S. Cranow

Mesopotamian Origins of Hebrew Myth

Revisado: 11-07-23

We are all familiar with the story of Noah’s Ark. The world sins so God decides to punish the world with a huge flood that covers the world. Noah is the only righteous person and so God spares Noah and his family by instructing them to build an ark and take a bunch of animals to save them as well. There are some contradictions to the story for example in one instance god tells Noah to take a pair of animals on the ark. In another he is told to take 7 pairs of clean animals and a pair of unclean animals. Kind of strange if it all came from God. In fact, I did not but rather was based on an older tale, a Mesopotamian tale or myth.

In the Sumerian version of things Noah is called Utnapishtim and he was sort of like a king albeit a righteous one. The people on the planet are far too noisy so the gods decide wipe them out with a flood. Utnapishtim survives. This tale is included in the epic of Gilgamesh. In other Babylonian version and Assyrian versions, the hero is called Atrahasis. There are different versions of the story going around as is with all stories and they can change with each telling.

How did this tale with changed names enter itself into the Old Testament. Assuming that there was a huge flood or at least a flood that impacted that region it was well known to the Sumerians. Abraham the first Hebrew or Jew was from Mesopotamia. A big debate as to whether he was Aramean or Sumerian. He might have learned the flood story from his Sumerian upbringing.

Another theory is that when the Judeans were brought into exile, they were totally shell shocked by being conquered then bought to a more advanced culture. They were assimilated into the Babylonian culture. The Ancient Mesopotamians invented cuneiform writing and it was a special honor to be inducted into a scribal school. Many Judean were inducted. It was from there that they learned the flood myth. Since their mythology might have been lacking some elements, they borrowed and made it their own. There are other elements like the Assyrian king Sargon who was born of a priestess and then cast into the river in a small basket. Sound familiar? Remember Moses going on to Mount Sinai and getting the ten commandments well Hammurabi went up to a Mountain and received the law from the sun god Shamash.

There is a question as to what the water vessel used looked like. Looking at Mesopotamian society and how it is placed on the river it can be expected that they had to get around somewhat by boat and they had to experience periodic flooding. There are two types of craft. One is a round craft made of reed and bitumen and it is water proof. Some versions of the story have it as a craft with one level and another has it as a craft with multiple levels. The other version is a boat like structure that Noah used.

There has been some speculation as to where the ark landed. In the Bible we have been trained to think that the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. In fact the original legend says they landed in the mountain of Urartu. Uartu was a kingdom to the North of Mesopotamia. But there are other legends that place the mountain elsewhere. Assyrian legend which held sway briefly believed that the mountain was Mount Nizar which is in Assyrian territory and part of the Zagros Mountains. Islamic tradition and Nestorian tradition placed it on Mount judi Dar. It held sway for the longest but now everyone settle on Ararat.

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The Watchers

Revisado: 09-07-23

The book of Enoch which elucidates the story of to hundred angels descending to earth in order to mate with human women and teach mankind. The angels mate with mankind and create a hybrid beings called Nephilim or fallen ones. These hybrids were the demigods and heroes of old. They were giants. The book is controversial, it was left out of the official canon and is considered Apocrypha. Not official scripture.
Scant reference is made to the Watchers in Genesis. One could wonder why that would be? It is part of the Ethiopian bible. Reason this book is explosive. Angels and demons are spiritual being and as such cannot mate with humans as they are physical. So who were these watchers? Angels are not flesh and blood and they cannot mate. They must be human like and if they came from the sky then chances are they are extraterrestrials. They came from another planet with superior skills and they attempted to teach these skills to mankind. The bible does not speak highly of these watchers they consider them to have been corrupting human kind.
All across the planet there are stories of teachers or people coming from the sky. They are depicted in a positive way. The bible makes them look bad. When human women mated with them they produced giants who could either be heroic or oppressive. The bible speaks about a council of gods. If there is a council there must be many and there is more than one god.
The author makes reference to other cultures coming into contact with these giant shining beings. It would have been nice if he would have gone more into depth about these shining ones and the cultures they mingled with. Since the author is a bible scholar he did give good over view of the judeo Christian viewpoint and examining their culture.
Going through the book one learns more about Moses, now mind you some of this is well known in Jewish scripture. They cannot identify where in Egyptian history did the figure Moses occur. Careful reading of Egyptian history may shed light on some things. The Pharoah he grew up under was thutmosis. Hatshepsut was the queen. Thutmosis the third was her step child. Egyptian history makes note of Seknut. He was like her adopted son meant to take the throne. Moses always wanted to be a ruler. Seknut disappears from the record and is never heard of again. Very similar to the story of moses .
The Garden of Eden story has some different details as well. In Genesis it says that Eve was tricked by the serpent to eat of the tree of knowledge, after god has said “No” A more careful reading of symbolology we learn that the serpent had arms and legs and could talk. Sort of like a lizard person. Looking through the symbolism we find that he is a magician who seduced eve and that was how Cain was born. Cain was hybrid and Nephilim . Supposedly the flood cleaned them out. Wiped out all the hybrids. Yet they survived. Mention of them echoes throughout the Old testament and New. Why the flood happened no one knows. The Bible says sin like Adam knowing Eve kind of sin.
In the end it is aliens. While the author does subscribe to Alien intervention he does criticize Zecharia Sitchin and Erich Von Daniken. Good book.

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Euro Wichcraft Tales

Revisado: 07-11-22

This work by scholar Claude Lecouteux examines old fairy tales and myths. First the author tells the tale to the reader and the gives over an analysis of its content and origins. Many of these tales started off as Ancient Greek or Roman myths. Others started out in Norse mythology bu were morphed over time and different elements were added or removed . Character names changed as did events.

The fist section deals with people being turned Into animals as a curse from an evil witch. The second part deal with humans in animal form who are wronged and then seek redress. The dolphin nights captures this well. A sailor hurts a dolphins then is ferried na way to help the dolphins heal.The third section deals with devil stuff and dark spells. The Love Spell deals with Charlemaign and his dead wife. Due to magic he cannot part from her. He embalms her and sleeps with her. It takes a bishop to break spell. The tales fall under different heading and it is worth a look if you are studying European literature.

I am not sure if the audible render a full version of the book . Parts of it seems short along with some of the explanations. But Claude Lecouteux is a scholar worth reading.

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The Werewolf

Revisado: 01-06-22

The wolf is liminal figure bordering between light and shadow. On the one hand they are fierce predators who can be hazardous to those wandering about. The wolf also keeps the natural balance and puts a check on other animal populations often feeding on the aged, dying and the sick.

The werewolf is another character based on the wolf but even more terrifying. Rumors of large wolves ravaging livestock and people abound in. European folklore all across the the continent of Europe. There are many ways to transform into a werewolf. There are different were creatures in different countries.

The African nations have wear hyenas and wild cats. In China and Japan you have were tigers. Some theories behind what is called lycanthropy exist. Some think it is a delusion. Someone mentally ill or,deluded and goes around acting like a wolf. There are other who believe that during trance states the souls leaves the body and can assume an animal form. There are people who believed that they have seen others transform fully into wolves.

How does one transform into a werewolf. For starts let us throw out the full moon motif. Some of the ways people transform is by being cursed by a witch to assume the animal form,sometimes for periods up to 7 years. Others embrace this change by donning a wolf skin or a pelt of a wolf and that will transform them into a wolf. Some believe that a sorcerer has several animal shapes at their disposable.

In certain European countries werewolves are synonymous with witches. Witches too can shapeshift into different animal forms and travel through the night. In Norse mythology part of the soul is an animal soul and it has different forms. People being transformed into wolves or other animals are found all over the world.

Yet not all werewolves are bad some like the benadanti help the people by retrieving grain from Hell so the people can consume it. Bands of wolf warriors used to roam the forests of Europe dedicated to Odin they wore wolf skins and acted a lot like wolves and legend has it they turned to wolves.

The book yields over many stories from folklore illustrating the points above . However , deeper analysis would have been nice.

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Lost Tale of Dracula

Revisado: 12-03-21

Everyone is familiar with the tale of Dracula penned by Bram Stoker. Jonathan Harper works for a law firm that assists the sale of Carfax to Count Dracula. Harker goes to castle Dracula only to become the vampire prisoner. He escapes as Dracula leaves for Britain.. In Britain after killing the entire crew of the Demeter, he commences to kill Lucy, Mina Harkers best friend and he tried to turn Mina as well. Van Helsing is dispatched from Amsterdam and a team of people have a final showdown with the count in his own castle.

To write his tale Bram had to jump through lots of hoops and was forced to revise and edit his work. Whole entire sections were pulled from Stoker original story. Part of it ened up in the tale “Dracula’s Guest” This story while bearing many similarity also has lots of differences.

For one the names are different. Jonathan is called Thomas and his fiancé is now now Wilma. As Harker is imprisoned in the castle he is tormented by the counts cousin. In the original it was three vampire ladies that tormented Harker. The count himself is somewhat different as well. Taking some elements from the historical personage this rendition . This story cues into his warrior past and genetically links him to Attila the Hun. While Harker is imprisoned in the castle he learned more about Dracula’s history and the past of his family. When exploring the castle in an attempt to find a way out he reaches and underground vault where in he witnesses a bizarre ritual when young women were murdered and fed to ape like vampires.

The count is loaded with gold and he is well connected to powerful people across the globe who he corresponds with. He has a plan of sorts for world domination. He has a library filled with occult books.

Minus in this book is also Renfield, the lunatic in the original. The final showdown happens in Carfax. They never return to Transylvania.

This is considered the Icelandic Version. Some believe it is based on a Swiss or a Swedish version. Some may wonder how many of these differences and nuances come from the editors contribution and what from Stoker or was there collaboration.?

A different telling and in no way is the original Impaler being spoken of. This is the fictitious Dracula.

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Lost Civilation of Atlantis

Revisado: 07-19-20

He has said it before, there was an advanced civilization before the official history of man was recorded. Piecing together the evidence Graham Hancock proves to us that human civilization is older than what we have recorded. The first pieces of evidence to be examined are ruin that have been left behind some going back possibly hundreds of thousand of years. Looking at ruins of structures in Ohio, Louisiana, and Missispi Valley it shows they were built with astrological precision. They are times to coincide with the summer and winter equinox. There is a structure resembling a snake in Ohio that stops short of where an ice age glacier this large snake shows advanced engineering technique.
There are also burial mounds and Stonehenge like buildings.

The next pieces of evidence involves genetics. There are different genetic signatures for North America natives have different DNA then the natives of South America. The northern natives had more Denisovan DNA and some what closer to European DNA. In the south there is a mixture of Australia melenese DNA. Like how did Australians end up in South America. There is speculation that part of the population crossed on the Bering straight but also that a group, possibly Denisovan got stuck there and evolved into a more complex society. This society was so advanced Thst they were able to map the stars and the planet. They were also very maritime an they sailed the entire world. It is believed that this society taught or spread its culture all over the world to anyone who would listen.

The next area to be covered is in the journey of the afterlife. Egyptian, Native American and even far Easter. Have the same journey of the soul. Boiled down to basics the soul travel through Orion’s Belt to the Milky Way. How did all,these ideas so similar end up in completely different societies. There is no way that these societies had any contact with each other. Unless the idea was diffused from a single source.

All the signs are there but where did this society go to? Where and when did they disappear ? Every so often the Earth intersect with the Orontid meteors. Around 12,800 years ago they crossed this meteor belt and North America was subject to heavy comet bombardment that tore up the ground, caused the forest to burn and covered the continent with snow. This got rid of Thst society. Any trace would have been washed away by floods or burned a way. Plus when Americans got here they destroyed a lot of indigenous archaeology. Before this catastrophe this society spread their culture and tried to set up colonies world wide. Now all we see are reflection of their knowledge.

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Dont get the Audible Version

Revisado: 05-23-20

Humans may have been on this planet a lot longer then we may have realized. We tend to think that Homo Sapeins have been here at the most 30 thousand years. In reality human existence may stretch back several millions of years. How advanced those societies were is another question. It is. Supposed under this thesis that humans or Homo Sapien Sapiens may have existed alongside aide other humanoid like homo erectus, Neanderthal and cro magnoln

Archaeologist have found evidence of some semi advance human stuff going back. Millions of years to the Pleistocene era. Such items would include human bones, skiulls and handiwork’s . However when scientists bring this up they are often ridiculed by their academic colleagues . Often at the cost of their careers,

The last part of the book discusses cryptozoology . Mentioning other humanoid creatures that might still be out there but hidden. There are areas in Washington state and Canada that have not been thoroughly explored creatures like a big foot might be out there. Supposedly there have been numerous sighting.

The only on this book is the brevity of the audible. I believe this book has many pages and books of this length usually take several more hours to read through on audible. Hope we are not getting the abridged version here. That would Medan the readers are getting cheated.

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