The God of Eden and Life-giving water
The faith in God celebrated throughout the Old Testament is a very old one. It is not a take over from a Canaanite Ba´al but reaches back into prehistoric periods. He is the God of life very different from his adversary, Ba´al/Resheph-Apollo, the great hunter and killer and his 7 "pigs" (demons), lord of the rephaim, the dead spirits, and his very violent sister, the huntress `Anat, the mistress of the coiling serpent, ltn.
The garden of Eden is not only characterized by the Tree of Life but also by the River of Life and by the Hayyot, the "Living Beings". It is a kind of omfalos, a cosmic navel, the great place of Life, a life giving center of cosmos with the temple as its visible counterpart. Like the Mesopotamian Ea/Ia, and El in Ugarit God is enthroned by the "living/ lifegiving water", Gen 2,10; Is 32,15, Hez 47,1-12, Joel 4,18, Zech 13,1 & 14,8, Dan 7,10 (a fiery river coming out from his throne), John 2 & 4 & 7,38 & 19,34, Rev 4,6 & 15,2 (a sea of crystal mixed with fire) 22,1f & 22,17. "For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light", Ps 36,9, shows that this well of life can also be seen as a well of light (or holy spirit or crystal water mixed with fire). The beautiful prehistoric pottery from the necropolis of Susa (4000 BC) shows that a very old "unity of 4 world corners-symbol" is part of the well at the navel of the earth, (Gen 2,10: the well of life dividing into 4 streams). At the bottom of the painted vases is a cross or a rectangle surrounded by water birds or wavering lines indicating streams of water. One or two such bowls were found in each grave. Memoires de la Delegation en Perse, vol 13. fig 8-9 & Tabl. XIIIff. Tetradic symbols are also the hayyot (the creatures of life) described as a unity of 4 species. They are 4, each with 4 wings. That this unity of the four has something to do with the mystic vision of God as the center of cosmic unity is seen from the fact that the hayyot and the 4 wheels surrounding the throne are full of eyes, they are all vision. The God of Life, surrounded by the "living creatures, the fountain of life and the tree of life", is also the God of mystic vision.
The traditions Gen 1-11 are not taken over from neither Mesopotamian, Egyptian or Canaanite myths but have archaic features. An extensive review of Near Eastern folk religion reveals a faith very different from what was believed in the Yahweh religion, which was first and foremost based on ethical demands. But there are also similarities, one of them can be found in the solar orientation of the temple in Jerusalem and "the primordial gate of the sun" and the "Sea" carried by bulls.
Inside the temple of Solomon the walls were decorated with palmettes and cherubs that is the tree of life with its winged guardians and chains of lotus buds and lotus flowers, 1.King 6,18.29.32.34f. The temple is Paradise on earth and the temple mount is the cosmic navel, the even shetiyyah (John Strange, Bibelsk arkæologi og Bibelsk teologi, Dansk Teol. Tidsskrift, 64, 2001, p.92). In the Psalms the temple is the place where there is LIFE in the most intense meaning of this word, prolonged life and bliss and being in the presence of God. The cultic understanding of the Psalms (Mowinckel and the Myth and Ritual school) has even here in Scandinavia, where it has been rather dominant, in recent years been met with skepticism. But one has to admit that an important motif in the Psalms is that God is hiding, God seems to have left his sanctuary (Pernille Carstens, DTT 64,2001, Mellem tavshed og sang, p.106) and is sought for. The reason is that the temple has been heavily polluted by the sins of his people. And this is exactly the background for the rites undertaken at Yom Kippur. By this ritual the holy of holies is cleansed and made ready for the theophany in the sunrise on the second morning of Tabernacles. Cf. the Psalms calling on God to "wake up" and the role played by "the dawn". God's solar epiphany is experienced after a vigil where the darkness is felt as chaos as the time when evildoers have taken power over the singer. Like the sun he is going through the valley of the shadow of death. But at dawn God will take up his abode in his temple, recreate cosmic order and bring justice and fruitfulness to his chosen people. This ritual can be deduced from Philo's De cont.vit. with the description of the cult of the Therapists, obviously an Essene variant of a second temple ritual. For lemnaseah the translation "for the choir director" is a modern invention and rather superfluous because it goes without saying that a choir director has to pay attention to the following. Theodotion translates: eis to nîkos "to the victory", Symmachus epiníkios, Aquila "to he who makes victory", Hieronymus victori or pro victoria. It comes from the verb "ykl", the god of Bet Shan is called Mekal, "he who has victory", cf. the Hittite god Tarhun-"the victorious" and the Latin name Victor, the verb is used in this meaning Gen 32,29, Hos 12,5. (Samson R.Hoisch, Psalmenkommentar, 1914, p.108 trans. "dem Siegverleiher", see also Langkjer, The Origin..,2.part ch.9: "To the victorious", ch.10: "Jerusalem".) Important motifs from the Psalms and the riding/ driving in the nightly course of the sun, Zech 1,8-6,1, is compared to the Syrian sol invictus-ideology.
An important feature in Canaanite and Near Eastern religion was the marzeah, the drinking orgy and feasting of men and gods together to honor the rephaim, the spirits of the deceased. The small placket shows sexual activities during the drinking (Akkadian period). Perhaps the marzeah was one of the main ways of practicing one's religion in the Syro-Phoenician culture. In Palmyra, in the temple for Ba'alshamin, the marzeah-room was next to the holy center, the cella, H. Niehr, Ba'alsamem,2003,p.134.
Syrian Seal, A. Moortgat 1940,no.526.
Quite a lot of the seals showing a god seated and drinking through a tube have the sun resting in the crescent moon hanging over the jug. Michal Bieniada, Habur Ware..second mill BC.ANES 46, 2009, p.208, fig.2-4; 209,fig.1+4; 210, fig.1-4. This unity of light from both sun and moon is a symbol of the mystical vision of light. But we may notice that this ecstasy is attained through orgiastic behavior similar to the Hindu tradition called "left hand tantra".
Mesopotamian inlaid marble calf late Uruk-Jemdet Nasr-period 3300-2900 BC:
The inlaid triangular spots are not for decoration only, they are meant to mark out the calf as the triune divine bull. Exactly the same decoration can be seen on a beautiful bull with a human face, Leon Heuzey, Catalogue des Antiquités Chaldéennes, 1902, p.287,fig 126:
The divine bull is closely connected with the watery element: he can be seen sailing in a boat with a small temple on his back. Both stern and prow seem to carry sprouting twigs (A.Parrot, Syndfloden og Noahs ark, 1959,fig.7). In the next picture (ibd. fig 7) there is no bull symbol but the high god in person with bull horns and streams of living water and sprouting green vegetation coming out from his shoulders.
The high god is certainly not identical with the bull. The bull is a symbol of power, an epiphany of something awesome and numinous. The triple sacrifice at Yom Kippur is an epiphany, and the sacred Yahweh name only to be pronounced on this solemn occasion is (just like the cultic calling on Io-Saturnalia, Eleleu-iou-iou, Io-Paean, Iakchos) a calling on the epiphany of "him who cometh". Therefore in the old liturgies the triune mentioning of his holy name "He who was and is and cometh" was followed by the blessing: "Blessed be he who cometh" Ps 118. The Golden Calf and Dionysus Bougenés is not God, for God is God for his chosen people. He is hidden from the many and the mighty but made manifest for his "minors" to whom he has chosen to reveal himself, Matt 16,15-19. 7 sons were standing before Samuel, but God had only chosen the smallest one, and he brought him forward to the greatest honor.
Religion cannot be studied apart from its all powerful object, God. A full understanding of this object is impossible - one has to be a humble believing child and a faithful servant and then perhaps he will make a faint reflection of himself known to us. Religion as a sociological phenomenon or as literary readings or as electric activity in some special center of the brain is of no interest to the present investigation. Religion is not only human activity and human interpretation of the most important facts in life but REVELATION of a metaphysical reality, which can be both many colored light and beauty and bliss and deep darkness and deception. This handful of articles is a study of some earthly reflections of the God of Life, Abundance and Paradise and the evil one who also wants to be counted as the god of light. But he is not given the power to create Life. He has only a small power which he very much likes to demonstrate, often in a cruel way.
But if many religions have a common origin in prehistoric times, why is syncretism then in the Old Test counted such a grave sin? Because of the 10 commandments. The Jewish faith puts a strong ethical demand on its followers, which is not always the case with syncretism. Christianity has borrowed from Jewish faith that truth is found by scrutinizing the revelation put down in Holy Scripture.
Some scholars doing research in the field of mystic experience have searched for a "common core", some characteristic elements common to Hellenistic, Indian and Christian Medieval and modern mysticism. Others have denied that there is anything common to these visions, and that they can be fully explained by the laws of anthropology and sociology as mere products of a cultural inheritance. They should not be treated as evidence of some metaphysical reality, but the reports on these experiences should merely be treated as human statements.
It is my intention to study theology, i.e.to study the object God, to try to discover the traces of revelation. One must try to read these old texts as they want to be read as an attempt to describe something very difficult to describe, something unspeakable. Much in these out-of-body visions is therefore the product of the person and the eyes which see, but there is also something almost indescribable, something seen. The problem with an article like the one written as introduction to a modern Danish book on mysticism (Armin Geertz, Introduktion: Mystik som Religionsvidenskabeligt Problemområde) is its firm belief in the unprecedented progress won by one's own research and by purely positivistic scholarship: older attempts to explain mysticism are called "naiv" (Wilhelm Grønbech's,1928-30 p.9; Dean William R. Inge's, 1899 p.12). Geertz is finally so dissatisfied with the many forerunners mentioned that his conclusion is that one has to start anew from point zero in the study of mysticism (p.32: Konklusion). Without giving any proof, Geertz considers it out of the question that these experiences could "offer some direct line to the transempiric reality" (p.12). But is it the task of science to judge about "transempiric reality"? It is certainly not possible to prove or disprove the reality of God, but the beauty of nature and the awesome impression of the starry vault, the moral laws as well as the complicated laws of nature in both macro- and microcosmos are witnesses to his wisdom.
But nature and history are not only witness to divine beauty but also to the activity of the evil one (Baal, Beelzebul) always trying to usurp the position of God. The so-called "tantra of the left hand" is a very old technique of ecstasy: By transgressing every normal moral behavior one has to manipulate one's sexual energy forcing the kundalini-shakti to ascend along the spinal cord. The flux of life and semen have to be turned and returned to its source in the upper part of the brain, and the means to doing that is the secret libertine practice of some gnostic and Indo-Iranian sects. And the purpose is to attract the powers of the dark side and make them my helping spirits. By Epiphanius of Salamis called "angels" but by Philo of Byblos "avenging demons (timôrois daímosin)", apud Euseb. Praep. I,10,44. The kundalini-power is often visualized as a snake or two snakes coiled around the primeval cosmic egg or the world axis. The snake symbolizes darkness, amorphous inertia, chaos.
Peter Steensgaard seems very informed in his article Merkavah-mystikken: Den ældste jødiske mystik. And the article is a good review of the viewpoints of Gershom Scholem, Ithamar Gruenwald, Peter Schäfer. But like so many modern scholars he likes to think in the categories of evolution: Full-blown Jewish mysticism is the late result of an evolution from allegory and speculative exegesis to visions and then to real ecstatic ascension to heaven. But already Isaiah and Hezekiel have visions of God (cf. the vision of seven times sevenfold light, i.e. divine light Zech 4). And for Philo "seeing God" through "The oldest Logos"/Anthropos/ Imago Dei is the very purpose of the Jewish nation and the meaning of its name. This heavenly Adam/the Light-Anthropos often described as having macrocosmic dimension as the "Great Soul or Intellect (Greek: Nous), divine dynamis filling the whole earth or universe" is also an important theme in the Gospel of Thomas and is the sure sign of mysticism. In Jewish religion mystic unity with God is unity with his image, the kabod-image of Hez 1,28 this figure "similar to and looking like a Man",1,26, cf. Hab 3,3: "His kabod covers the heaven, the earth is full of his praise".
God
An Ugarit-text describes a mysterious divine word binding opposites together, uniting the universe.
The word of tree and the whisper of stone,
The converse of Heavens to the Earth, Of Deeps to Stars;
The word not known to humankind.
The God of Israel was theophanous, he was want to visibly appear. In the history of religions we have the mystic experience which is by most mystics described as an experience of supernatural unity, peace, harmony. Religion has its origin in Gods self-revelation and it is my belief and what I have tried to prove in The Origin of our Belief in God that a mystic feeling of unity and light is an important part of the religious experience, the experience of nearness to God. In Genesis light is created on the mysterious day One (the word used is "day One", not the first day, stressing the unity of the God of light). In the revelation to Isaiah (Is 6) the words of the seraphim sounds: "The whole earth is the fullness of his glory (kabod)", i.e. God's light is present over all in nature and is the very reason for its existence. Here we come close to the Indian notion of brahman, "the word", as the inner kernel of everything. Note that in NT, in Ephesians, the fullness of God is identified with Christ as macr'anthropos, filling the whole earth and cosmos with his power. The seraphim with one pair of wings flying and one pair resting becomes a symbol of the unity of opposites.
There is a strong unity of opposites-motif (what Mircea Eliade called coincidentia oppositorum) in the description of God in the Old Test: "He placed the sun in the sky but he has for himself chosen to inhabit the darkness". His epiphany is twofold: in splendor (kabod) but at the same time hidden in a cloud. Although his epiphany is emitting bright light the color of his body is mostly described as sapphire-like. Wesley Williams, The Shadow of God: Speculations on the Body Divine in Jewish Esoteric Tradition, 2005 has argued strongly for a dark blue, almost black-blue, color of the sapphire, a stone mostly compared with the color of the Mediterranean. Cf. Sepher Bahir § 96: Why is blue chosen above all other colors?
Often in the theophanic scenes the glory (kabod) of the Lord appears in a cloud (`anan) Ex 16,10, and the result is a rainbow, Hez 1,18. The kabod itself looks like "a consuming fire" Ex 24,17. The people of Israel was on its wanderings in the desert guided by a pillar of fire in the night and a pillar of cloud (`ammud `anan) during the day. The dark cloud is the symbol of rain and life giving fluids, and the consuming fire is the symbol of the destroying heat. These are the two great natural forces in the desert land. Life is only possible when these two forces are held in some kind of balance. Exactly this balance is miraculously shown in the burning bush. The fire burns without harming the leaves. Acc. to several classical authors (Nonnos from Panopolis, Dionysiaca and Achilleus Tatios) the same strange miracle is seen in the great temple of Tyre and the seven branched Menorah is carrying both flames and buds of the almond tree. In The Origin of our Belief I have shown that this phenomenon in the temple in Tyre, the burning tree of life as world pillar, was split up into two pillars, a pillar of gold symbolizing fire and a pillar of green emerald symbolizing life and vegetation. Acc. to Philo of Byblos the primordial universe was haunted by fierce tempests and flooding (life fluid/water going beyond its limits) and burning forests (fire transgressing its limits), but stabilized by the erection of the two pillars. In 1.Enoch 14 Enoch sees the inner heavenly sanctuary built of ice and fire kept in balance by divine presence. Acc. to Gen 1 creation is creating borderlines in a primordial universe between light and darkness, water below and the waters above, between land and sea. The earliest Kabbalistic writing, The Sepher Bahir, has as its first paragraph the question how one can reconcile the verse Job 37,21: "it is brilliant (bahir) in the skies…(round about God in terrible majesty)" with the verse Ps 18,12: "He made darkness His hiding place" and Ps 97,2: "Cloud and gloom surround him". The answer is found in Ps 139,12: "Night shines like day". Light and darkness are the same to God. Cf. § 11: Michael, the prince on God's right, is water and hail, while Gabriel, the prince on God's left is fire. The two are reconciled by the Prince of Peace. This is the meaning of the verse, "He makes peace in His high places".
In several articles we have tried to penetrate all the way back to a very old Middle Eastern concept of the primordial twins who are closely connected to the primordial world mountain split into two pillars by the rising of the sun from the underworld, these two pillars forming the gate of the sun allowing the sun to run its course through a wild chaotic and untamed universe. In Exodus the two pillars are not seen as a gate but still somehow securing and leading the journey through the wilderness to the mountain of God. The two standing pillars, the dioscuric twins, a high stele flanked by two lower ones as a symbol of the world mountain flanked by its two split halves are found as leading motifs in Hellenistic Petra where we also have to locate Mt Sinai, cf. the Hellenistic concept of the two stelai from the land of Seir, one made of clay to withstand fire, the other made of bronze to withstand water. They carry a written version of the world order, and a similar pair of stelai is set up at sunset by the sun-hero Heracles in his temple at Gades. They may also carry a description of the world's destiny and are perhaps symbolized by the Mesopotamian cult-device: the tablets of destiny. They are the first splitting of primordial totality into two, and therefore also the symbol of right and wrong, good and bad, yes and no. In Israel we find this device in ´Urim og Tumim. In Qumran we find a word: "perfect-light", obviously created by putting these two words together and transforming them from plural to singular. "Perfect-light" is the mystical light, the union of every duality (and "plurality").
In early Jewish mysticism the primordial epiphany of divine light is in the form of the cosmic Adam Kadmon, made up of the ten Sefirot, among them Hod-splendor, Hesed- grace, Tiferet-beauty, Yesod- foundation, Malkut-kingdom, Netzakh-victory. Al these Sefirot are taken from the epiphany in the OT, conf. Ps 96,6: Hod and Tiferet. The rubric often translated "for the choir master" is better translated "to he who is victorious" and must be seen in connection with the sol invictus-motifs the OT has in common with Hellenistic Syria and the NT (Rev 2,7+11+17+26; 3,5+12+21) cf. the sefirah Netzach. Adam Kadmon made up of Sefirot is the Sapphire-body of the "Image of the kabod of the Lord" in Hez 1 and the precious stones of the cherub in Hez 28. 1 QS IV 3-8 enumerates Binah-understanding, Hokhmah-wisdom, Hesed, Gevurah-strength, and for Keter-crown "a garland of Kabod" as divine sefirot given to man at the initiation into the "Order of the Unity" (serek hajjahad) I,16 & II,21.
Just after finishing gymnasium I made a trip to Norway and got a strong impression of its nature and beauty. The daylight still shining mildly in the late evenings and even deep into the night, the quietness of the wind, the lake so calm and looking like a mirror below the steep mountainsides. The only sound that could be heard was the distant sound of the waterfall falling down the cliffs and the faint sound of a bell on one of the sheep. And towards the northern end of the valley the distant roads going up and up to even higher grounds, to mountains beaming in the splendor of the supernatural whiteness of ice and snow. It was like a glimpse of the sunken paradise. The beauty of nature experienced at such a moment is evidence of an even higher beauty hiding behind all the fair and pretty things, for without God, if everything was heaped together only by chance and coincidence, it would look more like a dump or a portion of boiled spinach. In England there is Sillbury Hill, the biggest human-made hill of white chalk heaped up to an artificial mountain, a sight which in splendor could match the pyramids which were originally covered with a surface of polished stone-slabs that would beam like giant mirrors in the sharp sunlight. Obviously man has tried to make an earthly model of God's mountain being the center of the universe. I began to understand the old pilgrims when they were traveling on the old pilgrim's route to the Nidaros cathedral or going east to the holy Orient with what was left of the paradise mountain hidden in dimensions only known to God, walking the endless roads to Jerusalem. Orphic wisdom talked about the Leucadian rock as one of the things marking out the road to the transcendent world, and Elijah has to travel 40 days and nights to reach the mountain Horeb (obviously a number of days indicating catharsis, cf. the 40 days of fasting in Jewish religion).
Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom of God could very well have the same origin as his use of the Messianic "Son of Man-title", i.e. Dan 7. Crispin Fletcher-Louis has drawn attention to the scene Dan 7. He mentions Å. Bentzen and J.A. Emerton, who have argued that the mythological pattern, the Son of Man "coming with the clouds" and the fight with the 4 animals of prey representing the chaotic forces of the "great sea", this Chaoskampf-motif with its Ugaritic parallel in Baal's"riding on clouds" and fighting with Jamm, the "Sea", for the mlk, "the kingdom" over the universe, has its origin in the New Year Enthronement Festival. But he wonders how to bridge the gap between the old New Year's Festival and the Hellenistic era of Daniel. And he quotes J.J.Collins for asking "what were the exact channels by which the material was transmitted?" But it is certainly wrong to assume the existence of an Enthronement Festival only on the basis of the Ugaritic parallel. S. Mowinckel has also used the rabbinic material, and we also have to look to "The Renewal of the Covenant Festival" at Qumran with its liturgically given vision of the throne of God (Songs of the Sabbath sacrifice, 1 Q4 Blessings). Acc. to Fletcher-Louis the whole scenario in Dan 7 has to be seen on the background of the temple and its cult and just as the High Priest in the cult functions as the image of God so we have to understand the "Son of Man" as the High Priest in the image of God, and as the cultic representative of Israel (with the names of the twelve tribes carved on his ephod, Ex 28) he is given the eternal kingdom of the universe. The old Chaoskamf-motif stills the waves and crushes the chaos monster, Rahab, Ps 89,9-11. The "Son of Man" is the image of God's glory in the form of a human body looking like sapphire, Hez 1. It is the same "man" seen by Daniel in chap 10,5f. as can be seen from the many similarities between Dan 10,5ff. and Hez 1,7+16+24 & 2,1. The 4 kingdoms are a repetition of the 4 kingdoms in Dan 2, and there they are crushed by a rock which begins growing and fills the whole world. In the old Near Eastern temple ideology the temple is built at the centre of the world, in omphalos, on the world mountain, the corner stone and foundation of the cosmos, and on the peak of this mountain heaven and earth meet. This is the explanation of the words of Jesus to Peter, Matt 16,17-19: Peter is identified with the omphalos, the rock which can withstand all the attacks of the chaos-force coming out of the realm of darkness and death, and on this firm rock the new temple has to be built, and in this temple, the meeting place between heaven and earth, the rituals are as acts performed in heaven before the throne of God. 4.Ezra 13 we meet with the same scenario as in Matt 16,17-9 and Dan 7: The Son of Man standing on Mt Zion is attacked by a multitude of nations, but they will vanish before his burning fire, (cf. Dan 7,11, acc. to Fletcher-Louis this fire could be the fire of Gehenna, the valley south of Jerusalem), and he will rebuild Zion.
In Assyria a holy stylized tree by some scholars named the "Tree of life" plays a very dominant role in the iconography. But there is no agreement between scholars as to how this has to be understood and most scholars have stopped to call it "Tree of Life". But a temple in Mesopotamia is called "Place of Life" and Esagila in Babylon "House of Life". In the Epic of Adapa, Adapa is offered "Water of Life" at the entrance to heaven, and Gilgamesh has to dive for the "Plant of Life". In the Psalms of David we find the phrase "by you (God) is the wellspring of life". To my mind it seems as if some dominant notion of a "Paradise" as the place where life is renewed is behind all this, a divine center of life-renewing power. And this is why "Life victorious" is such a dominant notion in Mandaean baptismal liturgy. Mt.Zion as the navel of the earth is this center. It was the only place not covered by the waves of the Flood. (J.Jeremias, Golgatha und heiligen Felsen, Angelos,). Paradise as the center is also the place of coincidentia oppositorum. But outside Paradise the river of life will divide into 4. The creature of life is composed of four species. The mountain of God is composed of 7 different metallic rocks, 1.Enoch. Israel is in Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum XII,8f. described as the wine with roots in the abyss stretching its branches up to the throne of God. It is the link between abyss and earth and heaven, "the unifying force in the created order". Cf. the enormous willow-tree stretching over mountain and fields and from which every baptized received a branch, Hermas 8th Simile. The baptized are called neophytoi ("newly planted") in the early church and in close agreement with Hermas' idea of a second repentance after baptism their branches have to be replanted. Perhaps they will then be revived because the tree is filózôon "fond of life" acc. to its species Sim VIII,2,7.
The Hebrew text of Ben Sira 49,16ff. describes the sphere of Paradise surrounding the high priest when officiating in the temple court: "Above every living thing is the beauty of Adam. Greatest of his brothers and the beauty of his people was Simeon (the high priest)…in whose generation the house was visited." The Greek text continues: "in his days he made firm the temple." When he came out of the "house of veil" he was "like the sun shining on the temple…like a rainbow giving light in clouds of glory, like the flower of roses…like a lily by springs of water, like a shoot of Lebanon…ornamented with every kind of precious stone; like an olive tree blooming with fruits and like a cypress exalted in the clouds. When he put on the robe of glory… around him was the crown of his brothers, like shoot of cedars of Lebanon and they surrounded him like trunks of palm trees". In the temple court the gate to Paradise is reopened as in the baptismal ritual.
Ich habe mich in diese Welt begeben, um zu pflanzen des Lebens Pflanzung…und Jordane in vollkommener Art hinzuziehen" (Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch,p.219). Das grosse (Leben) sprach…:Aus dem Orte, aus dem wir gepflanzt wurden, wurde deine Planzung recht gepflanzt", (Lidzbarski, Mand.Lit. pp.259f.) B.Gärtner has compared this with a psalm from Qumran: 1 QH XVI, where also are mentioned both a planting", living water", well of eternity" and well of life", trees of life by a well of mystery, hidden.., "garden" and "Eden". In 1.En., in The Book of Parables are mentioned "the planting of justice and truth", the eternal plant of justice" tree of life" garden of justice" aromatic trees", wells of wisdom", well of justice". This common vocabulary has acc. to Gärtner (and Widengren) to be seen on the background of the old Mesopotamian notion of the temple as the "House of Life" and "old royal ideology".
There is no close connection between the temple theology of Mt. Zion and the spiritualistic and tantric colored cult of Ba'al. I have tried to show that the sacrifice of boys to demons and manipulation of gender and sexuality were integrated ingredients in the Canaanite religion. In Israel there is the transcendent god called "Father of Eternity", "the Ancient of Days" and his epiphany or messenger. James Kugel has shown that the angel of the Lord frequently in course of a theophany, will fade into the person of God himself. The king in Israel and Assyria is king of the Paradise garden. Therefore he is shown reduplicated on each side of the holy tree, the symbol of fertility and vegetative life. There is as I have shown in The Origin of our Belief passim a strong duality between "the Good Shepherd" the lord of vegetation and life, the god who can be represented by the almond tree and the seven branched menorah and even the Tree of Life and the "true wine" (he is closely connected to the juice-filled sprouting buds and early flowers of spring, anemone, violets, hyacinth). He is the guardian of animals where his enemy, the "Great Hunter", riding the lion or leopard, is the killer of animals, in Israel called the "destroyer". As the representative of man the king is identified with the primordial man, "the Son of Man" who is also the image of God. In his initiation he is made one with this "Son of Man" and later when the initiation was more or less democratized it could be said that the souls of all those "elect and righteous", who died in righteousness, were in the Son of Man. Thus in 1.En 71 Enoch is elevated to heaven and becoming the "Son of Man". The form sacral kingship from the Eastern provinces took later on in the Roman empire can be seen from the description of H.P. L'Orange: Oldtidsslottet på Sicilia,1955.
In 1913 W. H. Roscher (Omphalos) drew attention to the fact that a lot of cultures have a notion of a certain location being the navel of the world. As an example he mentioned the Oracle in Delphi. There the world pillar stands separating heaven and earth. This very important research was taken up and continued by A.J. Wensinck, The ideas of the western Semites concerning the navel of the earth, 1916. The navel is an embryonic center and the connecting link between heaven and earth, a channel bringing fertility to the earth. The Book of Jubilee 8,12 calls Palestine the center of the earth, cf. Ez 38,12. The Mt. Zion is "the center of the navel of the earth" Jub 8,19. When God is enthroned as king in the debir this has consequence for the whole universe.
In Tyre a flaming tree is growing in the navel of the earth (E. A. S. Butterworth, The Tree at the Navel of the Earth, 1970) and an eagle is hovering over its top. In Assyrian iconography the "holy tree" seems to be a very important part of the sacral kingship ideology. On the stone slabs dug out from the palaces the king is seen as guardian of the holy tree together with winged genii nursing the tree sometimes sprinkling water on it with a small broomstick and a water bucket. Much later the sultan of Istanbul was sitting on his throne with the symbols of the tree of life and the well of life in front of him. Unfortunately the Assyrian scene of the king and the "holy tree" are never explained. S.Parpola thinks it is secret lore and has to be seen as a central notion in Assyrian religion, a mystical symbol still very much alive as the tree of the ten sephirot in the Jewish Kabbalah. I am not able to give a fair evaluation of the material collected by Parpola but I could add a few observations of my own: The tree is often seen with a mystical bird hovering over its top. The bird is made up by two snakes ascending and with their upper parts uniting in a winged sun disc or the mystical flower. The king is grasping the tail of the snake often reduced to a band. The "kundalini"-snake ascending into the light is the mind of the king ascending to heaven. By nursing the tree as the great giver of life and fertility the king is the giver of fertility. His relation to the god Assur and the transcendent center of fertility is of crucial importance for the whole nation. The holy tree as a transcendent vine standing in the Lightworld is an important notion in the Mandaean baptismal ideology, the believers are united to this tree. It gives healing and fruit to the Mandaean community and the messenger coming from the Light world can be identified with it. Just as the king in Assyria can be identified with the holy tree.
The Hebrew word is "Garden of Eden". Paradise is from the Persian pairidaeza, the first use of the Greek word paradeisos to translate Hebrew Gan Eden is in the Septuagint begun in the third cent BC.
Sven Tengström, Kristen tolkning av GT, SEÅ 48, 1983,pp.78f.
pp.9-32 in Mystik – Den indre Vej?, 1990, ed. Per Bilde & A. Geertz.
Geertz continues his suspicious attitude to much of the former research done on mysticism in his second article in the same book pp.107-138: Mystik, visioner, ekstase og besættelser. En direkte linie? ("Mysticism, visions, ecstasy and obsessions. A direct line?") He thinks that all the 4 mentioned phaenomena are a kind of ecstasy, and something similar could be reached by taking morphica. As a young pastor I worked for many years with drug addicts and lived with them under the same roof and I am sorry to say that I am not able to see any similarity. Geertz's favorite whipping boy seems to be the famous R.C. Zaehner who is scolded as a Christian apologetic. That Zaehner himself took drugs to prove that being "stoned" was quite another matter than seeing God does not add to his credibility in the eyes of Geertz. Another famous scholar, Rudolph Otto, is scolded for writing a "confused and messy" book on mysticism, p.111. Geertz thinks that he is able to prove that all mystics have sadly mistaken their experience for a direct line to God, sadly because there is no such thing. That God is a "living God" communicating with his people by putting visions and messages into their minds is an important part of biblical theology. If psychedelic drugs (LSD) are able to calm down some of the 1000 signals coming from the 5 senses hitting the brain every second, then perhaps there will be more room for the faint signals coming from the other side. In the desert where no sound is heard something similar could happen. But the result can also be a "bad trip", an encounter with the devil or one's own subconscious thinking.
For a short explanation of Tantric yoga, see M.Eliade, The Two and the One (Phoenix ed.1979) pp.40ff.; 117ff.; 92. Benjamin Walker, Tantrism: Its Secret Principles and Practices, 1982; on secret libertine practice: ibd., Gnosticism: Its History and Influence, 1989.
in Mystik – Den indre Vej? pp.71-92.
www.drwesleymuhammad.com
Julius Schwabe, Die kosmogonischen Zwillinge und das Saülenpaar im Tempel, SYMBOLON 6, 1968, pp.25-55 calls the primordial twins die Urtrennung mit der alle Schöpfung beginnt" p.55. To modern man one" is the smallest unity but for antique thinking one is the all-inclusive totality and two the two contrasting halves ("Urgegensätze") coming out of primordial totality and the beginning of plurality. The twins are therefore always opposite halves, like day and night, man and woman, life and death, right and wrong (ibd.s.26). Oneness was to the Pythagoreans the beginning of everything. And from this oneness the duality emerged. Duality is also symbolized by the two pillars standing in front of so many Sumerian and Egyptian temples.
Otto Böcher, Dämonenfurcht und Dämonenabwehr, 1970, p.176f.
www.marquette.edu/maqom/dan1.pdf
King and Messiah, 1970,p.64
"The Origin of the Son of Man Imagery", JTS 9,1958, p.225-42
"Stirring up the Great Sea", The Book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings, ed. A.S. van der Woude, 1993, p.121-136.
In fact he is also representing Adam, humanity, see Fletcher-Louis,p.167n23, Hez 28,12-19, Sirach 49,16ff. and C.T.R.Hayward, The Jewish Temple, 1996,p.44-7, 71f. In post-biblical literature his garments are those of Adam "which is only natural given the strongly Edenic symbolism of the Temple" (Fletcher-Louis, "The High Priest..",p.167). Cf. that Enoch is the archetypal high priest in 1.En 14 and in 1.En 71 is identified with the "Son of Man".
Joachim Jeremias, Golgatha und der heilige Felsen, Angelos 2, 1926, pp.74-128.
C.T.R.Hayward, The Jewish Temple, 1996,p.160.
Die rätselhafte Termini Nazoräer und Iskariot, in G.Widengren, Der Mandäismus,1982,p.174.
The God of Old, 2003, p.36.
I.Engnell, Die Urmenschvorstellung und das Alte Testament, pp.265-89, SEÅ 22-3, 1957-8.
especially "Jegeren og hyrden",pp.72ff and pp.47ff.: The emperor Diocletian as the "Great Hunter".
Art. in Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie. Hrsg. Von -
