TheBibleNet: December 2016

Ishtar

Read my page on Inanna, first, or after, but in partnership either way, because really they are the same goddess,

Often rendered in English as Ištar, she was the wife of Anu (of Marduk in the later versions) and mother of Enlil. She was the goddess of war and love, which equates her with Minerva and Venus, and also with the Persian Astarte, who was probably a late form of Inanna, or else the two were Akkadian and Sumerian variations of the same goddess.

However - as you will see by clicking any of those above links - each of those is also equated with another goddess of the common cultural source, so that Diana and Aphrodite and Athena (notice Athena's owls among the symbols in the adjacent illustration of Ishtar as Delilah or Lilit, the Queen of the Night and the Underworld), and Io/Yah, and Asherah, and many more goddesses all turn out to be variations of the same idealisation of the female principle in the cosmos, on Earth and beyond.

So, to the Greeks and Lebanese, she was Ashtoreth, and to the Egyptians Eshet (Isis). The Yehudit name Ester (Esther in most English renditions) is derived from her name, just as her "uncle" Mordechai is a variant of Marduk.

These are the variations of Ishtar herself; within her story there are just as many variations: was she the daughter of An or Anu, or his wife, or sister, or the daughter of Nanna, or even of En-Lil? Was Utu, or Dumuzi, or Tammuz, or the one called Amaushumgalana her husband, or brother, or merely her lover?

Utu, Dumuzi and Tammuz turn out to be dialect variations of the same god (people never believe me when I say that, but it is precisely the same with God and Dieu and Deo in English and French and Spanish Christianity); Amaushumgalana turns out to be a mere epithet, for Utu et al, and describes those vast clusters of dates that fill the summit of the palm tree; while Ishtar (see my page on Inanna) turns out to be a variant of Tamar, the goddess of that palm tree: so his are the testicles (dates) and penis (trunk), while she is the invisible essence of fertility within the tree.

So, in all these myths, do the male and female parts meld, merge and synchronise, and even if the earliest societies had their own versions, all were so similar that eventually they too melded, merged and synchronised, equated to the point that none could be told apart. So, to read the rest of Ishtar's story, simply click the links above to Inanna or Astarte or Anat or Isis; or here for the British Museum's account of the earliest Mesopotamian version of Ishtar, and which you should read in parallel with my commentary on Genesis 1.

The Babylonian version of the Sumerian goddess Inanna, but even more sexualized. In "The Epic of Gilgamesh" she tries to seduce King Gilgamesh, is repulsed by him as he lists her many faults as a fair-weather lover, and calls down the Bull of Heaven to punish the king.

In Sumerian poetry, she is sometimes portrayed as a coy young girl under patriarchal authority, but at other times as an ambitious goddess seeking to expand her influence, e.g., in the partly fragmentary myth "Inanna and Enki", ETCSL 1.3.1 and in the myth "Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld", ETCSL 1.4.1). Her marriage to Dumuzi is arranged without her knowledge, either by her parents or by her brother Utu. Even when given independent agency, she is mindful of boundaries: rather than lying to her mother and sleeping with Dumuzi, she convinces him to propose to her in the proper fashion. These actions are in stark contrast with the portrayal of Inanna/Ištar as a femme fatale in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Taken by the handsome Gilgamesh, Inanna/Ishtar invites him to be her lover. Her advances, however, are rejected by the hero, who accusingly recounts a string of past lovers she has cast aside and destroyed.

The young Inanna of Sumerian poetry demonstrates her sexual liberty in the very language with which she approaches would-be lovers: "Plough my vulva, man of my heart" on one occasion (Gilgamesh); "Let us enjoy your strength, so put out your hand and touch our vulva!" on another (Dalley 2000: 79). Hardly surprising that she was the recipient of prayers regarding impotence and unrequited love, nor that she became the patron goddess of prostitutes.

Her attitude to war is just as uninhibited: "Battle is a feast to her", we are told, and she is identified with both royal power and military might, from the earliest liturgical poems of the Old Akkadian period, when Naram-Sin frequently invokes the "warlike Ishtar" (aštar annunītum) in his inscriptions. Even more so in the Neo-Assyrian where two separate incarnations, Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbela, were linked to the person of the king. Something decidedly androgynous though in this two-sidedness: the warrior aspect emphasizing her masculine, her sexuality strongly feminine.

Perhaps more significant to our Bible-studies is the so-called "sacred marriage" ceremony, prevalent in the very earliest early records of Sumerian history, long before the Beney Yisra-El set up their "Tent of Sarah" as a primitive chupah; the marriage of Inanna (surrogated by her high priestess or another chosen and trained female) and Dumuzi (represented by the ruler or another chosen and trained man) took place during the New Year's festival in the spring, and was intended to ensure prosperity and abundance. Practiced in the late third and early second millennium BCE, the sacred marriage rite will enter the Bible as "whoring" in the "sacred groves of Asherah" (who is of course Sarah just as much as she is Ishtar and Inanna), and European culture as the May Queen and the May Queen at what would be Christianised with yet another name variation, as the Feast of Easter (Oester or Oestre in its mediaeval spellings)

Several of the mythological narratives dwell on her astral aspect, reckoning her to be Venus rather than the moon. In the tale of "Inanna and Šu-kale-tuda" for example (ETCSL 1.3.3), the clumsy gardener boy Šu-kale-tuda has intercourse with the goddess while she is asleep under a tree. Enraged at what has happened, she hunts him down where he is hiding, a search which parallels the journey of Venus across the heavens - see my notes on the mythological tales in the Book of Judges for the Biblical paralells. Similarly in the tale of "Inanna and Enki", (ETCSL 1.3.1), in which the goddess travels first to Enki's city Eridu from Uruk, and then back again, likewise charting the epic of Venus as first the dawn, then the evening star. We can assume that worshippers of the goddess would have made the same journey as their annual act of pilgrimage, like Christians to Canterbury or Moslems to Mecca later on.

Because the cycle of the seasons moves between fertility and infertility, Inanna-Ishtar also spend her required period in the underworld. There, she sits on her sister Ereshkigal's throne, rouses the anger of the Anunnaki, and is turned to a corpse. Only through the agency of her minister Nin-Shubur, who secures the help of Enki/Ea, is she able to come alive again and return to the world above.

The main temple of Inanna-Ishtar was at Uruk, but she had shrines across the Middle East, at Adab, Akkade, Babylon, Badtibira, Girsu, Isin, Kazallu, Kiš, Larsa, Nippur, Sippar, Šuruppak, Umma, and significantly Ur, where Av-Ram and Sarai began their epic journey.

Inanna is listed in third place after An and En-Lil in the Early Dynastic Fara god-lists (Litke 1998). Inanna-Ishtar remains in the upper crust of the Mesopotamian pantheon through the third, second and the first millennia. She is especially significant as a national Assyrian deity, particularly in the first millennium. She is variously represented: holding a reed bundle, beside a gatepost (in the Uruk Vase), or simply as a female nude. In the Syrian iconography, she often reveals herself by holding open a cape, and always wears the horned cap which denotes her goddess status. In her warrior aspect she Ištar is shown dressed in a flounced robe with weapons coming out of her shoulder, often with at least one other weapon in her hand, and sometimes with a beard, to emphasize her masculine side. Her attribute animal as the goddess of war is the lion, on the back of which she often has one foot or fully stands. In praise of her warlike qualities, she is compared to a roaring, fearsome lion - which merits comparison with both the Jacob and Moses tribal oracles. In her astral aspect, she is symbolized by the eight-pointed star. Followers of mediaeval Christian art will be inttested to note that, as long ago as 4,000 BCE, her colours were the red and carnelian associated with Mary Magdalene, and the cooler blue and lapis lazuli associated with the Virgin Mary.

In Sumerian nin.an.a literally means "Our Lady of the Heavens", though some scholars translate it as "Our Lady of the Date Clusters", which would associate her with the Biblical Tamar.

The Semitic name Ishtar, which becomes Esther in the Jewish Purim tale, and Ashtoreth elsewhere in the Tanach, is the source of the Greek oestrus, whence oestrogen, the vast egg of the ostrich, and, as noted above, the mediaeval spelling of what is now Easter.

The Argaman Press

Inanna

Sometimes rendered as Inana, with just two Ns (Inana), usually as Inanna with three, she was an early incarnation of Ishtar; or simply Ishtar was Akkadian, later Assyrian, Inanna Sumerian. In the Myth of Etana she is referenced as Innina and, early on, was considered the twin sister of Utu (Shamash) the sun god. She was En-Lil's mother in the Sumerian versions, the goddess of Love and War; and for the former of those, Love in the fullest sense, of fully liberated, unrepressed, female as well as male sexuality, passion, fertility, pleasure, male and female prostitution, bisexuality, the lot.

Being the goddess of love and war inevitably made her the most popular and beloved of all the Sumerian pantheon. She features prominently in several of the best known and frequently copied stories, myths and hymns of Sumer - among them, "The Descent of Inanna", "Inanna and the God of Wisdom", "The Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi", "The Huluppu Tree", "Inana and Enki", "Inana's Descent into the Underworld", "Inana and Shukaletuda", and most famously the "Epic of Gilgamesh" - and is listed among the seven primary deities of Sumer early on along with Anu, En-Lil, Enki, Nin-Hursag, Nanna, and Utu. Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great) invoked Inanna for protection and victory in battle and for guidance in politics and his daughter, Enheduanna, was the Chief Priestess of Inanna at Uruk and the composer of many hymns and songs to her.

Her husband was Dumuzi, her marriage arranged without her knowledge or consent by her brother Utu, though in some versions of the myth her husband is Utu himself, and in yet other variations Utu-Dumuzi is regarded as the same deity - in the same way that Apollo, Bacchus and Dionysus began in the Greek world as separate deities, and gradually merged as a homogeneously centralised culture replaced disparate local cultures. In yet other versions her husband is Shamas, the sun-god, who becomes Shimshon (Samson) in the Danite and Philistine myths, though really Shamas is just another dialect variation of Dumuzi-Tammuz.

Importantly for our understanding of the Biblical world, this "sacred marriage" was celebrated in a formal ceremony as part of the annual New Year festivities, with the high priestess coupling publicly with the ruler of the land, both serving as surrogates for the god and goddess, with the child born from the rite given back to the temple as a tribute to the god and goddess, and thereby both an assurance of prosperity and abundance, and a thanksgiving for it. This sacred marriage is particularly reflected in the marriages of Ya'akov and Davidis unquestionably what is happening when Hadassah becomes Ester, and may also be reflected in that of Yoseph with Asnat and Mosheh with Tsiporah, in both of these instances the bride being the daughter of the high priest. The May-King May-Queen rituals of the pre-Christian Oester (Easter) celebrations across Europe were themselves a survival of this rite, with the Maypole equivalating to the Asherim or sacred trees of the Mesopotamian and Biblical tales.

Inanna's principal city was Uruk, though she was carried in pilgrimage to all her cities through the year, culminating in her sacred ceremonies at Eridu; both of these were in that region from which Av-Ram's family was supposed to have originated (Genesis 11), and, perhaps more significantly, that region where the Yehudan exiles were taken as captives after 586 BCE. Her other known cities included Bavel (Babylon), Larsa, Nippur, Sippar, Shuruppak and Ur itself, all of them referenced at some point in the Tanach.

"Inana's Descent into the Underworld" appears to be an early version, possibly even the source, of the Greek myth of Persephone, which became the Roman myth of Proserpine. Just as Inanna travels back and forth between Eridu and Uruk, so also she travels back and forth between this world and the Underworld, where she dares to sit on her sister Ereshkigal's throne, upsetting the Underworld gods by doing so; she is turned into a corpse and requires the help of the god Enki (Ea in the Ishtar version) to be restored to life and the upper world - this the feminine version of an identical tale told of Utu-Dumuzi-Tammuz, as it was of Osher (Osiris) in Egypt, and of Jesus later on. In both the male and female versions, the myth is an aetiological parable of the cycles and seasons of earthly vegetation and fertility.

The illustration at the top of this page shows the Sumerian Uruk Vase (sometimes called the Warak Vase). It depicts Inanna both as a reed bundle and as a gatepost, the latter being the entrance to the Underworld as a metaphor for the entrance to the womb. Sadly the Vase was looted at the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein in 2003, along with hundreds of other artefacts in the Iraqi National Museum; but was later returned, anonymously, and broken.

She is often depicted riding on a lion and referred to as "The Queen of Heaven". Her older sister was Ereshkigal. She was the foremost goddess and patron of the city of Uruk, to whom she was said to have given the sacred "me" (laws), which were given her in a drunken revel by the god of wisdom, Enki. Many of the compositions concerning her depict her as highly sexual, unmarried, and able to "turn men into women" with passion.

She was associated with the planet Venus, and as such was represented by an 8-pointed star (octagram). Anthropomorphic images of her mostly used red, carnelian and lapis lazuli blue - the same triplet of colours with which the Virgin Mary is depicted in all European Christian art. Her name is thought to mean "Our Lady of the Dates", which would connect her with Tamar, the date-goddess of the Tanach (Genesis 38 and 2 Samuel 13).

In later Greek culture she became identified with Aphrodite and Venus, the former her waxing (new moon) aspect, the latter her Madonna (full moon) aspect.

Not to be confused with NANNA, her twin-brother - click here to learn more about him.

Yes to be confused with ISHTAR, who is rrally the same goddess in a different incarnation - click on the link for more on her, and see also the pages on ASTARTE and ANAT, who are regional variations.

The Argaman Press

Angels and the Heavenly Host

MALACHIM - מַלְאָכִים

From the root LA'ACH (לָאָך) = "a messenger", "minister" or "servant"; the word was probably Ethiopian originally.

Not connected to MELECH (מֶלֶךְ) = "a king", which is spelled quite differently (the Aleph - א - is missing).

Not connected to MELACH (מלח) = "salt" either, as in Yam ha Melach, the Dead Sea (that has a final-letter Chet - ח).

Malachim are generally translated as "angels", which they were not, if we are to understand angels in the modern sense of fairies with wings who sit on top of Christmas trees, and look like Barbie dolls, which are female, where all the angels mentioned in the Bible are un-hermaphroditically male. The Malachim were the messengers of the gods, something in the manner of Hermes to Zeus or Loge (Loki) to Wotan (Woden, Odin), and invariably came in human, or at least predominantly human shape; and as such it would be better to call them "archangels", in the way that there are bishops, but above them there are arch-bishops. To the Persians, from whom the Jews acquired them, they were simply lesser gods of the ancient pantheon, not included in the "Olympian" twelve who later became tribes. In all likelihood they were first and foremost the twelve constellations of the Zodiac, who sent out the messages of the gods in the form of light; angelology therefore a prelude to astrology and horoscope readings.

The Malachim named in the Tanach, or elsewhere in Judaic scriptures, are:

1) SAMA-EL (סַמָּאֵל): named Samil in the Babylonian myths, he is also known as Satan in Christian mythology, though this should not be confused with, or mistaken for, the figure of Ha Satan (הַשָּׂטָן) in Jewish mythology, though there are similarities in that Sama-El means "Venom of El" or "Poison of El," and his role is that of an accuser, seducer and destroyer; but more in the Inquisitional sense of a "Devil's Advocate" than the full-scale scales and forked tail. He was originally the patron-god of Samal, a Hittite-Aramaic kingdom to the east of Charan (חָרָן - see Genesis 11:31). Later versions, especially Christian ones, held that the serpent of Eden was in fact Satan in disguise: i.e. the Archangel Sama-El. Sama-El is also accredited by some as having fathered Kayin (Cain) upon Chava (Eve): this may account for the false rendering of "Kaniti ish et YHVH - קניתי איש את-יהוה" (Genesis 4:1) as "I have gotten a child from YHVH". Sama-El is also linked to the Gnostic Cosmocrator or Demiurge, Ophion.

2) RAZI-EL (רזיאל)‎‎: The name means "Keeper of the Secret[s] of El". He is very much a figure out of Jewish mysticism, especially Kabbalah, where his name is usually translated as "Angel of Mysteries". He is associated with Sephirat Chochmah (the second of ten; the name means "sphere of wisdom"; written phonetically as Chokhmah in the attached illustration) in Beri'ah, one of the Four Worlds of Kabbalistic theory - but rather than me trying to explain what I don't even want to try to understand, click here and make of it what you will.

Shlomo (Solomon) is said to have possessed "a work of wisdom based on astrology" (the two concepts are logically incompatible, but let that be) and called the "Book of Razi-El". The idea of such a book is first mentioned in Enoch 33, which notes that Elohim dictated such a book to Chanoch (Enoch), and then appointed two angels - Samuil and Raguil, or Semil and Rasuil - to accompany Enoch back to Earth with them. Samuil is presumably a variation on Sama-El, and Rasuil likewise of Razi-El. This may well be the same "Book of Razi-El" which was purportedly given by the angel Razi-El to Adam, who passed it on by generation until it reached Shlomo. But all of this suggests a very late development of angels in Jewish myth. See also my notes to the serpent cult.

3) YAHO-EL (יהואל): Where Sama-El belongs to superstition and Razi-El to mysticism, Yaho-El belongs to the cult of Metatron, and is, at least in the folk-lore of the Babylonian Talmud, yet one more early and alternate version of what will eventually become Christian Satan - here the most senior of the seventy Seraphim, those celestial beings that exist one level of the hierarchy down from the archangels. The name is probably a variant of YAHU-EL, which is itself a masculinisation of the moon-goddess Yah, combined with the male sun-god El, the marriage of the Beney Chet (Hittite) moon-goddess with the Beney Kena'an (Canaanite) sun-god, as is the name Yo-El (יואל - Joel), by which Yaho-El is also sometimes known. We can see in the development of Jewish angels something akin to the development of the early Christian saints, and a parallel with the creation of Shophtim or Judges in the Book of Judges – the need to absorb and thereby obliterate the rival cults of neighbouring groups by finding a way to make them native and aboriginal to the absorbing cult. By allowing the invented Yahu-El an archangelic existence, those who worshiped Yah and El in their polytheistic form were placated, those who reviled the paganism could apply cognitive dissonance and move on. In the UK we have achieved the same result with such figures as King Arthur, Robin Hood, Ned Ludd and Guy Faux (Fawkes).

4) MICHA-EL (מִיכָאל): In the latter chapters of the Book of Judges we follow a character named Michahyehu (מִיכָיְהוּ) who, as suggested in the commentary, is really Michah-Yahu; the Yahu, as with Yaho-El above, a masculinisation of Yah (monotheistic Judaism is strictly patriarchal and has attempted to eradicate the female principle entirely, leaving only the amorphous Shechinah as a condescension to the original male-female equality and duality of Genesis 1:27). Micha-El was probably a later attempt to achieve the same goal, it obviously having failed to eradicate the pagan cults. It will be worthwhile comparing the known stories of Micha-El with those in chapters 17 and 18 of the Book of Judges and the later Prophet Michah, to see what emerges.

5) GABRI-EL (גבריאל): Gabriel's day was Monday; he was the messenger of She'ol, the Hebrew underworld, best known through the story of King Sha'ul's persecution of David, which is the Hebrew equivalent of the Twelve Labours performed by Hercules for King Eurystheus. Gabri-El is the equivalent of Hermes, who is English Herne, Egyptian Thoth.

6) HEYL-EL. Also known, quite erroneously, as LUCIFER; Lucifer in fact is never so much as mentioned in the Tanach, but often translated as if he were - in the King James version of Isaiah 14:12-15 for example, where the Yehudit text reads "Aych naphalta mi shamayim Heyl-El ben Shachar - אֵיךְ נָפַלְתָּ מִשָּׁמַיִם, הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר - how you are fallen from the heavens, bright son of the dawn", which is to say the morning star; but in Isaiah it is simply a metaphor for the future defeat of the King of Babel.

This Lucifer, or correctly Heyl-El, as "son of the dawn" was the chief archangel (the name is probably derived from Hallal-El = "praiser of El") and a keruv (cherub) who walked in Eden wearing an array of precious jewels (Isaiah 14:12-17); he dreamed of supplanting god, was cast down from Eden to Earth (the only hint in the Tanach that Eden was not on Earth), then to She'ol, falling like lightning and reduced to ashes (cf Enoch 29:4). Isaiah refers to his god as Elyon, who we know from Genesis 14:18-22 as the god of Melchi-Tsedek, king of Shalem.

The "bright son of the dawn" may originally have referred to the planet Venus, which was sacred to Ishtar. Chanphey Shachar (כַנְפֵי-שָׁחַר) = "wings of the dawn" is used metaphorically in Psalm 139:9, though it has been treated by some translators as a literal reference to a winged deity. Ugaritic mythology made him into Ba'al son of El, the twin brother of Shalem = Perfect. Heylel's mountain of the north which he aspired to ascending is Tsaphon (צפון), where Ba'al's throne is said to have stood. When Ba'al was killed by Mot, his sister-wife Anat buried him there. Anat is known to the Hebrews from Beit Anatot, later Christian Bethany, where the father of the Prophet Yirme-Yahu (Jeremiah) was a priest. Tsaphon is now Jebel Aqra, at the mouth of the Orontes river; the Hittites called it Mount Hazzi, where Teshub, the storm-god, his brother Tasmisu (sometimes Tashmishu), and his sister Ishtar saw the monster Ullikummi and killed him. The Greeks called it Mount Casius, home of the monster Typhon and the she-monster Delphyne who imprisoned Zeus in the Corycian Cave until Pan subdued Typhon with a shout and Hermes rescued Zeus; though this may be the Mount Casius in Egypt, rather than the one in Anatolia.

The legend of Phaethon also seems to have been added or merged; Phaethon fell driving Helios' sun chariot. In Babylon, Venus was Ishtar and a ritual telling of the Phaethon story was performed to her each year, ending with a human sacrifice. In Greek, Phaethon was the son of Apollo, but later the son of the goddess Eos (the Dawn); Hesiod says Aphrodite (likewise a variation of Ishtar) made him her temple guard. The king of Tsur (Tyre) worshiped Ishtar and made sacrifice to Melkart (Ruler of the City).

Ezekiel 28:11-19 offers a prophesy that, to us, reading it today, appears to echo the fall of Lucifer, but in fact is a prophesy of the fall of the city of Tsur (Tyre). The concept of Lucifer belongs to a post-Hebrew cult.

Enoch 29:4/5 - a first century BCE text that was discovered in the cave of Qumran in the 1950s CE - tells that "one from out the order of angels, having turned away with the order that was under him, conceived an impossible thought, to place his throne higher than the clouds above the Earth, that he might become equal in rank to my power. And I threw him out from the height with his angels, and he was flying in the air continuously above the bottomless." This may well be readable today as Lucifer, but whoever he was then, it was not yet Lucifer.

The idea of monstrous conspiracy against the ruling deity runs through all these myths. The Bull-God El also ruled here, though there are no legends of conspiracy against him.

7) AZRA-EL. Azrail was the angel of death in the Ethiopian myth of Akaf. The Hebrew equivalent is AZRA-EL (עזראל), which some believe to be a variant of Yisra-El itself, as Ya'akov (Jacob) may be a variant of Akaf. The name means "helper of El", which is interesting, because the High Priest in Yehoshu'a's time, the son of Aharon himself, was named El-Azar (אֶלְעָזָר), the same name in reverse (think of Theodor and Dorothea as equivalents).

8) SHEM-HAZAI: Who goes by many variants of the same name, including Semihazah, Shemyazaz, Shemyaza, Sêmîazâz, Semjâzâ, Samjâzâ, Semyaza. He only appears in the apocryphal writings, both Jewish and Christian, and appears to be drawn from the Greek concept of the Grigori or "Watchers". The name probably means "famous rebel". In the Persian story, which is the likely origin, he is called Semjâzâ, and his name indicates that he alone knows the true but secret name of the Hebrew god; in one tale he makes a bargain with a human named Istahar to tell her the name; but this is likely a late version and in the earlier one it would have been the goddess Ishtar, whose own name is barely concealed here.

A Midrash concerning Shemhazai and Aza-El names Metatron, which may be an alternative name for Chanoch or Enoch; it also presents Aza-El as a variant of Azaz-El.

9) AZA-EL: Also called Azaz-El, the scapegoat of the Hebrews at the beginning of the agricultural year (which is why Rosh Ha Shana now falls in the autumn). Previously, from Kayin (Cain), it must have been a scape-bull, but changed when the cosmological epoch shifted from Taurus to Aries.

10) RAPHA-EL: The angel of healing, the chief patron of the Essenes and an equivalent of Aesculapius. Rapha (רפא)in Hebrew means "to heal".

11) URI-EL: The messenger of salvation.

12) DUDA-EL: Probably an erroneous form of Beit Hadudo or Haradan near Yerushalayim, from which cliff the scapegoat Azaz-El was thrown on Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16:8-10). In the same way Azaz-El has come to be thought of as a place, because the scapegoat was sent there. The word Duda or Dudo comes from the same root as David, so the original Beit Hadudo would have meant "Temple of the Beloved One", an epithet for Tammuz, who is the Babylonian origin of David; it may also be connected to the Ugaritic Ba'al Hadad, who is elsewhere identified with Rimmon and with Teshub.

Keruvim (cherubim) are storm-cloud angels according to Psalm 18:11, but not according to Genesis 3:24 or to Ezekiel 1 and 10; and most definitely they are not as the mediaeval painters depicted them, as little babies with wings; click the link (here) for an illustration and more detail.

(the essay that follows is adapted from my book "A Myrtle Among Reeds", The Argaman Press, 2013, and repeats some of the material above)

A section of the daily prayer service in Judaism, known as Kedushah, reflects the angelology. The first phrase states that: "Then they [the angels] all accept upon themselves the yoke of heavenly sovereignty from one another, and grant permission to one another to sanctify the one who formed them, with tranquility, with clear articulation, and with sweetness. All of them as one proclaim his holiness and say with awe…" After which the congregation, on behalf of the angels, pronounces the Kedushah: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord of the Hosts of Heaven, the whole Earth is filled with glory." The phrase is taken from Isaiah 6:3, and is recited aloud, usually with gentle gusto, by the congregation, after which the chazan repeats it, and adds one of the oddest, most abstruse of lines: "Ve-ha-ophanim ve-chayot ha-kodesh be-ra'ash gadol mitnasim le-umat seraphim - then the Ophanim and the Chayot ha-kodesh raise themselves towards the Seraphim, making a great noise; facing them they give praise."

Isaiah 6 takes this a little further.

"In the year that king Uzi-Yahu died I saw the Lord seated on His throne, high and lifted up, and His trail filled the Temple; seraphim stood above to minister to Him, each one had six wings; with two He covered His face, with two His feet, and with two He flew…then one of the seraphim flew towards me with a live coal in his hands…" (vv 1-6)

This is the Damascene moment, Isaiah's cataleptic fit or haoma-induced hallucinogenic trance, in which his unclean lips are purged by coals of fire - as, in the Midrash, were those of the infant Moses - and he becomes the spokesman of his god. Commentators insist that these seraphim are an order of angel, but there is nothing angelic, in the Christmas tree sense, about this creature; on the contrary, a six-winged opponent for King Arthur sounds far more plausible. And of course, in the Holy of Holies in the First Temple, there stood two winged keruvim (cherubim), described by Ezekiel as living creatures, each having four faces, of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man; with the stature and hands of a man, the feet of a calf, and four wings, two extended upward, meeting above and sustaining the throne of YHVH, while the other two stretched downward and covered the creatures themselves. No abstract divinity here, as in the empty Holy of Holies of the Second Temple!

But the text here speaks of seraphim, not cherubim, and requires a different reading. Moses' banner, Nechushtan, was a fiery serpent made of brass. To the Egyptians, from whom we can safely assume that Moses learned it, it was the Aesculapius, the symbol of healing and wisdom, which reappears in later Hebrew as Chochma, who built the mansion of seven pillars and seven houses which T.E. Lawrence cited as the title of his memoirs: "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom". That Nechushtan should be the name of a seraph is made still more likely when the calling of Ezekiel is compared. For "I looked, and behold a whirlwind came out of the north..." Ezekiel (1:4 ff) witnesses four extraordinary creatures - John of Patmos later mistook them for the four beasts of the apocalypse - "chayot ha-kodesh" in Isaiah's phrase, and much like the seraphim, right down to the fact that all four of them "sparkled like the colour of burnished brass - notsetsim ke-eyn nechoshet kalal." Nechoshet - the root word for Nechushtan.

What though of the ophanim? To remain in Egypt for a further moment, the wheel was depicted there in Pharonic times as a quartered circle or mandala, with the head of Horus in the northern quarter, and the heads of Isis, Osiris and Set in the other three. It was a sacred object, and used as a focus of concentration in worship, hence its other name, "the wheel of prayer". But in Persia it was known as "the wheel of fire" and it was depicted as a square cross with angled tips and called a swastika; the "lahat ha-cherev" or "flaming sword" of the Garden of Eden.

If we accept these two - the seraph and the ophanim - then the holy beasts are easy, for in Egyptian mythology all the gods were depicted as beasts, and all had taboo animals attached to them. As Elohim is the sky-god Ra in his Hebrew form, so we can deduce the chayot ha-kodesh as the bull Merwer and the bird Bennu. We can also begin to understand what the Heavenly Host must have consisted of. If Elohim is the Sun who dominates the sky, and His consort is the moon, why, what else can the Heavenly Host of angels be but stars? Isaiah 14:12 confirms this, calling the fallen angel "the morning star". Job 38:7 confirms it too, when God speaks out of the same whirlwind in which He will later address Ezekiel and recalls the Creation of the world: "when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of Elohim shouted for joy." This, as Borges observes, makes the angels two days and two nights older than the rest of us, for the stars were created on the fourth day.
[note that, in Yoma 67B - see "Day of Atonement" page 100 - the D’vei of Rabbi Yishma-El regarded the goat-ritual as an atonement for the acts of the fallen angels, specifically Uzza and Aza-Eel, whose names, they claimed, had become mixed up. The First Book of Chanoch (Enoch), some fragments of which were discovered at Qumran and form part of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but most of which has survived only in Ethiopian translations, treats Azazel, or Aza-El, as one of the leaders of the angels who desired the daughters of men (Genesis 6:1-4), and taught the skills of manufacturing weaponry and ornaments (Genesis 8:1-2). Almost certainly we should read Aza-El as correct and regard any connections with the Azazel as merely the consequences of post-Biblical dyslexia.]

Later Jewish mythology of necessity rejected all this. In place of a pantheon of gods with attendant symbolic animals, it redefined the entire terminology, leaving unexplained where it could not come up with satisfactory alternatives. Some gods or demi-gods - Av-Raham, Shimshon (Samson), David - simply became mortal men, or Heroes anyway - Jewish Titans. The ophanim became one of the ten orders of angels which even Maimonides (Yesodei Ha Torah 2:7) agreed we lack the vocabulary to define - but still better an unexplained angelology for the Heavenly Host than a set of planetary deities. He called them: Chayot, Ophanim, Er-Elim, Chashmalim, Seraphim, Malachim, Elohim, Beney Elohim, Keruvim and Ishim - in my reading: Symbolic Beasts, Prayer-Wheels, Images of Brass, Winged Serpents, Messengers, Latter Gods, Contemporary Gods, Compound Creatures (the cherub, as we have seen, usually consists of man, ox, lion and eagle), and finally Mankind. These make up the Tseva'ot or Sabbaoth - the Host of Heaven.

All thee creatures then, to return to the phrase in the prayer that triggered this digression, give noisy praise to God, saying - and again the congregation recites the words: "Baruch kevod Adonay mimkomo… Blessed be the Name of the Lord from his place" - words taken from Ezekiel 3:12, an extraordinary coincidence in the light of my analysis, though Yechezke-El does not pronounce these words himself, but hears them "in a great rushing" - a "ra'ash gadol", precisely the same words, for the same sound, as in the Isaiah - right at the point of his vision where the spirit takes him up and carries him away to Tel-Aviv, the spring on the river Kevar where the remnant of Yisra-El has been taken captive. And as he hears that "great rushing" and those sacred words, so also does he hear "the wings of the living creatures (chayot) touching one another, and the noise of the wheels (ophanim) against them."

So the coincidences cannot be coincidences. So the circle of explanation is complete.

Where do the angels Micha-El and Gabri-El and all the others come from, if angel means something other than a messenger of God? The fact that each angel has a name ending -El, and a prefix denoting a role or attribute, allows them to be understood as Beney Kena'an (Canaanite), for El was the name of the principal deity whom Yahweh Elohim in his unity superseded. Micha-El in Hebrew is "mi-cha-El - who is like God", as Gabriel is "gavri-El - El is my strength". But the concept of these übermenschnik super-beings belongs to the Second Temple period, when Hellenisation was in full swing, and it is the figure of Hermes the messenger of the gods who comes to mind - the Romans called him Mercury - especially in the Christian Annunciation. Somewhere along the way the Rabbis tried to graft one strain - the Egyptian - on the other - the Hellenic, but unlike Aaron's Rod, it failed to blossom.

Ophanim are, properly speaking, wheels; chayot ha-kodesh are holy beasts. More complex are seraphim - not to be confused with teraphim, the stone idols kept as household gods or placed at the entrances to vineyards and orchards. The root of seraphim suggests "burning" though it also means "sucking", "swallowing" and "absorbing", any one of which might be applied to Smaug or Gollum. The English word "serpent" almost certainly derives from the root - saraph - in the form in which it appears in Numbers 21:6 (שְּׂרָפִים), as a species of venomous serpent. But Isaiah (14:29 and 30:6) uses it for a flying dragon - from an earlier Sanskrit root, sarpa = serpent, sarpin = reptile.

One final thought. If the 12 angels of the heavenly host were originally conceived of the 12 constellations of the zodiac, as is likely; and if, as is absolutely certain, the twelve-tribe or twelve-city confederations of the ancient world, like the twelve knights of the Round Table and the 12 disciples of Jesus later, were a paralleling on Earth of these twelve constellations, then we should be able to draw exact parallels between the earthly twelve and those in the heavenly host. Click the link to the essay on the Number Twelve for more on this.

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A Provisional Timeline of Biblical History

Some considerable argument exists about certain crucial dates, such as - especially - the Exodus from Mitsrayim (Egypt). What follows is a summation of [current] accepted scholarly opinion, but (mostly) without the arguments against it. It should be regarded as no more than an attempt at a chronology, and by no means as definitive; and then, to add one more qualification, certainly as incomplete.

2800 The first Egyptian pyramids built (there is much evidence that the pyramids came to Egypt from further south in Africa, rather being an Egyptian "invention"; but it is also significant that the earliest "known" pyramid is in Brazil, dating around 3000 BCE; the earliest in Egypt was the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, built for King Zoser in 2750 BC; and the model for that was further south, in "Greater Mali", the land of the "mythical" but actually very real Timbuktu; so the Africans must have been sailing to South America, and/or the South Americans to Africa, very early in our history! Ah, but we are so Euro-Centric in our view of History!).

2200 Beney Chet (Hittite) empire, based in Anatolia, but spread as far west as Cheret (Crete) and Kaprisin (Cyprus), south into Kena'an (Canaan) and Mitsrayim (Egypt), and east as far as the Indus Valley. When William Jones believed he had discerned a "common source", but couldn't name it, the word he was missing was "Hittite", and the mistake he was making was to look only at the language, where the broader cultures are far more revealing.

2040 Ur-Nammu's law-code.

1950 Av-Ram leaves Charan; Minoans build towns and palaces in Crete.
1820 Yitschak (Isaac).
1790 Hammurabi's law-code.

1740 Ya'akov (Jacob).

1710 Yoseph (Joseph): Hyksos rule in Mitsrayim.

1680 Beney Yisra-El in Mitsrayim.

1500 Yisra-El either enslaved in Mitsrayim under the conquering Hyksos, or themselves the Hyksos.

1400 Tutenaten/Tutenkhamun.

1375 Earliest possible date for the arrival of the Pelishtim (Philistines) in Kena'an (because this was the date of the fall of Knossos)

1310 Latest feasible date for the Exodus.

1300 Sethos 1 (Menmaatre Seti I) and Rameses 2; Mosheh (Moses).

1220 Invasion and conquest of Kenaa'n (Canaan) by Yehoshu'a (Joshua); fall of the Beney Chet (Hittite) empire.

1190 Rut (Ruth). Latest probable date for the arrival of the Pelishtim.

1100 Gid'on (Gideon); Phoinikim (Phoenicians) trade from Tsur (Tyre), Tsidon (Sidon) and Byblos; earliest possible date for the invention of the alphabet in Ugarit.

1080 Latest possible date for Shimshon (Samson); though this should probably be reckoned "late" by at least twenty thousand years, and possibly as much as two hundred thousand!

1070 Shmu-El (Samuel).

1060 Sha'ul (King Saul).

1010 Yedid-Yah (the full name of King David; the diminutive was probably pronounced Daoud).

980 Shelomoh (Solomon) and the First Temple.

950 Yerav-Am (Jeroboam) and Rechav-Am (Rehoboam) rule the divided kingdoms of Yisra-El (later Ephrayim) and Yehudah (Judah, later Judea).

920 Pharaoh Shishak (Sheshonq I) invades Yisra-El.

910 King Omri makes Shomron (Samaria) the capital of the northern kingdom of Ephrayim.

880 Eli-Yahu (Elijah).

860 Elishah; Ach-Av (Ahab) & I-Zevel (Jezebel) re-introduce Ba'al worship; the Ashurim (Assyrians) under Shalman-Ezer defeat the northern kingdom of Ephrayim at the battle of Qargar.

840 Poetry and wisdom books written.

800 The early Prophets.

770 The Ashurim (Assyrians) take Shomron (Samaria).

760 Death of Uzi-Yahu (Uzziah) of Yehudah (Judah); birth of Yesha-Yahu (First Isaiah).

740 The Ashurim (Assyrians) take Damasek (Damascus).

730 Siege of Yeru-Shala'im (Jerusalem); the kingdom of Yehudah survives.

720 End of the northern kingdom, "disappearance" of the ten tribes (really only six and a half tribes; Shim'on and Bin-Yamin had long been absorbed into Yehudah and the two and a half tribes east of the Yarden likewise into Mo-Av and Amon).

700 Ashuri (Assyrian) empire.

690 Yirme-Yahu (Jeremiah).

650 Bavli (Babylonian) empire.

630 King Yoshi-Yahu (Josiah).

605 Dani-El (Daniel) taken to Babylon (though this tale is now known to be fictional, and written several centuries later, but set at this date); Battle of Carchemish, Bavel (Babylon) defeats Mitsrayim (Egypt).

597 Yeru-Shala'im falls to Nebuchadnezzar II; Yechezke-El (Ezekiel).

587 Exile, Yeru-Shala'im destroyed.

586 First Temple destroyed on the 9th of Av.

585 Founding of Tsi'onut (Zionism) at Tel Aviv in Bavel (Babylon) (cf Psalm 137).

550 Koresh (King Cyrus) of the Medes (Achaemenids).

530 Zeru-Bavel; return from exile, Second Temple (completed 515).

500 Battle of Marathon; Greeks defeat Persia.

480 Battle of Salamis (Xerxes beaten by Greece).

470 Ester (Esther) - now known to be a fictionalised reconstruction of the Persian New Year epic.

457 Ezra returns with the exiles from Bavel (Babylon); Artaxerxes I of Persia.

455 Yeru-Shala'im rebuilt, and the period of the Redaction of the Tanach.

450 Nechem-Yah (Nehemiah).

333 Alexander the Great conquers everywhere.

285-246 Septuagint (translation of the Tanach into Greek) created in Alexandria for Ptolemy II.

153 Maccabee restoration.

63 Pompey captures Yeru-Shala'im.

-1/+1 Start of the Common Era (the Zero had not yet been invented).

5CE Birth of Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia.

70CE Titus's soldiers destroy the Second Temple (Saturday August 2nd in the Gregorian calendar, which means it would have been Tuesday July 29th in the Julian of the time; 9th of Av 3830 in the Yehudit); end of Yehudah (and of the Yisra-Elite-Yehudite era in Kena'an).

70CE Founding of Talmudic Judaism by Yochanan ben Zakkai at Yavneh; start of the Galut (Exile), Tephutsah (Diaspora) and Yishuv (those who remained in the land).

71CE Re-emergence of prohibited Tammuz, Ba'al and Adonis worship throughout Kena'an, with the re-establishment of goddess-shrines, leading to the "resurrection" of the ancient trimurtic cult in the form of Sauline Christianity.

The Argaman Press