And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt- offerings on the altar.
And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them: ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.’ (Genesis 8:5, 7, 10–11, 20; 9:1)
All the elements of the flood story in the Old Testament story are here in the Sumerian legends of Mesopotamia. This story of the flood is retold in the seventh century BCE Epic of Gilgamesh, which records much earlier legend. The Epic also has many allusions recognizable in the Biblical story of the Garden of Eden.
This time it is the story of Gilgamesh and his faithful companion, Enkidu. During their adventures they unfortunately fall foul of the goddess Ishtar, who causes Enkidu to die of a plague. Stricken with grief, Gilgamesh sets out to find the secret of immortality. He encounters Utnapishtim who, we have heard from other Sumerian legends, has gained immortality from the god Enlil. Utnapishtim warns Gilgamesh that it is man’s providence to eventually die, but Utnapishtim’s wife persuades him to reveal the secret of life. Gilgamesh is told of a magical fruit that lies at the bottom of the ocean, which can bring back his youth. He retrieves it from the ocean floor, but whilst bathing in a pool on the way home, the fruit of life is stolen from him by a snake. Gloomily our hero communes with his friend Enkidu, who now resides in the kingdom under the earth, and is told of the inevitability of death.
The story carries the same basic message as that told in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve. There is a world of difference between man and God. If man aspires to be like God he will come to grief.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying: ‘Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat; but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’
And the woman [Eve] said unto the serpent: ‘Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said: “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die”.’ And the serpent said unto the woman: ‘Ye shall not surely die; for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil.’ And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.
And the Lord God said: ‘Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.’ Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. (Genesis 2:16–17; 3:2–6, 22–23)
There are many other creation stories, however, from ancient Babylonia recorded in the languages of Sumerian and Akkadian and from Assyria, which do not easily relate to Old Testament. In fact, apart from these early correspondences given above, there are surprisingly few Biblical references to Babylonia, but vastly more to Egypt.
Midrash – see Torah.
Mishnah – see Torah.
Orthography – Form, style and content of words giving an indication of when and where they were composed.
Palaeography – Form, style and shape of the letters and symbols used in writing.
Papyrus – Writing media made from the papyrus plant found growing mainly in the Delta marshes of the Nile, in Egypt. Earliest examples date back to 3035 BCE.
Parchment – Animal skin, usually goat or sheep, specially prepared and used for writing. Used in Egypt from 2000 BCE and in Judaea from about 200 BCE.
Pentateuch – The first five Books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
Persians – People from the area of modern-day Iran who drove out the Babylonians from the Holy Land and conquered Egypt c.525 BCE under King Cyrus. They dominated the Middle East for about 200 years. They allowed the Jews exiled by the Babylonians to return to the Holy Land and generally acted benignly towards them. The Biblical story of Esther is generally thought to have been enacted in Persia.
Philo, Judaeus (c.20 BCE–c.40 CE) – Jewish-Egyptian philosopher and Greek scholar, born in Alexandria. He worked at Alexandria on Bible commentary and law and mentions the Qumran-Essenes in his writings.
Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) – Gaius Plinius Secundus was born in Como, Italy, of an aristocratic Roman family. After a spell in the Roman army he later devoted himself to writing historical treatises on, for example, oration, and the history of Rome. A friend of Emperor Vespasian, he died during the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. He wrote about the Essene community by the Dead Sea.
Plutarch (46–120 CE) – Greek historian, philosopher and biographer whose works included forty-six portraits of great characters who preceded him.
Pseudepigrapha – Jewish Biblical-related texts, not canonized by the Catholic Church, and those considered to be written under a false name or attributable to biblical characters (see Apochrypha).
Ptolemies – Greek rulers of Egypt who followed the ‘Greek Macedonian’ period of rule by Alexander the Great, his half-brother and his son, from 332 to 310 BCE. The Ptolemaic period of Egypt lasted from 305 BCE until the demise of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE.
Romans – The dominant power in the Middle East and Mediterranean area from the middle of the first century BCE to the fourth century CE. The Romans conquered the Holy Land c.44 BCE and Octavian Augustus appointed himself ruler of Egypt in 30 BCE.
Talmud – see Torah
Torah – The Torah, in its narrowest sense, comprises the five Books of Moses of the Old Testament. In its wider sense it encompasses all the whole of Jewish teaching. Together with the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai, orthodoxy holds there also came a raft of 603 other Commandments, the basis of the Torah, and an Oral commentary explaining the rest.
The Ten Commandments traditionally given to Moses on Mount Sinai are:
I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
Thou shalt shall have no other gods beside Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down unto them; for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and showing mercy unto the thousandth generation of them that love Me and keep My commandments.
Thou shalt not take the name of thy Lord in vain; for the Lord will not hold a person guiltless that taketh His name in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but on the seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord thy God, on it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the Land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
Thou shalt not murder.
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house; nor his wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.
Triad – A grouping of three Egyptian gods, often as father, mother and child figures comprising a divine family, who were worshipped on a localized basis. The practice arose during the New Kingdom period of the Amenhotep pharaohs. Examples were the combination of Amun, Mut and Khons at Thebes; Ptah, Sekhmet and Nefert
um at Memphis; Horus, Hathor and the child Horus at Edfu; and Khnum, Satet and Anuket at Yeb (Elephantine). A triad worshipped on a national basis was that of Osiris (worshipped locally at Abydos), Isis (worshipped locally at Philae) and Horus (worshipped locally at Edfu).
Ugarit – Ancient city on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, south of the estuary of the river Orontes. Its cultural development made it a leader in language development – producing a compressed alphabet using only twenty-seven letters, which led to the development of paleo-Hebrew.
Terminology Relating to Jewish Religious Teachings
1. The Torah*63 Comprises the Pentateuch of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (according to fundamental tradition given to Moses on Mount Sinai c.1200 BCE). Torah contains 613 Commandments, including the Ten Commandments.
2. Oral Laws Made up of Mishnah and Gemarah to comprise the Talmud (a handbook of Jewish observance).
Mishnah Mishnah
(Based on Oral traditions)
Laws, Stories, Moral instruction (Aggadah)
(by Tannaim – Rabbis pre-200 CE) (Based on Oral traditions)
Laws, Stories, Moral instruction (Aggadah)
(by Tannaim – Rabbis pre-200 CE)
+ +
Gemarah
Discussion of the Mishnah
(by Amoraim – Rabbis living from 200–500 CE) Gemarah
Discussion of the Mishnah
(by Amoraim – Rabbis living from 200–500 CE)
I I
Palestinian Talmud
(Written in Hebrew & Western Aramaic)
Compiled from pre-400 CE works
(Earliest complete text now in Leyden, Holland, 1st
printed version, Venice, 1522 CE) Babylonian Talmud
(Written in Hebrew & Eastern Aramaic)
Compiled from pre-500 CE works
(Earliest extant text, fourteenth century codex,
now in Munich)
Posekim (codifiers)
The numerous sources of Mishnah were edited by R. Judah Ha-nasi and written down c.200 CE. The Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds both use Ha-nasi’s Mishanh, but different Gemarah. The work of codifiers (Posekim) of the law (Hallachah), such as Maimonides (1135–1204 CE) and Isaac Alfasi (1013–1103 CE) on the Babylonian Talmud, and Asher ben Jehiel (1250–1327 CE), were collated by the Sephardi scholar Joseph Caro (1488–1575 CE) into a work called Shulhan Arukh. Moses Isserles (1525–1572 CE) added to this work the views of Ashkenasi scholars, and the supplemented code has become the accepted authority for Orthodox Jewish Law. Where the supplements differ from the main text, the Sephardim Orthodox (Spanish and Portuguese traditions) follow Caro’s interpretation and the Ashkenasi (German and French traditions) follow Isserles.
3. Midrash Homilies usually based on Bible texts. One ‘Collection’ of Midrashim was arranged in Bible order by Yalkut Shimoni in the thirteenth century, based on first through tenth century homilies, interpretations and commentaries on the scriptures.
I I I I
Midrash Rabbah Shoher Tov Pesiktot Other Midrash
Commentaries on the
Pentateuch and five
Megillot (Song of Songs,
Ruth, Lamentations,
Ecclesiastes, Esther) Commentaries on Psalms Commentaries on
Special Sabbaths and
Festivals On Ethics, Morality, Conduct and History
FOOTNOTES
CHAPTER 1
*1 The seven scrolls comprise two almost complete versions of the Old Testament Book of Isaiah, a War Scroll and a Manual of Discipline for the Qumran-Essenes, a commentary on Habakkuk, a Genesis Apocryphon and a scroll of Thanksgiving Psalms.
**2 Before Common (or Christian) Era - i.e., before 1 BC. CE or common (Christian) Era corresponds to AD1 and after.
*3 The First Jerusalem Temple, built around 950 BCE, was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians.
CHAPTER 2
*4 Most translators agree that there are sixty-four treasure locations listed in the Copper Scroll, although John Allegro only lists sixty-one items in his The Treasure of the Copper Scroll, published in 1960 by Routledge & Kegan Paul.
*5 The full text of the Copper Scroll in its original form, including the position of the Greek letters, can be seen in the Appendix at the back of the book.
CHAPTER 3
*6 This is the generally accepted number, although John Allegro gives only sixty-one.
*7 Demotic was a script form of writing that came into use in Egypt as a replacement for the earlier hieratic script (except for religious and funereal subjects) around 670 BCE. It remained in use, alongside Greek, through to the second century CE.
*8 A representational carving.
**9 Copper-bearing ores. Sometimes found in metallic form, copper usually occurs as an oxide (cuprite) or, combined with iron, as a sulphide (pyrite).
CHAPTER 4
*10 Descendants of this Levi family were later designated as priests and guardians of the Temple in Jerusalem.
*11 A nomadic tribe of Bedouin based in north-west Arabia.
*12 The Pentateuch comprises the first five Books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
*13 The Midrash is the explanation, teachings and commentary of the rabbis on the Old Testament scrolls, while Mishna is the Oral Law of Moses, written down about 200 CE, and held by Orthodox Jews as equivalent in authority to the Torah.
CHAPTER 5
*14 Nikolas Copernicus (1473–1543 CE), correctly deduced that the planets circle the sun but wrongly thought that the sun was the centre of the universe.
*15 Entropy is the measure of a system’s disorder. The higher the entropy the greater the disorder. In other words a closed system, which the universe can be considered to be, tends towards chaos with the passing of time.
*16 Oral translations of the Bible given during public readings, explaining and adding legal and ethical details.
CHAPTER 6
*17 The Nemes headcloth was a striped piece of cloth pulled tight across the forehead and tied into a tail at the back, with two strands or Lappets hanging down at either side of the face. The Uraeus was an insignia decoration worn at the centre of the forehead.
*18 Electrum derived from naturally occurring ores containing approximately 80 per cent gold and 20 per cent silver. It was pale amber in appearance.
CHAPTER 7
*19 Alistair Cooke’s ‘Letter from America’ radio broadcasts to Great Britain often take several diversions before coming back to the original point!
*20 Joshua (Moses’ appointee as leader of the Israelites after his own death) died at the same age as Joseph: 110 = 22 +32 +42 + 92
**21 The spell referred to is from Coffin Text 228.
*22 A Babylonian king, who ruled from 1728–1686 BCE.
CHAPTER 8
*23 Abraham’s wife is called Sarai until after they leave Egypt, when her name changes to Sarah after God makes a Covenant with Abraham (Genesis 17:15).
*24 A custom in use in Egypt long before the First Temple in Jerusalem was built.
CHAPTER 9
*25 Neferkhepure Waenre was the throne name of Amenhotep IV.
*26 There is evidence that Akhenaten had a secondary, diplomatic wife, Kiya, but she appears to have played no part in his family or religious life.
*27 The fifth and fourth fingers held together, spaced from the third and second fingers (also held together) and spaced from the thumb, a position since copied by Mr. Spock in the Star Trek series!
CHAPTER 10
*28 A type of tree from which turpentine is derived.
CHAPTER 11
*29 Interestingly, the contents of the Ark of the Covenant are later referred to as ‘Aduoot’ in Exodus 40:20.
CHAPTER 12
*30 A name that combines the name of a god and a human.
**31 Foreign workers allowed into a country to undertake tasks the indigenous population do not want, or are unable, to perfo
rm.
CHAPTER 13
*32 Egyptian script form of hieroglyphs, written from right to left.
*33 Hapolytes are molecular groups that characterize chromosome types.
*34 i.e., The date visualized by the authors of the ‘Testament of Amram’ for Amram’s death had he lived to be 137 years old.
CHAPTER 14
*35 i.e., the diviners of God’s will by the throwing of dice.
*36 George Brooke is Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at the University of Manchester.
*37 The destruction by the Babylonians of the First Temple at Jerusalem in 586 BCE.
CHAPTER 15
*38 See Figure 1, the relational map of the ancient Middle East.
*39 A festival celebrating the events described in the Old Testament Book of Esther.
*40 Scrolls because Column 12 indicates that a second copy of the scroll will be found north of Kochlit.
*41 The Greek letters Χ Γ and Θ have English transliterations of kh, g and th, respectively.
*42 An alternative spelling of Aten.
*43 A rectangular inscribed outline with curved corners, inside of which, usually in hieroglyph form, were carved a person’s titles.
*44 Tribute or religious donation amounting to a tenth of a person’s income.
*45 The Greek letter sigma has an ‘sz’ sound.
**46 A cache of documents, see Chapter 16 for further details.
CHAPTER 16
*47 To this day some Jewish Orthodox women will wear an amulet during childbirth to ward off evil spirits (see Chapter 9).
*48 The Nabatean were Arab tribes who occupied Edom (part of today’s Jordan) in the sixth century BCE, establishing their capital at Rekem (Petra).
*49 This was modified around 400 CE by the addition of an extra seven lunar months in every nineteen years to harmonize the cycle with the seasons – see the Glossary for more details on Calendars.
*50 A wicked person. Satan in the New Testament.
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