SPENTA MAINYU

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: "Ignorance is an affront. Get rid of it."

YOU ARE IN DARKNESS.

bible page 1

WHO SAID THERE WAS A SINGLE WRITER?  DID HE LIVE 900 YEARS?

Various parts of the Bible are attributed to different persons. For example the first five books are attributed to Moses (Imagine Moses writing his own death!); histories are attributed to the prophets (Joshua - 2 Kings); majority of the poetry to the kings David and Solomon (Psalms, Proverbs). Many many theories were introduced about the composition of the books in the Bible. For the possible authors of the  Old Testament  books  you may check the  pages on OLD TESTAMENT in this site. Nevertheless the verdict is unchanged, we don’t really know who were the writers of the books of the Old Testament or whether the authors mentioned were really historical personalities. But what we are interested in is the fact that there is nothing divine in that literature. This colourful literature is the product of earthly human authors composing the borrowed material and the output of their imaginations in the form of texts for the consumption of the illiterate and incognizant masses.

WHAT YOU READ IS THE TRANSLATION OF THE TRANSLATION !

The worst thing is that when compared with the whole of the adherents of these books only a very very small minority is able to follow them in the original language of the texts, and the speakers of all the other languages are the most disadvantaged because the Bible they read is the translation of a translated text.

Here is an example of how translation changes the meaning: Torah is usually translated as ‘law’ into English, but it really means something like ‘instruction, guidance’ or from the theologian’s standpoint it is ‘the revelation of the divine will’. Add to this the separation made by Paul where he describes Torah as law and Gospel as grace. The personal factors involved in this presentation have caused tremendous damage to the relations between Christians and Jews. But did Paul really make such a harsh differentiation? Could we put the blame again on  the translation? It is quite possible. When so much translation (which entails a great deal of approximations and interpretation as well) is involved how can one be sure of what one believes in. I would like remind you firstly the ‘virgin birth’ story. The original description used by the author of the Gospel of Matthew refers to Isaiah, and uses also the word ‘virgin’. This is most likely a quotation from the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament. In the Septuagint we see the Greek word parthenos which is ‘virgin’. But the word used by Isaiah in his so called prophecy was not ‘virgin’. The original Hebrew word that was not translated properly into Greek is ‘almah’, which means a ‘young woman’, not a ‘virgin’. The proper Hebrew word for a ‘virgin’ would have been ‘bethulah’, which means sexually pure, undefiled and untouched.

HOW A GOD COULD HAVE SEX WITH A HUMAN BEING?

While we are on the subject of a sexual act between a divine(!) being and a woman I would like to mention another story on a similar line. This time a sexual union between the supreme being and a woman in  I Samuel 2:20-21:

• “And the Lord visited Hannah, so that she conceived, and bare three sons and two daughters. And the child Samuel grew before the Lord.”

Let me remind you that a non-material, non-physical entity cannot impregnate an ovum which is physical, which has substance . Because conceiving physically must start with the fertilization of the ovum by a sperm, which is an organic material. No other alternative does exist. A woman can conceive solely in a humanly fashion. She could become pregnant either from another human being of the opposite sex or by the method of artificial insemination which also necessitates a physical ‘agent’ - a sperm. Therefore either the ‘lord’ in this story is the ‘master ’ - a human - or the story is an invention like many many others.

ABSURDITIES: THE ORIGINAL SIN AND THE OTHERS

The Old Testament stories were interpreted by the Christians in line with the requirements of the day. The example is the story on original sin. Later generations of Christian apologists have created 'sin' out of a story, the original text of which has no hint of it (and neither the Jewish traditions) at all. Under the influence of Gnosticism and Manicheism the entire realm of sexuality was demonized. The sexual activity was seen as the devil's sphere of temptation, and women as a being was placed at the centre of this domain of 'diabolic' temptation. These Gnostic and Manicheistic tendencies played a great part in determining the understanding of sin and redemption. These apologists have also identified the snake with devil.

The next story we shall take up is the global flood. Elsewhere in this site I have quoted the archaeological evidence and the calculations, which show that the global flood is just another invention. There is not that much water on Earth or in the atmosphere to cause a flood up to the height described in the Old Testament. This story has its origins in the Mesopotamian and Hurrian mythology. The Noah and  the tower of Babel stories are also created by the peoples in the region. Jews believed that the Hebrew language was the oldest on Earth because they thought it has survived the catastrophe of Babel (as if there was one!). Jews proposed Moses as the first author of the Hebrew language (Such naiveté is unbelievable!). Well, they also believe that they have the oldest(!) the first, the ‘one and only ’ monotheistic(!) belief system, beginning with Abraham!  But when the Babylonian, Ugarit and Sanskrit were found out to be much older than their language they had the shock of their lives; Tell Mardikh/Ebla tablets damaged the myth about Abraham; and various other records indicated that the concept of YHVH was introduced after the ‘exile’ and prior to that there was polytheism amongst Israel.

On the subject of monotheism read Genesis and you will detect two different parts in it: Genesis 1:1-11:9 is the first part, and most probably it has its origins in Babylon, because it ends with the founding of Babylon. The second part is between Genesis 11:10-50:9, and it is thought to be Palestinian/Arabian/Syrian in origin, because it focuses on the desert tribes, and their god, El. El is the most famous and common Canaanite, Babylonian, Syrian and Arabian name for god, who is the supreme authority in the 'celestial court'. He gives his sanction to all the decisions among the gods affecting nature and society. He is the father of the family existing up there in heavens, and presides over the divine council on the ‘mount of assembly’. El is known as the Bull in the Canaanite mythology. In the myths he is termed as bny bnwt, which might mean creator of created things. But his role in the two royal legends from Ras Shamra makes some scholars think that the meaning of this expression is the giver of potency, but he is generally depicted as sitting aloof and indeed remote, enthroned at  the 'out flowing of the (two) streams’. This reminds the Biblical Garden of Eden, from which a river flowed to form the four rivers, Tigris, Euphrates, Gihon and Pishon. El is known as the ‘creator god’, the ‘kindly one’, the ‘compassionate one’. El expressed the concept of ordered government and social justice (these are also the attributes of the god of Islam, which may be an indication as to the sources of the concept of the god of Islam). The Old Testament never dishonours the Canaanite worship of El, whose authority in social affairs was recognized by the patriarchs. El’s companion was Asherah, the mother goddess,  who is represented in the  Canaanite sanctuaries by a natural or stylized tree (Hebrew ashera).

HEAVENLY HOSTS, EL, YHVH..

The kings of the region were El’s servants-agents-executive arm on earth. The Canaanite king is described as ‘the servant of El’, like king David who was called ‘the servant of god’. Thus the king becomes the executive of the will of the divine king. This duty entailed both privileges and burdens. Beyond doubt the Canaanite mythology survives in monotheistic(!) Israel, at least in their codebook. An example is the representation of god as the president of a court of the gods, bene’el. The history of Israel is depicted as originating in the apportionment of Israel to her god YHVH by the ‘most high’ in the assembly of the bene’el (‘the sons of El'). Here YHVH is not presented as the supreme entity, because there is one higher, the ‘most high’. There are some scholars who say, the meaningless Hebrew description, ‘the sons of Israel ’, is a desperate effort to avoid embarrassment due to this reference to a multitude of gods. In Job, the morning stars and the sons of god (bene’el)  join the chorus of praise to the almighty. In the Hebrew writings, the term heavenly hosts includes not only the counsellors and emissaries of YHVH, but also the celestial luminaries; and the stars (imagined in the East to be animated intelligences, presiding over human weal and woe) which are identified with the more distinctly impersonated messengers or angels, who execute the divine decrees, and whose predominance in heaven is in mysterious correspondence and relation with the powers and dominions of the Earth (here Muslims may detect the origin of references in Kuran to celestial luminaries and stars). The narratives of the great Judges (Judges 3:7) and Deuteronomy 32:8 are believed to be the indications of the first stage of the Israelite adaptation from the Canaanite mythology of the conception of god’s presidency of the divine court. But Israel could not have remained long with this concept, and the divine court was rebuked (Psalm 82:1-7). Beginning in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C., several Israelite writers especially Jeremiah, the Deuteronomist, and deutero-Isaiah have categorically rejected the notion that there were gods other than YHVH, and portrayed the ‘hosts of heaven’ and the ‘god of hosts’ as a foreign invasion in Israelite monotheism, which in reality is the monotheism of ancient Iran, Zoroastrianism.

ABRAHAM  OUT  YHVH  IN

How about the story of YHVH choosing Israel as his people. We read in II Samuel 7:24:  “..Thou hast confirmed to thyself  thy people Israel to be a people unto thee forever, and thou, Lord, art become their god.” But according to the ideology of Islam this same god chose the Arab tribe of Kureysh and one of them ('Muhammad') for the conclusion of his revelation. If Israel is the ‘chosen people’ what are we to call those Arabs?

If you remember, Moses survived the Pharaoh’s decree to kill all the male children; he was taken to the court of the paharaoh and raised there. Well, if the Old Testament has such a story the New Testament must have its own version also. Read Matthew 2:13-20; the slaughter of the innocents and the flight to the Egypt is the answer to the Old Testament.  Whether Moses was or was not an Egyptian does not make any difference. He is the major prophet of the Abrahamic belief systems - Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But what happened to Abraham? The story of coming out of Egypt, the pharaoh, mount Sinai, Ten Commandments, the eruption of a volcano (pardon me!), YHVH’s manifesting himself with a lot of fire, smoke, rumble and shaking in the ground, and the amazement of the people watching this natural phenomenon (pardon me again!), the manifestation of YHVH, must have sounded much more effective, so Abraham was left in peace somewhere along the route, only to be brought into the limelight again with the shrewd Hagarene Messenger ('Muhammad'), when he announced the return to the original belief system of messenger Abraham. 

Now let’s take up the story about the burning bush  where Moses encounters YHVH, where he responds to Moses as "I am that I am’" or  "I am who I am ’" or  "I will be what I will be"  (the last expression does not sound right though, and looks like an addition with the aim of connecting future and past events - a continuity). YHVH in Hebrew is said to be derived from the verbal root ‘hyh’ ('ehyeh', to be, to exist, ‘I am’). YHVH is said to have the meaning which is ‘hyh shr hyh’ (ehyeh asher ehyeh) in Hebrew. This expression could not have had the meaning of a self-subsistent being because the god of Israel has acquired its metaphysical dimension 2000 years later. This Hebrew idiom, ‘hyh shr hyh’ expresses a deliberate vagueness, which is widespread in the Middle East. For example one could ask the question ‘Who are you’ and easily get the rude response ‘I am who I am, what is it to you?’ Consequently when one meets an expression like ‘they went where they went’ in the codebooks one should understand that the writer hasn’t the slightest idea about where they went. Did you get the inference? In this context god’s declaration ‘I am who I am’ or ‘I am what I am’ means something like "Never mind who I am, just listen.. or ..do as you are told or ..mind your own business". So ‘hyh’ reflects the name but it is not the name. The actual name is not known. In Exodus 3:7-14 we read that god instructs Moses to return to Egypt in order to lead his people out of their bondage there; and in Exodus 3:14, we learn that before acceding the prophet asks the name of this strange and powerful being who has addressed him (‘in a flame of fire, out of the midst of a bush’)..The lord, however, does not respond directly to the prophet’s question. Instead he replies briefly and enigmatically with these words: “I am who I am”. (This exactly is the context of the original Hebrew expression, “I am who I am, what is it to you ..never mind ..just do as you’re told.. just mind your business”  (Check the pages on the SUPREME BEING and MOSES in this site). By way of further clarification he then adds: “I am the god of thy father, the god of Abraham, the god of I!zak and the god of Ya'kub.” Hebrews accept  the name as nature of the being, therefore in answering Moses’ plea YHVH is very clever not to reveal his whole being by giving his name right away. He reveals just as much of his nature that mortal man could bear(!): “ehyeh asher ehyeh”; accompanied by a lot of fire, smoke, thunder, and rumbling (the volcano!). Therefore the ‘unnameable one’ who has spoken(!) to Moses is still the ‘one’ and ‘unnamed’.

Meanwhile Laurence Gardner in his book Bloodline of the Holy Grail gives a very different angle: “Originally, these four consonants Y, H, V, H represented the four members of the heavenly family: A quartet of Y representing  El the father; H was Asherah the father; V corresponded to he the son; and H was the daughter Anath.”  With the Covenant, YHVH has adopted Israel as his people and, as a jealous god, demanded total allegiance from them. They were to worship no other god but YHVH. But it was much later that the Jewish exiles in Babylon came face to face with the exact formula in the form of an explicit statement  outlining Yahvistic monotheism. ‘I AM YHVH, AND THERE IS NO OTHER, THERE IS NO OTHER GOD BUT ME’ (Isaiah 45:5). As pointed mentioned earlier Moses is not the initiator of monotheism. The notion of a single, invisible and almighty god, creator of the universe, a father of love and goodness, of compassion, sensibility and trust, had long been in evidence in the Vedas. Zarathustra, founder of Zoroastrianism, had also proclaimed his god to be the ‘one and only ’.

There were many names of deities and people incorporating the name of the Canaanite god Baal like one of the earliest heroes from the time of the initial invasion, the warrior Jerubbaal. He later changed his name to Gideon. This shows that at that time YHVH was not as established as the later authors of the Old Testament would like us to believe. For many, YHVH was just an Israelite war god, useful in time of battle but a fairly lowly figure when viewed against the full pantheon of gods. We read in I Kings 20:23: “The servants of the king of Aram said to him, ‘Their gods are gods of the hills, and so they are stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.’”

THIS IS THE EGYPTIAN 'SOLE' GOD

In Egypt there was another god, 1000 years before Moses, who was referred to as ‘the nameless’ and ‘the one whose name cannot be spoken’. This Egyptian god has called himself ‘nuk pu nuk’, which when translated into English means exactly, ‘I am who I am’. Yes! This announcement is almost identical with the one in Exodus 3:14.

In the Papyrus of Prisse, dating from about 1000 years before Moses, god has  declared himself as follows: “I am the unseen One who created the heavens and all things. I am the supreme god, made manifest by myself, and without equal. I am yesterday, and I know the morrow. To every creature and being that exists I am the law.”  Either this Egyptian god and the god of Moses were the same(!) god, or the authors of the Old Testament have copied the central character from the older Egyptian tale. Of course one must emphasize that this unnameable, unspeakable god of Jews is in complete contrast with the ‘god in flesh’ concept of the Christians.

THE DECALOGUE(!)

The Ten Commandments, the decalogue (‘ten words’), are not original. There are much older examples of covenants of this kind in the Hittite, Canaanite and even Egyptian suzerainty treaties. Covenants of this type were deposited in a sanctuary, just as the two supposed tablets of stone were claimed to have been placed in the ark of the covenant (a portable sanctuary) and supposed to be read publicly at stated periodic intervals. Original Commandments in Hebrew are admitted  to have been two to four words, as the name decalogue  (ten words) suggests. But they must have been expanded by later generations of mankind considerably, because now we have two sets of Commandments: in Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. Which set is the original?  Which one is the beginning point of the decalogue, Exodus 20:2 or 20:3? What happened to the original ‘ten words written on two stone slabs’, because we do not have ‘ten words’ any more, but sentences. No one knows the answers, because most probably nothing has taken place at mount Sinai, apart from a volcanic eruption, the memory of which is most probably turned into the story we read in the Old Testament, and the commandments were just borrowed from the earlier texts and added on to the story (Check the pages on MOSES in this site for other examples of divine(!) ordinances similar to Ten Commandments).

YHVH BURIES MOSES(!)

Now Deuteronomy 34:1-12 where we are told that Moses has died on Mt. Nebo and “..He buried him in a valley in the land of Moab, according to the word of the lord.”  This is the last story in the series of books called the ‘books of Moses’, because the belief is that the author is Moses himself. How could he have written his own death and burial? The story is a narration, someone is telling us. Who is this novelist?  Was he present at the burial ceremony?  If he was, he must have stood side by side with YHVH, because in verses 5 and 6 the narration leaves us no choice but to conclude that god actually interred Moses. So who buried whom? Was that ‘he’ YHVH himself? (A preposterous thought) These authors, and the generations of editors of the Old Testament after them, were not attentive to the details at all. Can you imagine the supreme creator  interring someone? All right, those were the days when the author of Isaiah had not interfered yet with the narration and the god was anthropomorphic, but a supreme creator burying the greatest prophet in history is too much!

In a later epoch this same god would send his son down to earth;  and afterwards pull this god in flesh up to his side. Then why would he leave the greatest prophet on earth, even put him in a pit and cover him with earth while on the contrary pull the other one bodily up to the heavens? One should stop there! Beyond that point divine(!) knowledge takes over and humans are not equipped with the necessary intellectual ability to comprehend the goings on. Only the authors of the books and Paul could understand that part of the story. What happened  to the greatest   created  creator of all times - your brain?  Can’t you see the truth?

Furthermore the word prophet has its origin in the translation of the Hebrew word nabî to Greek as prophetes rather than mantikos (Greek ‘mantikos’ or French ‘mantis’ are akin to mainesthai = ‘to be mad’, ‘having a mania’, ‘maniac’). Prophets are thought to be mantics (diviners) as much as they are seers and speakers. But since these meanings will have a negative effect on the stature of the prophets in their societies, biblical ideology prefers to mask such unfavourable factors by separating diviners from speakers. These are the eternal rules for the belief systems:

• Uphold the system with every means available;
• Conceal the truth;
• Introduce a subjective version of 'reality' ;
• Resort to terminological inexactitudes;
• Purge the unwanted factors;
• Reinterpret the reality the subjective 'reality' ;
• Suppress, subdue, crush, and kill.

Just  check the history to see the truth.

STORIES ABOUT THE TRUTH, THE POWER OF THE WORD  ETC.

While speaking about truth, don’t stick to the utterances like the one by Jesus where he says he is the truth. Moses, Krishna, Mani, Zarathustra and  the Hagarene Messenger ('Muhammad') had also laid their claim to the eternal truth. But they all gave different messages and those differences were really fundamental. If they were all interfaces of the one and only supreme creator, their giving an identical message would have been much more acceptable. Those arguments which maintain that different revelations were necessary because of the existence of different races, different communities, different conditions don’t count. Those at the receiving end of this process have always been human beings, the mankind.

• Why would the one and only supreme creator send different messages to different peoples (they are all humans)?

• Why would he need interfaces or modems or messengers, when as the supreme arbiter he just has to will for something and utter the word ‘be’ to accomplish everything?

• The argument that mankind has deviated from the course intended by the divine authority, and messengers who speak the individual languages of the communities were needed to pull them back on course is also nonsense. Because again the supreme arbiter has to will only and all the creatures will fall in line. Don’t forget, this supreme arbiter is the creator(!) of the universe. A creator can certainly carry out course corrections or if he wills he can destroy the unwanted 'elements' (be it the mankind, animals, plants or the whole of the Universe).

• He did create everything including the whole of the mankind, didn't he? So god shouldn't have told different things on the same issue to Krishna, Moses, Mani, Zoroaster, Jesus or the Hagarene Messenger. If there are discrepancies in the allegedly divine(!) word, no one can say that it comes from the sole supreme authority, because the concept of an omnipotent supreme arbiter and contradictions don’t go together.

• If there is an eternal truth, it must really be internally consistent, eternal and never changing. If there is a contradiction in the versions of the eternal truth as it is relayed to us, either that truth is not the truth and have been invented or the modems or messengers are giving us their stories because there is nothing 'out there' except their imagination. The narrators of these tales are inventing the stories themselves and encapsulating their messages with a divine concoction to give them the authority. There is nothing divine in them.

FOOL AROUND WITH NOTIONS AND CONCEPTS

This is an example how the authors are playing with the supposedly divine texts: It is the David and Goliath story in I Samuel 17 where we are told that David has killed the giant Goliath. But  II Samuel 21:19 tells us that the deed was carried out by someone else. I Chronicles 20:5 makes an harmonizing correction and invents a brother of Goliath. Then the Authorised Version makes scholarly corrections to the text of II Samuel 21:19 and makes the person killed “..the brother of Goliath the Gittite”. It is  obviously  another created story and an amendment by the authors of the Old Testament.

Throughout  the Old Testament one comes across the narrations of a volcanic eruption which seems to have been interpreted and written down by the authors of the Books as the manifestation of the mountain god, YHVH. The volcanic eruption was an extraordinary or rare event for those who have witnessed it, and it  was extremely useful for the designs of the keepers of the oral tradition and the writers of the Old Testament, because that volcanic eruption (at mount Sinai, mount Horeb or Cebel el Lauz, or somewhere else) was an awe-inspiring event that Israel had witnessed for the first time. This story must have been developed, given a slant, written many times over with personal interpretations, and used time and again later in other narrations. The examples are in Exodus 40:38; Numbers 16:34-35; I Kings 19:11-14; Isaiah 30:33, 64:1-4; Micah 1:2-3; Nahum 1:2-8; Habakkuk 3:3-14. This mountain god is mentioned also in  I Kings 20:23.

Now let me remind you the stories about the messengers in Samuel and Kings. Apart from the references to Elijah speaking the word of god in  I Kings 19:5-20 and Isaiah in II Kings 20:19, and Jonah in   II Kings 14:25, try to find any stories of or a single reference to any of the messengers whose works form the prophetic collection of the books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the book of the Twelve Prophets. You won’t find any. How could Amos, Hosea, Micah and Jeremiah be ignored? There is complete silence on  them. Does this mean that they are all inventions? Have they ever ever existed? Your guess is as good as mine.

Whatever satan may represent in the Christian texts we see him as one of the most loyal and obedient servant of YHVH in the Hebrew Bible. Isaiah 45:7 summarises the position of evil (satan) vis a vis YHVH: “I form the light and create darkness: I make weal (good, peace, well-being) and create woe (evil, sorrow), I am the Lord who do all these things”. In the book of Job satan appears to be the partner of YHVH. Satan-devil becomes the adversary of god in the post-Biblical Judaism. Following the Babylonian exile, under the influence of the Zoroastrianism, Satan took on counter-god characteristics. When we come to the New Testament we see devil, satan, belial, beelzebub (‘the enemy’ - ha-stan). He tries to win over Christ by offering him riches of this world. Satan has tried also to deceive the Messenger of the Hagarene teaching (the precursor of Islam).

The book of Ezra (together with Nehemiah) is very important, because it concentrates on the return of Judeans (or perhaps their descendants) from exile in Babylonia to Yerushalim. Has anybody noticed the abrupt ending of the book? This suggests a excision at that point in the text. Moreover, a substantial portion of the original book (Ezra 4:8- 6:18) is not in Hebrew but Aramaic, which was the lingua franca of the Persian empire. The narration in this portion of the book centres on the Persian kings Cyrus, Artaxerxes and Darius and their deeds favourable to the Judeans. In later Jewish tradition Ezra was rated as the most important Jew after Moses (even a ‘second Moses’); As “a ready scribe in the law of Moses”  he was sent to Yerushalim from Babylon with the Persian emperor’s authorisation to reinstate the temple cult and organize the community of Yerushalim in accordance with the law (Ezra 7:6-28). Why would he be authorised  to do those things? Well, the scriptures has been allegedly perished during the Babylonian captivity of the Jews; thus Ezra was credited with overseeing the rewriting of the scriptures which had been lost during the Babylonian destruction of Yerushalim. Some researchers propose that at the time of Artaxerxes, the then king of the Persians, the exercise of foretelling must have excited Ezra, who was in Babylon then, which resulted in him restoring the whole of the ancient scriptures. According to this account  Ezra has compiled and catalogued the books of the Israelite writings from sources ranging from Persia to Egypt; and wrote the books containing his peoples’ histories and the writings of the messengers (much of the histories were contained in the body of the prophetic works), quoting as much as he was inspired; he included their lineage and his commentary in the scriptures. This is evidenced as one reads through the various books of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and the Prophets (especially Isaiah).

The list of books claimed to have been used by Ezra the priest for the restoration of the scriptures are mentioned in many places. This is the list:

The book of the Beginnings;

The books of Eden;

The acts of the Patriarchs;

The acts of Moses;

The book of the laws given to Moses (Joshua 23:6);

The book of Numbers;

The book of Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14);

The book of Jashar/Jasher, the upright (Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18);

The acts of Joshua;

The oracles of Balaam (Numbers 23,24);

The books of the Judges of Israel (a separate one for each judge);

The words and deeds of Samuel the seer ( I Chronicles 29:29);

The acts/chronicles of king David (I Chronicles 27:24), in which the Psalms were found;

The words of the days of Nathan the prophet (I Chronicles 29:29);

The words of the days of Gad the seer (I Chronicles 29:29);

The acts of Solomon (II Chronicles 9:29), which contained the song of Solomon, the proverbs and ecclesiastics;

The prophecy of Ahi’zah/Ahijah (II Chronicles 9:29);

The visions of Iddo (II Chronicles 9:29);

The words of the days of Iddo/story of the prophet Iddo (II Chronicles 13:22);

The words of the days of Shemai’ah the prophet (Samaria) (II Chronicles 12:15);

The words of the days of Jehu the seer, son of Hana’ni (II Chronicles 20:34);

The words of the days of Isaiah the prophet, son of Amos (II Chronicles 26:22);

Commentary on the book of the Kings (II chronicles 24:27);

The Chronicles of the kings of Judah (II Kings 21:17);

The writings of the days of the kings of Judah (by Jehu);

The writings of the kings of Israel (by Jehu).

Do you get the picture now? Persian thought has become the determining factor in the reshaping of the Mosaic law, and Ezra was the author of the new scripture.

But the story does not end there: The scribal tradition is said to have invented  Ezra as a character in order to legitimize a contemporary view of the past (History and Ideology in Ancient Israel). Together with Ezra there was another person called Nehemiah, who was sent again by the Persian king to build the city walls of Yerushalim. These two characters have reconstructed the city and reinstated its cultic observances and feast days. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are texts about the reorganisation of Yerushalim and its religious life.

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