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D**N
Not Up to Snuff
This is, essentially, Mr. Gilbert’s fourth foray into analyzing the stranger parts of the “Bible” and the religions that have interacted with it (this time, with his wife). I have reviewed “the Great Inception” and “Last Clash of the Titans”. I will not be reading or reviewing “Bad Moon Rising”.I have found fault with Mr. Gilbert’s theology in the first two books but I have found his biblical analyses thought-provoking so I was looking forward to book. I was disappointed. All of the theology-driven biblical analysis that I disliked about the previous books has intensified in this one. Mr. Gilbert still hasn’t sunk to Dr. Heiser’s level of theological dishonesty but he is coming close. In this book, he – they actually –, all too often, simply made an assumption and ran with it.There is also the matter of Part Seven: Technology of the Dead. This was the Gilberts’ excursion into Lovecraft and Crowley, trying to tie biblical necromancy and the “Inanna Spirit to modern-day literature and occultism. While it is a potentially interesting topic in and of itself. It simply did not, in my opinion, belong in this book.Oh, and the repetitions. The Gilberts frequently duplicated entire paragraphs with only minor changes. I found this very annoying.That is my review of the book. What follows is my abbreviated analysis of some parts of the book. If nothing else, I appreciated that the Gilberts gave me an opportunity to look at some biblical and ancient near eastern texts is a different way than before. A more complete version should be available on Academia…edu for a month or so from this posting.-----The Goodp. 15 – “refer to Goliath and the other Philistine ‘descendants of the giants’ (yelide harapa), it’s in the spiritual sense”Huge leap. The “Bible” says nothing about a spiritual sense. There is no reason to think that anything other than physical descent was meant.p. 66 – “It’s tempting to go overboard with speculation, but we don’t serve our God well by wandering too far afield without evidence.”Good advice. Prove as much as you can and keep speculation to a minimum. At the least, keep it clearly labeled as such.p. 93 – “If this is correct, the account in Genesis is a sort of cosmic model. A river flowed out of Eden to become the three major sources of fresh water in the world known to the Israelites… No doubt the river in the garden was the same one Ezekiel described in his vision of the future Temple.”All good points.p. 271 – The passage on this page comes from Isa 14:20b-21The Gilberts bring up a good point that, anytime you see ‘iyr in the OT, you should check to see how the translation works in context. If one interprets this passage as referring to Gen 6:4, then ‘iyryim probably are “watchers”. On the other hand, this could simply be an exorcration (erasing the name and memory) of an enemy. In this latter instance, ‘iyryim is better understood as “cities”. In the context, either would be appropriate so I only wish that the Gilberts had presented both sides of the discussion as it makes the discussion clearer.-----The Iffyp. 52 – “Without getting too graphic, there are only a couple of physical positions in which Phinehas could have speared both of the with one jab.”True and one of those ways was if (presumably) the man jumped between his wife and an armed home invader to try to protect her. Isn’t this exactly why so many Christians have guns to protect themselves and their families from vicious criminals and thugs?p. 54 – “The name of the first, Oboth, derives from ‘ob, which refers to necromancy”The main translation offered is “water bags / bottles”. It is also possible to derive it from ‘abyim (“fathers”) and ‘abyim (“young / fresh plants / fruits”). All of which are as likely as the source of the name of this location.p. 56 – “’br, which means ‘to pass from one side to the other.’ In this context, it refers to a spirit that passes from one plane of existence to another”The Gilberts are taking a big step into the unsupported, here. Looking at some of the other uses of this term, it appears that it was also used of one passing through the split carcasses of a beryit (“covenant”) ceremony. Indeed, looked at that way, it reveals several passages that probably referred to a beryit. Abraham’s beryit (in Gen 15:17-18) is the clearest example but it may also be behind Gen 31:48+ and Gen 32:22.p. 286 – When discussing Eze 39:11, it is interesting to note that ‘aber can also be used as a verb, to “pass through”. This is the same verb that is used of the parties that have to pass through the halved carcasses of a beryit (“covenant”) ritual as mentioned in Gen 15:17 and 31:52. Gog and his multitude are to pass through the Valley of the Travelers / Those Who Pass Through (quite possibly, “those who have made a covenant with Yahoweh or ‘El”) which will restrain those who would pass through (Gog and his multitudes). A valley is the split body of the Earth, so this passage may mean to describe Gog and his minions entering into a beryit with Yahoweh but doing so with intent to betray Yahoweh and his allies. And what is the fate of those who violate a beryit? Death (Gen 31:52).-----The Questionablep. 81 – “Habakkuk describes him [Deber and Reshef] following at the heels of Yahweh like a whipped puppy.”What about Hab 3:5 impresses you as “whipped puppy”? This is not Yahoweh out for an evening stroll. This is Yahoweh striding into war with deadly-effective battle companions striding before and after him. If you insist on thinking of them as dogs rather than ‘elohim, then you can regard them as no less than war dogs trained to kill the enemy with little thought regarding their own lives. Deber and Reshef are described as battle companions, subservient to Yahoweh but loyal and effective in their own rights.p. 180 – “Really? For more than six thousand years, our ancestors accidentally forced their babies to wear head-gear so tight that it deformed their skulls?”For thousands of years, most cultures around the world were nomadic. That means that they had to carry any newborns as they traveled. As anyone who has ever handled a newborn human knows, newborn and young infant necks are quite fragile. Carrying them in your arms is unreliable over hours of travel over uneven terrain. Therefore, you pack the infants in wraps on your backs. Unfortunately, that leaves the infants’ heads to flop around and kill many of them. To solve that problem, you wrap and secure the infants’ heads with a cloth. That cloth has to be wrapped fairly tightly which will distort the infant's soft brain skull. Even as the societies become more sedentary, new mothers didn’t have strollers. They still had to carry their babies to the field with them so that they could work. Thus, papoopses and “papoose head” continued even into sedentary cultures as traditional. In some cultures, it lasted longer than in others.p. 189 – “Gender fluidity is the flavor of the month among progressives in the West.”While this may be true today, it was certainly not true within the “Inanna cultures” of which the Gilberts are writing. Men are known to have taken on female gender for religious purposes. However, women becoming (at least legally) men was a different matter. In most of these cultures, women had very little social status. To survive, they were expected to become wives, concubines, or property of men. In Early Babylonia, they were given a legal out to become a harimtu. This was not prostitution but singleness. As a harimtu, a single woman could own property, run a business, adopt children, even negotiate contracts with men. Thus, this female maleness was not a “flavor of the month”, it was a harsh economic reality by which many women had to survive.And it had its consequences. A harimtu could not legally cover her head in public. If she was caught, then she could be executed. Consider the analogy in modern islamic culture. A veil designated a woman as someones property (a father’s, a husband’s, a master’s, whatever), which meant that damaging that property (the woman) could result in legal repercussions from her owner. The lack of a veil meant that the woman was single with no owner or family to press legal charges or avenge her. Thus, they would be subject to rapists, slavers, and the like with the ability to seek legal repercussions only if they survived and escaped. Even then, in a notoriously male-centric culture, their testimony was worth significantly less than a man’s in court.-----The (Mis)TranslatableTo slightly paraphrase Inigo Montoya, “I do not think those words mean what you think they do.”.p. 107 – “Genesis 28 is not describing a necromantic ritual. That would imply that Jacob performed some working to open the portal.”The phrasing is ambiguous but it is likely that Jacob was actually planning on invoking a spiritual encounter. He didn’t travel through this place. He encountered it as a specific location. He intended to come to this location. Although he might simply have found an appropriate stone by which to rest his head, the passage says that Jacob “took from (the) stones” suggesting a pile of stone already in that specific place, i.e., a matsebah, a memorial / ritual stone(s).He used the stone as a mer’ashah (“at the head”) which seems, from usage, to be an object place near the head during sleep but not (usually) a pillow. The use is not clearly specified but, since the mer’ashah used by Michal (1 Sam 19:13) was a teraph, it seems likely that this was an object of ritual intent. Indeed, when used in 1 Sam 26:7, 11, 16 and 1 Kin 19:6, a spear, cruse of water, and, in the last case, a cake were place near or on a mer’ashah. Thus, this was almost certainly not a pillow but more of a mini-altar with libation and offeratory bread.Next, Jacob slept (shakab) before the mer’ashah. But shakab is not always sleeping. In several cases it can mean having sex and also be part of a visionary ritual. Samuel shakabed before the Ark of the Covenant in 1 Sam 3:3. He didn’t simply sleep or have sex before the Ark of the Covenant. 1 Sam 26:7 and 1 Kin 19:5 also distinguish between “sleep” (yashen) and shakab.So, though not unambiguously, it appears likely that Jacob stopped at this location and deliberately performed a ritual to the gods of this location.p. 145 – Discussion of ‘Asherah, the Queen of Heaven in Jer 7.Jer 7 opened up a big ole can of He Said / She Said. This whole chapter is the prophet Jeremiah speaking out against the religious practices of the Temple, Jerusalem, Judah, and Israel – the entire religious hierarchy of Temple Judaism. It was probably a situation similar to that of Paul (and, in a sense, Martin Luther), where a small off-shoot group of a religion became powerful enough overwhelm the parent religion (Jerusalem Christianity / the Holy Roman Catholic Church) and invalidate it. Many places in the OT make it clear that ‘Asherah (usually not Astarte. Definitely not Ishtar, or Inanna) was worshipped as Yahoweh (or ‘El’s) consort in the First Temple as part of the Royal Judaism of the time. Various reformers came along to disrupt this practice but it legitimately persisted even after the destruction of the First Temple as the Common Judaism of the time as witnessed by the “Yahweh and his Asherah” inscription at Kuntillet Arjud and the ‘Asherah-containing theophoric names in the writings that survived from the jewish temple in Elephantine during the Hellenistic Period. I have even argued that it might be behind Jesus’s odd cursing of the fig tree (Mark 11:12-25). Thus, Jeremiah’s rantings against the Queen of Heaven were not a reflection of True Judaism(TM) on the worship of ‘Asherah at the Temple but the rantings of a reformer who was rejecting former ways (e.g., Protestants denouncing Catholics using statues of saints and Mary).In Jer 7:22, Jeremiah quoted Yahoweh as saying, “For I spoke not unto your fathers nor commanded them - in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt - concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices.” This is probably technically true. Yahoweh waited several days, indeed, over a month (as I remember) until Moses and the people reached Mount Sinai, before revealing the specifics of sacrificial laws. However, since Jeremiah’s intent was to discredit the notion of animal (or human) sacrifices, this quote is, essentially, a lie as there are extensive rules on how and why to sacrifice animals to Yahoweh. Either Yahoweh gave “abominable” commandments during the Exodus or he (or Jeremiah) was lying about giving those “abominable” commandments. From the evidence, we know that animal sacrifice was an acceptable judaic temple practice both before and after Jeremiah’s time.Also, Jeremiah railed against the people offering their sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven and Yahoweh threatens to kill them for it but what happened when they actually gave up these practices and (presumably) make offerings only to Yahoweh? Well, in 44:18 we see what happened when the people went monotheistic. Their economy collapsed and they were consumed by war and famine. Pretty much exactly what Yahoweh threatened to do to them if they didn’t convert and there is no mention, in the text, that this was Yahoweh’s punishment. The only reasonable conclusion that the people could have come to would have been that monotheism was a false religion and tried to return to their old ways (worshiping Yahweh properly as the head of the ‘Elohim).p. 163 – “Boom. Down you go, Dumuzi. Nice knowing you.”Even though I disagree with many of the conclusions that the Gilberts drew from this story, I’m glad that they included it because it is a good example of drawing firm conclusions from incomplete backgrounds. “Inanna’s Descent into the Nether World” is an incomplete text with text missing at a key point. The Gilberts depicted Dumuzi as the victim of a power-mad Inanna but this is exactly where the text breaks off. We have some fragments that may come from the end of this text and we have other surviving texts that tell of the fate of Dumuzi. The problem is that they don’t all agree. In some Dumuzi offers himself. In others he is taken. In some he shares his fate with his sister. As should be expected of a story adopted by many cultures for different purposes, the story changed – not unlike the story of the Titans / Didanu / Nephilyim.Before dealing with the end of the story and Dumuzi’s fate, let’s take a quick look at the beginning. Inanna controlled the mes objects – those objects that she surrendered as she passed through each gate of the Underworld. In essence, she was already in control of the Underworld.So, why did Inanna choose to try to take over the Underworld (or whatever she was after) as she did? She had the mes objects. She had power over Ereshkigal or Ereshkigal wouldn’t have forced her to give them up at each gate of the Underworld. As near as I can tell, we don’t know. Before she descended to the Underworld, Inanna set up a contingency plan to save herself from the Underworld when she fell victim to Ereshkigal. She obviously knew ahead of time that she would have to surrender herself to Ereshkigal’s power. Why? Unfortunately, I didn’t see her reasons in my quick glance through the text.In this version of the Inanna’s and Dumuzi’s story, Dumuzi’s fate is tied to Inanna’s true motivations for her descent. Unfortunately, Inanna’s motivation and Dumuzi’s actual fate are ambiguous. We do have a few clues. First of all, Inanna left a contingency plan with her servants in case she couldn’t escape from Ereshkigal. Her servants were to seek aid for her from the other gods. “Inanna’s Descent” tells of her instructing her servants one by one, then, after her capture, her servants followed her instructions until Ninshubur enlisted Father Enki’s aid (as quoted by the Gilberts). What the Gilberts neglected to describe was Inanna’s return from the Underworld accompanied by a gallu (“bull(?) demon”) who went before her as a minister; a gallu who went behind her as an escort; and a host of small and large gallyim around them. As she progressed, she encountered her servants one by one. They bowed down before her in the dirt and their dusty mourning clothes. This continued until she came to Dumuzi.“There was Dumuzi clothed in a magnificent garment and seated magnificently on a throne.”Obviously, Dumuzi had not taken the route of mourning when his wife died. Thus, we have a clue that, in this story, Dumuzi was not the loyal, selfless husband that he was depicted as in other versions of the story. As the gallyim seized him to drag him to the Underworld to take Inanna’s place, he pleaded to Utu (Inanna’s brother) to save him. He requested to be given the hands and feet of a snake so that he could escape the gallyim. This request was granted and Dumuzi seems to have escaped (as a seraf?)… at least for a little while.And that is where the known text ends. There are additional fragments which probably belong the end. In these, Inanna mourned the betrayal by her husband and Dumuzi was captured and imprisoned in the Underworld. In addition, his sister was captured and they have to share time in the Underworld (6 months a year each). We don’t know why his sister became involved in this plot but, most likely, he took refuge with her (she may even have convinced Dumuzi to take over Inanna’s throne). Certainly, in this version of the story, Dumuzi’s substitution for Inanna does not seem to have been the result of Inanna’s callous attitude towards Dumuzi in stark opposition to Gilgamesh’s view of her in his epic.
P**.
Must Read!
Here is the "big picture" that has been missing for so many of us, me included. If you are "in the church" don't be afraid to read this, it's well researched and will get you thinking. If you are a Christian and love Jesus Christ I believe you will love Him even more! If you are into sci-fi and attracted to new age and occult material please, please read it. If nothing else, you will find it interesting, and reading it may open your eyes to a deception that was designed to destroy us all!. I'm a child of the 60's, was brought up in the church but was into sci-fi (I still am, but I see it differently than before) and frankly was attracted to new age and occult material at an early point in my life. Yep, I was an H.P. Lovecraft fan (until one day after reading a short story I realized I always felt horrible after reading Lovecraft stuff and decided it was dumb to willingly do something that made me feel awful), own multiple sci-fi program DVD sets, and went to Las Vegas to see the representation of King Tut's tomb as discovered by Carter and go to the Star Trek experience. I thought mythologies were just interesting made up stories and thought it would be cool to be able to read palms, etc. etc. Somehow God kept me safe and now Sharon and Derek have explained the connections I never understood before. I read "Chariots of the Gods" when it first came out and couldn't find anyone in the church to help me understand what was going on. I hate to say it but I think it's still hard to find people in the church who can help. Please read this book. It is ground-breaking. I'm hoping it will come out in kindle in a way that will make it easier to cross-check the footnotes! I'd like to give this as Christmas presents but I don't like it when people give me books to read that I did not want. (Oh no....) so what to do... As I keep saying, please read this book. If you read this and are a friend of mine, ask me and I'll buy you a copy. (You must already be a friend. I can't afford to buy copies for all Amazon customers. :-)
B**.
Great Book
What a team these two make. Derek and Sharon are the consummate researchers and this book certainly proves it. I was so excited to start reading this book because I have developed a curriculum on Spiritual Warfare called "Warfare Bootcamp " and this book was an invaluable resource for me. This book just ties a lot of loose ends for me in my research for my studies and I am so grateful to both of these highly intelligent anointed writers. I mean this from the bottom of my heart Derek and Sharon you are in my prayers and thank you for your diligence and obedience to serving God and the Body of Christ. Billy B.
M**N
What I didn't know, I'm learning now!
About the authors: Every time I listen to or read anything by Derek and Sharon Gilbert, I always learn something that opens up the world around me and most importantly, the Bible's hidden mysteries. The author's know their topics, are well researched and I love how they share back and forth as if they truly always enjoy each other's company. You won't only come away with newer understandings with their books, podcasts, shows, conferences,...but their marital relationship is sincerely respectable and loving and makes you want the same kind of relationship in your own marriage. If you don't catch on the first time to what they're talking about in Veneration, don't worry, it will be explained differently several times throughout, so that you can understand and make sense of it all. Truly helps when you learn what "the powers and principalities" really are, and why people from the beginning of time, are deceived into venerating the dead...
Z**M
Eye opener
Another great book from the Gilberts enlightening those who seek after truth and a deeper walk
M**L
past, present, future
The research for this book has been nothing less than outstanding. Thank you Derek and Sharon Gilbert for such an eye opening study of reality.
M**A
A real page-turner!
Simply great! Now I want to read "Reversing Hermon" by Michael Heiser.
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