| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
Torkel
Cannabis Sacrament Minister
Joined: 23 Nov 2004
Posts: 1396
Location: West Virginia, USA
|
 Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:30 pm Post subject: The Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon |
 |
|
Very thought provoking article, IMHO.
The Ark of the Covenant and the Temple of Solomon
Excerpted from:
The Secret History of The World
by Laura Knight-Jadczyk
| Quote: |
The Ark of the Covenant: that most mysterious and powerful object that we are led to believe was the object of the Templars sojourn and searches in Jerusalem. What do we really know about the Ark?
In order to come to any idea about the Ark, we will naturally have to make a careful examination of the religious structure in which it is situated: Judaism. When I began to study the issues that concerned me: religious questions, philosophical problems, and so on, I really had no idea that I would uncover something so horrific and far reaching as what I came to realize about religions in general and monotheism in particular. Please don’t misunderstand me or think that I am promoting paganism or any other form of worship of “gods” or images of god. I am quite convinced that the source of all existence is consciousness, and that this consciousness is, at its root, what we would call God, or Divine Mind. What we are concerned about here is the imposition of monotheism in the form of any one group claiming that their version of who or what god is or is not is the only correct one. And the further result of this is that Judeo-Christian monotheism prevailed with its twisted conception of linear time borrowed from Zoroastrianism.
People have been reading the Bible for ages. It has achieved a status in our culture assigned to no other single body of text. There are more copies of the Bible on the face of the planet than any other single book. It is quoted (and misquoted) more often than any other book. It is translated into more languages than any other book ever written as well. More people in recorded history have read it, studied it, taught it, admired it, argued about it, loved it, lived by it, and killed and died for it. It is the singular document at the heart of Judaism and Christianity, and yet the common man doesn’t really seem to ever ask: Who wrote it, really? They think they know: it is divinely dictated, revealed or inspired
In spite of what the average person believes about it, many investigators – mostly theologians - have been working on this question for about a thousand years – when they aren’t being burned at the stake for even asking it. What is ironic is the fact that most of them have only been seeking closer communion with God by trying to get closer to the original text “from the Hand of God,” so to say.
When one studies literature in a classroom setting, it is important to also study the life of the author, even if only through the clues of the literary works under examination. One is enabled to see significant connections between the life of the author and the world that the author is depicting. In terms of the Bible, these things become crucial. Nevertheless, the fact is, when we are talking about such “fuzzy” things as religion and history, we immediately come up against a certain problem.
Historians, when writing about history, not only discuss the theoretical facts that are being proposed as the timeline, but also the means by which they arrived at their ideas. Generally, they draw their conclusions about history by reading "sources," or earlier accounts of the matter at hand. In some cases these are eye-witness accounts, in others, accounts told to a scribe by a witness, and so on.
Historians try to make a distinction between sources as "primary" and "secondary." A primary source is not necessarily an eye-witness account - though it would be nice if it was - but is defined by historians as one that cannot be traced back any further and does not seem to depend on someone else's account. Secondary sources are those that are essentially copies or "re-worked" primary sources. Often, they consist of material from several sources assembled together with commentary or additional data.
Well, obviously this could present a problem if the primary source is completely falsified.
Primary sources can legitimately require interpretation and assessment; this is the role of a good secondary source, providing the distinction between source and interpretation is made clear. Indeed secondary sources - analyses - are vital to the average reader who may not have the necessary linguistic, historical and cultural background to assess the primary sources. But, all too often, historians deal with their sources exactly as J. K. Huysmans has described:
Events are for a man of talent nothing but a spring-board of ideas and style, since they are all mitigated or aggravated according to the needs of a cause or according to the temperament of the writer who handles them.
As far as documents which support them are concerned, it is even worse, since none of them is irreducible and all are reviewable. If they are not just apocryphal, other no less certain documents can be unearthed later which contradict them, waiting in turn to be devalued by the unearthing of yet other no less certain archives. [Huysmans, 1891, Ch II].
One theologian wrote about the Bible:
The Bible is an Extraordinary Book: A book which claims infallibility; which aspires to absolute authority over mind and body; which demands unconditional surrender to all its pretensions upon penalty of eternal damnation, is an extraordinary book and should, therefore, be subjected to extraordinary tests.
But it isn't.
Neither Christian priests nor Jewish rabbis approve of applying to the bible the same tests by which other books are tried.
Why?
Because it will help the bible? It can not be that.
Because it might hurt the bible? We can think of no other reason.
The Truth is that The Bible is: A Collection of Writings of Unknown Date and Authorship Rendered into English From Supposed Copies of Supposed Originals Unfortunately Lost.
So wrote M. M. Mangasarian, former Congregationalist and Presbyterian Minister, who studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, and very early in his life renounced his Christian affiliation and pursued a remarkable career as a proponent of Free Thought.
Recently, Richard Dawkins, author of the Blind Watchmaker, suggested that religion was a virus.
Dawkins argued that the widespread presence of religion —despite its lack of obvious benefits—suggests that it was not an evolutionary adaptation. [...] Society provides a breeding ground for the “virus” of religion by labeling children with the religion of their parents. Children, in turn, absorb these beliefs because they are conditioned to do so.
Though it is universal, Dawkins said, religion is not widely beneficial. Rejecting the theory of many of his contemporaries, Dawkins argued that religion has not helped people to adapt or to survive. Beyond acting as a source of solace, religion provides no protection against diseases or physical threats.
“A person who is faced with a lion is not put at ease when he’s told that it’s a rabbit,” Dawkins said. Religion, in Dawkins’ view, not only provides false comfort—it is actively divisive and harmful. Designated as Christians or Muslims by their parents, children are apt to face the discrimination associated with these labels, Dawkins said. Dawkins pointed to the example of Protestant fundamentalists in Belfast spitting at young Catholic girls merely because their parents labeled them Catholic. [1]
Dawkins is right in many respects. Even if I do not agree with his ideas that promote existence as solely the consequence of the "accidental mechanicalness of the universe," I have to say that he has zeroed in on the crucial element of religion - or cult - as it is known in our day: that it is a virus, and a deadly one at that. One thing that Dawkins said that I disagree with is: “A person who is faced with a lion is not put at ease when he’s told that it’s a rabbit.” As it happens, that is exactly the problem we face when we consider the use of religion in our reality. Many people are "put at ease" by being told that the lion is a rabbit. It doesn't help them to survive, or to solve the problems of humanity, but it distracts their attention away from asking uncomfortable questions about our reality that the Powers That Be do not want them to ask. As to why people believe the lies of the Monotheistic Cults, Dawkins points out rather succinctly that religion is a societal norm that stems from children’s psychological tendencies. “It is their unique obedience that makes them vulnerable to viruses and worms,” Dawkins said.
"Their unique obedience." Religion is a form of coercing obedience a la Machiavelli.
As the reader might know,[2] I spent a number of years as a hypnotherapist as part of my search for answers in the “realm of mind.” That work gave me a unique perspective on just about every other branch of study I have followed since. The main thing I learned from this is that most, if not ALL, human perspective is rooted in emotional thinking. Emotions have a curious tendency to “frame” and “color” what we see, experience and remember so that what we think becomes, very often, a matter of “wishful thinking.”
The problem with the subject of the Bible and History is that there are so many fields that can contribute data - archaeology, paleontology, geology, linguistics, and so forth - these types of things provide DATA, which are discarded in favor of "wishful thinking. On the other side we have mythology and history. They are, unfortunately, quite similar because, as it is well known, the “victors write history.” And people are prone to do many evil deeds in difficult situations, which they later wish to cover up in order to present themselves in a more positive light for posterity.
The oldest extant texts of the Old Testament in Hebrew are those found at Qumran which date only to (by some estimates) two or three centuries before Christ. The oldest version before those were discovered was a Greek translation from about the same period! The earliest complete Hebrew text dates only from the tenth century AD! Something is wrong with this picture.
It is generally believed from textual analysis, that a very small part of the Old Testament was written about 1000 BC and the remainder about 600 BC. The Bible, as we know it, is the result of many changes throughout centuries and is contradictory in so many ways we don’t have space to catalog them all! There are entire libraries of books devoted to this subject, and I recommend that the reader have a look at the material in order to have some foundation upon which to judge the things I am going to say.
Biblical scholars generally date Abraham to about 1800 - 1700 BC. The same scholars date Moses to 1300 or 1250 BC. However, if we track the generations as listed in the Bible, we find that there are only seven generations between and including these two patriarchal figures! Four hundred years is a bit long for seven generations. Allowing 35 to 40 years per generation, places Abraham at about 1550 BC and Moses at about 1300 BC. This obviously means that there are a few hundred years not accounted for in the text. Tracking back to Noah, using the generations listed in the Bible, one arrives at a date of about 2000 to 1900 BC - about the time of the arrival of the Indo-Europeans into the Near East. The geological and archaeological records do not support a cataclysm at that time, though what could be described as a global discontinuity of cataclysmic elements is supported right around 12,000 years ago. In this case, we have lost 8,000 years, give or take a day.
In a more general sense, using the Bible as historical source material presents a number of very serious problems, most particularly when we consider the “mythicization” factor. There are many contradictions in the text that cannot be reconciled by standard theological mental contortionism. In some places, events are described as happening in a certain order, and later the Bible will say that those events happened in a different order. In one place, the Bible will say that there is two of something, and in another it will say that there were 14 of the same thing. On one page, the Bible will say that the Moabites did something, and then a few pages later; it will say that the Midianites did exactly the same thing. There is even an instance in which Moses is described as going to the Tabernacle before Moses built the Tabernacle! (I guess Moses was a time traveler!) |
Rest of article here:
http://cassiopaea.org/cass/biblewho1.htm
Peace,
Torkel
_________________
Miller vs U.S. (230 F 2nd 486,489): "The claim and exercise of a Constitutional right cannot be converted into a crime."
Miranda vs Arizona (384 U.S. 436, 125): "Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule-making or legislation which would abrogate them."
HAGANS vs LAVINE (415 US 533 N-3,note 5): "Once JURISDICTION is challenged it must be proven by the Plaintiff." |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
Public Forum
Members only forum
Members Group
| 
