Paul Wallis & Mauro Biglino - ELYON - "The Commander of The Elohim" - Ep 2 - 07-22-2022
Episode Summary:
"ELYON: The Commander of the Elohim" by Paul Wallis and Mauro Biglino is an exploration into the depths of biblical texts, revealing a potentially different narrative hidden within the ancient language and symbols. The authors delve into the root meanings of key Hebrew words, suggesting that traditional interpretations of the Bible, particularly the monotheistic view of God, may be a result of mistranslations and ideological influences rather than accurate reflections of the original texts. Wallis and Biglino argue that 'Elion' and 'Elohim,' commonly translated as 'God,' are actually references to distinct beings or entities, with 'Elion' being a singular term denoting seniority or command over others, especially in relation to 'Elohim,' which is plural.
The book challenges conventional beliefs by dissecting the Hebrew canon's evolution, particularly how it underwent significant redaction in the 6th century BCE to support a monotheistic worldview. The authors suggest that 'Elion' refers to the most powerful or senior among the 'Elohim,' implying a hierarchy or council of powerful beings rather than a singular omnipotent deity. This interpretation offers a fresh lens to view ancient scriptures, opening up discussions on the nature of divine beings and the potential historical and cultural contexts from which these texts emerged.
By reexamining translations and the ideological basis of biblical writings, Wallis and Biglino invite readers to consider the implications of a polytheistic or henotheistic tradition within early Jewish history. They propose that acknowledging these multiple powerful beings could reshape our understanding of humanity's ancient past and its relationship with the divine. The work encourages a critical examination of religious texts, urging a return to the original Hebrew words and meanings to uncover a more nuanced story of human origins and the cosmos.
Key Takeaways:
- 'Elion' and 'Elohim' are indicative of a divine hierarchy or council, not a singular supreme being.
- Traditional monotheistic interpretations of the Bible may stem from historical redactions and ideological shifts rather than original meanings.
- The biblical narrative, when revisited through the lens of ancient Hebrew, reveals a possible polytheistic or henotheistic culture among early Jews.
- Understanding the original texts and translations is crucial for a nuanced interpretation of religious and historical narratives.
- The concept of 'Elion' being the commander of the 'Elohim' reshapes our understanding of divine and human interactions in ancient texts.
Paul Wallis & Mauro Biglino - ELYON - "The Commander of The Elohim" - Ep 2 - 07-22-2022
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 text 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 ods 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.
Hello everyone. We are on the second video about the small suggestions Paul and I are giving to read the Bible in the clearest and correct way possible. That is, to read it in a way that is respectful of what the authors have written, but above all, to read it in order to avoid all those absolutely useless discussions that have been going on for a very long time without ever reaching a shared solution. I want to remind you what I said in the first video.
When we read the Bible, we read a text that was written not on a grammatical basis, but on an ideological basis.
And therefore the grammatical rules are an elaboration of the modern grammarians who have tried to derive sign grammatical rules in a test which, on the other end, basically did not pay attention to those grammatical rules. Today we talk about a new term, Alion.
Let's clear away a possible misunderstanding immediately. Elion and Elohim might seem like two terms deriving from the same root.
Instead, we must remember that the root Elohim derives from the root l. So here there is an iron, here there is an aleph, and therefore they are two completely different roots.
The term alion is a term that indicates being above is an objective.
So while Elohim is still given a number of meanings, Arion is given the meaning of the igist. Whenever you find the igist, or the most ig in the Bible, in Hebrew, there is actually this term here, Elion, now very ig, is an absolute superlative, but Elion is not a superlative. So this translation already gives us the idea of how there is a forcing in the passage from one language to another, an absolutely unjustified forcing.
One of the greatest jewish exegetes, Professor Emmanuel Tov, in his critical analysis of the biblical hebrew text, writes that Elion, el and Yahweh are not various ways to indicate the God of Israel, but they actually correspond to three different individuals. Tendency, monotheistic individual, diverse. In questolibro, I have identified a little more than 20 lom present in the Old Testament. And the curious thing is this, the term eloim is plural, while elion is singular. The term eloim is explained.
Its plurality is explained in many different ways because it must be said that it is singular. Therefore, it is said that loem is plural, but it is an indefinite superlative, a plural of abstraction, a plural of majesty, a plural of sovereignty, a plural of excellence, a plural of intensity. Now let's simply reason between ourselves for a moment. If we say that elion is the highest, all these plurals in Hebrew, indefinite superlative plural of abstraction, which therefore indicates indefinable majesty of God, should be applied to Elion, since this is the one who stands above all others.
But it is obvious it should apply to this because it is he who is on top.
So if there is a term that deserves this type of treatment, that is, the use of a plural of abstraction, of majesty, of sovereignty, of excellence. It is Elion. Well, Elion in the Bible never has the plural. Here we have two dictionaries written by the founder of the center for Ancient Abrio Studies, Dr. Jeff Benner, who, speaking of the term elion, clearly states with absolutely unquestionable simplicity, elion translation upper than the others.
That is, he who is above is higher than the others because he is above the others. But he is not very high. He is simply one who commands and always. This is another dictionary where he talks about the origins, the evolution of the saints, of the Hebrew Language. And he clearly says that the root of this term, Elion comes from two pictograms.
The FirSt indicates an I, that is, the one who observes, the one who controls. The Second, that is, the l, is the shepherd's stick. Therefore, this indicates the one who keeps an eye on everything and the one who governs others with the shepherd's staff.
Also, Plato, in his Dialogue Critia, tells that the gods, after dividing the Peoples, the Territories, ruled their peoples like shepherds. Very well then, this one, this one, who is above, who is above, but who is not very ike, but who is simply above others because he commands them, is the one who observes them and guides them as if he were a shepherd. So this is a fundamental fact. Elion, for example, is used in DeuteronoMy 32 eight when it is said that Elion divided the peoples and defined the boundaries of the nations based on the number of the children of Israel. So it is written in the bibles, but in the Text of Qumram, it is written that he divided them on the basis of the number of the children of the eloim.
ElioN is also used in the Book of JOshua, where it is even used to indicate the upper part of a bet or on Town. In the Bible there is bet or on above and bet or on below.
In Ezekiel, on the other end, we speak of a building that has a lower floor and an upper floor, always using the term elion.
Let's see the examples in this Comparative Bible Study.
Here we have the term Elion. And as you can see, this term Elion is clearly indicated as an absolute, singular masculine adjective. Have you seen? Let's move on to the other example of Elion, and let's go to the Book of Joshua. Let's go to chapter 16 in verse five, where again is the term elion.
But here the interesting thing is precisely this. While Elion, as you can see, is again indicated as an absolute singular Masculine Adjective. But here it clearly indicates that, as you can also read in one of the Translations, beloved, up to bet or on. Above that is, up to bet or on. And then an alion simply indicates above that is, it has nothing to do with that absolute superlative which is used to indicate the most height.
Now let's go to see another example. Let's go to exec. Here we are in exec 41 seven, where we even see a third type of use of the term elion. Meanwhile, as you can see in the usual square that appears, you see that it is a singular feminine adjective, because here we are talking about a construction, a building, and it is said that from the lower part we rise above the upper part. And this is precisely the meaning of Eliona, which even has the ending of the feminine, and here has the article.
So as for the other two examples, here we are back to a very concrete use. We are talking about an upper floor of a house, a building.
We saw three uses of alien in the Bible, three concrete uses, and we even saw one in the feminine. So why the rule of the famous plural of abstraction is not applied to Elion? Because Eloim has the plural ending. So you have to come up with an explanation. Elion doesn't have the plural ending used in this way, so there is no need up with an explanation.
And going on like this with some other indication that we, I and Paul Wallace give you, you will find yourself reading an extremely clear Bible without ever having to discuss translations with anyone. And respecting the ancient Otos. Hello. Thank you. See you next time.
Thank you. Maro. Elion really is a fascinating word. As Maro said, it's one of the words that we conventionally translate as God in the Bible. Now, when I say the word God, we think of an ultimate entity.
The apostle Paul once defined God as the source of the cosmos and everything in it, that in which we all live and move and have our being. But that is not the meaning of the word Elion, as we've already seen. And we think of Elion as this superlative. But as Mauro rightly said, it is a word that defines this being in relationship with other beings. But I want to go back to the formation of the hebrew canon, what christians call the Old Testament, because there's a very broad scholarly consensus that the hebrew scriptures took their current form sometime in the 6th century BCE, and that what happened was a scissors and paste redaction.
The library of scrolls and books that formed the hebrew canon were reworked, edited, cut and pasted to try and present a seamless story presenting the theology of the redactors at that time. So I would absolutely endorse what Maro said when he says that the final redaction of the Hebrew scriptures was done not on the basis of grammar or exposition of the texts, but was done for ideological reasons, to teach monotheism and to endorse the Jerusalem temple and disendors all the other temples that existed, and to endorse the high priestly family that ran the Jerusalem temple, as, in essence, the inheritors of the power of the monarchy. So it justifies the davidic monarchy and then the levitical priesthood, and then the authority of the high priestly family and the authority of the Jerusalem Temple. That's really the message of that final redaction in an attempt to pare JudaisM down and clean it up into this pyramid of powers. So if you follow the drama of the stories of the Hebrew canon, you arrive at the 7th century BCE, and the boy king Josiah, sets about reforming Judaism and sets about getting rid of all the vestiges of polytheism within Jewish practice.
So they destroy the high places and the standing stones, they get rid of the worship of ASHeRAH, because Judaism is not going to be polytheistic. It's not going to be henitheistic. It's going to be monotheistic. And let me just define what that means. It's not going to be polytheistic.
They're not going to worship YaHWeh and ASHeRaH. They're not going to have many gods. It's not going to be henathaistic, where they acknowledge other gods, but choose to worship this one. And so the memory of other powerful beings is sort of airbrushed over. It's going to be monotheistic.
And I don't want to downplay the importance of that message. I think the idea that we shouldn't be running around WoRshipping entities as gods is quite a positive message. But in the Process, they obscured the information that was carried by the earlier forms of the stories. Now, Elion is part of this process of change, because what Josiah did in jewish practice, cleaning it up from polytheism, getting rid of henetheism, turning it into monotheism. So the 6th century redactors tried to do within the texts.
So to lose the references to polytheism, hennetheism, edit all those books, so that it would appear that from start to finish, the hebrew canon is a seamless story teaching monotheism. Except, of course, within those stories, you've got these other entities washing around in the text. And Elion is one of them. As Maro said, elion means the powerful one, higher than the others. Now, what does that mean, higher than the others?
What does it mean higher than the others? Does it mean taller? Does it mean higher in space? Or does it just mean senior? Well, before we rush on to the conclusion, let me point out that this higher in space concept exists all around the world.
When talking about our ancestors cosmology, if you go to the Edo narrative from Nigeria and southern Benin, you will hear of Osana Bua, the Almighty one, above the waters. So we're thinking about an entity that's up there in the sky, looking down on the waters. Well, that's there, of course, in Genesis as well, where we have the flooded waters, and then the ruach arrives and hovers over the flooded waters. It's there in the mesoamerican story from out of the Popol Vu, the mayan tradition that speaks about the progenitors arriving in the darkness, hovering over the waters. If you go to the Philippines, you'll hear of the primordial TAgalog hovering above the waters.
Or there's the epic narrative from out of Nigeria of Abbasi and Attai, these advanced beings who hover in the sky above the planet. So these were beings that had seniority over humanity, and they were high in the sky. And I wonder if at that point, we conflated the ideas of being high and being advanced, being higher and being more senior. So Osana Boa is the Almighty one above the waters. In the Sumerian Stories, we have the descent of the sky people from on high who then govern over us.
So I would just want to flag seniority and high in the sky, there might be a connection between those concepts. And it's interesting what Maro was saying about Elion in the form of a pictogram. What a pictogram of Elion carries is this image of a staff for control and an eye supervising. And so there we have the two concepts held together, oversight, control, and seniority. Elion is the most senior of the Elohim, and Elion the most senior implies a group in which that seniority has a meaning.
So the picture that emerges is Elion is the commander of the Elohim. This idea of Elion as a commander makes sense of the pictogram, makes sense of the root meanings of the word. And it's interesting to me that if you go to the sumerian stories, which I believe are the Source narratives, but the biblical narratives, you have Enlil and EnkI Enlil is the commander of this region of space. EnkI is the commander of this region of Earth. So this notion that the advanced beings are commanders is there in the Source narrative as well.
Enki, Enlil, Elion, the senior powerful, one of the powerful ones. Now, so far, I've just talked about meanings, root meanings, pictographic meanings, but this is actually how the word Elion functions in the drama of the texts. If we go to psalm 57, for instance, if we look at this text, it says, I call to God, the most high. So that's how it's translated. I call to theos.
If I'm reading the Septuagint, which is the greek translation of the hebrew scriptures used by those who wrote for Jesus, it uses this greek word theos to translate Elion. Elion, I call to God the most high. But realizing that we're looking at Elion, let's read it in the hebrew text according to that root meaning we were just discussing. I call to the powerful one, to the most senior of the powerful ones.
Elion implies a group over which to be in command. Elion is an Elohim, the most powerful of the Elohim. And so this picture of what I would call a sky council, the concept that recurs in ancestral narratives all around the world, emerges. There it is in the Bible, this sky council of powerful ones who are presided over by a president, commander, Captain Elion, the most powerful of the Elohim. Take a look now at psalm 78, verse 35.
And they remembered that the powerful ones, their rock, and the verb to be is sort of read as being implicit in the text. They remember that the powerful ones were their rock, and that the powerful one, the most senior, was their redeemer.
Now, psalm 78, verse 35. Some people would say, ah, this is a classic couplet where in hebrew poetry you will say something twice, you say it once one way, and then say it again a slightly different way just to finesse the concept or hammer it home. And some people would say, that's what's happening here. But the text says, and they remembered that the powerful one was their rock, that the powerful one, the most senior, was their redeemer, and possibly translate powerful one as God. But Elohim is plural elsewhere in the psalms.
And I mention that because I believe Elohim is a word in transition in the hebrew scriptures, that it morphs from being a simple plural to being a group noun, to sometimes being used as a name or as a singular. Well, we see it elsewhere in the psalms as a plural, as we just did in psalm 57, to Elion, the powerful one, the most senior of the Elohim, the powerful ones. So if it's plural in psalm 57, perhaps it's plural in psalm 78. Let's read it that way. And they remembered that the powerful ones were their rock and that the powerful one, the most senior, was their redeemer.
So once again we have that picture of Elion as the commander of the Elohim, a sky council of powerful beings over which ElIon is presiding. Now, Mauro mentioned this text from Deuteronomy 32, verse eight, the Kumran text in which the nations are being parceled out among the Elohim. Now, if you go to the Septuagint, that's the greek translation of the hebrew scriptures, it says that the nations were parceled out among the Angelon Theu, among the agents of God. But we note that Theu is actually a rendition of the Hebrew Elohim, the agents of Elohim. So we've got the Bene Elohim in the Qumran text and we've got the agents of Elohim in the Septuagint.
So that's why I would lean to the same interpretation as Maro, that we're looking at a council of powerful ones. And then Elion is going to parcel out the lands and the people that belong to those lands, to the various Elohim. And that is how the drama of the hebrew scriptures plays out, that you have human society divided into human colonies, each with their own powerful one governing over those local colonies. And Elion's role is to preside over that distribution of lands and people. And Yahweh is the Elohim who gets the people of Israel.
So what's interesting about that is that we have a picture of humanity presided over by Elohim, presided over by Elion. And Yahweh is down here, one of the junior powerful ones presided over by Elion. So there's the clue that Yahweh is not God. Elion isn't God either. He's one of the powerful ones, the most senior.
Elsewhere in the hebrew canon, we see the sky council in operation. We see it in one kings 22, fermenting war. We see it at the beginning of the Book of Job, where two of the powerful ones are toying with a human being, much like a boy with a magnifying glass might toy with an ant. It's not a pretty picture, but the picture is coherent, that we've got a body of powerful beings that might be quite diverse. Elion presides over it.
Yahweh is on that council, and that really is the stable and coherent picture of the human condition that plays out all the way through the hebrew canon. And so what we've seen this time around about El Elion, who is the commander of the Elohim, is that it sets us up to go back to this junior level of Elohim and to this particular character of Yahweh and find out where Yahweh fits in the picture, because for a long time believers have equated Yahweh with the concept of God. And once you translate Elohim and Elion, you realize you cannot make that equation. But that's for next time.
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 Maro Bilino, along with links to their published works, follow the links in the video description. Thanks for watching the fifth kind.
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