Chapter 18 Creationism Is the Whore of Babylon! | Enuma Elish | Ishtar, the Whore of Babylon | Hoodoo in Jerusalem | Urim and Thummim

Enuma Elish

The prevailing view among scholars is that Genesis 1 is derived from a depraved polytheistic Babylonian myth called Enuma Elish.  This is because there are several converging similarities between Genesis 1 and Enuma Elish.  Below is a list: 

Genesis 1 says that creation took place over seven days.  Likewise, Enuma Elish is a creation account written on seven tablets. 

Genesis 1 says that humans were created on the sixth day.  Likewise, the creation of humans is recorded on Enuma Elish’s sixth tablet. 1 

Genesis 1 says that God made the sun, moon, and stars to be signs for times and seasons.  Likewise, Enuma Elish says that the sun, moon, and stars were created in the form of constellations, and rules were established to govern them so that they don’t "wander." 2 

Genesis 1 says that a solid ceiling, or firmament, was spread out above us to hold the weight of an ocean in the sky. 3  This firmament must be quite strong to support the weight of the water. 4  Likewise, Enuma Elish says that there is an ocean in the sky, and that the torso of a dead goddess named Tiamat forms a firmament to support its weight. 5

Genesis' Priestly account of the Flood, which bears many markings of Genesis 1's cosmological assumptions, asserts that there are fountains of the ocean deep that can spring up and flood the land. 6  Likewise, Enuma Elish asserts that the god Marduk took the breasts of the dead goddess Tiamat and made mountains of them.  Then he ran fountains from the ocean deep through her nipples to make springs, rivers, and lakes. 7

Genesis 1 says that "darkness was on the face of the deep."  The Hebrew word for "the deep" is Tihom.  In Enuma Elish, the goddess of the ocean deep is called Tiamat.  The two words are obvious cognates, and they are both identified with the depths of the ocean.  Enuma Elish tells how Tiamat was killed by the god Marduk, and so it is natural that Genesis 1 mention that "darkness was on the face of Tihom (the deep)" – because Tihom was killed, and so her face was dark.  As Albright put it, "There was originally a statement in verse 2 mentioning specifically and succinctly the triumph of God over the great Deep – Tehom = Acc. (Accadian) Tiamat – which was later deleted." 8

The very next phrase in Genesis 1 continues, "and the Spirit of God moved over the waters."  The Hebrew word for spirit here is Ruach, which can also mean "wind."  According to Enuma Elish, the god Marduk killed Tiamat by blowing a hurricane of wind into her belly and exploding her from the inside out. 9  Wind moving over the waters is apparently the Bible’s way of remembering this primordial hurricane.

Why is their so much bloodshed in Enuma Elish?  According to Enuma Elish, the goddess Tiamat was pregnant with the gods.  She decided to kill her own children.  But the gods hired a hit man named Marduk who killed her instead.

Genesis 1 bears all the markings of a sanitized "G-Rated" version of an earlier "X-Rated" Babylonian myth.  The authors of Genesis 1 probably didn’t care about whether their story was scientifically accurate or not.  They couldn't prove that the earth was created in six days, nor did they care to do so.  They just wanted to create a theologically acceptable alternative to the popular nonsense of the day.

From a theological standpoint, it is rather disturbing that creationists are defending a regurgitated Babylonian myth, especially in light of what the Revelation tells us about Babylon: 

MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 10 

Revelation speaks of this "whore of Babylon" clothed in red, who drinks the blood of the saints, and she is usually interpreted to represent false religion.  Enuma Elish is straight out of Babylon, and it represents a very depraved and false religion indeed!  Enuma Elish is the spawn of Babylon, and Genesis 1 is its sibling.  Thus, we might rightfully label the entire creationist worldview as a child of the Whore of Babylon!

At the heart of both Enuma Elish and Genesis 1 is an erroneous earth-centered assumption about the solar system.  When the ancients saw the sun set in the west, toward the Mediterranean Sea, they reasoned that the sun sank into the ocean.  What keeps the sun in the ocean during the nighttime?  Perhaps a big monster keeps it hostage in the ocean deep.  In order for the sun to rise, a hero must kill the monster.  Tiamat was the monster and Marduk was the hero.  When the monster is disposed of, the sun and the waters of the ocean are free to ascend to the heavens, and that's why we have sunlight and rainwater. 

Seeing that this myth is thoroughly refutable on the basis of scientific fact, we may discard it as ignorant superstition; and, since Genesis 1 is derived from this nonsense, we may discard it also. 

Yet there is an element of scientific truth to Enuma Elish.  The myth states that the primordial mother goddess Tiamat wanted to kill her own children.  In this, she is like Mother Nature.  Natural selection is made possible when Mother Nature sacrifices her own children before they procreate, thus bringing about evolution by means of cleansing the gene pool.  In this, the Babylonian myth Enuma Elish is actually more scientific than Genesis 1, for Tiamat is truly a symbol of Mother Nature, in that she kills her own children.

Ishtar, the Whore of Babylon

The goddess Ishtar was also a whore of Babylon, for she betrayed and cheated on her husband Tammuz numerous times, 11 and she was known for hanging out with prostitutes. 12  She was such a suck-you-butt that she even threatened to raise zombies out of hell to overwhelm the land of the living. 13 

Ishtar was apparently very fond of the colorful stone lapis lazuli, and of gold, for she mentioned these precious elements in oracles she delivered to the Babylonians. 14  Lapis lazuli is blue and purple with specks of gold-yellow color.  The Priestly text states that the uniforms of the priests were blue, purple, and yellow. 15  King Solomon apparently decorated the temple with lapis lazuli, forthe Queen of Sheba is reported to have noticed it in the newly constructed temple. 16 

Lapis lazuli was frequently used as a religious stone in ancient times.  Egyptian women used it as makeup.  It is found in the tombs of pharaohs and on the seals of Assyrians and Babylonians.  Far from being particular to the Hebrew faith, it was a mark of pagan influence.  Therefore, the use of lapis lazuli colors on the Priestly garments is evidence that the priests of Jerusalem were practicing religion in the tradition of the pagans, and therefore it is right to call them the whore of Babylon.

Hoodoo in Jerusalem

Hoodoo folk witchcraft, which is common in the southern United States, traces its roots to Zadok, the first high priest of the Jerusalem temple.  According to the hoodoo’s own historical claims, their occult practices were derived from the 6th and 7th books of Moses, which Moses supposedly wrote in addition to the first five books of the Bible.  These books were secrets until the time of Zadok the priest.  Of course, one must wonder how a book could have been kept secret for so long, for there were several hundred years between Moses and Zadok.  It is more likely that Zadok wrote the book himself as a forgery, just as his descendents invented the Priestly text.  It is interesting that the Jerusalem temple priests kept turning up secret holy books nobody had ever heard of before.  It supports our thesis that the Jerusalem temple priests were a bunch of con-artists and scoundrels who falsified roughly half the Torah and deceitfully passed it off as divine inspiration.  Worse, if the hoodoo tradition is to be believed, they practiced witchcraft.

Urim and Thummim

The Priestly text makes frequent mention of certain sacred stones called the Urim and Thummim.  It is believed that a person would ask the Urim and Thummim questions, and they would respond by glowing light.  Strangely, the Urim and Thummim are never mentioned at all in the earlier Yahwist and Elohist sources.  They are never mentioned in the Prophets either.  In short, the Urim and Thummim only appear in very late texts – namely the Priestly portions of the Pentateuch, the 5th century texts of Ezra and Nehemiah, and in the very late pseudepigraphal Song of Moses. 17 

There is one exception.  Urim is mentioned without Thummim in the early book of Samuel, yet here it only says that "Yahweh did not answer with dreams, Urim, or prophets," which means he did not care to communicate by means of Urim and Thummim.  Hence, the verse does not necessarily lend support to the Priestly use of it.  Besides this, it can be explained as an interpolation, because the earlier Elohist version does not mention Urim, but only says "Elohim (in place of Yahweh) does not answer with prophets or dreams." 18  In Samuel, there is an Elohist core that is older than the Yahwist portions.  Urim is only mentioned in one of the Yahwist passages.  Therefore, the use of Urim and Thummim is only condoned in the late texts.

We must ask the question, if the use of Urim and Thummim is never condoned in the earlier parts of the Bible, were they really part of the early Hebrew religion?  Did they really come from Moses?  And if not, then this is another blow to the Priestly text and its creation myth in Genesis 1, for it means that the Priestly sect consulted with an occult device used for divination, which is tatamount to flirting with demons.  The Priestly text describes the use of the device as follows:

"Put the Urim and Thummim in the mishpat breastplate, and they will be on Aaron’s heart when he goes before Yahweh… and you shall make the priest’s garment all blue." 19 

The Hebrew word mishpat refers to the act of making a decision, or answering a question about what to do.  The Urim and Thummim were used to ask God a question, to which he answered yes or no.  Also, "Urim" is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and "Thummim" is the last, which suggests that the Urim and Thummim contained an alphabet, in addition to its yes/no function.  If this interpretation is correct, the Urim and Thummim must have been very much like an Ouija board, since Ouija boards communicate by means of both an alphabet and a yes/no function.  Since exorcists generally agree that Ouija boards are a fast track for demonic possession, and since the Urim and Thummim were so similar to Ouija boards, we should ponder if the Urim and Thummim were devices for divination which connected the priests to the demonic realm. 

Divination is condemned throughout the Bible.  Jeremiah and Kings mention divination negatively.  Ezekiel repeatedly condemned divination.  Deuteronomy offers a blanket condemnation of all witchcraft, specifically including divination. 20  So why does the Bible condone the Urim and Thummim, seeing that they were a tool for divination?  The explanation, I think, is that the use of Urim and Thummim was a heretical practice of the Priestly sect.

The Urim and Thummim were allegedly used to translate the Book of Mormon, according to their founder Joseph Smith, 21 who was excommunicated from the Methodist Church for his involvement in the occult.     The Urim and Thummim are also featured on the seal of Yale University.  Yale is home to the nefarious secret society called "Skull and Bones," to which both candidates of the 2004 US Presidential election belonged. 

Therefore, we may conclude that the Jerusalem temple priests were deciding public policy based on oracles from an ancient Ouija board!  They were conjuring up Captain Howdy and his band of wild demons to help them run their ostensibly "theocratic" government.  Perhaps this explains why Jewish culture sank into a 300 year dark age as soon as Ezra introduced Priestly religion to the second temple.