The Bibel is not about God

If it is not about God, what is it about?
It is about ‘the powerful’.

The biblical stories are based on Sumerian, Babylonian, Akkadian, Assyrian mixed with Egyptian stories. These stories are ‘borrowed’ by those who later called them their stories. Elohim, Yahweh, Adonai are not God the almighty creator of the Universe, the Source of all existence. They are stories of interference or intervention. These ‘gods’ are sky people. Today we would call them extraterrestrials, ET’s. They are the Sumerian Anunna or the Babylonian Anunnaki, which means ‘the powerful’.

For people with a Christian theological background, the origin of the stories is not unknown at all. Or should not be. Theology at the university is not tied to Christian faith but practices source-critical historical research of texts. In Islam, this kind of thing does not take place. A Christian theologian is not a priest. This only happens in the upper secondary school at the seminary. And here they are told that they can forget all about that part of their education, because out in the congregations it will be too strong food and cause consternation. And so they do.

At some point in the 6th-7th century BC, a theological ‘coup d’état’ or purge took place in Judaism. From the original Judaism, where the term Elohim originates, there were gods (plural) and not God (singular). Elohim is a plural term, which must be taken quite literally. But as Yahweh, one of the subordinate Elohims / governors himself stated: ‘Your god is a jealous god’ and ‘You shall have no other gods before me’. Monotheism is therefore based on jealousy, envy and domineering, low-minded qualities mixed with anger and vengefulness, which today we would say God was above. But no, God behaves in the Old Testament as a bipolar despot, and his people are tools for his disputes with the other Elohim. He is a violent, xenophobic terrorist, and he gets away with it … because he can. So in the 6th-7th century BC, Yahweh’s priesthood organized the destruction of temples other than the main temple, and in this they made sure that all images of other Elohim and all texts that described them were removed or destroyed.

Professor of Semitic Philology at the Sapienza University of Rome, Giovanni Garbini calls Hebrew a Canaanite, southern Phoenician dialect. The dialect died out and was only reconstructed between the 8th century and the year 1000 by the Talmudic Tiberias School as Masoretic Hebrew. They were the ones who introduced the vowel apostrophes that we see in the written language today, but we cannot know what it was actually supposed to have said, and neither could they 1000 years ago. They guessed. Even when the wise men today declare agreement on a certain meaning of a word, there is no guarantee that it is correct. When we read the Old Testament, we are also reading a text that no longer follows grammatical rules but is ideologically motivated. Therefore, Elohim changed from being plural to singular, and gods became God.
This was the monotheistic purge.

Jewish scholars admit that in the Bible, Talmud and other Jewish scriptures there is no name for God as we understand it today, that is, a transcendent, omnipotent and spiritual being who should be worshipped as such.

The Elohim were governors, judges and lawmakers according to their description. They were the luminous beings from heaven, as it says. The Creator of the Universe has no need to rule, judge or legislate. In the Sumerian-Babylonian depictions they are equipped with wings, which has become what we know as angels. They also have long beards, hence the stereotype of God in the form of a patriarch with a long beard. They therefore fly. They have a figure that can be depicted, which the Creator of the Universe does not have, so the image makers usually refrain from this - except when Michelangelo is allowed to paint the Creation of Adam.

If you give the god your little finger, he’ll take your whole arm.

The Bible annotated for theologians correctly designates Elohim in the plural, while the family Bible lumps a handful+ of names for these god-like figures together to form God, the Lord, period. God has become an absolute monarch. He behaves like the Roman emperors who created Christianity, and whose word was law. He behaves like the Pope, his son’s representative on earth (Vicarius Filii Dei), whose word is law. God still behaves like one of the many ‘gods’ after becoming the one God along the way.

One of the only mass-published Bibles that - although it mentions God in the singular - at least in the notation admits that the word for God is plural is the Jehovah’s Witnesses Bible. You can just see there!

In Psalm 82 of the Book of Psalms, there is a clear reference to an assembly of Elohim, where the president El-Elion addresses the assembly:

God stands in the assembly of the gods,
among the gods he holds judgment:

How long will you judge unjustly
and show partiality to the wicked?

Defend the weak and fatherless,
acquit the helpless and poor,

deliver the weak and needy,
save them from the hand of the wicked!

They do not understand nor comprehend,
they walk in darkness,
the foundations of the earth are shaken.

I have said, You are gods,
all of you sons of the Most High.

Yet you shall die like men,
and fall like one of the mighty.

Arise, O God, judge the earth,
for all the nations are your inheritance.

El is Elohim in the singular. In Sumer it would be Anu, the head of the gods.
Another form in the singular is Eloah. In Aramaic it is Elaha.
In Syriac it is Alaha - note the similarity with Allah, which comes from the Arabic Ilah.
These deviations are precisely due to the absence of vowels in the scriptures, which were not necessary, since everyone knew how to pronounce the words, just as all Czechs and Slovaks today know that Plzn is pronounced Pilsen. It is almost a form of consonant shorthand.

One of the foremost translators of the Bible, originally hired because of his skills by the Vatican’s own publishing house, Mauro Biglino, says that the names for God should therefore not be translated. This also applies to a number of other names that are translated interpretatively-ideologically. Or politically, one could say. This, says Biglino, would be the most honest. The question is then, are the church institutions interested in honesty and love when it comes down to it? When Biglino began speaking publicly about his discoveries, he was, not surprisingly, fired. Business as usual.

There were Christian church fathers in the first centuries of the Christian era who argued that one should refrain from using the Old Testament as a foundation for the church at all, but they did not get the last word, as the early church was in the process of being Catholicized, and these disagreements were hammered into place in the creation of a Roman state religion. The church fathers rightly pointed out that we would have to apologize to God for committing atrocities worse than the worst people. So they were fully aware of the moral dilemma. The Roman Empire, upon its downfall, morphed into the Catholic Church, the emperor became the Pope, Yahweh became God, the Lord, Christianity became Judaism lite or Judaism for the Gentiles. Christianity inherited the theological coup d’état that had already taken place in Judaism 1,000 years earlier, and theology skimmed over the moral dilemma that the church fathers presented.
Just like with the Old Testament, there are plenty of problems—even more!—with the New Testament.
Read: The King that Disappeared

One might ask, is it not because of this blurred image of God and apology for a despotic God that has brought about the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity? One becomes what one believes in.

The ultimate church father of all three Abrahamic religions was - hence the name - Abraham. He is asked why he moved from the city of Ur in the land between the two rivers (Meso-Potamia), to which he replies: Because the powerful (Elohim) said that I should do so. This is the original text, where Father Abraham still says what he said. With the translation of the Bible into European languages, the original concept of God does not survive, because God has now been catholicized / orthodoxized and has become one holy and ordinary God, just as the church has become one holy and ordinary church. Father Abraham is censored and no longer says what he said but has become politically correct.

In Genesis it is written that Elohim says: Let US remake humans so that they resemble one of us. This is the statement that has given rise to the explanation that ‘the powerful’ were tampering with human genetics. They later regretted it, because humans also took over their power. Then we get the story of the Flood, where ‘God’ aka the powerful tries to destroy their own work. In the centuries of editing from the original Sumerian source, this has been rewritten to mean that humans disobeyed God, they were sinful, and God had to punish them. So they were the ones who did it themselves instead of being mistreated by despotic god(s).
Read: You don’t piss with impunity on the gods

The powerful did not want humans to be as intelligent as they were. This is the starting point for the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden and the expulsion from the garden for eating from the tree. These Elohim, arguing among themselves, are a reflection of the conflict between two of the Mesopotamian gods, Enki and Enlil.

We find the story again in Greek mythology, where Zeus punishes humans because Prometheus stole the fire of the gods. Prometheus has many similarities to Mithras from Persian mythology. It is about disobedience to despotism, and that humans are not allowed to possess their self-imposed sovereignty but must remain powerless. Is there anything new under the sun?
Read: The Immortal Sun

The monotheistic dilemma is both grammatical, moral and philosophical. Only by allowing the original space for pluralism can all three problems be solved with an anti-artifice - in contrast to the constant artifices that must be committed to maintain orthodoxy. In addition, the stories of the Bible become much more interesting.

One can also speculate about whether this politicized treatment of the original stories is a contributing factor in the fact that most people today cannot stand them. Do we intuitively sense that the truth is not being told? Do we sense that this refusal to describe how the powerful in ancient times mistreated people bears an eerie resemblance to how the powerful today treat us? Orthodoxy has shot itself in the foot and scared people away instead of holding them in its iron grip. The Bible could have gained a whole new wave of young readers if they knew they were getting the best science fiction from real world history.

We could even go one step further and ask whether the powerful at that time disappeared at all, or whether they continued to mistreat humanity in our time? That would make perfect sense and explain the nature of the inhumanities we see in our time. They are simply the result of a backstory of programming from the past that has not yet been erased. It is said that work is being done on the matter.

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Listen to this or other conversations between Mauro Biglino and Paul Wallis:
Elohim is not God
Mauro Biglino is one of the top experts in translating the Old Testament from its original sources. He was hired by the Catholic Church for a new translation. But he was fired, when they found out, what he discovered.