I decided to go down the rabbit hole of Biblical historicity again, due to fellow Americans simply refusing to accept the problems of the Bible. Even when I repeatedly confront them with contradictions from Jesus Christ’s own mouth, they simply ignore it as a way to not think about it. I had felt it pointless to continue for a time, because too much of Biblical archaeology suddenly required a paywall demanding a subscription, so I stopped caring. If the freedom of learning and growing requires a paywall on every established website, then I just stop caring because it was merely a passing interest for me in the first place and there’s no scientific evidence to support religious myths, especially the Abrahamic faiths. I prefer learning about Native American archaeology, theology, and culture along with my own Dharmic culture, its archaeological findings, and the different schools of Hindu thought that I take the time to read on occasion. I don’t even like any of the Abrahamic faiths to begin with, I had no contemptuous feelings for Judaism and viewed it as more scholarly due to the abundance of Secular Jews making breakthroughs in social, political, and psychological systems of thought in academia. However, learning the contents of the Epstein files, I have nothing more than contempt for all three Abrahamic faith traditions and view them as nothing more than warring desert tribal barbarians’ incapable of behaving civilized. I view all three this way after the Epstein files essentially confirmed my supposedly most bigoted views as completely accurate. European Jewry’s more recent behavior in favor of Zionism is just White tribalism as far as I’m concerned and the willful ignorance towards the Epstein files by the corporate media and US Congress confirms this to be the truth about the Abrahamic religion in my opinion. The fact that no surveys were done on who the US public blames for the actions of Jeffrey Epstein says it all. America is acting like a conquered people, refusing to openly criticize a materially insignificant country that committed a Holocaust upon American children, and pursuing policies that allow that country to continue to have absolute power over the US at the expense of the lives of US children. That’s the truth, because if we can’t even say it was Israel that was behind a global pedophile cabal that mainly harmed US children, then who is being protected – the US kids or the perpetrators who serve a foreign country and foreign government? People act as if age verification technology is in isolation of the Epstein files, when its intent is clearly to make the kidnapping and rape of children easier for a global pedophile cabal run by Israelis and Zionists that intentionally harm US children.

I had a dismissive view of the Abrahamic faiths after listening to New Atheist debates of Christopher Hitchens and then reading more about Biblical archaeology to learn that there was no archaeological proof of the story of Exodus and it appeared to be a complete myth. In 2008, Willam Dever, a Professor Emeritus from the University of Arizona who has been part of the investigations into Israel’s archaeology for more than 30 years during the time of his interview with PBS (PDF), had this to say about the lack of corroborative findings for the Biblical story of Exodus during that interview:

NOVA: Have biblical archeologists traditionally tried to find evidence that events in the Bible really happened?

William Dever: From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. [William Foxwell] Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the “archeological revolution.” Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that’s very disturbing to some people.

But perhaps we were asking the wrong questions. I have always thought that if we resurrected someone from the past, one of the biblical writers, they would be amused, because for them it would have made no difference. I think they would have said, faith is faith is faith—take your proofs and go with them.

The fact is that archeology can never prove any of the theological suppositions of the Bible. Archeologists can often tell you what happened and when and where and how and even why. No archeologists can tell anyone what it means, and most of us don’t try.

Yet many people want to know whether the events of the Bible are real, historic events.

We want to make the Bible history. Many people think it has to be history or nothing. But there is no word for history in the Hebrew Bible. In other words, what did the biblical writers think they were doing? Writing objective history? No. That’s a modern discipline. They were telling stories.

I had written and cited sources in Chapter 10 of my book, Faith in Doubt, which described the following findings during the time:

Egyptians had no slavery until the tail end of the empire due to attacks from foreign empires and there’s no proof that the Israelites ever set foot inside Egypt or that they built the pyramids.^[1][2] The pyramids were built by Egyptian workers who were handsomely paid and respected for their contributions to the legacy of the Pharaohs.^[3] On JPost, Stephen Gabriel Rosenberg, a Senior Fellow at the Albright Institute of Archaeological research in Jerusalem, explains succinctly in the article “The Exodus: Does Archaeology Have a Say?” as shown below:

The short answer is “no.” The whole subject of the Exodus is embarrassing to archaeologists. The Exodus is so fundamental to us and our Jewish sources that it is embarrassing that there is no evidence outside of the Bible to support it. So we prefer not to talk about it, and hate to be asked about it.

For the account in the Torah is the basis of our people’s creation, it is the basis of our existence and it is the basis of our important Passover festival and the whole Haggada that we recite on the first evening of this festival of freedom. So that makes archaeologists reluctant to have to tell our brethren and ourselves that there is nothing in Egyptian records to support it. Nothing on the slavery of the Israelites, nothing on the plagues that persuaded Pharaoh to let them go, nothing on the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea, nothing.

Nothing at all. There are three Pharaohs who said they got rid of the hated foreigners, but nothing to say who the foreigners were, and no Pharaoh is named as having persecuted foreign slaves or suffered unspeakable plagues.^[1]

1. [1] Rosenberg, Stephen Gabriel. “The Exodus: Does Archaeology Have a Say?” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, 14 Apr. 2014, http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/The-Exodus-Does-archaeology-have-a-say-348464.

[1] Deitch, Ian. “Egypt: New Find Shows Slaves Didn’t Build Pyramids.” S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/12/egypt-new-find-shows-slaves-didnt-build-pyramids.

[2] “Archeology of the Hebrew Bible.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 18 Nov. 2008, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/archeology-hebrew-bible.html.

[3] Deitch, Ian. “Egypt: New Find Shows Slaves Didn’t Build Pyramids.” S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, http://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/12/egypt-new-find-shows-slaves-didnt-build-pyramids.

The Exodus story was a fable, Israelites were never slaves in Ancient Egypt, and the character of Moses didn’t exist. This was such a shock to the Abrahamic world, but then it posed a challenge to people: Where exactly did the story of Exodus come from then? You have an entire epic about being slaves to Egypt, wandering the desert for forty years, and then establishing ancient Israel but if the whole story is a hoax or a myth, then why is it in the Bible and where did the Israelites actually come from? Where, indeed, did YHWH come from?

Archaeology has finally provided answers, alongside some gaps as with the majority of archaeological studies across the world due to decay and destruction of historical sites. However, I would argue that both scholars and journalists are ignoring the most painfully obvious implications of their findings. The abundance of evidence indicates the following:

YHWH’s actual origin is being a Wandering Calf deity for the Shasu-Yhw, a group of wanderers, pastorals, and mercenaries’ part of a Bedouin tribe (one of the ancestors of modern-day Southern Arabs); according to UK archaeologists, they sometimes worked with and sometimes got persecuted by ancient Egyptian empires (PDF). This really explains a lot about the story of Exodus. The term slave wasn’t literal; it may have just been an insult by the Ancient Egyptians towards the Shasu-Yhw’s mercenary work for the Ancient Egyptians or – more plausibly – towards being a bound captive after being defeated by the Ancient Egyptians when they were hired by other groups to fight the Ancient Egyptian military. Ancient Egyptians once had a strong rival called the Kerma Kingdom that most archaeologists and historians didn’t realize had ever existed until recently and it led to centuries of rebellion against the Ancient Egyptians for approximately 220 years (PDF). I don’t see why it wouldn’t be plausible that Kerma rebels would have hired the Shasu-Yhw for mercenary work against the Ancient Egyptians.

Unfortunately, we now get into what this would mean for the Canaanites, the ancient Jews or proto-Jews of Canaan. The name Israel was not a veneration of Monotheism as mentioned by Jewish scholars; from journalist Ariel David on June 13th, 2016 in the article titled “How the Jews Invented God, and Made Him Great (PDF)” which had the following:

The Bible explicitly tells us that God has one, which indicates he had to be distinguished from other celestial beings, just like humans use names to identify different people.

What that name might be is another matter. The Jewish prohibition on speaking God’s name means that its correct pronunciation has been lost. All we know is that the Hebrew Bible spells it out as four consonants known as the Tetragrammaton – from the Greek for “four letters,” which are transliterated as Y-H-W-H.

The existence of a proper name for God is the first indication that the history of Yhwh and his worship by the Jews is a lot more complicated than many realize.

In gods we trusted

Modern biblical scholarship and archaeological discoveries in and around Israel show that the ancient Israelites did not always believe in a single, universal god. In fact, monotheism is a relatively recent concept, even amongst the People of the Book.

Decades of research into the birth and evolution of the Yhwh cult are summarized in “The Invention of God,” a recent book by Thomas Römer, a world-renowned expert in the Hebrew Bible and professor at the College de France and the University of Lausanne. Römer, who held a series of conferences at Tel Aviv University last month, spoke to Haaretz about the subject.

The main source for investigating the history of God is, of course, the Bible itself.

When exactly the Jewish holy text reached its final form is unknown. Many scholars believe this happened sometime between the Babylonian exile, which began after the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BCE (some 2600 years ago), and the subsequent periods of Persian and Hellenistic rule.

However, the redactors of the Bible were evidently working off older traditions, Römer says.

“Biblical texts are not direct historical sources. They reflect the ideas, the ideologies of their authors and of course of the historical context in which they were written,” Römer explains.

Still, he notes, “you can have memories of a distant past, sometimes in a very confusing way or in a very oriented way. But I think we can, and we must, use the biblical text not just as fictional texts but as texts that can tell us stories about the origins.”

What’s in God’s name

The first clue that the ancient Israelites worshipped gods other than the deity known as Yhwh lies in their very name. “Israel” is a theophoric name going back at least 3200 years, which includes and invokes the name of a protective deity.

Going by the name, the main god of the ancient Israelites was not Yhwh, but El, the chief deity in the Canaanite pantheon, who was worshipped throughout the Levant.

In other words, the name “Israel” is probably older than the veneration of Yhwh by this group called Israel, Römer says. “The first tutelary deity they were worshipping was El, otherwise their name would have been Israyahu.”

It’s noteworthy that William Dever described the archaeological findings of the Canaanites as such:

Tell us more about the Merneptah inscription. Why is it so famous?

It’s the earliest reference we have to the Israelites. The victory stele of Pharaoh Merneptah, the son of Ramesses II, mentions a list of peoples and city-states in Canaan, and among them are the Israelites. And it’s interesting that the other entities, the other ethnic groups, are described as nascent states, but the Israelites are described as “a people.” They have not yet reached a level of state organization.

So the Egyptians, a little before 1200 B.C.E., know of a group of people somewhere in the central highlands—a loosely affiliated tribal confederation, if you will—called “Israelites.” These are our Israelites. So this is a priceless inscription.

Does archeology back up the information in the Merneptah inscription? Is there evidence of the Israelites in the central highlands of Canaan at this time?

We know today, from archeological investigation, that there were more than 300 early villages of the 13th and 12th century in the area. I call these “proto-Israelite” villages.

Forty years ago it would have been impossible to identify the earliest Israelites archeologically. We just didn’t have the evidence. And then, in a series of regional surveys, Israeli archeologists in the 1970s began to find small hilltop villages in the central hill country north and south of Jerusalem and in lower Galilee. Now we have almost 300 of them.

The origins of Israel

What have archeologists learned from these settlements about the early Israelites? Are there signs that the Israelites came in conquest, taking over the land from Canaanites?

The settlements were founded not on the ruins of destroyed Canaanite towns but rather on bedrock or on virgin soil. There was no evidence of armed conflict in most of these sites. Archeologists also have discovered that most of the large Canaanite towns that were supposedly destroyed by invading Israelites were either not destroyed at all or destroyed by “Sea People”—Philistines, or others.

So gradually the old conquest model [based on the accounts of Joshua’s conquests in the Bible] began to lose favor amongst scholars. Many scholars now think that most of the early Israelites were originally Canaanites, displaced Canaanites, displaced from the lowlands, from the river valleys, displaced geographically and then displaced ideologically.

So what we are dealing with is a movement of peoples but not an invasion of an armed corps from the outside. A social and economic revolution, if you will, rather than a military revolution. And it begins a slow process in which the Israelites distinguish themselves from their Canaanite ancestors, particularly in religion—with a new deity, new religious laws and customs, new ethnic markers, as we would call them today.

“It’s interesting that in these hundreds of 12th-century settlements there are no temples, no palaces, no elite residences.”

If the Bible’s story of Joshua’s conquest isn’t entirely historic, what is its meaning?

Why was it told? Well, it was told because there were probably armed conflicts here and there, and these become a part of the story glorifying the career of Joshua, commander in chief of the Israelite forces. I suspect that there is a historical kernel, and there are a few sites that may well have been destroyed by these Israelites, such as Hazor in Galilee, or perhaps a site or two in the south.

The polytheistic Canaanites were a peaceful hilltop chiefdom that didn’t have any experience with war and didn’t seek it. What does that mean then? Bedouin desert travelers almost certainly conquered Canaanites and forced them to follow either a Southern polytheistic religion or Monotheism after Egypt kicked out the Bedouin known as the Shasu-Yhw. That’s how YHWH became the head deity, first from being a consort of Asherah and then later becoming the only deity. So, the descriptions of massacres in the Old Testament are of… ancient Bedouins (Shasu-Yhw) conquering ancient Jews (the Canaanites). After that, Monotheism slowly took hold, likely thanks to Zoroastrian Monotheistic influence that preceded Judaism by approximately 100 years which condemned polytheism, but it was more so for the Bedouin Shasu-YHW group to affirm full control of the land by forcing Jews to worship their own massacres and conquest as part of divine judgment from YHWH. In other words, the Bible was the beginning of revisionism to rewrite the genocide of the ancient Jewish people and culture as a victory. This very process of ancient colonialism to destroy ancient Jewish polytheism may have been the whole purpose of the Ten Commandments.

So, wandering the desert for 40 years was confirmed to be this group of Bedouins, not Ancient Canaanites / Israelites. They were essentially “wandering” either due to being the hired mercenaries of the Ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Egyptians simply ordered them to settle from place to place to demonstrate Egyptian royal power judging from the current evidence. The terminology of slave may have been more about the complaints by the Shasu-Yhw of how ruthless the Ancient Egyptians treated them than any actual slavery. The identity of Israelite didn’t become an established identity until after the Shasu-YHW conquest of the ancient polytheistic Jews (the Canaanites). But also… the entire Abrahamic Faith tradition being an off-shoot of Ancient Egyptian religion might be truer than I thought, because the Shasu-YHW likely fled during Ancient Egyptian imperialism of the lands directly south of Egypt and were undoubtedly influenced by ancient Egyptian polytheism and possibly the religious beliefs of the long colonized Kerma Kingdom. Unfortunately, not much of the survived inscriptions give a definite answer on where the Shasu-YHW were specifically in African lands directly south of Egypt, according to UK archaeology scholars. However, this strongly supports the idea that the god YHWH is an African deity of an ancient Bedouin tribe; thereby making YHWH an African, ancient Arab, and possibly an off-shoot of an Egyptian deity or a syncretic concept of Ancient Egyptian polytheism and the colonized Kerma Kingdom’s religious beliefs. Even prior to the findings of the Shasu-YHW’s connection to the formation of Israel, it was well-known for those who’ve studied both Ancient Egypt and the Ancient Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism that Judaism is actually the the third Monotheistic religion. Zoroastrianism almost certainly influenced the Polytheistic settlements of Ancient Israel to become Monotheistic due to ancient Iran being an empire and the influence within scholarship is noticeable, but the Shasu-YHW may have been influenced by the first Monotheism that precedes even Zoroastrianism. The first Monotheism was by an Ancient Egyptian King who wanted to be seen as God on earth and replaced Polytheism with his own brand of Monotheism for twenty years until the end of his reign when his successors returned to Egyptian Polytheism. From the Kindle edition of American Egyptologist and research associate at the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures in Chicago, Emily Teeter‘s 2011 book, “Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt” which had the following (and apologies for the color-coding, I was doing research for other purposes until I remembered this book’s plausible significance to this piece; feel free to click to enlarge each image in a new tab to read clearly, if need be):

The Egyptian archaeological discoveries of the Amarna Period of Amunhotep IV has surprising parallels to the story of King Lucifer in the Bible and thus, the story of King Lucifer might be a significant piece to solving the archaeological mystery, because it suggests that the Shasu-YHW were familiar with the history of Amunhotep IV’s rise and fall as a possible form of oral history before being written down:

Isaiah 14:12-15 

New American Standard Bible

¹² How you have fallen from heaven,
You ^[a]star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who defeated the nations!
¹³ But you said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
¹⁴ I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
¹⁵ Nevertheless you will be brought down to Sheol,
To the recesses of the pit.

The craziest part when combining both the Haaretz findings and these new findings by the UK archaeologists is… the Golden Calf IS Yahweh. It’s his oldest depiction according to both Tel Aviv and Brown universities.

After they – seemingly – conquered Israel, YHWH became more abstract as a way for the Yahweh Theologians to hold power in a theocratic monarchy, from what I understand. I can’t believe this is real. All these genocidal wars, massacres, even the Epstein files… over a Calf deity reshaped into four letters. This is the earliest inscription of YHWH from the imperialization of Ancient Egypt upon the Nubian / Kush lands…

1. YHWH’s Earliest known inscription. I’ve added more to give more context, basically the Shasu were the original worshippers of Yahweh and Yahweh was likely made from Ancient Egypt’s wars with its southern lands, before the Shasu-YHW conquered the Canaanites and created revisionist history of the supposed “Israelites” to justify their colonization:

Context and details.

2. An example of what YHWH’s original form was. He was… just a Calf deity for a Bedouin Mercenary Pastoral group looking to settle around Ancient Egypt and being repeatedly exploited by Ancient Egypt. Archaeologists put this around the late Bronze Age to early Iron Age:

If this Jewish Youtuber who is an enthusiast for Jewish history and Hebrew linguistics (PDF) is accurate and the ancient Hebrews were pronounced “Habiru” and became known as the Hebrew, then it makes sense. It would have been the case of Ancient Egyptians calling them Abiru or Apiru as the Youtuber below mentions, Shasu by either themselves or the Kerma rebels for a time, and then Habiru plausibly by the Canaanites which they used to conduct revisionist history to call themselves the Hebrews. However, keep in mind this youtuber is just an enthusiast, whereas the prior links are to scholarly works from Israel, the UK, and America. The scholars have actually excavated the archaeological sites of the Bible, whereas this guy, Seth Fleishman, just studies the language of Ancient Hebrew and tries to find appropriate context.

The Jewish enthusiast from 12:31 – 20:00 makes this point for anyone who wants to see his evidence based on Hebrew linguistics: https://youtu.be/JEoU7MyfOgE?t=753

And a glimpse at how the Bedouin Shasu-Yhw fit the pattern of the Old Testament Bible’s claims with both Biblical archaeology and the Bible itself from Professor Gary A. Rendsburg who is a professor of biblical studies, Hebrew language, and ancient Judaism at Rutgers University from Chapter 3 of the fourth edition of his book, “ANCIENT ISRAEL: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple” which had the following from pages 59 – 64 (PDF):

In other words, the Bible was the beginning of revisionism to rewrite the genocide of the ancient Jewish people and culture as a victory. This very process of ancient colonialism to destroy ancient Jewish polytheism may have been the whole purpose of the Ten Commandments (PDF) with clarifications once we put the fuller picture together:

First Commandment (Exodus 20:2)

I am the Lord Your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

 

A rewrite of what actually happened. The Bedouin conquerors forced the Jewish polytheists to view their massacres and slaughters as an intrinsic good for bringing the Calf deity to them.

 

Second Commandment (Exodus 20:3-6)

You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord Your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

 

The Ancient Jews are forbidden from worshipping the authentic Jewish polytheistic gods like Asherah.

 

Third Commandment (Exodus 20:7)

You shall not take the name of the Lord Your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that takes His name in vain.

 

Ancient Jews are not allowed to question their colonization and rule by their Bedouin conquerors.

 

Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11)

Remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; but the seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord Your God, in it you shall not do any manner of work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your man-servant, nor your maid-servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger that is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day. Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and made it holy.

 

Ancient Canaanites are forced by the ancient Hebrews to work and serve their conquerors.

 

Fifth Commandment (Exodus 20:12)

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord God gives you.

Honor the man who has taken Canaanite women as spoils of war for the Hebrew conquerors.

 

Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13)

You shall not murder.

You are not permitted to bring harm to the Hebrew conquerors and fight to rebel against them. Their rule is absolute.

 

Seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:13)

You shall not commit adultery.

 

The Hebrew conquerors are arguing amongst themselves on how ancient Jewish spoils of war are to be treated.

 

Eighth Commandment (Exodus 20:13)

You shall not steal.

 

Same as above, but for material property instead of just the sex slaves.

 

Ninth Commandment (Exodus 20:13)

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

 

The Hebrew conquerors must work together to quell and smash any rebellion against their imperial mercenary rule by the Canaanites.

 

Tenth Commandment (Exodus 20:14)

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, nor his wife, his man-servant, his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

Further evidence was found in the Bible itself according to scholars. The Bible Archaeology Society’s Edward L. Greenstein, a Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel; he provided this eye-opening review of the book titled “Bedouin Culture in the Bible” by Clinton Bailey (PDF). Clinton Bailey was an American-Israeli political scientist. He was an expert in Bedouin culture and poetry, and a founder of the Museum of Bedouin Culture in the Negev. Greenstein reviews Bailey’s work as follows:

There is a long history of scholarship that attributes the origins of the Hebrews to a nomadic lifestyle and that explains manifold biblical norms and literary features as direct reflections of such a society. Roland de Vaux’s classic Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (1961) is chock full of comparisons to Arab and Bedouin cultures. In 1975, Morris S. Seale, a Christian missionary in Syria and Lebanon and an Arabist, published his book The Desert Bible: Nomadic Tribal Culture and Old Testament Interpretation, where he sought to explicate biblical practices, passages, and terms on the basis of Arabian culture. We are now presented with a somewhat similar but more copiously referenced treatment by Clinton Bailey, an American Israeli who has for several decades lived with Bedouin, studied their culture, and published on their literature, law, and lore.

It is Bailey’s thesis that nomadic culture exerted a decisive influence on Israelite culture and thereby on biblical literature from the earliest periods and throughout their development. He traces the lifestyles of the Bedouin of today to the barely known, apparently nomadic or semi-nomadic Levantine peoples of the third and second millennia B.C.E., the Shasu and the Martu. As evidence of such influence, Bailey points to the Israelites’ contacts with the Midianites, whom he sees as nomads. Like some earlier scholars, Bailey credits Moses’s Midianite father-in-law, Jethro or Reuel, with no less than the worship of Yahweh and the idea of liberating the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. Although an increasing number of scholars—including myself—have come to regard Israel as an outgrowth of Canaanite civilization, Bailey advances a view harking back to the 19th century, holding that to understand the ancient Hebrews, one needs to study the nomadic Arabs.

Most of Bailey’s book delineates aspects of modern Bedouin culture that, he contends, throw light on the ancient Hebrew ethos. Bailey even suggests that the Israelites depicted in the Bible may have been Bedouin or of nomadic background. To be sure, one is impressed by the many ways in which the biblical milieu seems to be of a piece with that of the Bedouin. One could say that, to take ourselves out of our Western frames of thought and to assimilate historical biblical frames of thought, we could hardly do better than to immerse ourselves in the world evoked in Bailey’s book.

Bailey describes and explains Bedouin practices, values, and sensibilities with unusual empathy. Although some of his explanations of ancient Hebrew manners and customs from the present-day Bedouin experience sound outlandish but plausible, others are either erroneous or improbable.

The concept of vengeance is an example of the former. In one of the most intriguing suggestions in the book, Bailey interprets the biblical law of talion (“an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”) not as a license to get even but rather as a constraint on excess: You may take an eye for an eye, but no more than that.

The latter group includes a discussion of the Hebrew word for tribal chieftain (nasi’). Based on ancient Semitic parallels, it means someone who has been “elevated,” a high-up, possibly even someone “carried aloft.” Bailey, however, pressing as ever for a Bedouin connection, interprets it against form as an active verb—someone who “carries” the needs of his clan in his cloak.

When Deuteronomy 6:9 and 11:20 enjoin the Israelites to “write (the divine teachings) on the doorposts of (their) house and on (their) gates,” following a well-attested ancient Near Eastern method of proclamation, the educational purpose is plain: “recite (the divine teachings) to your children” (6:7) and “teach them to your children” (11:19). Bailey, however, goes far afield in comparing the Bedouin practice of daubing sacrificial blood on the entrance to their tents for the sake of divine blessing. The correspondence is superficial: writing on a doorpost here, daubing blood on a tent-flap there. A more obvious parallel to the Bedouin custom is the ritual of the Hebrews smearing the blood of the paschal lamb on the doorposts of their houses during the tenth plague in Egypt (Exodus 12:21–23), where the explicit purpose is to ward off the spiritual being enacting the plague. Here the functions as well as the form are alike: ritual blood defends against the demonic.

Neither a scholar of the Bible nor the ancient Near East, Bailey tends to make speculative historical claims in arguing for a nomadic background for biblical Israel. Nevertheless, his book is elegant, illustrated with photos (mostly his own), and highly suggestive. It provides valuable insight into some, if not all, of the ideas and practices found throughout the Hebrew Bible. Above all, the ethnography of the Bedouin the book provides is authoritative and fascinating.

---

Edward L. Greenstein is Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. A prolific author in biblical and ancient Near Eastern studies, he has recently published Job: A New Translation, with Yale University Press.

Despite the positive framing, people can read the Bible itself. It was all to self-justify examples like this from Numbers 31 NIV edition:

Vengeance on the Midianites

31 The Lord said to Moses, ² “Take vengeance on the Midianites for the Israelites. After that, you will be gathered to your people.”

³ So Moses said to the people, “Arm some of your men to go to war against the Midianites so that they may carry out the Lord’s vengeance on them. ⁴ Send into battle a thousand men from each of the tribes of Israel.” ⁵ So twelve thousand men armed for battle, a thousand from each tribe, were supplied from the clans of Israel. ⁶ Moses sent them into battle, a thousand from each tribe, along with Phinehas son of Eleazar, the priest, who took with him articles from the sanctuary and the trumpets for signaling.

⁷ They fought against Midian, as the Lord commanded Moses, and killed every man. ⁸ Among their victims were Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur and Reba—the five kings of Midian. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. ⁹ The Israelites captured the Midianite women and children and took all the Midianite herds, flocks and goods as plunder. ¹⁰ They burned all the towns where the Midianites had settled, as well as all their camps. ¹¹ They took all the plunder and spoils, including the people and animals, ¹² and brought the captives, spoils and plunder to Moses and Eleazar the priest and the Israelite assembly at their camp on the plains of Moab, by the Jordan across from Jericho.

¹³ Moses, Eleazar the priest and all the leaders of the community went to meet them outside the camp. ¹⁴ Moses was angry with the officers of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—who returned from the battle.

¹⁵ “Have you allowed all the women to live?” he asked them. ¹⁶ “They were the ones who followed Balaam’s advice and enticed the Israelites to be unfaithful to the Lord in the Peor incident, so that a plague struck the Lord’s people. ¹⁷ Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, ¹⁸ but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.

¹⁹ “Anyone who has killed someone or touched someone who was killed must stay outside the camp seven days. On the third and seventh days you must purify yourselves and your captives. ²⁰ Purify every garment as well as everything made of leather, goat hair or wood.”

²¹ Then Eleazar the priest said to the soldiers who had gone into battle, “This is what is required by the law that the Lord gave Moses: ²² Gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, lead ²³ and anything else that can withstand fire must be put through the fire, and then it will be clean. But it must also be purified with the water of cleansing. And whatever cannot withstand fire must be put through that water. ²⁴ On the seventh day wash your clothes and you will be clean. Then you may come into the camp.”

Dividing the Spoils

²⁵ The Lord said to Moses, ²⁶ “You and Eleazar the priest and the family heads of the community are to count all the people and animals that were captured. ²⁷ Divide the spoils equally between the soldiers who took part in the battle and the rest of the community. ²⁸ From the soldiers who fought in the battle, set apart as tribute for the Lord one out of every five hundred, whether people, cattle, donkeys or sheep. ²⁹ Take this tribute from their half share and give it to Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part. ³⁰ From the Israelites’ half, select one out of every fifty, whether people, cattle, donkeys, sheep or other animals. Give them to the Levites, who are responsible for the care of the Lord’s tabernacle.” ³¹ So Moses and Eleazar the priest did as the Lord commanded Moses.

³² The plunder remaining from the spoils that the soldiers took was 675,000 sheep, ³³ 72,000 cattle, ³⁴ 61,000 donkeys ³⁵ and 32,000 women who had never slept with a man.

³⁶ The half share of those who fought in the battle was:

337,500 sheep, ³⁷ of which the tribute for the Lord was 675;

³⁸ 36,000 cattle, of which the tribute for the Lord was 72;

³⁹ 30,500 donkeys, of which the tribute for the Lord was 61;

⁴⁰ 16,000 people, of whom the tribute for the Lord was 32.

⁴¹ Moses gave the tribute to Eleazar the priest as the Lord’s part, as the Lord commanded Moses.

⁴² The half belonging to the Israelites, which Moses set apart from that of the fighting men— ⁴³ the community’s half—was 337,500 sheep, ⁴⁴ 36,000 cattle, ⁴⁵ 30,500 donkeys ⁴⁶ and 16,000 people. ⁴⁷ From the Israelites’ half, Moses selected one out of every fifty people and animals, as the Lord commanded him, and gave them to the Levites, who were responsible for the care of the Lord’s tabernacle.

⁴⁸ Then the officers who were over the units of the army—the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds—went to Moses ⁴⁹ and said to him, “Your servants have counted the soldiers under our command, and not one is missing. ⁵⁰ So we have brought as an offering to the Lord the gold articles each of us acquired—armlets, bracelets, signet rings, earrings and necklaces—to make atonement for ourselves before the Lord.”

⁵¹ Moses and Eleazar the priest accepted from them the gold—all the crafted articles. ⁵² All the gold from the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds that Moses and Eleazar presented as a gift to the Lord weighed 16,750 shekels.^[a] 53 Each soldier had taken plunder for himself. ⁵⁴ Moses and Eleazar the priest accepted the gold from the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds and brought it into the tent of meeting as a memorial for the Israelites before the Lord.

There we have it. We now have a good overview of the Bible’s true history. Ancient Jews were polytheists forced to worship a foreign god who denied them freedom and destroyed their old Gods like the Mother Goddess Asherah through a gradual process of conquest and colonization, from the 2008 PBS article interviewing American Archaeologist William Dever again:

One of the astonishing things is your discovery of Yahweh’s connection to Asherah. Tell us about that.

In 1968, I discovered an inscription in a cemetery west of Hebron, in the hill country, at the site of Khirbet el-Qôm, a Hebrew inscription of the 8th century B.C.E. It gives the name of the deceased, and it says “blessed may he be by Yahweh”—that’s good biblical Hebrew—but it says “by Yahweh and his Asherah.”

Asherah is the name of the old Canaanite Mother Goddess, the consort of El, the principal deity of the Canaanite pantheon. So why is a Hebrew inscription mentioning Yahweh in connection with the Canaanite Mother Goddess? Well, in popular religion they were a pair.

The Israelite prophets and reformers denounce the Mother Goddess and all the other gods and goddesses of Canaan. But I think Asherah was widely venerated in ancient Israel. If you look at Second Kings 23, which describes the reforms of King Josiah in the late 7th century, he talks about purging the Temple of all the cult paraphernalia of Asherah. So the so-called folk religion even penetrated the Temple in Jerusalem.

Is there other evidence linking Asherah to Yahweh?

In the 1970s, Israeli archeologists digging in Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai found a little desert fort of the same period, and lo and behold, we have “Yahweh and Asherah” all over the place in the Hebrew inscriptions.

Are there any images of Asherah?

For a hundred years now we have known of little terracotta female figurines. They show a nude female; the sexual organs are not represented but the breasts are. They are found in tombs, they are found in households, they are found everywhere. There are thousands of them. They date all the way from the 10th century to the early 6th century.

They have long been connected with one goddess or another, but many scholars are still hesitant to come to a conclusion. I think they are representations of Asherah, so I call them Asherah figurines.

There aren’t such representations of Yahweh, are there?

No. Now, why is it that you could model the female deity but not the male deity? Well, I think the First and Second Commandments by now were taken pretty seriously. You just don’t portray Yahweh, the male deity, but the Mother Goddess is okay. But his consort is probably a lesser deity.

We found molds for making Asherah figurines, mass-producing them, in village shrines. So probably almost everybody had one of these figurines, and they surely have something to do with fertility. They were no doubt used to pray for conceiving a child and bearing the child safely and nursing it. It’s interesting to me that the Israelite and Judean ones are rather more modest than the Canaanite ones, which are right in your face. The Israelite and Judean ones mostly show a nursing mother.

 

What about Abraham?

From here, I think it is worth speculating: where exactly did Abraham come from? If the transition was the Calf deity, YHWH, transitioning to replacing El and becoming Asherah’s consort, and slowly being the “hidden figure” behind other deity depictions in the early parts of the Old Testament to justify Shasu-YHW colonization of the ancient polytheistic Jews, then where did the story of Abram becoming Abraham upon receiving YHWH come from as an explanation for the “Abrahamic” faiths? Pure speculation on my part, but I think the evidence now suggests this Patriarch was just revisionist history of turning Asherah into a male prophet figure to justify conquest. Just as YHWH replaced El and became husband to Asherah, Abraham “receives” YHWH and honors him as Supreme Lord. I postulate that the Bedouin-YHW colonizers rewrote the Divine Matriarch and Queen of Heaven as a male prophet who submits to the abstract form of what was a Bedouin calf deity. I could be wrong, but I strongly believe that this is a worthy line of inquiry to explore in terms of academic study.

This change was likely over a process of centuries; if William Dever’s findings about how Moses wasn’t originally a person but the name of the Pharaoh who was then re-interpreted in fictional terms as the leader of the mythologized version of the Shasu-YHW that were renamed Israelites, then I don’t see why Abraham’s origins wouldn’t be the same, especially given the story of his name change from Abram to Abraham, which could be a case of reimagining his origins to cut out all references to Asherah and reinterpret the relationship from a colonizer viewpoint with their language replacing the ancient Canaanites / ancient proto-Jews. Why wouldn’t this reimagining be true for Abraham and not just Moses, if the purpose was to justify colonization of the ancient Jewish Canaanites to force them to worship the calf deity, YHWH?

Evidence of the early Israelites

The Bible chronology puts Moses much later in time, around 1450 B.C.E. Is there archeological evidence for Moses and the mass exodus of hundreds of thousands of Israelites described in the Bible?

We have no direct archeological evidence. “Moses” is an Egyptian name. Some of the other names in the narratives are Egyptian, and there are genuine Egyptian elements. But no one has found a text or an artifact in Egypt itself or even in the Sinai that has any direct connection. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. But I think it does mean what happened was rather more modest. And the biblical writers have enlarged the story.

Final Thoughts

This newfound history entirely explains the autocratic impulses of Eastern European Jewish leaders like Claudia Sheinbaum, Volodymyr Zelensky, and Benyamin Netanyahu as per the Global Zionist-Mafia nexus that has controlled America due to people voting on the basis of keeping America a Christian nation-state. Wealthy US people digging up holes is likely to await the outcome of a rigged US election, while their corporate media lies to the public more forcefully and tries to justify military strikes on their own people because they’ve also been indoctrinated to believe in Biblical mythology from what was a mercenary band worshipping a calf deity trying to justify imperial rule over the ancient polytheistic Jews. To wit, the wealthy elite believe the Rapture is going to happen in their lifetime and that it’s a test from YHWH to help Israel to destroy democracy around the world and await the Kingdom of God, whether Jewish or Christian. All because they venerate a calf deity turned into an abstraction to justify a peaceful hilltop chiefdom of ancient Canaanite Jews being subjugated to ancient Bedouin imperialism.

By following the Bible, the Israelis of today are simply following the ancient footsteps of the savage barbarism of what the Bedouin Shasu-YHW did to their own Canaanite Jewish ancestors. The modern Israelis of today have now done it upon their distant cousins, the Palestinians; who are their fellow Jews, but of the Muslim faith. It also means that modern Israelis never needed the Bible or the Talmud to prove their claims to their ancient heritage. If they had taken the chance to actually do DNA research as has been found repeatedly from Israeli universities, US universities, and especially the highly reliable David Reich’s research; then, they would have learned that their own DNA sampling proves they have ties to the land of the Canaanites / Israelites that are older than the Bible. The Bible is actually irrelevant and the most significant proof of modern Israelis claims to their heritage are the fact that the Palestinians exist and have the closest matching DNA to them, because they’re derived from the same ancestors who lived on that land predating the Bible itself (PDF + More context: PDF). They’re literally the same people with different ethnic markers. Their ancient Jewish customs aren’t unique, it’s Bedouin customs from their ancient Arab colonizers; the very racism Israelis have towards Arabs has now become a point of humiliation, because the Calf god they worship came from a Bedouin tribe that colonized the Canaanites / ancient Jews.

What is now known about the history of YHWH affirms everything I ever believed about the Abrahamic faiths when I learned of its teachings; it’s a religion of warring desert tribes incapable of rational thought and constantly raping, murdering, looting, and genociding everyone around them and then justifying their exploitation as somehow part of their God’s will and humblebragging about how everyone is a sinner to make their exploitation sound inevitable when it serves their self-interests. From the ancient Hebrews genociding the Canaanite Jews, to Christian imperialism that led to tens of millions of deaths across the world for White European profits, the continued genocide of the Native Americans, to two World Wars, concentration camps, and now the Epstein files revealing a genocide upon US children by Israel and the genocide of Gaza. This barbaric, savage culture will never change and cannot be changed as long as they worship their pedophile war god that was originally just a calf deity, YHWH. And if you think I’m an asshole and a bigot, half of America and a good portion of the entire Christian population of the world supported a genocide of Jews who were of the Islamic faith, the Palestinians, because they believe in the abstract form of an ancient calf deity. I was repeatedly mocked as insane throughout my life, while these same people who mocked me likely supported the genocide of Gaza was over a calf deity and all these “sane” people behave willfully ignorant of Israel’s part in a global pedophile cabal that targeted US children.

That all said, it also affirms Nietzsche’s views about how it is a worship of death, collective narcissism, and Jews are better served leaving it and creating the forms of human flourishing that both Friedrich Nietzsche and Sam Harris talk about like Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman’s groundbreaking work in psychology, Erich Fromm’s works in sociology and anthropology, although I’m not deeply familiar with her. . . possibly Hannah Arendt’s works on history and philosophy, neuroscientific popularization and Atheistic critiques of the Bible by neuroscientist Sam Harris, and the most prominent Jewish American name in the US history of urbanization with the development of New York City. . . Robert Moses. It seems to me like Jewish culture always has a lot breakthrough and innovations to offer . . . the more it keeps Jewish tradition, while abandoning the supernatural aspects of Judaism, just like Nietzsche argued. Throw away the supernatural barbarism of Abrahamic faith traditions and you end-up with a culture committing to endless progress and innovations; continue to worship the supernatural barbarism of a warring desert cult and you end-up with Epstein’s pedophile blackmail harming American children – including Jewish children – for thirty years and genociding your fellow Jews who are of the Muslim faith (the Palestinians) in a protracted intra-Jewish conflict that is leading to a nuclear holocaust and World War III. Jeffrey Epstein was a Jewish Kabbalist who combined his beliefs with Thelema and any rules about how he wasn’t following Jewish Kabbalah correctly run into the problem of Kabbalah (Jewish Occultism) being a non-rational theological belief system, to begin with. In which case, if Kabbalah is premised on the lack of logical thinking, then how can you claim that Epstein was doing it wrong? All you can argue is that you disagree with his interpretation of Jewish Kabbalah, no different than Catholic priests who rape children and believe Jesus forgives them of the sins they commit upon children because of their interpretation of Christianity. It’s arguably the exact same “non-rational” value judgments behind it. Free yourselves of this horrible history already, because judging from the evidence you’re supporting an endless historical chain of mass murdering colonization without any endpoint. Jewish culture is more than just the barbaric supernatural claims of Abrahamicism; which is precisely why atheism was always leading to an endgoal of further human development, while the supernatural aspects lead to sexual violence against innocent children including Jewish children such as what was revealed in the Epstein files. The entire history of the Abrahamic faiths is proof that atheism leads to better and more positive life outcomes for all people, once they abandon the supernatural.