create a notion of God to fit our own agenda and validate our own beliefs. We do it today, so what makes you think we didn't do the same thing back in the days of Noah and the flood.
If this makes you uncomfortable I assure you we are just getting started, I have much more to discuss.
Let's fast forward a few hundred years to the exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt. In the book of Exodus in the Old Testament bible what we find is an extraordinary sequence of events called the ten plagues of Egypt. A chronological summary of disaster, each more debilitating than the one before it. According to the Hebrews these plagues were of divine origin orchestrated to free the Hebrews from captivity in the Egyptian empire. In plague #1 we find the water turned to blood. In plague #2 we find the essential nuisance of frogs. In plague #3 we experience an overwhelming colony of gnats. The fourth plague brings us a swarm of flies and we watch as the Egyptians witness their livestock dying in plague #5. Boils destroy human flesh in plague #6 and Hail threatens to destroy everything in plague #7. Apparently the Egyptians still have not learned their lesson and so the locusts bring the 8th plague and darkness and death round up 9 and 10. If you are not familiar with this epic tale you are about to be. I will start by saying that I do not disbelieve this tale. I believe it wholeheartedly. I will follow up that declaration by also saying that I do not believe that something is necessarily divine just because it is in the bible. The bible is a collection of many different types of literature. Poetry, hymns, history and of course faith. If you are captivated by religious dogma and tradition you will not have the discernment to suppose that these themes are not altogether related. Instead you will view everything in your religious texts as a religious phenomenon. The challenge is to provide a scientific explanation for these events. Thankfully, as our knowledge of the world in which we live has evolved this is not very difficult to do. Let us examine:
The Exodus Decoded is a 2006 documentary created by Jewish Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, in which new evidence regarding the escape of Hebrew slaves from Egypt is explored. It is partially narrated by film director James Cameron, and also features input by Charles Pellegrino, author of Unearthing Atlantis. Jacobovici suggests that the Exodus took place around 1500 BCE during the reign of pharaoh Ahmose I, and coincided with the eruption of Santorini that most scholars believe ended the Minoan civilization. In the documentary, the plagues that ravaged Egypt in the Bible are explained as having resulted from that volcanic eruption, and a related limnic eruption in the Nile Delta. While much of Jacobovici's archaeological evidence for the Exodus comes from Egypt, a surprising quantity comes from Mycenae, on mainland Greece.
The eruption of Santorini has been connected to the Israelite Exodus from Egypt and to the Ipuwer Papyrus, which in turn have been connected to each other. These theories would tie the eruption to Pharaoh Ahmose I in the Second Intermediate Period of Egyptian History.
A 2006 documentary created by filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, which explores new evidence in favor of the account of the Book of Exodus, "Exodus Decoded" (The History Channel, aired Sunday, 20 August 2006), investigates Egyptian records of the departure of the mysterious Semitic Hyksos.
Jacobovici suggests that the Hyksos and the Hebrews (whom he calls "Amo Israel", "the people of God") were one and the same, a thesis he supports with Egyptian-style signet rings uncovered in the Hyksos capital of Avaris. These signets read Yakov, similar to Hebrew name of the Biblical patriarch Jacob (Ya'aqov). Another standpoint for this theory is one of the important Hyksos cities, Avaris, which is called modernly Tel el-Yahudiyeh (meaning "mound of the Jews") known for its distinctive black and whiteware.
Jacobovici propounds the theory that the eruption of the Santorini Island volcano (c. 1623 B.C., +/-25) caused all the biblical plagues described against Egypt, redating the eruption to c. 1500 B.C.. The Hyksos, some of them Mycenaean Greek "Hebrews", fled Egypt (which they had in fact ruled for some time) after the eruption. Jacobovici (and fellow producer James Cameron) make a dramatic but rather thinly-supported presentation that the Hyksos were none other than the Israelites, who may have also been known as Habiru ("Hebrews")[neutrality disputed]. The pharaoh with whom they identify the Pharaoh of the Exodus is Ahmose I, whose name means "the moon is born" in Egyptian, and "brother of Moses" in Hebrew. Rather than crossing the Red Sea, a marshy area in northern Egypt, known as the "Reed Sea" would likely have been alternately drained and flooded by Tsunamis caused by the caldera collapse and could have been crossed during the exodus.
Fact: the eruption of Santorini Island Volcano is a verified historical event. What Jaconvici does in his documentary is look at the fallout and after effects of such an event, and to see what the natural effects would have been to potentially contribute to the plagues and disasters described in Exodus. What we find are a potential sequence of events that scientists agree are eerily similar to what is described in the Torah's Exodus. The fact that the eruption takes place roughly fifty years earlier than where biblical historians record the Exodus to have it's place in history is to me a minor detail. It is a minor because if biblical historians are correct, this means that the fact that there is no evidence- archaeological, and therefore my default, historical- save for biblical writings that these events ever occurred has to be confronted. If it is simply a matter of going back 50 years, I can concede that, especially when you consider the compelling evidence.
You must understand why the Exodus is so compelling to people. The fact that there is no historical or archaeological evidence that the Exodus ever happened then calls into question the entire Jewish nation and the state of Israel by default. The tales of the mighty king David and his expansive empire that his son Solomon continued become merely stories of poetry and fantasy. Aside from the bible, there is no evidence that the Exodus ever happened. There is no historical record of a people called the Hebrews, no historical record of the Man called Moses. There is no historical record of Mount Sinai. Unless of course you are willing to adopt Simcha Jacobovici's theory that the Exodus actually took place some fifty years ago, you are choosing to use the bible and the bible alone as your historical proof that the Exodus ever occurred. Which is fine save for the fact that the bible is not a history book.
Understand the nature of the bible which alleges that mankind originated with two people, Adam and Eve. They then produced two sons one of them was murdered by his brother and the murderer got married. To whom presumably? There is no record of God creating anymore human beings which means that he wouldn't have married until Adam and Eve had more children. Which means a large portion of the entire human race is a product of incest. Hold that thought. What ever happened to Cain's children? Could this, in fact, be what the bible is referencing when it says that Noah was righteous? If Cain's wife was a daughter from Adam and Eve his wife would then be his sister. Meaning that this incestual affair would have mutated his entire genealogy. Cain's brother Seth, by default then, would be the only "healthy", "good", or "righteous" bloodline on the entire planet and this righteous bloodline would eventually lead to Noah. Could this be why God chose to wipe out the rest of humanity from the earth? Otherwise we would be a species of deformed, mutated, cripples who would never evolve as we were intended. Perhaps. Of course you must understand that this travesty; this Jekyll and Hyde monstrosity; this abominable debacle is all part of the divine plan... the problem then, you see, with biblical history, is that it doesn't tell you what is actually going on. It wants you to believe that every single thing going on in the world can only be a product of good and evil. Failing miserably of course, to include the rest of the world outside these Semitic people who didn't even have a name until they left Egypt.
This notion that the rest of the world and all its population was corrupt and deserving of destruction, murder and obliteration is obscene. It supposes that the absolute slaughter that is genocide is Godly and that the Jews were exempt from this divine wrath from almighty God simply because God's favor rested solely with this one small strand of the human race that history cannot even locate or identify as having ever existed. This should cause every free thinking human being to raise an eyebrow and begin to ask questions. Let us go back to the tale of Noah. Noah only had three sons. One of them was Ham who is reported to be the father of Canaan. Yet we know what happened to the descendants of Canaan. They were slaughtered. By whom? I remind you, Noah only had three sons. The Christians argue a ridiculous explanation for this and point to Genesis 9:20-28 claiming that this extermination is the cause of the father of the Canaanites, Ham, seeing his father naked. And because of this, all Ham's children were cursed. This explanation makes no plausible sense. Noah inexplicably curses one of Ham's sons- Canaan. Mind you Canaan wasn't even born yet. Somehow Noah apparently knows the name of a child who hadn't even been born yet and for some unexplained reason curses him against the rest of his three brothers. You have to be an irrational individual to believe this stuff. The story of the Hebrews is one continuum of brothers killing each other and almighty God unwaveringly pledging his allegiance to one of the brothers and his descendants for the simple reason that he is God and never breaks his promises; the rest of the brothers, the rest of the entire human race in fact, be damned. But understand that were it not for the old testament bible, or the Torah if you will, the so called Jews would not even exist. The word Hebrew is neither biblical nor historical. it is a term that was created after the history was established. One of Noah's sons was named Shem. One of Shem's sons was called Eber. Eber is where the term "Hebrew" originated except "Hebrew" is never used in the bible. Abraham, for the sake of argument, therefore was a Hebrew. He was not, however, an Israelite or a Jew. Abraham's descendants became known as Israelites after God changed Jacob's Israel. The word "Jew" is actually a derivative of Jacob's son Judah and the tribe which he fathered. Therefore the "Jews" are not Israelites and the Israelites are not Jews. In fact, later on in the Old Testament bible you will discover that Judah and Israel become separate nations altogether even going to war against each other. But that is neither here nor there. What is important is that you understand the nature of confusion towards Israel's history and why much of their history is not found in the recordings of history and why many nations do not presently recognize Israel's existence. If Abraham was not an Israelite or a Jew and the Jews are not Israelites and the Israelites are not Jews than what exactly is the modern state of Israel?
In the bible we are asked to believe incredible tales that can never hope to be explained in any rational detail and when portions of history are glaringly absurd or even missing, we are told that we have no business questioning "God's Word" and that if we don't believe it, no matter how ridiculous, we are in danger of eternal incineration in hell for the rest of hereafter while those who did believe this absurd explanation of events will experience peace, harmony and blessings from almighty God forever and ever.
Let us now say, for the sake of argument, that God did create a wife for Cain. This means then that there is more to the creation story than the bible reveals. Which then means that there is more going on in these biblical stories that is simply not being told. Which means that if you attempt to explain the world you live in purely through Christianity, Judaism or Islam, there will be many essential productions of life you will not only have no explanation for, but come across as less than the whole truth. Do we know where Cain got his wife from? No we don't. Perhaps it was a miracle. We also don't know where the Hebrews came from. Or do we?
The first plague of water to blood, inn the bible suggests that there was actual blood in the water. Apart from the absurd nature of this assumption, we take a look at what science tells us would be the source of such an anomaly, perhaps the first effect from a devastating volcanic eruption.
This eruption remains one of the most powerful eruptions in the last 26,500 years. On the VEI (Volcanic Explosivity Index) it is rated a 7. It is thus classified an Ultra/Plinian or Super Colossal explosion. To give you an idea of the size of this eruption, Mount St. Helens is classified a 5 and Krakatoa a 6 on the scale. Furthermore, there have been only 5 eruptions of this magnitude in the last 10,000 years. Jacobovici’s contention is that this eruption was the source for all of the plagues that fell on Egypt as well as the subsequent escape of the Jews across the Reed Sea. But who exactly were the Hebrews? Understand that after Joseph rose to power and accepted his brothers into Egypt roughly 430 years passed before Moses is introduced to biblical history. During those 430 years, it is not clear what happened to Joseph's bloodline. Moses is described as being a descendant of Levi. But how exactly he is related to Levi is largely a mystery. The problem with genealogy in the bible is that the presumption that we are all descendants of Adam means that it doesn't really matter how you arraigned it, eventually you will find a link to trace someone back to Abraham and therefore claim that you are heir to this divine bloodline. A bloodline mind you that includes incest or some miraculous procreation concept we've never heard of before, or an additional creation story that was omitted. Was it the Hebrews who left Egypt in triumph and went on to conquer Canaan, or was it another group of people entirely?
Jacobovici claims the Hyksos expulsion from Egypt was the work of Ahmose around 1500 BC. Other authorities place the expulsion under Ahmose as well only closer to 1530 BC. He also states that the Hyksos and the Jews are one in the same people. There is a bit of validity to this statement as Josephus also identified the Hyksos expulsion with the Jews. The Hyksos are a historically accurate people. The Hebrews are not. This does not mean that the Hebrews are not a historical people. But what you will find in the bible is a change of context. Before Joseph was exiled to Egypt, his people did not even have a name. After the Exodus, indeed centuries later, into the Exile in Babylon, they then became known as the Jews. Of course "Jew" is a purely western name which is a derivative of the actual word Yehudi What we find historically is that the Hyksos are the only people recorded leaving Egypt en mass and in a show of power and strength. Biblically this may be cause for consternation but historically this makes more sense. It makes more sense that the Joseph's brothers, all twelve of them, a large number of sibling but minuscule compared to the empire of Egypt, would have become part of a culture of people already established in the land. In the same way that the 12 Hebrew tribes comprised the nation of Israel, the Egytians were not a race of people, they were an establishment of power. Other people and cultures of Semetic, Mediterranean, European, African and Arabic decent comprised the Empire of Egypt. It is a self indulging assumption to suppose that a small family, not yet even given a name, even by the bible no less, would somehow be recorded as historically being separate from a powerful group of people already established as a culture in this expansive empire.
One cannot suppose that a small family that had not yet become a nation, recognized by anything or anyone at the time would be able to create its identity in a foreign land of already established power. That would be like me moving to my family to a foreign land and trying to establish our family as a nation. This is a ridiculous proposition. In all likelihood I would find myself and my family becoming part of whatever established culture most resembled my own. I contend that such is the case with the Hebrews and the Hyksos. In fact the word Hebrew is never even recorded in the bible. The title "Hebrew" is a manifestation of the language the people acquired as they settled into Canaan. Which means that Joseph's family had no uniform identity when they entered Egypt, which explains why there is no historical record of the Hebrews and their mass Exodus from Egypt. It's not that they didn't exist, but rather historically, their identity was not recognized by anyone but them.
Let us examine the Exodus: The Filmmaker, Jacobovici, claims that the Nile turned red as a result of the release of high concentrations of iron oxide deposits in the water. A great disturbance of the river floor would have happened as a result of the volcanic eruption and this would have accounted for the red blood color of the Nile. Ironically, this theory, and all of Jacobovici's subsequent explanations for the plagues of ancient Egypt draw support from a modern sequence of events that mirrors the plagues in Exodus almost exactly. Supported by this village disaster next to Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Jacobovici continues his theory, contending the causes and sequence of the plagues were brought about by natural causes, the catalyst being the eruption Minoan volcanic eruption.
Jacobovici ties the next three plagues together as being the result of the first one. He claims the iron oxide deposits and gas killed all the aquatic creatures in the Nile. Jacobovici says the frogs emerged on land because of this, being the only creatures in the river with legs. When all the frogs had sufficiently invaded the towns, they began to die. The piles of dead frogs drew the swarms of gnats and flies that were the next two plagues.
The Filmmaker claims the death of the livestock and the boils on the people are the direct result of the release of gas from the riverbed. This gas rose up after the riverbed was disturbed by the explosion at Santorini.Jacobovici’s contention is that a terrific storm covered Egypt, once again, due to the explosion at Santorini. The phenomena of fiery hail is attributed to debris mixed with hail from the storm. This is a very unique hail storm, biblically speaking because it is said to be a mixture of ice and fire. This mixture sounds spectacular but when you understand how far into the atmosphere the lava from a volcanic eruption spews, much of it, if caught up in a storm as it descended to earth would be exactly that- a mixture of fire and ice.
Jacobovici says the locusts were already in Egypt, but had gone to ground because of cool weather. When the heat of the remnants of the volcanic eruption reached Egypt, they came up in swarms. The plague of darkness is also attributed to the volcanic storm. The ash from such a volcano would, in all likelihood, cause some obscurity from the sun. Yet I personally believe this is the weakest explanation in Jacobovici's theory. Not unlikely but I wouldn't rule out an undocumented celestial event that could have also caused such an event to occur for three days.
Jacobovici contends that gasses from the volcanic eruption disrupted the riverbed and brought forth not only iron oxide to turn the Nile red, but CO2 from underneath the bed. This gas then laid low on the ground as it travelled through Egypt robbing anything in its path of breath. The Filmmaker states that this was also the source for the boils and death of the livestock as well. He then explains why only the firstborn died in this plague. The firstborn of Egyptian households slept in a place of honor in their houses. They were placed each night on a small bed that was extremely low to the ground while the other family members slept either on the roof or in wagons outside the home. This would explain why only the firstborn died since the gas would only kill whatever was low to the ground. For an example of this, Jacobovici points to the disaster at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Africa.
This event happened in 1986 and caused the deaths of 1700 sleeping people as well as animals. This kind of event is known as a Limnic Eruption and while rare, has been known to happen. Lake Nyos is an extreme example. A Limnic Eruption is when gas pressure at the bottom of a lake becomes great enough to make the lake unstable. This gas usually develops because of volcanic activity but may build up because of biological degradation as well. In the case of Lake Nyos, there is a pocket of active magma under the lake. Eventually the lake becomes unstable and an event such as an eruption or landslide causes the lake to release the gas in mass quantities rapidly. This is what happened at Cameroon in the middle of the night. Jacobovici contends that the low travelling gas would not have harmed anyone had they been upright or sleeping at a higher elevation.
Jacobovici also points out at this time that Ahmose had a son. After forensic testing of the mummy of Ahmoses son, researchers determined his approximate age as 12 years old. This, contends Jacobovici, is further proof that Ahmose is the Pharaoh of the Exodus since his son died at such an early age.
In summary, this is one theory of how the Exodus plagues actually manifested. In light of modern examples such as Lake Nyos I contend that this Jacobovici's theory is highly probable. I do not, however, rule out the possibility that other presently unresearched theories are also probable. We simply do not know because we were not there and it is high time that believers admit this fact as well. It is one thing to say that you believe in something. I believe the sun is a gaseaous sphere existing in state of constant nuclear explosions. And I believe this because this notion is supported by many experts in the field who have encountered many theories yet have all concluded the above. This does not mean that this is true. What it means is that what we know to be true is currently accepted as fact. And what we know to be true is still evolving. What happens when we discover future mind boggling facts that we can barely fathom. Well then we will be forced to rewrite our educational material once again.
This highlights the danger of limiting your belief system on what you can prove alone. First of all you yourself have proven nothing. You are believing the words of others and they hold validity because these words and explanations are accepted by the peers in their field. What we begin to find is that the further we get into possibilities, the more we are forced to accept the notion that our beliefs may not be not be absolute. This notion scares people. It makes them question everything they've built their life around because something like religion is where people's entire rationale for life gains meaning.
This is unfortunate. If only the religious among us would look at their religion as it is for "God's Word" cannot be simply a bunch of stories written on paper by the same foolish men they claim are guilty of the iniquities which spawned God's wrath in the first place. I could write a book about my life, call the influences and prodding of my conscious the words of God speaking to me and rationalize, justify and explain every noble, obscene and vile thing that I and those around me do. I could then bury it deep in a cave somewhere and centuries from now when the world is reborn, humanity will decipher my ancient writings and spawn a religious movement. Who wrote Genesis? Who wrote Exodus? Who wrote these things down within the context of "thus saith the Lord"? Nobody knows. There are speculative explanations but no one actually knows where all this religion stuff came from.
What we have is a large portion of the history of humanity either omitted or sorely underrepresented, a group of people who cannot even find their existence in history telling their own story introvertedly and exposing it to the rest of the world as the absolute truth. No other alternative explanation can possibly be even considered as valid. The three monotheistic religions all share the exact same stories from Genesis to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Ishmael yet they all condemn each other. Non believers look at this madness and confusion, throw up their hands and say: "their is no God" for which by the these confused believers they are condemned.
Not one of these groups: Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Atheism, which is also a religion, will declare the only truth which is absolute. (We Don't Know). None of us do. And the most religious people will try and convince you that they do know which flies in the face of what they claim to believe which is "thou shall not lie". We don't know God. Period. This is why we have historically sought to personify God, labeling God generically as a male; him, he, Father, Son. We've never seen God. No one has. Jacob claimed he did in the Torah but Jesus assured us he had not in the gospels. Who do you believe? Why do you believe it? Or are you strong enough to admit that you don't know?
Why do we convict ourselves of the notion that once upon a time there was nothing? Nothing but God and God verbally created the something we call existence? This is nonsense. Not even the bible says this. "Nothing" and "Something" are human explanations for things we do not understand. And from what we do no understand, we seek to construct a belief system to explain it.
I'll tell you what I believe. I believe that the closest thing to God we can ever hope to conceptualize is what the Native Americans so nobly referred to as "The Great Spirit". I do not believe that God is altogether good or that God is altogether evil. These are man made explanations for the things that happen in our world. If a nuclear explosion happened in your neighborhood this would be bad. But millions of them happen billions of miles away on the sun and this is good. Good and bad are concepts but they are not real beyond the explanation of humanity and what we need for our continued survival.
The only two concepts that are valid are fear and love. What is fear and what is love? Again, as humans we can best hope to explain this in the terms of our survival. Beyond this we are lost. So simply put, ponder the following: Love is what gives us hope. Fear does not snuff that hope out, rather it challenges it. That is all. Everything that exists, ever has existed or ever will exist is a product of these two realities. Hate is not the opposite of love. Fear is. Fear is what challenges everything we've built or hope to build. But what do these two suggestions look like outside the lenses of our own humanity? What is hope, if not but a human forensic? We don't know. But try to wrap your mind around this, a new notion. Hope- in it's essence, worldly or otherworldly, flesh or divine, religious or scientific- is possibility. The possibility of anything and everything. This is the omnipresent character of everything finite, infinite and beyond. The character of God, if you will. Yet fear is necessary for anything and everything to manifest. Fear, the challenger of love, is not bad. Love is not good. They just are. They exist out of possibility and necessity, constantly discovering and rediscovering harmony and balance. They do not have labels or titles. It is only we who seek to attribute some virtue or malice to these. Fear challenges love. Anything that is challenged either withers or grows. Evolutions suggests the occurrence of the latter. And here we are. The big bang, creation, the beginning; Genesis if you will. The parable of our existence. Understand there's nothing wrong with parables. But call it what it is: Religion declared as literal and actual history. These are not infinitely credible sources of our reality. I do not believe in the devil. I believe in evil but I believe that evil is the conglomeration of humanity's fears haunting our race. "The Devil" is simply our attempt to understand this fear by personifying it in the same way that "God" is our attempt to personify our notion of good in this world. Unfortunately this, however noble, is a distorted view of God. On one hand, Christians contend that God created everything. On the other they claim God has absolutely no comprehension of evil. (Observe religion's natural propensity towards the extreme), do not ignore this very popular excerpt from the Christian Bible: "Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made." (John 1:3). This must then mean that this same God created evil. The essence of creation is that you call into existence a portion of yourself for one cannot create something that one does not first posses. How then did evil enter creation? It wasn't through Adam as believers contend because that would suggest that Lucifer's actions weren't evil when he rebelled against God eons before man was ever created. If God did not create evil, yet evil exists as religious believers claim, the only alternative then, is that there is a part of reality that God has no control over, there is a part of creation that he did not create. How can this be? This then means that God is not all powerful. It means that God is not omnipresent. It means that God does not reign supreme. How can this be? This means that God is not God; these are the only two alternatives. Or could there possibly be: the truth- religion's identity of God is wrong.
The whole idea of good and evil is archaic and needs to be revisited. If science is correct we know what can happen will happen, has happened, or eventually will happen. This is a theory brought to us by Quantum Physics. Understand yet again that this theory is based upon time. "Can" "has" "will" these are all provisions for the only way we experience reality: time. Follow me here. Time, according to Einstein's theory of relativity, is predicated upon space therefore time and space coexist and without it nothing physical can exist. (Take note of black holes). I'll tell you what this does not mean, it does not mean that in the absence of space and time nothing exists. What this means is that in the absence of space and time everything that can possibly exist has always existed and will exist forever because there is nothing to separate reality. In that reality there is no past, present and future. The three coexist together without distinction or separation. If you believe in God my friends, this is the essence of God. Not good and evil, not Jesus and the Devil. The whole concept of the "Trinity" (which, by the way, is never once even mentioned in the bible or any religious text anywhere) is an attempt to personify this reality so that we can understand it. It does not make the illustration false. It just means it was a parable like most of Jesus' teachings were. An earthly story to convey a heavenly meaning.
Do not label me a heretic without first acknowledging the merit of what I say. The past, present and future only exist because of space and time. Take away space, take away time and they coexist together. Our universe is littered with constructs called black holes which exemplify this very idea, indeed there are black holes which have collapsed upon themselves. It is inexplicable, but our inability to explain something does not make it any less a part of reality. Why we are here now, has less to do with the conscious effort on the part of some divine overseer but simply a strand of the possible expressing itself for when time and space are no longer a fabric, everything is something and there is no such thing as nothing. "Nothing" is a product of the fabric of space and time. Fear and love challenges this notion, Yet in reality, "Nothing" does not exist. It never has, it never will.
God exists, and so does the Devil but only in the context of our own humanity. In all actuality what we are seeking to explain through these two eternal beings are the personifications of something beyond the physical world. Love and Fear. One is not greater than the other, and one is not lesser than the other for they are both needed for our survival. The physical world exists because of this juxtaposition. Once you personify God, you make God prone to human error. This human error is what you find time and time again in the Bible, the Torah, and the Q'uran. Human error, seeking to explain something beyond our comprehension of reality. Your religion will not allow you to identify or understand this. Your religion will pressure you to believe that the writing of a mere human being are the accurate interpretations and reflections of a flawless God who reigns on a throne somewhere in another dimension.
Ah but you have something religions do not have you stricken human don't you? You have an imagination. And where do you think that came from? Where do you think your dreams come from? What do you think dreams are? We cannot create something that is not somehow a part of our consciousness. Yet many of our dreams appear other worldly in nature, defying the laws of physics, challenging science as we know it. You do and see things in the world of your dreams that would never be allowed in this world don't you? Of course you do. And just like you experience otherworldly dreams but wake up and cannot explain them, you experience God and cannot explain the God you experience. This is because God is not the product of man's expression. Man is part of the expression of God. There never was nothing and there never will be. There was always everything. The past and the future is simply being regulated by something called the present. This is the physical world and we live in it. Rejoice. But God had merit long before your religion was ever created or good and evil was conceptualized. What does that say about your reality? What does that say about your religion? I am not saying your faith is false. That would make me a fear monger and I am nothing of the sort. What I am saying is that if you believe something, you posses the power to cause what you believe to manifest into reality. Therefore what you believe has little do with what actually exists. This is the beauty of reality. Faith is real, always has been and always will be. Faith has little to do with the past, present or future. Faith is faith. It supposes that what is believed has eternal merit. Faith is indeed a powerful thing. But understand what I am saying. Religion is false. It is an errant explanation of God and always will be. Whoever Moses was, he was no better than me. Whoever Abraham was, he was no better than you. We are all human and I don't care how great a human being he is, he is still human. She is still human. And for some obscure individuals whom history has yet to identify to write an entire book on their own and pass it off as the word of God is a fearful thing not a loving one and their aims had less to do with truth and more to do with controlling humanity. I will not alter this position or change the language of this statement. My faith is greater than Christianity, Islam or Judaism because if neither existed I would still have my faith. God's word is written in my DNA, not in the pages of a book because the eternal reality we call God existed before there were books. There is no fairytale ending. There is no alternative theory. There is only fear and love. Accept fear, but choose to love. God bless you all and thank you for taking the time to read.
Fear Not, Love Now,
zulufighter25@facebook.com
@jaredjbailey
