The Ancient Tradition

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Music

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You’re listening to The Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production. Music provided by Joseph McDade. He is your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to the ancient tradition. I’m your host, Jack Logan. It’s great to have you along for today’s episode. Today we’re gonna continue our discussion on the fourth pillar of creation, the council of the gods. In our last episode, we established that divine councils were a common feature of all major ancient cultures. We find them all over in the ancient world.

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The ancients taught that a civil government existed in the heavens, a government that was headed by a divine monarch. They taught that this monarch, the high god, reigned as a celestial king from the summit of his mountain home on a throne dais. But he didn’t act alone. The ancients taught that the high god presided as supreme authority over a council, a council of gods, a council.

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who made proposals, assigned responsibilities, delegated over important decisions and voted, and then bound themselves by oath to the decisions that were made in that assembly. If you are a first time listener or you haven’t had a chance to listen to our last episode, I highly recommend giving it a listen. It’ll give you some really important background. Unlike a lot of podcasts, which primarily produce standalone episodes, this podcast is

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progressive, which means that each episode builds upon the previous episode. So when you get a chance, be sure to catch up on the episodes you’ve missed. So you’re kind of up to speed before I jump into today’s episode. I also wanted to let you know that if you’re interested in the enuma, Elish the Babylonian Epic of creation, I dropped another explanation and commentary on the enuma Elish lines 79 to 161 of tablet one.

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And I did that on, I dropped it on our sister podcast, the ancient tradition audio writ. There’s a lot of fun stuff in there. In our last episode, I mentioned that today’s episode would be on the council of the gods in the biblical canon. And it will be, but before I get into that, I wanted to share a few more examples of the council of the gods in the texts that we find in the ancient world, other texts outside of the biblical canon. In our last episode, we covered a couple of Babylonian texts.

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But that’s, I felt like that’s just not enough to give you a good idea of how prevalent this motif is in the ancient literature. So before we jump into the biblical canon, I wanna take a look at the divine council in the ancient Egyptian and Ugaritic, which is the Canaanite literature. And so let’s go ahead and start with Egypt. In the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts.

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which I’ve mentioned several times on the podcast, which is the oldest collection of religious writings anywhere in the world. It’s as far back as we can go and get that big of a collection. And they’re dated to 2400 BC. And in them we find mention of a divine council. And this can be found in King Pepe, who was the third king of the sixth dynasty. So this is very early on. And in these pyramid texts that were found in his tomb,

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At this point, King Pepe has died. He’s ascended to the heavens. This is within the text and has become divine. Pyramid text 423 reads, and this comes from the James P. Allen translation. “‘O Osiris Pepe, accept these your cool waters. “‘Your mother Newt has made you be a god “‘to your opponent in your identity of God. “‘Accept the outflow that comes from you. “‘Horus’

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has made the gods assemble for you in every place in which you have gone.” So, you know, Pepe ascends to the heavens and he there he meets this assembly of gods. In pyramid text 422, King Pepe is told that he should take his position in the heavens on a throne and it reads, quote, you take up your position, Pepe.

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on thighs forwards throne, saved, provided as a god, and equipped with Osiris’s form on foremost of Westerners throne. So like I just mentioned, here Pepe joins the gods who have assembled for him, and he takes up a throne among them. It’s quite fascinating. In Pyramid Text 432, King Pepe’s told that he’s now

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imperishable star among the imperishable stars, plural, in heaven. And I’ve mentioned this before too, but in ancient Egypt the imperishable stars were the circumpolar stars of the northern sky. So if you lived in the northern hemisphere and you looked up, it’s those stars that never descend below the horizon. And the Egyptians used these eternally shining stars as a symbol of the immortal or the deified dead.

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one who now reigned in the heavens as a god. So to become part of the imperishable stars was another way of saying you have become a god. And the heavens are full of these stars. And so this suggests that there are multiple gods in the heavens. The ancient Egyptians painted these imperishable stars on the ceiling of the king’s tomb. So if you go onto the internet and you look at King Pepe’s tomb and you look at the ceiling of his tomb, you’re gonna just see hundreds and hundreds of stars,

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pointed stars and they look kind of human like they’re in stick form five pointed stars and that represented the King ascending to the imperishable star so we’re getting this motif of multiple gods and an assembly waiting the new God who has come. Pyramid text 432 reads you have placed for yourself this Pepe as an imperishable star that is in you. In pyramid text 441 that you might go to

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the Northern imperishable stars. So in that text, you can see the Egyptians equate them, gods and the imperishable stars were one in the same idea. And this is a clear expression that King Pepe upon his death is now going to join the multiple gods in the heavens. In pyramid text 437, King Pepe appears to be made one of the members of the divine assembly. And this pyramid starts with

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what the divine assembly of gods has declared in it reads. Hear this which the gods have said, the son says he will occupy his Pepe so that he might receive his status as Ock at the gods for as Horus or Osiris’ son, giving him his status as Ock as one of the watchers of pay and privileging him as a god as one of the watchers of Nechon.

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So a couple of things I have to clarify for you. What does Akh mean and Akhify? I’ve done that before, but in case you’ve forgotten, in ancient Egypt to become Akh or Akhified meant to become a quote effective one. And it really just represented an aspect of the Egyptian soul that was transfigured into a being of light.

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necessary process the deceased king had to go through to become an immortal God in the heavens. So he’s got to go through this process of aquification of his soul to become like light which of course is associated with the imperishable stars. But he does this, he’s aquified and then he becomes one of the watchers of Pei. I mean he becomes like one of the watchers of Pei. So who are these watchers? The watchers of Pei and the watchers of Nechen

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sometimes referred to as the souls of Pei or the gods of Pei in Nechon. These are the gods. These gods are the royal ancestors of the king, the line of kings that preceded him. And this starts with, you know, from the very first dynasty. So he’s going to join with the ancestors, his ancestors who have died before him. In the ancient Egyptians, they made statues of these deceased god-kings.

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known as the Royal Statuary and they placed them in the temple and they placed them in the four court of the temple. So you walk in and there’s just hundreds of hundreds of these statues of the line of kings that have died and they call them the souls of Pei and Nechon. And this is really interesting because as we saw in the previous episode this is the exact same place that the council of the gods met in Mesopotamia.

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in the forecourt of the temple. Thord Kull Jacobsen, the Danish expert in Assyrian Sumerian literature that we referred to in the last episode, he said this, quote, the highest authority in the Mesopotamian universe was the assembly of the gods. It met when occasion arose in Nippur in the corner of the forecourt of Ikur, Enlil’s temple there, called Upsu-Ukina.

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So it’s my contention that this royal statuary, these statues of the gods of Pei and Eken, the royal ancestors, were meant to represent the assembly of the gods in Egypt, the assembly that the dead king would now join, the assembly that he could become a part of. In ancient Egypt, these gods were sometimes referred to as the gods who follow Horus. And we’ll talk about that in a

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Egyptologist notes that these gods were understood as a collective. So they’re called the souls or the gods or the collective and in the other ancient literature it’s the assembly. It’s the council. And this is just a quick interesting side note. In 1903 a French Egyptologist by the name of George Legrane, he was actually working and excavating in the North Court of the

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massive cache of these royal statues. And they’d been relegated to kind of large pits. And this was done because over the centuries, the ancients had to make room for more and more of these statues. There was so many. And he found over a three year period, he found over 900 of these stone statues, which makes quite an assembly. And then in 1989, another statutory cache was found on the Western side of the solar court and the Luxor temple.

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and it also contained a massive stockpile of statues. If my contention is correct, these statues were meant to be a stone representation of the council of the gods in Egyptian temples. In the Ugaritic literature, which is made up of about 1,500 ancient cuneiform clay tablets that were found in Ugarit, it’s an ancient port city in what is now known as Northern Syria.

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In ancient times, the area was known as the land of Canaan. And these tablets were found, they were found accidentally. And there’s, I love all these kinds of ancient stories about how these texts were found, but they were found in 1928 by a farmer. A farmer was out plowing his field when he hit a stone. And when he got up, when he went around and he removed the stone, he found that it opened up to an underground vault. And it’s sort of like right out of national treasure. I mean, it was filled with…

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all kinds of jewelry and artifacts and things and in there were all of these tablets. What he’d found was the ancient Phoenician city of Ugarit, which is known today as Rosh Shamara. Scholars date these tablets to about 1300 to 1200 BC. And these tablets are really important here because they contain numerous references to the council of the gods. In fact, it…

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They contain so much council material that E Theodore Mullen while he was working on his PhD at Harvard wrote an entire book on it titled the assembly of the gods and It’s pretty much basically based off of what was found in the Canaanite literature If you’re interested in taking a look at it and you want to browse through it You can browse through an early version of it on the internet on internet archive and you can do that for free It goes by the title

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the divine council in Canaanite and early Hebrew literature. In these texts, the divine council is referred to as Puru Mo’idu, which means the gathered assembly of holy ones, the assembly of the gods or the assembly of the sons of El. Now in Canaan, El was the high god. He was the king, the father, the progenitor of the gods in Canaanite mythology. So as such,

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he stood at the head of the Canaanite pantheon. And Mullen notes, quote, El must be pictured as the aged judge who, as we shall show, sat at the head of the assembly, surrounded by the other gods. So the council here, just like we saw in Mesopotamia, served at times as a court of judgment. And keep the idea of God as a judge and the council as a

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of judgment in the back of your mind, because I’m gonna share some fun insights connected to that in our next episode. I’m gonna be reading from the English translation of cuneiform tablet 2.1, and it’s known as the Baal, B-A-A-L, cycle. And I don’t wanna get too bogged down in the ins and outs of the myth here, because it is very similar to some of the same motifs we’ve seen in the Enuma Elish. Baal is actually the Marduk figure here.

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I just want to focus on what we can learn about the council. In this tablet, messengers of Yam, who is the personification of the sea and the enemy of Baal, so he equates with Tiamat or Lucifer and Baal equates with Marduk or Christ. They’re sent to address the council of the gods, the sons of the high god El, E-L. And I read, arise lads, do not tarry.

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verily set face toward the appointed assembly to the midst of Mount Luli. Okay, so notice for right away this assembly meets on a mountain, also known as a temple, which we’ve pointed out Mount Luli, which is the quote Mount of El. It’s the temple where the high Canaanite god El resides. To the feet of El do not fall.

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Do not prostrate yourselves to the appointed assembly. Arise, constantly stare. So here, the messengers of Yam, right, who is akin to Tiamat and Satan or Lucifer, tells his messengers, when you go to this council, don’t prostrate yourself, look them straight in the eye. Repeat your message and say to Bull, his father El, repeat to the appointed assembly, the lads arise, they do not tarry.

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verily they set face to the midst of Mount Luley toward the appointed assembly. Now the gods were seated to eat. The sons of Kutsu do dine. Baal was standing beside El. So this is an important point to point out. So you have the high God El and right next to him is standing Baal who is similar to a Christ figure or Marduk.

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So they’re two separate beings here, they’re two separate gods. And when the gods saw them, espied the messengers of Yam, the envoys of Judge River, the gods lowered their heads to the tops of their knees to their princely thrones. So in this council of the gods, some of them must have been enthroned. They’re sitting on thrones called here princely thrones. And when they are confronted by the messengers of Yam,

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They kind of look away. That’s probably enough to demonstrate the significance of the divine council in the Ugaritic literature. Mullen notes, quote, “‘This text provides a description of the council meeting, the place of the meeting, the reception of messengers with their request to the council, and the response of the council to that request. Also, this description clearly places El, the head of the pantheon, as the leader and judge in the council.'”

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And just like we saw in ancient Egypt and Babylon, the council of the gods here is tightly connected to kingship and the investiture of a new king. Now that we’ve taken a look at the evidence of the divine council in the Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Ugaritic literature, let’s take a look at it in the biblical canon. Is there any evidence of a divine council in the Bible? Is it mentioned in the New Testament? Are there?

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any direct references in the biblical canon to the divine council of gods. Surprisingly, especially to a lot of Judeo-Christians who adhere to a strictly monotheistic tradition, there are a number of references and inferences to a divine council in the biblical canon.

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Paul Sumner, who I mentioned in the previous episode, who wrote his master’s thesis on the divine council, he says this about how prevalent the divine council is in the biblical canon, quote, numerous biblical texts testify to the belief in a heavenly council consisting of Yahweh the King and his staff. References to God’s royal throne room and his entourage of heavenly servants occur in all three portions

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of Hebrew scripture, the laws, the prophets, and the writings. In all major literary genres, including narrative, historical, prophetic, poetic, liturgical, wisdom and visionary, and in the earliest and latest dated materials, it is also found in materials spanning all of time, from the primeval moments of creation to the eschatological arrival of God’s Kingdom.

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it’s important to see how deeply embedded this imagery and concept are in the various strata of the Hebrew Bible. Another scholar by the name of Patrick Miller, he was the Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. And he goes even farther to argue that the Council of the Gods imagery is, quote, one of the central

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cosmological symbols of the Old Testament. So here we have these two scholars that have studied this a lot, and they’re saying that the biblical presentation of the divine council represents the way in which the ancient Hebrews actually understood the organization of the heavens. Paul Sumner says, quote, the divine council imagery expresses how the biblical writers

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understood the machinery and systems of the universe. In other words, these gentlemen are arguing that the divine council motif was core to the theology of the Old Testament. If that’s the case, then why do so few Judeo-Christians seem to know about this? Well, one of the reasons I think is because research on the divine council is just relatively contemporary, it really hasn’t taken off until about the year 2000.

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I went into academia.edu, which is a database of academic articles, and I typed in divine council. I typed that into the search engine and a graph popped up of the articles that had been written on the divine council since 1938. In between 1938 and 2000, a period of about 60 years, only 565 articles had been written on some aspect of the divine council.

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Between 2000 and 2023, more than 8,500 academic articles had been written on the divine council. So it’s really only been recently that this subject has been taken up by scholars and it’s come into the public sphere. And of course, the second reason I think that the divine council of gods is not really talked about too much in the Judeo-Christian tradition is because obviously it’s problematic.

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for a religious tradition that’s understood by most to be strictly monotheistic. But despite this, those scholars who have really dug into it and rigorously examined the Bible have shown that the divine council is not only referenced throughout the biblical canon, but it’s core. It’s core to the cosmology and it’s core to the theology of Judaism and Christianity.

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The ancient Hebrew scriptures attest that a divine council exists in the heavens and that that council makes up the real or actual order or governing body in the heavens. It’s a concept that, you know, many Judeo-Christians are only now beginning to take seriously. So let’s jump in and examine a few of these passages. Some of the most notable examples can be found in Psalms.

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We see specific references to the council of the gods in Psalm 82. The new revised standard version of Psalms 82 verse one reads, God has taken his place in the divine council in the midst of the gods, and that’s plural, he holds judgment. The new international version of that same verse is translated, God presides in the great assembly.

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he renders judgment among the gods. The council of the gods is also mentioned in Psalm 89 and Psalm 89 is fascinating and it’s fascinating not only because of the references that we get to the divine council, but because of other aspects of the Psalm that correspond to the motifs we found in the enuma, Elish.

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So let’s go through parts of Psalm 89 and I’ll draw out a few of these motifs. Psalm 89 verse five, the new revised standard version translation of this reads, quote, let the heavens praise your wonders, oh Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. The mention of the divine assembly in Psalm 89 is.

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pretty significant because Psalm 89 is known as one of 11 or so royal Psalms. Royal Psalms are a set of Psalms that focus on the relationship between God and His vice-regent, the earthly King. It’s in these Royal Psalms that we learn that there’s a profound theology of kingship. It’s embedded in those and it’s all connected to the divine council and some other aspects.

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I’ll save that topic for another time, but I do want to point out how the content of Psalm 89 is deeply connected to the pillars of creation or the creation motifs that we’ve seen all over the world so far in this podcast. And let me read a little bit here starting in verse seven. The New International Version of the Bible reads, quote, in the council of the holy ones, God, and this is speaking of Yahweh or Jehovah, is greatly feared.

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He is more awesome than all who surround him. This might be sounding a little bit familiar to you because this is sort of how they were talking about Marduk. Remember Marduk was double the gods and he was to be feared. We’re getting the same ideas here. The context of these verses is clearly the counsel of the gods. We can see that, it’s very explicit. In verse eight, O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee?

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or to thy faithfulness round about thee.” So here we are in the council of the gods, Jehovah is being praised as incomparable to the other gods in the council. And then what do we find in the very next two verses? We read about Jehovah’s power over the primordial waters and how he conquered the sea monster that dwelt in the depths. The King James Version reads, verse nine.

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Thou rulest the raging of the sea, when the waves thereof arise thou stillest them. So Jehovah brings order to the primordial waters. And then in the very next verse, in verse 10, thou hast broken Rahab, which is the Leviathan, in pieces is one that is slain. I kind of like the New Living translation of this verse. It reads, you crushed the great sea monster.

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I like that translation, it’s pretty good. Okay, so we’ve gone through just four verses, seven, eight, nine, and 10, and we’re following the very pattern that we see in the Enuma Elish. So from here, what do you think we’re gonna see in the next verse? Based off of what we saw in the previous episode, what do you think is going to be mentioned next after Jehovah has conquered the Leviathan? If you guessed that the next verse is gonna mention the creation of the world,

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then he’d be absolutely correct because that’s exactly what we saw in the enuma Elish. If you recall in the enuma Elish, Marduk who was double the other gods is chosen in a primordial council of the gods to battle the awful sea monster Tiamat. Marduk successfully slays the sea monster. And then it’s directly after this that he uses her slain carcass to create the world.

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which is a symbolic reference to slaying the chaotic, lifeless, primordial elements and imposing order or creation upon them. It’s pretty fascinating. Let’s read verse 11, the very next verse where we read of Jehovah’s creation of the world. The King James version reads, quote, “‘The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine. “‘As for the world and the fullness thereof, “‘thou hast founded them.'”

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The new international translation reads, quote, “‘The heavens are yours and yours also the earth. “‘You founded the world and all that is in it.'” So those verses clearly attest that Jehovah was the creator of the world. So let’s pause here for just a second. Do you remember what happened next in the Enuma Elish? After Marduk slayed the sea monster and created the world, what did the council of the gods do?

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to Marduk. Think about this for a second. After Marduk returned from slaying Timon and creating the world, what did the council of the gods do? If you guessed, coronated him a king, then again, you’d be absolutely correct. So in Psalm 89 then, we expect to see, we should see a reference to the same thing happening after Jehovah slays Rahab and creates the world. And guess what?

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That’s exactly what we see. In verse 18, it reads, quote, for the Lord is our defense and the Holy One of Israel, Jehovah is our King. Jehovah is established as King. And keep in mind that in both the Enuma Elish and in Psalm 89, all of this happens in the primordial realm, or as some scholars have coined it, the eternal world. And it’s worth noting here that the rest of Psalm 89,

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focuses on the connection between the divine king Jehovah and his earthly co-regent, the earthly king, King David, which is where in future episodes we’ll get into that theology of kingship. So what does all of this mean? These indisputable striking parallels between the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish and the theology that we find in Psalm 89 of the Hebrew Bible.

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For starters, the theological parallels between the two provide strong evidence that the ancient Hebrews understood the council of gods to be just that, a council of gods, plural. The ancient Egyptians, the Sumerians, Babylonians, Canaanites, and the Israelites all describe the council of the gods as a council made up of gods, plural. But as we mentioned in our previous episode, many Bible scholars, especially those who are

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personally devout monotheists go to great lengths to to argue that the gods mentioned in the biblical canon are not actually gods but our messengers or servants or angels or Sometimes semi-divine or but they’re they’re never truly divine but let me remind you that that is just not what the ancients taught in the cultural miloo of The ancient Near East the gods in the council of the gods were always gods

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in the true full sense of the word. Speaking of the references to the council of the gods in the Hebrew Bible, Paul Sumner writes, quote, what’s most striking about some titles for the council members is their unabashed affirmation of semi divinity. See, not even Paul wants to call them fully divine, yet he’s going to right in the very next sentence here, listen, these beings are openly referred to as Elohim.

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gods, divine beings. They are also benay elohim and benay elim and benay elion, which is sons of god or sons of the most high. Such terms are borderline dangerous because they closely mirror ancient Near Eastern pantheons where their father deity is surrounded by his children deities, the lesser gods.

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But the Israelites weren’t embarrassed by this. They firmly held onto the council imagery throughout their history. It apparently posed no threat to Jehovah’s position. For he was Ha-Elohim, which means the God or the only real God or the true God. Summoner makes actually a really good point here. Israel does differ from the ancient Egyptian, Sumerians and Babylonians and stuff in that only one God,

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in the divine council was to be worshiped and this was Jehovah. Sort of and I’ll get to that in just a minute. But this difference known as monolatry, the worship of only one God, although other gods are recognized as existing, is a very very important difference and quite fundamental to the Judeo-Christian tradition even though we’re going to question even that designation of

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Let’s take a look at evidence of the council of the gods in the New Testament. I’m not aware of any direct references to the divine council in the New Testament like we saw in the Old Testament, but there are several passages spread throughout the New Testament that point to and include divine council imagery. Sumner writes this quote, several passages in the New Testament suggest a deep and widespread awareness.

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of the Hebrew divine council. Though the apocalyptic book of Revelation contains many of these tests, divine council imagery is also common in the gospels and letters. Let’s start by looking at some of the divine council imagery in the gospel of John. I love the gospel of John, it’s one of my favorite. In particular, John chapter eight. In this chapter, Christ testifies of his Messiahship.

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to a group of Jewish scribes and Pharisees. In verse 12, it reads, quote, “‘Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, “‘I am the light of the world. “‘He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, “‘but shall have the light of life.'” In the next verse, the Pharisees challenge Jesus. So he’s just declared his Messiahship, and now the Pharisees are gonna challenge him, and it reads, quote,

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The Pharisees therefore said unto him, thou bearest record of thyself. Thy record is not true. The Pharisees are basically telling Jesus that they don’t believe he is the light of the world. They don’t believe he is the Messiah. And why don’t they believe? Well, they tell us why they don’t believe them. Because quote, thou bearest record of thyself.

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It’s like the Pharisees are telling Jesus that just because you say you are the Messiah doesn’t mean you are the Messiah. We don’t have to take your word for it. We don’t have to believe what you’re saying is true. But there’s a little bit more going on here than meets the eye. See, within a Jewish court, two witnesses were needed to establish truth. So here the Pharisees are telling Jesus that they need more than his individual witness.

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of his messiahship in order to believe that he is the messiah. They need another witness. And in the Jewish court, this is established by the law, which is found in Deuteronomy chapter 19 verse 15, which says, one witness shall not arise against a man for any sin or guilt that he may commit. According to two witnesses, or according to three witnesses, a matter shall stand.

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So according to Jewish law, one witness does not provide conclusive proof. Sumner says this of John chapter eight, and listen closely to this. He says, the Johannin writings seem to depict an interplay between two courts, the earthly Sanhedrin, which was the supreme council and court of the Jews that was headed up by the high priest, and the heavenly divine council.

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The words and works of Jesus are being scrutinized by both and Jesus knows it. He frequently cites his heavenly witness in defense of what he’s doing and who he is. So that’s quite interesting. We have sort of a pseudo Sanhedrin going with these Pharisees questioning his Messiahship, yet Jesus is a member of this divine council.

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and he knows he’s going to have to answer to that counsel as well. And Jesus responds to the Pharisees in verse 14. The new revised standard version translation says this, even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going. I testify on my own

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testifies on my behalf. These words spoken by Jesus to the Pharisees make no sense here, especially in terms of a judicial court if Jesus and the Father are understood as the same being, as one God. In this court setting, Jesus is claiming to have another witness, somebody else besides himself that can vouch for or testify of his Messiahship, a second witness

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by which they could obtain conclusive proof according to the Sanhedrin’s laws. And Jesus explicitly tells the Pharisees this in verse 18. He says, even in your law, it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. So if Jesus can have two witnesses to his Messiahship, then the Pharisees should know that he is the Messiah. It is true.

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Jesus meets the Jewish Sanhedrin’s threshold of two witnesses only if he and the Father are separate beings, actually Father and Son. And we find Jesus make this distinction himself between Father and Son over and over and over in the New Testament. And this suggests that they may have been one in purpose and character but separate in being and such

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such a statement like this, I testify on my own behalf and the father who sent me testifies on my behalf made by Jesus himself. He’s the one that made this statement. It clearly indicates that Jesus understood himself and his father to be two separate beings. And that would of course mean we are talking about two separate gods or a plurality of gods.

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If we turn to John chapter 17, the great intercessory prayer, we find another example of Jesus distinguishing himself from God the Father. Scholars believe this prayer is a great high priestly prayer that Jesus gave in the temple, in the Holy of Holies. In verse one reads, quote, “‘These words spake Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father,

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the hour is come, glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee. So there are a number of things in this verse that point to Jesus and the Father as two separate gods. First, if Jesus and the Father are one being, why would Jesus need to pray? I mean, why would Jesus need to pray to himself on behalf of others? It doesn’t make logical or theological sense here.

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And Jesus doesn’t give any indication in this verse that he is praying to himself. In fact, everything in the verse points to Jesus praying to another being, a being separate from himself. And we see this, this is pretty clear when he addresses the prayer directly to his father. Father, the hour is come. And this is clear when it says that at the beginning of the prayer, Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven.

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why would Jesus lift his eyes to heaven? Why would he do this? Naturally we assume he’s doing this because he is about to pray to his Father who is in heaven, which Jesus actually tells us in the Lord’s prayer when he says quote, Our Father which art in heaven hallowed be thy name. So for Jesus to look up when he prays to the Father is a clear gesture by Jesus that

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He understood himself as a separate being from the Father. They are literally in two different places. Jesus is on earth and the Father is in heaven. A clear indication that Jesus and the Father are separate beings, they are in separate places. And finally in this verse, Jesus says, quote, glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify thee.

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And this text is incredibly difficult to make sense of theologically if Jesus and the Father are one being. Because it really would require us to believe that Jesus is praying to himself and that in that prayer to himself, he is asking himself to glorify himself. And I personally cannot conceive of a God who prays to himself and asks himself for greater glory. It seems completely incompatible with the notion of God.

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everything in the my loo of the ancient Near East, in particular the theology of kingship that we see in Sumer, Egypt, Babylon, and Ugarit, along with what is actually written in these New Testament verses, strongly point to God the Father and Jesus Christ as literally separate, distinct beings, actually Father and Son, as the New Testament attests to Gods.

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In Hebrews chapter one verses one to three, we’re told that the father and son are virtually indistinguishable from each other in likeness and in glory. But then we’re told something very curious after that. So listen closely to the King James version of these verses. Quote, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets. Hath in these last days spoken unto us

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by his son. So God is speaking to the Hebrews through his son, whom he hath appointed heir. So God has made the son a king. So we’re getting all kinds of descriptions as the father and son being separate here. Of all things by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory and the expressed image of his person. So

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They’re practically indistinguishable, the father and son in terms of their glory that they have and what they look like. They even look the same expressed image, but those similarities may put them as one in brightness and one in image, but they don’t necessarily put them as one in being. They can still be two separate gods and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins. Now listen to this part. Sat down.

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on the right hand of the majesty on high. That last line is really important. God the Son sits on the right hand of God the Father in the heavens. You know, there’d be no need for God the Son to have his own throne in the heavens next to the Father’s throne if they were one being. To sit down on a throne next to God the Father clearly indicates that God the Father and God the Son are two distinct beings here.

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two separate gods. And there’s more than just this text to support this idea. Like I mentioned, all of what we’re seeing here conforms to what we’ve seen in Egypt, Sumer, Babylon, and Canaan where the relationship between the gods is familial. The father god, be it Ray, Anu, or Elm, literally begats a son, a separate being, who as crown prince eventually becomes a divine king.

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a divine king who is enthroned in the heavens next to his father. They have separate thrones. The New Testament is literally loaded with the dual imagery of two gods. As you’ll see as this podcast progresses, this understanding is absolutely critical to the theology of kingship in the Bible and to an understanding of the cosmological order of the heavens. The richest parts of Christian theology are lost.

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A theology that is all over in the biblical canon when the plurality of God the Father and God the Son is suppressed. And you will see this as the podcast progresses. It’s too much to go into right now, but you will definitely see how that is important. Scholars have found considerable evidence that the early Jewish followers of Jesus taught a Benetarian theology, which is the belief into God. So,

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Scholars have found that there’s evidence that this was the belief in the early times. If you’re interested in reading more about this, check out the book, Two Powers in Heaven, Early Rabbinic Reports about Christian Anastasis by A.F. Segal. Sumner notes that the image of God and a companion Lord eventually became quite problematic in both Rabbinic orthodoxy and among the early fourth century theologians who crafted the Nicene,

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Chalcedonian and Athanasian creeds. He points out that the theologians who crafted the creeds gave no authoritative place to passages like the passages I’ve mentioned or other passages like Psalms 110 and Daniel 7 that attest to more than one God. He writes, quote, “‘To bolster the content of these creeds, some zealous Christian scribes altered

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their Greek New Testament manuscripts and places to transform the original heavenly council imagery of God and Lord into more orthodox Trinitarian patterns. Roman Catholic orthodox and Protestant theologians joined orthodox rabbinic teachers in a common effort to abandon and suppress a central cosmological symbol in the Hebrew Bible and a central Christological symbol of the New Testament.

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All of this brings me full circle to why we began discussing the council of the gods in the first place, the creation. The ancients attest that a real divine government exists in the heavens. One that’s governed over by a high God who reigns a celestial king and presides over a council of gods. In the Enuma Elish, we learned that it was in this council before the creation took place that a special God, Marduk or in Psalm 89,

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was chosen to battle the awful sea serpent Tiamat and her consort Kingu, who represents both the chaotic pre-creative elements and the force that led to their chaos, Lucifer or the devil. After vanquishing the enemy, Marduk or Jehovah then creates the earth. We can find evidence of the divine council in the creation account in Genesis.

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The Divine Council in Genesis chapters 1 to 11 by Richard J. Clifford writes, One of the most remarkable features of Genesis chapter 1 to 11 has not received the attention it deserves, the persistent presence of heavenly beings in the creation of heaven and earth. This shows up in the creation account as a plurality of gods discussing and planning creation.

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For example, if we look at Genesis chapter one, verse 26, this is what it says. And God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Who is God referring to here when he says let us? The revised English version of the Bible commentary says this, quote, this let us is God speaking to his divine counsel, which is his counsel of spirit beings.

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Note how they’re afraid to say God’s here. That God works with in ruling and running his creation. God’s divine council is an important but not commonly understood part of scripture. And as a quick side note, let’s not forget that this council existed before the earth was created. The beings that occupy the council had been created before the earth in a pre-existence, which attests that not all things began

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with the creation. Some things existed before the creation. We may also have a connection between the divine council and the creation in the New Testament in John chapter 1 verses 1 to 3. That famous scripture that reads, quote, in the beginning, which means the time before the creation, in the beginning, the time before creation, was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

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The New Testament was originally written in Greek. So in the Greek, the first mention of God is Theon, T-H-E-O-N, which is one of the plural forms for God. And it depends on the verb form. And the second mention of God is Theos, which is the singular form of God. So in this verse, the word refers to Christ. So the passage could also read, quote, before the creation was Christ.

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and Christ was with the gods and Christ was a God. The same was in the beginning with God. And when it’s translated like that, we can easily see the ties between the creation, Jehovah and the divine council. It ties them all together very beautifully there. But Greek scholars don’t usually translate it this way because of the singular form of the verb.

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But even if the translation is kept how it is in the King James Version of the Bible, it still hints at a divine counsel since it specifically speaks of Christ being with God. So we have two gods here. In the beginning, that existed before the creation. Interestingly, in this verse, Jehovah is referred to as the Word, which in Greek is logos. In Greek, this word has a

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double meaning. It means both thought and speech. In verse 3 John tells us that quote, all things were made by him. So all things were made by the logos, the word who is Christ. Now where have we heard of creation first by thought and then by word in the ancient world? If you thought of the Shabaka stone then you’re absolutely right. It was in that text that we learned how the ancient Egyptian

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created the world. In the Shabakos stone said, quote, for the very great one, Patah, who gave life to all the gods and the cause through his heart. And remember the Egyptians thought the heart was the source of thought. So heart here is used to refer to thought and through his tongue, the parallels between Patah creating by way of thought and word and the depiction of Christ in John chapter one, verse one is the logos,

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create the world is pretty striking. From this passage in John we learn some really important things about Christ. Number one, Christ existed before the earth was created in a primordial realm and this is clear by the reference in the passage two times to quote in the beginning which refers to the time before the world was created. Number two,

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that Christ existed in the primordial realm with at least one other God or perhaps several other gods, depending on how the Greek is translated. This is clear in this passage when it says, quote, the word was with God or the gods, because remember that word is plural in the Greek. Number three, Christ in the primordial realm was a God.

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He was one of the gods that existed in the primordial realm. And this is clear when the passage says, quote, the same, which is Christ, was in the beginning with God and was a god. From the research we’ve covered in the ancient Near East to this point, Christ appears to have been an extremely important member of the council of the gods. Number four, Christ appears from this passage to be the one that had been assigned in the primordial realm to create the earth.

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the ancient Near East, that’s what these councils did is they defined the fates or they made assignments and gave stewardship. And this is clear in this passage when it says quote, all things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made. And this makes total sense because John here is calling Christ the word, the logos, which we saw in episode number 12, the word that changed the universe, which was how the ancients said the earth was created through divine utterance.

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the word. And don’t forget in the enuma, at least like I pointed out in the last episode, when Marduk is chosen by the council of the gods to take on Tiamat, the gods ask Marduk to demonstrate his ability to divinely utter his ability to create, which he does. And he does this through his word, he causes a constellation to appear. And as we see in the epic, Marduk goes on to create or fashion the world out of the primordial elements or

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Tiamat’s carcass. Pretty nifty stuff. Along with all of the other evidence we’ve examined on this podcast so far, I hope you’re beginning to see the incredible correspondences in the ancient record. Correspondences that speak to an original religious tradition in deep antiquity, which we call the ancient tradition. And this is only a drop in the bucket. We’re just getting started. There is so much more to come.

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That wraps up this edition of the ancient tradition. I’ll leave you with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge is the wing we’re with, we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Logan.

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You’ve been listening to the Ancient Tradition. A Wonk Media Production.