Paul Wallis And Mauro Biglino - GOD YAHWEH - Shocking Truth Behind The Original Bible Story Ep 3 - 08-14-2022
Episode Summary:
Paul Wallis and Mauro Biglino delve into a radically different interpretation of the Bible, focusing on the name "Yahweh." They analyze key Hebrew words, suggesting an alternate narrative hidden within the ancient texts. Their research indicates that the traditional portrayal of God as a singular, almighty entity may be a result of mistranslations and misunderstandings over centuries.
Wallis, an Anglican Church senior and biblical scholar, along with Biglino, an Italian author and expert in ancient Hebrew, challenge conventional biblical interpretations. They argue that anomalies and translation nuances hint at a different story. Biglino's work on literal translations of Hebrew words for the Vatican uncovers a layer of information contrasting the familiar narrative of God's creation and governance.
The scholars discuss how the name Yahweh, traditionally translated as "Lord" or "The Eternal," has been a subject of debate and confusion. The Vatican's directive against using the name "Yahweh" in liturgy due to its non-Christian nature adds to the complexity. They explore the possibility that Yahweh might not be a name but rather an expression or title, highlighting the myriad ways it has been translated over time.
The discussion extends to Moses's encounter with Yahweh, where the enigmatic reply "I am who I am" or "I will be who I will be" is given to Moses's inquiry about his name. This leads to speculation about the actual meaning and origin of the name Yahweh, considering the ancient languages and the time lag between its initial usage and later textual recordings.
Wallis and Biglino compare the biblical stories with global ancestral narratives, suggesting that ancient texts from around the world tell of a time when non-human entities governed humanity. They point out similarities in names and descriptions of these beings across cultures, hinting at a shared ancient memory of non-human governance.
The implications of their research are profound, suggesting that the biblical stories might not only be a record of divine interaction but also a complex amalgam of human experience with powerful non-human entities. They argue that this recontextualization of ancient texts could reshape our understanding of human history, the concept of God, and the roots of monotheism.
By reexamining the Bible through the lens of language, translation, and comparative mythology, Wallis and Biglino invite readers to consider a broader perspective on ancient texts and the figure of Yahweh. Their work represents a significant contribution to the ongoing dialogue about the origins and development of religious thought and the complexities of interpreting ancient texts.
Key Takeaways:
- Redefining Yahweh: Paul Wallis and Mauro Biglino suggest that "Yahweh" refers to ancient, non-human entities governing humans, challenging traditional monotheistic views.
- Translation Matters: The interpretation of ancient Hebrew texts, especially the name "Yahweh," significantly affects our understanding of biblical stories.
- Comparative Mythology: The similarities between the Bible's narratives and global ancestral stories suggest a shared ancient experience with powerful entities.
- Language and Mystery: The enigmatic nature of Yahweh's name and Moses's encounter with it reveal the complexity and potential misinterpretations of ancient texts.
- Religious and Historical Implications: Reinterpreting biblical stories in light of these findings could reshape the narratives of human history, the concept of God, and the roots of religious beliefs.
Paul Wallis And Mauro Biglino - GOD YAHWEH - Shocking Truth Behind The Original Bible Story Ep 3 - 08-14-2022
For hundreds and thousands of years, people around the world have turned to the Bible for information about God. Two scholars, Maro Bilino and Paul Wallace, argue for a radically different interpretation.
Seeking out the root meanings of key words in these ancient texts, they find another quite different story emerges, one with enormous implications for our understanding of the human race and our place in the universe. For more than two millennia, readers have interpreted the ancient texts of the Bible as stories of God, a seamless narrative in which God creates the heavens and the earth, botanical and animal life, and eventually the human race. However, a number of anomalies in the texts, along with intriguing questions of translation, point to another possibility. Paul Wallace is an internationally best selling author, researcher and scholar of ancient mythologies. Over the last decade, Paul's work has probed the world's mythologies and ancestral narratives for the insights they hold on our origins as a species and our potential as human beings.
As a senior churchman, Paul served as a church doctor, a theological educator, and an archdeacon in the Anglican Church in Australia. Paul's work in church ministry has included training pastors in the interpretation of biblical texts. His work in biblical translation and interpretation has revealed a forgotten layer of ancient story with far reaching implications for our understanding of human origins and our place in the cosmos.
Maro Bilino is an internationally best selling italian author, researcher, and highly regarded scholar of ancient Hebrew. For many years he worked for Rome's St. Paul Press as a Bible translator, providing with great precision the literal meaning of hebrew words for Vatican approved interlinear bibles. It is an exacting discipline. The scholar must be rigorous in avoiding any kind of interpretation of the word and give only the literal, etymological meaning of each word.
Part Morrow's findings set him at odds with the conventional expectations of the catholic world and propelled him onto the international stage, where his work has opened up a world of cultural memory recorded in the Bible yet hidden from the public for centuries by mistaken translation and the dogmas of the church. Together, Morrow and Paul show that the root meanings of a series of keywords in the Bible reveal an earlier layer of information very different to the story of God associated with the Bible. Hidden plain sight in the pages of Genesis is an even more ancient narrative, one which reframes the whole story of human beginnings.
We generally are used to reading the Bible in a bubble and not realizing that its stories run in parallel with ancestral narratives from all around the world. Stories of the hebrew canon set it in this wider family of narratives about a time when our ancestors were governed over by non human beings. Could it be that the original stories are telling us about this ancient time, recalled by many cultures around the world, to do with the ancient governance of humanity in the deep past?
Hello, everyone. Today, with our friend Paul, we talk about the more important name in the Bible. This name is Yahweh. Yahweh is obviously the name of the presumed God and is generally translated with Lord or the eternal.
These are the two translations that are used to render this name. About this name, I want to start immediately by saying that the Vatican in 2008 sent a letter to episcopal conferences around the world, where he invited us not to use the name of Yahweh in the liturgy because he is not Christian Czech.
This is obviously very strange also because Yahweh would be God the father. But I would like to make another consideration.
As an expression of the infinite greatness and majesty of God, it was considered to be unpronounceable.
You know that the Jews cannot pronounce that name. And therefore it was replaced in the reading of a scripture by the use of an alternative name, Adonai, which means Lord.
Since the text of the Bible, written in Greek, constituted the Bible of the first generation of Greek speaking Christians in whose language all the books of the New Testament were written. Even these Christians, from the beginning, they never pronounced the tetragrammaton. Something SiMILAR happened also for the latin speaking christians.
And here there is another important consideration. The name of Jesus is a Latin name. It is not the translation of Hebrew, because in Hebrew we have Yoshua. And the first part is precisely the name of Yahweh. Contract, because Yoshua means Yahweh saves.
So those who pronounce it. In hebrew, the name of Jesus pronounced also the name of Yahweh.
So also when the Christians today say Alleluia, alleluia, the first part is the verb allelu, which is the exhortation, or rather the order to praise yah, that is Yahweh.
Therefore, the Christians still use the name Yahweh at least every once they sing the hallelujah in the Bibles that we have at home, whenever there is Yahweh in Hebrew, we find the Lord or the eternal, because the two terms are used interchangeably to translate the term yahweh.
But what is the problem? The problem is that we know nothing about the name Yahweh. But now let's go and see how it originated. Let's go. In the EXODuS TeXT, we are in chapter three, where moses asks the alleged God a question that turns out to be fundamental.
We read in a traditional translation. Moses said to God, I go to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your father has sent me to you. They will tell me, what is his name? We can understand that it would be absurd to ask for God's name if that God were the only and therefore unequivocal God. And this is more evident in Hebrew because in Hebrew it actually says, and Moses said to the Elohim, that is, Moses speaks to that Elohim who presented himself to him.
So here is the ArTicle, and here it is not.
Here it says to thee ElOHIM, that is, to that there and not to another.
What will I answer them? Says Moses. God said to moses, I am who I am. And added, so you will say to the children of Israel, I am. He has sent me to you.
Here I am who I am, in Hebrew is which, as you can see here is translated, I will be who I will be. So here we have I am who I am. And here we have I will be who I will be. Why are there two different translations? Because in reality there are more.
There is also I will be what I am. I will be what I was. That is, over the centuries, the exegutes have essentially formulated all the hypotheses possible to translate that name.
Let me do a personal consideration by placing ourselves in that situation in which Moses asks that individual. But in short, tell me who you are. Then I have to explain it to the others. I imagine the greed boss who hears himself asked by one of his subordinates, even if he is the commander in field that he himself had chosen. He ears himself asked, tell me your name because I have to tell it to the twelve tribes and then convince them to come after you.
I also imagine a little anger on the part of this very powerful individual who says to him, Moses, I am what I am. As if to say, mind your own business. So who I am does not matter. Moreover, I was pleased to read in the Hebrew Bible published by John Tina and edited by Rab Dario Dizeni, who in the commentary on this verse we are talking about, says that Yahweh's answer to Moses may mean my name doesn't matter. What matters is that I am.
But now let's go on to continue reading how Yahweh says he wants to be called God, said again to Moses, so you will tell the children of Israel, here is the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. And in Hebrew, in reality there is and Elohim said again to Moses, so you will say to the sons of Israel, and here is the famous tetragrammaton. That is his name, the one we know as Yahweh. But which ear, for example, is vocalized as Yehwa and is one of the many possible vocalizations. But immediately after this, there is the important statement that identifies this as his name.
And Yahweh says this name of mine in perpetuity, and this is memory of mine from generation, generation, that is to say, with this name, you will remember me for the future, with this indication that it is the famous tetragrammaton. So we really know nothing about this famous name. When Moses asks this individual what he is called, perhaps the hebrew language did not exist. And so when Moses asks this question to Yahweh, in what language was it pronounced? This name, we don't know.
He may have pronounced it in the egyptian language, or if Yahweh came from other civilizations, he might have said it in his own language.
So we don't know anything. We don't know what language it was written in. We don't know how it was said. We don't know how it was pronounced. Why?
Because it was written several centuries after it was pronounced. Because it was written without vowels. And the vowels, they were inserted many centuries later, between the 6th and the 9th century after Christ.
So a long time passed between when that name was written only with consonants and when the vowels were inserted.
Biblical Tori theologians have written many treatises on this name, and this happened precisely because its meaning is not known.
And if you do not know, the best thing is make translations.
For example, according to some scholars, rabbis, the name could simply be an interjection and mean. It is he. That is the expression they used when they saw him arriving, and that therefore, he could have said to them, very well, remember me like that.
So, in reality, we do not know what Yahweh means. And then, since we do not know what Yahweh means, we do not translate it, because translating with lord or translating with the eternal really means. Here we are sure inventing translations. So when in English, we find Lord or the eternal, we write what is written in Hebrew, Yahweh. So we respect the text, and respect for the ancient otors is precisely the goal of this collaboration with Paul.
Ciao from Italy.
Thank you, Maro. When Moses meets the being Yahweh, it's quite clear he has no idea who he is talking to. And when Yahweh gives his name, the name we know as the holy name of God. It's very clear Moses has no idea what this word means. And so it's very much like getting a call on your phone.
It says, caller unknown. You pick it up, you hear a voice, you don't recognize the voice, and so you say, who am I talking to? That's exactly the moment we catch Moses in with the being Yahweh. But if Yahweh really is the God of his ancestors, the powerful one of his ancestors, isn't it rather odd that Moses doesn't recognize him? Well, at one level, maybe not, because he can't see who he's speaking to.
He can hear a voice, he can see a fire, but he can't see who it is. But it is surprising that this name is completely new to him. And I agree with MARA. What this tells us is that this was not a word in any of the languages that Moses spoke. Now, as a prince of the court of the pharaoh, it's very possible Moses spoke a number of languages.
But apparentlY, yahweh is not a hebrew word. It's not an Egyptian word, it's not a word in any language known to Moses. We begin with a mystery. Now, there's a very broad scholarly consensus that the Hebrew canon took its current shape sometime in the 6th century BCE. In the century before, the boy king Josiah had set about reforming Judaism and paring it down into a neat and tidy world of monotheism, with God and the king at the top, and then the high priests and the priests and then the people at the bottom of a nicely ordered religious society.
That was JOSiah's intent. And then, in the 6th century BCE, the redactors set about doing the same reform within the canon of the scriptures themselves, taking this vast library of books and scrolls and doing a scissors and paste edit on them to give them the appearance of a seamless story of God from beginning to end, a story that teaches monotheism. And part of that redaction involved taking the name Yahweh, which by that time was understood to be a name for almighty God, and pasting it over the whole sequence of stories from beginning to end. And so the redactors import the name yahweh into much earlier texts and paste it into the old, old stories of the elohim. Now, if you read the Bible attentively, you can spot this, because you can see the name Yahweh in texts that precede the encounter where Yahweh gives his name.
So if you've got the timeline of the Bible, here's the beginning. Here's the end. Somewhere along here, Moses is told the name of God. So what's ThaT name doing back here? Well, it's simply that a writer, after the time of Moses, who knew this word, is retelling these old stories using the word that's been revealed.
So at the 6th century BCE, by the latest, that's when the name YahweH starts to be pasted over these earlier stories. And in the final redaction, the edition of the canon is produced where the name Yahweh is there, more or less from start to finish. One example of these importations you could find in Genesis eleven, for instance, which is the story of the tower of Babel. Now, that story begins with Yahweh getting wind of something happening on the shenar plain that he's not very happy about. And so he goes down to see what is going on and to see if he needs to take action.
And when he decides to take action, the text says this, come, let us go down and confuse their language. Who's the US? Well, the US is the Elohim. In the original telling of the story, Yahweh refers to himself as an Elohim many times. And it's clear that in Genesis eleven, he is one of many Elohim because of that plural verb form.
LEt us go down and CONFUSE. In the moment when Moses meets Yahweh, Yahweh identifies himself as an Elohim, a powerful one. He says to Moses, tell them that the powerful one, Yahweh, the powerful one of your ancestors, has sent you to them. So Yahweh sees himself as an elohim. This is also clear in the Ten commandments.
When Yahweh commands, you must have no other Elohim before me. Don't work for them, CERTAINlY don't bow down to ThEM. And you can't even paint pictures of them. He's commanding a great forgetting. It's there when Joshua says, don't serve the Elohim of Egypt, or of the Canaanites, or of your ancestors in MEsopotamia.
Serve only Yahweh. So Yahweh is one of the Elohim. It's clear in the story of King Ahaziah, when Yahweh's king Ahaziah falls off a ladder and breaks his back. Ahaziah wants to know if he's dying, and so he sends his messengers to Ekron to inquire of the Elohim of Ekron, the powerful one of Ekron, who he believes can give an accurate prognosis and when Yahweh hears of this, he's furious. According to his spokesman, Yahweh says, is there no Elohim here, that Ahaziah has to go running off to the Elohim of Ekron.
So Yahweh identifies himself as one of the Elohim. But what exactly he is and what his name means is still a bit of a mystery. Remember, Moses doesn't see him. He only hears a voice and he sees a fire. So he doesn't know who or what Yahweh is, and he doesn't know what the word means because it's foreign to him.
Now, by the close of the Bible writing period, Yahweh was being used as the holy name for God. If you wanted to talk about God, the source of the cosmos and everything in it, then you would refer to Yahweh. But is that what the word meant in the beginning? And I'm going to suggest, no, that's not what it meant. I agree with Maro that in Yahweh, what we're looking at is a foreign word, or what linguists would call a loan word.
So let me just illustrate for you what a loan word is. In the 1950s, linguists started coming across a funny word in the south of Italy, in Sicily, that they had never come across before. Now, it's a word that meant spade. But the italian language has a perfectly regular word for spade. It's la pala.
So what was this other word? It sounded like Shovelo, and it was a word without any etymology in the italian language. As they spelt it out, they thought, well, these roots don't mean a digging item. Where has this word come from? And it took them a while to realize that this word had appeared at a time when there'd been a movement of people who originally from the south of Italy in Sicily, back to the mother country from America, and they'd brought with them an American word, shovel.
And they were simply using that word that they'd used in workplaces in America. They carried on using that word, and they were using the italian sound system to pronounce an american word, and they would have used italian spelling conventions to transcribe an american word, shovel. That's often how a Lone Word works. It appears in the writing conventions and sound system of the Host language, but it's come from somewhere else. And that's why suddenly you have this word that has no history, no root meaning.
It is a foreign word that the people have started using. I believe Yahweh is that kind of a word. Not a hebrew word, not an egyptian word, not a word in any of the languages known to Moses, a word from somewhere else entirely. So, in a way, when Moses asks his question, sorry, who am I talking to? He doesn't really get an answer.
When the being Yahweh says, a ser a, I am as I am, it's kind of a non answer. It's kind of saying, well, that's for you to find out. But then, within a sentence or so, he is using this name, yahweh. So he begins by saying, tell them I am has sent you. Say, the I am of Israel has sent you.
And then within a sentence, he says, tell them that Yahweh, the powerful one of their ancestors, has sent you to them. So let's go back to this I am sentence, because, as Maro says, it can be, I am as I am. I am what I will be. I will be what I will be. It's a very enigmatic answer.
That really does mean. Well, that's for you to find out. You're going to have to follow me to find out. But when you get to the Septuagint, you find there's another way of understanding that answer. Now, the Septuagint was the Greek translation of the Hebrew canon that was used by Jesus and those who wrote for him.
So JEsus and those who wrote for him regarded it as the BEE's knees. This was inspired. This was a wonderful rendition of the Hebrew original. And when you read the septuagint's rendering of Yahweh's answer, it says this. And Moses said to God, behold, I shall go forth to the children of Israel, and I shall say to them, the powerful one of our fathers has sent me to you.
And they will ask me, what is his NAME? What shall I say to them? And the powerful one spoke to moses, saYing, legon ego amy HOPON, tell them I am the being. Say this to the children of Israel. The being has sent me to you.
What kind of being is that? Maybe there is a clue in the tetragrammaton, these four letters that have become used as the holy name for God. This was the name that the being began using of himself in the very next sentence. So the very next sentence begins, and moreover, the powerful one said to Moses, so again, there's that equation, Yahweh is a powerful one, in conversation with Moses. And moreover, the powerful one said to Moses, say this to the children of Israel, Yahweh, elohe of your fathers.
The elohe of Abraham, the elohe of Isaac, the elohe of Jacob has sent me to you. So he's describing himself as an elohe, as an Elohim. He's using this name, yahweh, and it's represented by these four letters, the tetragrammaton. Now, Maro very rightly says, we don't know how that was pronounced. The vowels CAme into YAhWEh.
At a later stage. We Just have the four consonants. So even though we can't be sure exactly how it was pronounced in the beginning, we do know what the four consonants were. And that tells us quite enough, in my view, to place this story in a global family of stories. The consonants we have are y.
Hwh. How were they pronounced? Now, when you put the vowels into the name, the H's almost disappear. It becomes yahweh. But I'm going to put forward a little linguistic theory here, and it has to do with something called africation.
Africation is something that happens as languages develop and morph. And essentially it's a pattern of sound softening whereby, for instance, a t becomes a s becomes a s, or a p becomes a p becomes a f, or a d becomes a z becomes a z. And so hard word like 20 can morph into svansik. 20, being BUiLT on an earlier version of svansik, or milk, with the hard k, is built on an earlier version of the word that becomes milk. K becomes.
And that is the story of the h in Yahweh, because with the vowels in, they're almost silent. But if you go to proto northwest Semitic, which is an ancestor of Hebrew, the h sound was voiced quite differently. Instead of the almost silent glottal fricative, it was a Vela fricative. So it's quite possible that in the primitive pronunciation of the tetragrammaton, we have this sound.
Why is that significant? Well, I go back to the point that moses isn't quite sure who or what he's speaking to. He can hear a voice, he can see fire, and then this name with in it. All around the world, ancient cultures tell of a time when our ancestors were governed over by non human beings. So in the mesoamerican traditions that come out of the MAyan tradition, we have the stories of QuEtZALCoTtl, CuCUMUts, CuCUCan.
Go to SpaiN and POrTUGal. And you've got the CocA. Go to Georgia, you've got the concis. Go to EGyPt. You had Ache.
Go to CHINA, and you've got the ACUCHU, The CUCEDRA. And you might notice there is a phonetic similarity between all those names. There is the k, or sound, and they all refer to these non human beings that governed over our ancestors in the deep past. Now, intriguingly, those stories tell us something about what these entities look like. So QUETZALCOTTl is described as a feathered seRpent, and some of the entities are described as creating a trail of fire.
Picture the CHiNeSE dragon, and you're looking at a very similar kind of entity. Other stories around the world speak about beings that demand prodigious volumes of beef, virgin girls and gold, and can destroy you with breath that can be ignited. So a lot of these images repeat in stories around the world. Well, in some of the stories of the Hebrew canon, you've got some parallel themes. You do have entities that demand prodigious volumes of beef, virgin girls and gold, that have a powerful voice and that have breath that can be ignited.
And again, these stories are associated with the. Of the hebrew stories. One example of this would be in numbers 30 117, where, following a battle, Yahweh has demanded 675 sheep and goats, 72 cattle, 61 donkeys, 32 virgin girls and 420 pounds of gold. Now, that's for him. The human beings can keep the rest, he says.
And you might think, oh, when it says that's for him, presumably that's actually to sustain the priestly families. That's really virgin girls to be used by the priestly families. Beef for the priestly families, gold for the priestly families. Except that's not how the story is told. And, in fact, when you get to the Septuagint and you read the Book of Belle and the Dragon, there's a very clear distinction made between the babylonian culture who pretend that they have an entity that needs gold and cattle and virgin girls, but it's really the priests who are enjoying all these.
That culture is made fun of, because that is not the pattern of the people of Israel. The priests are not pretending. They really do have a powerful one that demands all this tribute, and his name is Yahweh.
We generally are used to reading the Bible in a bubble and not realizing that its stories run in parallel with ancestral narratives from all around the world. And so these motifs in the stories of the hebrew canon set it in this wider family of narratives about a time when our ancestors were governed over by nonhuman beings. And not only are the motifs of beef, virgin girls and gold repeated, but when there are descriptions given of the entity in the stories, we have mention of flight, feathers, pinions, we have mention of this powerful voice, and we have mention of this breath that can be ignited and can destroy things. So there are many, many correlations that set some of the ancient stories of the hebrew canon in a much wider context. Could it be that the original stories are telling us about this ancient time, recalled by many cultures around the world, to do with the ancient governance of humanity in the deep past?
Now, there are clues within the Bible itself that this may be so, but one powerful one comes in Joshua 24, when Joshua says, don't serve the Elohim of Egypt, serve only Yahweh. If you insert the names into those texts, then what Joshua said was, don't serve Ahech of Egypt, serve Yahweh, the powerful one of us. The names Ahech and Yahweh are so close, and the kind of service is equivalenced in what Joshua is saying, that it strongly suggests that the Yahweh character of these stories fits in a panoply of ancient beings that we have perhaps forgotten how to imagine. Now, in many of the stories around the world, there's a moment when the human societies say, we don't want to be governed by non human being anymore. We want human kings, human queens, human governance for human society.
And you see this pivot happening in stories and cultures around the world. It's there in the greek, it's there in african stories of the handover of power from the Ojisu to the Oba. It's there in the Sumerian stories where we have the pivot king of Gilgamesh, this hybrid king who takes over from the powerful ones, who are not human, who governed, and then hands over to human kings and queens. There's a pivot moment in the Bible as well, where the people of Israel say to Yahweh's spokesperson, we don't want a non human governor anymore. We want human kings, a human society.
Now, just think about this. This happens in one SamuEl eight. If in that moment, Yahweh means almighty God, that story is bizarre. Why would you trade a human king for Almighty God? Surely Almighty God gives you better protection on the battlefield than a human king.
But no, the shape of the story tells you they're trading a non human ruler for a human ruler. And that pivot occurs in so many of the world's narratives. And that's why I believe the tetragrammaton is actually a clue that places the biblical story in a much wider context, makes it part of a much bigger story about the history of our planet, the history of the human race, and the history of our God concepts. If you go to one Samuel eight, that's one clue that Yahweh is not referring to Almighty God. In that moment, Yahweh's jealous competition with the powerful one of Ekron would be another clue that that's not almighty God you're dealing with in the moment.
The first human king in the hebrew story is King Saul, whom Yahweh sabotages. When Yahweh sends king Saul out to battle, Saul does what has been done before. He wins the battle, and he brings back tributes of gold, virgin girls and beef, and many other things besides to give to Yahweh. But Yahweh is furious with Saul. He's furious and he says, you're not going to be king anymore because you failed to follow my instructions.
I wanted scorched earth, every man, woman, child and animal dead. And because you have failed to do this, you can forget begging me for forgiveness. And at first, Saul is very confused. He says, but I did what you asked me to. I won the battle.
I brought you all this tribute. No, you didn't. Follow me to the letter. That's the end of you. And Yahweh sets himself against Saul and drives him insane until Saul commits suicide.
It's another clue that the original form of that story, and even the form as we now have it, is not a story of God, the transcendent source of all things. God, the source of the cosmos and everything in it. God, this unified field of love in which we all live and move and have our being. No, the entity in that story is something quite different, and it's a something that fits in the world of narratives about these entities. So when we go back to that moment when Moses met and he didn't know what he was or who he was or who he was talking to, we realized there is a far greater mystery to explore than our conventional translations have really made clear to us today because of that final redaction in the 6th century BCE.
We think of the Bible as a book all about God. But as we drill down into the root meanings of many of the words we associate with God, Elohim, Elion, Yahweh, we see that there is another layer of story there that, in fact, within the pages of the hebrew scriptures, there is a plethora of beings. There's a whole diversity of mysterious entities washing around in the text, and not in some strange, vague kind of way, but in ways that run in parallel with many of the world's ancestral narratives about human beginnings, and the experience of our ancestors in the deep past. I think the meaning of these words, elohim, elion, yahweh, invite us to return to the texts, to look again and to realize that many of the stories we have assumed were God's stories are actually stories about something quite different.
The final edit of the Old Testament of the Bible, the hebrew canon, included the layering of some beautiful and profound theology over the top of ancient text. Unfortunately, mistranslating traumatic ancestral memories as if they were encounters with God is a choice with far reaching consequences. Belief in a violent, xenophobic, hierarchical God has been used through the ages to justify violent wars and all manner of abuses. However, the fidelity which the ancient manuscripts have been curated in the hebrew canon by countless generations of priests and scribes means that in our generation, we can now return to these fascinating artifacts of our prehistory and ask how differently they might be translated.
To find out more about Paul Wallace and Mauro Bilgino, along with links to their published works, follow the links in the video description. Thanks for watching the fifth kind.