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 with me today as we parse out the religious tradition, the theology taught by the ancients in deep antiquity. On this podcast, we take the theology of the ancients seriously. We take them at their word. When the ancients attest that a religious tradition was revealed to them in deep antiquity, we take their claims seriously.

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And that’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to take what they have to say seriously. In today’s episode, we’re going to dig into the ancient record and see what else the ancients can teach us about the council of the gods, especially how the council of the gods is ordered. It’s really a remarkable episode in terms of its cosmic implications. And I think many of you are going to find yourself saying, ah, that makes so much sense. I had never put two and two together.

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I’m not going to spell out everything for you, but if you have time to think over and study what you learn in this episode, I think you’re going to find that the cosmic implications are truly remarkable. So let’s jump in. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been discussing the creation. We’ve been delving into the ancient writings and trying to catalog the creation motifs that we find show up all over in the ancient texts. And if you’ve been following along closely, you’ll probably notice that

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As we’ve been discussing the creation now for quite a while that we haven’t discussed the creation of a single thing yet. Not a single grain of sand has been created. And this is because the ancients taught that a whole lot went on behind the scenes before the earth was ever created. They taught that a primordial realm existed, referred to in the Enuma Elish as went on high, a realm, high in the heavens where a number of gods dwelt under the authority of a divine king.

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creation of the earth was not the beginning of everything. The ancients taught that an entire heavenly realm existed prior to the birth of the earth. It’s in this primordial kind of celestial abode, sometimes referred to as a mountain, the holy of holies, that we learn that God is a divine king before the earth was created, held counsel with an assembly of gods. And we know this from an array of ancient writings.

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For example, in our previous episode, we talked about Mullen, who wrote a book titled the assembly of the gods. And he says this of the Ugaritic literature. He says, quote, whenever the need arose to decide an important matter relevant to order in the cosmogonic realm, the gods would journey to the dwelling of L. L’s decree is connected explicitly the Purumuidu on the mount, Guru L his mountain.

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The consistency of the tradition places the assembly of the gods under the leadership of the high god upon the mountain of El. If you go into the Bible, we see something very similar in Isaiah chapter 14 verse 13. And this is the New International Virgin Translation. It reads, You said in your heart, I will ascend to the heavens. I will raise my throne of the stars of God. I will sit enthroned on the mount.

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of assembly on the utmost heights of Mount Zephan. In another text, a tablet from Nineveh dated to sometime before 1100 BC, we see King Amaduranki. If you remember, he was the Mesopotamian Enoch figure. He’s summoned by the gods to join them in a special chamber of the temple Ibarra, which is the House of Splendor, which was the earthly temple of the high god.

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In this special chamber, which appears to be something akin to the Holy of Holies, Emma Duranki meets with the Council of the Gods. The text reads, quote, Emma Duranki, the King of Sippar, the beloved of Anu, Anlil, and Ea, which are the gods, Shamash into Ibarra, which is the temple, caused him to enter.

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So the gods are inviting Imadjuraki into this special divine council chamber. Shamash and Adad to their assembly called him. So we’re seeing the same motifs here. In the Mesopotamian Lugal Banda epic, it’s a story of a deified Sumerian king, which was believed to be composed around the 21st century BC. And it says, quote, in his convened and just assembly, in the heart of the great

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quarters, which is probably referring to the temple, which resting firmly upon the earth like a great mountain. So here we get a firm connection between the heavenly temple and the mountain motif and the assembly meeting in the heart of or holy of holies in the heavenly temple. And like we covered in our last episode, the ancient Egyptians also located their royal statuary of the Council of Gods in the four quarter of their temples, the same place the

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the Council of the Gods in their temples. From these texts, we can see that the ancients uniformly placed the location of the Council of Gods in the High Gods temple, either directly in the Holy of Holies in the Divine Throne Room, or in an assembly room of some sort that was designed for the council to meet in, which was referred to it by the Mesopotamians as the Ubsu-ukina, the Divine Assembly Hall. The Council of the Gods was held, we are told in the ancient texts,

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in the presence of the high god. The divine king sat in the midst of them or in the center of the council members. In a text known as the Nungal in Ikor which is dated to the old Babylonian period about 1894 to 1595 BC we read this. Nungal has taken her seat in its great and lofty

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She has set her eye upon the king in the midst of the assembly. We learned in our last episode that the divine king sits on a throne dais, a raised platform, and we can see from these texts, he does so in the midst of the council of the gods. To be seated in the midst of or in the center of suggests that the divine council sits in a circle around the divine king in his royal temple palace. From his throne,

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The divine king presides over his royal court, his royal council. And let’s not forget that this is exactly where the tree of life stood in the Judeo-Christian garden of Eden account. The tree sat in the midst in the center of the garden. So we’re getting all those connections here. A Mesopotamian text known as Sulgi D refers to the high God and it says this, may you be the life.

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giving king of your assembly. So we see this kind of connection between the tree of life and the giving of life. And then here the king is the life giving king in the assembly. We learned from other ancient texts that quote, exalted council members referred to in the text as gods sit on thrones too. We see this in a Mesopotamian hymn to Inanna, which was dated to 2250 BC. And it says quote,

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the exalted in the assembly sitting on the seat of honor, right and left. In the lament of Ur, line 153 it says, quote, the Anunnaki gods, which is the council, being still seated after they had given the binding promise. And then in tablet six of the Enuma Elisha says, quote, the great gods took their seats. We see something very similar in the pyramid text when the dead king ascends.

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to the heavens and is placed on a throne like the other gods. Pyramid text 422 reads, quote, “‘Take up your position, Pepe, on Thive’s forwards throne.'” And then he was told to do this right before Horus had assembled the gods in Pyramid text 423. In early Christianity, we see something similar in the book of Revelation chapter 20. And verse four reads, and this is John speaking of what he sees in heaven.

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says quote, and I saw thrones and they sat upon them and judgment was given unto them. Okay, so who is John seeing here? Who is sitting on these thrones that he sees? Well, according to John’s vision, we find out. He tells us, let’s keep reading and it’s in the same verse. And I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God and which had not worshiped.

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the beast. Well, this is intriguing because basically Jesus is telling us that those who were sitting on these thrones used to be human beings, that these are the deified dead. That’s very intriguing. And as we read in our last episode in the ball cycle, the Anunnaki, which is the council of the gods, sat on thrones. And it reads, quote, the gods lowered their heads to their princely thrones.

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It’s very important here to note that the thrones occupied by the gods in the council were referred to as princely thrones. The gods in the council here in Mesopotamia, just like we saw in Egypt are the princes or sons of the governing divine king who sits in the heart of the cosmos. This designation of gods who surround the throne of the high goddess, princes or sons or daughters or children is really, really important. It’s one of the most important theological tenants in the ancient tradition.

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And as the podcast progresses, we’ll develop this theology more and more. Here are a couple of examples of the Anunnaki or the council of the gods described as sons. A Mesopotamian text known as the myth of Anzu, which dates to the old Babylonian period. We read, and this is in tablet two, the gods of the land assembled together for direction. Anu opened his mouth. He spoke to the gods, his sons.

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In the book, The Assembly of the Gods, that I’ve mentioned a couple of times, Mullen notes the following of the Ugaritic text, and this is what he says, quote, “‘As creator, El stands at the head of the pantheon “‘as father of the gods. “‘As his sons, the gods are collectively designated “‘as the sons of El. “‘Yam is designated as the beloved of El, “‘and Mott, hero, the beloved of El.

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Anat is explicitly called Bittu, daughter by El. For example, in Cuneiform tablet 4.3.14, the council is called the assembly of the sons of El. The designation of the gods as sons, and even more intriguingly as beloved sons, actually shows up all over in the pyramid text and in the king’s royal titularies.

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Let’s take a look at a couple of pyramid texts in King Eunus’s tomb. In pyramid text 219, the dead king is identified with the ancient Egyptian god Osiris. And it reads, “‘Athum, this Osiris here is your son whom you have made revive and live.'” Pyramid text 222, “‘Athum, elevate him to you and circle him inside your arms. He is your son of your body forever.'”

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The designation as a son shows up most widely in the king’s titularity as one of the king’s new enthronement names. So after he’s been enthroned, they give him these new names. For example, Thutmose III’s nomin was son of Ra. Ramsey’s Horus name was the strong bull, beloved of Ra, and his nomin was Ramsey’s beloved of Amun. And Queen Hatshepsut’s was daughter of Amun, foremost of noble.

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ladies. And of course, very interestingly, you find the same designation in the book of Revelation right after the section where John sees multiple occupied thrones in the heavens. In Revelation chapter two, verse seven, it reads, quote, he that overcome shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. And Paul says something very similar in Psalms,

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I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee. In Psalm 89 verse 6, the New American Bible translation reads, who is like the Lord among the sons of the gods? Okay, that’s quite a bit to take in. So let’s recap briefly what we’ve learned about the council from the ancients so far. So number one, we’ve learned.

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that the Council of the Gods existed before the earth was created. Number two, the Council of the Gods meets in the high gods abode in the heavens, in the heavenly temple, in the Holy of Holies, the bosom of the cosmos. And number three, God sits on a throne in the center of the council, which suggests that the council sits in a circle around him. And number four,

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Exalted council members are referred to in the ancient texts as gods or princes, sons and daughters of the most high god. And quite intriguingly, in a number of cross-cultural texts, they’re also referred to as beloved. And finally, number five, exalted council members sit on thrones too, but not as far as I can tell on elevated thrones like the divine king in the midst of the council. According to the ancients, the

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Divine council is the order established in the heavens. It’s the soci structure in the cosmos. And so at this point I have some questions. I wanna know more about how this divine government is structured. I wanna know how it’s ordered. In high school, most students take a civics class where they learn how the US government is structured, how the body politic operates.

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they learn that there’s a specific order to the US system is structured into three branches, a judicial executive and a bicameral legislative body. But what about the divine government? How is it ordered? We know the high God presides a supreme divine monarch over a divine council of gods, but is there anything else in the ancient record that can tell us who the gods are, who sit in council, and is there anything else in the ancient record that can tell us how the divine council is structured?

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the order by which it operates because right now, in everything we’ve read, the council just feels like this mass of people, the hosts of heaven, this amorphous mass of beings. After going through the ancient record, answering just who occupies the thrones surrounding the high god is a lot more difficult to answer than the latter question of how the council is structured.

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With the exception of naming Baal, Marduk, or Jehovah, or Tiamat, Yam, or Lucifer as members of the Council of the Gods, the ancient record is pretty obscure. It’s almost silent when it comes to naming the other gods who sit in council. Theodore Mullen, who wrote the Assembly of the Gods, writes of the Council of the Gods in the Ugaritic and Hebrew literature. In Canaanite mythology and Israelite literature, the identities of the members of the Council remain obscure.

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In Cuneiform Tablet 2.1, they are simply designated as gods. No further description is offered. The other references to the council and Ugaritic literature provide little additional information. Cuneiform Tablet 4.3.14 refers to the assembly of the sons of El. Throughout the texts, the fact that the members of the council remain unnamed makes the task of identifying them more difficult.

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Yeah, kind of does. Mullen does manage to find a few places in the ancient text where specific council members are mentioned, but they’re pretty few and far between. And the ones who are mentioned quote, aren’t gods who play a major role in the mythic cycle from Ugarit. In other words, the few gods that are mentioned by name are the names of gods who aren’t really major players in Ugaritic mythology, which seems a little odd.

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Mullen also looked for names in the ancient Hebrew literature and he also came up empty handed. He states, quote, their identity is once again not given. The allies of El remain unnamed in all our ancient traditions from Canaanite, Phoenician and Israelite sources. We find this same obscurity when trying to identify the names of council members in the ancient Egyptian texts. Like I mentioned in the last episode, in ancient Egypt, the council of the gods is referred to as the souls of…

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and Nehken. In ancient Egyptian literature they’re always referred to as a collective. They’re never referred to by individual names. We aren’t told why this is, but as you ponder over the rest of this episode you might come up with a good reason for why this might be. As for the second question, how many gods make up the Council of the Gods? Well that’s when things get really interesting.

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There are loads of hints in the ancient record as to the organizational structure and the numerical constitution of the Council of the Gods. And we find our first really good hint in an ancient Sumerian text known as Enki and the World Order. Scholars date many of the traits in the text.

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clear back to 2900 BC, that’s some 5000 years ago. So we’re talking about a very old text, but scholars also believe that the composition was probably known in oral form even earlier than that. In lines 250 to 386 of this text, Enki, who we learned in the Enuma Elish was the father of the god Marduk, journeys to several cities and locations in the land Sumer to set up or establish world order.

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In this portion of the text, which is known as the 12 cycles, Enki does this by dividing Sumer into 12 specific domains and appointing a god steward over that domain. Dr. Richard E. Everbeck, who’s an expert on the Enki and world order text, says this of how Enki established order in the world. Quote.

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Enki himself initiates the various forces of nature and cultural phenomena necessary to make Sumer a prosperous place, and then puts one of the Anuna gods, the Anuna gods of course being the divine council, the Anunnaki, in charge of each component. It appears that there are 12 cycles of initiation and assignment. Enki organized the whole region by establishing boundaries between the various cities of Sumer,

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providing dwellings for the Anunnagods and dividing the agricultural land among them. And we see Enki assigning stewardship to one of the Anunnaki in line 267. This is just one example of the 12. Enki, the Lord of the Destinies, Enki, the King of the Apsu, placed in charge of all of this, him who holds a scepter in his right hand.

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So we learned some really important things about the divine council from this text. Number one, we learned that Enki, the high god, establishes world order by dividing Sumer, which equates with the world into 12 exclusive domains. Second, we learned that after Enki divides the world into 12 domains, he assigns an individual council member stewardship.

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over each domain and he appoints them steward over specific agricultural lands. He divvies up the geography of the world to individual council members. This tight relationship between the stewardship of council members and geography, be it earthly or cosmic geography, is a really important pattern connected to the divine council. And in a couple minutes we’ll see this pattern all over the globe. Third, it’s clear from the passage I just read where Enki quote

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placed in charge of all this, him who holds a scepter in his right hand, that these 12 council members weren’t angels or messengers. They were divine kings who sat on thrones in the divine council and held the scepters of kings, which we learned in episode number four was a branch of the sacred Kiskanu tree, the tree of life, and they held that in their right hand.

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In this text, it appears that these council members represented Enki, the king of the heavens, as viceroys or vassal kings. In this text, we see the high god dividing his entire kingdom among 12 of his sons or princes. The fact that Enki divided up his entire kingdom, everything over which he reigned, among just 12 council members,

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upper echelon of the Divine Council. It applies especially in their description of enthroned God-Kings that they made up an exalted High Council or the highest governing body within the Divine Council. You know, it’s not to say that there aren’t numerous beings who make up the Divine Council, just that there appear to be 12 important God-Kings who govern over the rest of the Divine Council.

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And this is probably a good place for me to stop and take a minute to talk about numerical symbolism. In the ancient world, numbers often signified something more than mere quantity. And we do this today. When a soccer team waves their index fingers in the air and yells, we’re number one, they aren’t talking about quantity at all. They aren’t saying they are the quantity of one, like we are one apple. They’re saying the number one symbolically to convey that they are the…

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best team in the league or in the country or in the world. The number one is used as a way to symbolize that their soccer team is athletically superior to all of the others. All ancient societies, all of them attached important meanings to numbers. And surprisingly, you would kind of expect that each society would develop their own set of meanings for the numbers, but we just don’t see that.

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Instead, we see significant cross-cultural consistency in how numbers are used to express specific symbolic ideas. For example, as we’ve discussed on the podcast already to this point, in the ancient world, the number four symbolically represents geographic totality. So where you’d expect different ancient societies to attach different meanings to the number four, we just don’t see it. Instead, what we find.

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all over the ancient world is that the number four symbolizes the same thing. Regardless of culture, it symbolizes geographic totality. And this, like so much in the ancient world, speaks to one fount, an ancient tradition as the source of the symbolic meanings attached to numbers. One scholar notes, quote, why certain numbers became laden with symbolic

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prehistoric times. Just like the number four, we find the symbolic meaning of the number twelve to be cross-culturally consistent. It means the same thing in most cultures. In virtually all ancient cultures, the number twelve had a standard meaning. And can you guess what it symbolized? It symbolized the order of the cosmos, the divine order.

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And this is super interesting because that’s exactly the picture we get from the Sumerian text Enki and the World Order. We see a clear connection between the establishment of world order and the number 12. We see 12-fold governing bodies show up all over the globe and sometimes in reference to the order of the cosmos, divine high council of 12. And other times in reference to the order of the earth, the earthly council of 12, which you might imagine.

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is modeled after the divine order of 12 in the heavens. The divine council of 12 in the heavens. In most cases, the ancient peoples of the world intentionally modeled their earthly cities or civilizations after the 12-fold order in the heavens. They were trying to create the ideal image of the cosmos on earth. And why did they wanna do that? Well, because in the heavens, that order led to peace, prosperity, and fertility.

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best way to achieve those same outcomes on earth would be by replicating the cosmic order on earth. For example and get ready because there are a lot of examples I’m going to show you here we see this all over the world so according to the writings of Diodorus Siculus who was an ancient Greek historian around the first century AD wrote that the Chaldeans were ruled by 12 gods. Siculus writes quote

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12 of these gods, they say, hold chief authority. In Greek mythology, 12 Titans, the children of primordial parents, Uranus and Gaia, were the generation of gods that preceded the Olympians. In Greece, almost all of you know this, Zeus presided over a 12-god pantheon on Mount Olympus. And most of you are familiar with these 12 gods, but did you notice where these gods meet?

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Yes, on a mountain, on Mount Olympus. There’s the mountain temple motif again. Zeus reigning from the summit of the mountain. In Athens, the altar of the 12 gods was set up in the geographic center. There’s that center motif. In Rome, statues of 12 Roman gods stood in the forum.

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Forum was a rectangular plaza which stood at the center of day to day life in Rome. It was the site of triumphal processions, criminal trials, public speeches, and it was surrounded by a number of important government buildings. So note the location of these 12 statues stood in the very center of civic life. In Norse mythology, Odin, the All-Father, the High God, sat on a high throne.

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among 12 divine counselors in Asgard. These 12 counselors were known as the Asr, the 12 gods. And interestingly, in this Norse mythology, the 12 gods were accompanied by 12 goddesses headed by Frigg, Odin’s consort. These 12 gods ruled over 12 thing districts. Now things in the old Norse

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which means assembly. So these 12 gods ruled over 12 assembly districts. Quote, things were where political decisions were made, laws upheld and disputes settled. I mean, this sounds exactly like the council of the gods. Odin’s assembly was called the All Thing, the National Council. Note how we see the same association between the gods and the division of geography here.

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The 12 gods ruled over 12 geographical districts. And note the association between the gods and the political governance of Odin’s kingdom. John Michel wrote a book on 12 tribe nations, and he notes this, quote, 12 was the customary number of magistrates who sat together on Scandinavian things. So this was the traditional number.

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The Hindus from the time of the Dramanas, which are sacred texts dated to between 900 and 700 BC, recognized 12 solar gods, the Adityas. The Adityas were the divine offspring of the goddess Aditi, a goddess who represented infinity or eternity. You can find a list of these in some of their other sacred texts. According to Dr. Ramesh, who worked on translating the text, he notes that the Adityas are described in the Rigveda,

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one of the oldest and most important Hindu texts as quote, bright and pure as streams of water, free from all guile and falsehood, blameless, perfect, true to the eternal law. I love that description of the gods who sit on this council. In the Hindu tradition, the Hindu god Brahma, the creator employed 12 jayas to help him fashion the world.

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These gods are believed to have existed at the very beginning of the kalpa, which is the name the Hindus give to the long lifetime of the universe, which they’ve calculated to be 4.32 billion years. Take note that these 12 gods were to take part or assist in the creation of the world. In Shinto cosmogony, 12 kami, which is the Japanese word for traditional Shinto gods in Japanese mythology corresponded

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12 stages in creation, which is quite similar to what we saw in the Sumerian text Enki and the World Order. In Japanese mythology, we see 12 stages of creation and in Sumer we see 12 cycles of more or less Sumerian creation, where the gods are associated with different domains like responsibility for the rivers, marshes, rains, crops, herds, flocks, and things like that. If you remember Izanami and Izanagi.

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the Japanese gods who stirred up the primordial waters until they thickened. Well, the Kami were believed to be the sons and daughters of that pair of gods. In Zoroastrianism, which is an Iranian religion based on the teachings of Zoroastrian and Iranian speaking prophet, we read in the Bundarish, which is a collection of Zoroastrian cosmogony of 12 octars, which is the Persian word for stars. So,

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In their cosmogony, we have 12 stars who are led by Ahura Mazda, the creator deity, which is interesting when we think about how in ancient Egypt, the imperishable circumpolar stars represented the gods. In China, John Michel notes the Emperor Yao, who presided over a legendary golden age in China at the beginning of the third millennium BC, divided his realm first into four quarters and then into two.

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12 regions governed by 12 mandarins. So what are mandarins? They’re these appointed scholar officials or civil servants. So we can see here how Emperor Yao was arranging the Chinese government to match the government in the heavens. In Tibet, the Dalai Lama ruled by way of a circular council of 12 elders. In Ireland,

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John Michelle notes, quote, 12 was the number of seats arranged round a king’s throne in the royal halls of Ireland, as in the place of King Crooker of Ulster, and the King of Munster headed 12 lesser kings. I could go on and on. 12 Roshakrishnan adepts made up the inner circle of Agartha, the enchanted country, in Madagascar, China, Peru.

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Iceland, there are traditions of the nation’s territories being divided up into 12 tribes and 12 regions. The followers of Odysseus, like those of King Arthur, were 12 in number. Charlemagne’s mystical court consisted of 12 peers. Among the Mayan, 12 priests presided over their religious initiations. The Winnebago Indians had a 12-clan society. And the Hopi Indians of the

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the agricultural land was divided up amongst them. And most notably, Plato. Plato wanted to develop the ideal city. So he laid out the groundwork for a 12 tribe city, one that mirrored the cosmos. And he did that in his book, The Republic. He envisioned a cosmic order, one that was the archetypal model for the most perfectly attainable state of affairs on earth. And there are many, many more examples than this, but I’m not gonna go into them.

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John Michel notes, quote, “‘It is impossible to say when or where this idea arose, for it occurs in the earliest traditions and histories of virtually every nation.'” And we, of course, argue on this program that the 12-fold pattern originated with the ancient tradition. The 12-fold order is particularly noticeable in the ancient Israelite tradition.

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Many of you probably already thought of this in the Old Testament, Jacob, later named Israel as twelve sons who are collectively referred to as the twelve tribes of Israel or the Israelites. In Numbers chapter 1, we learn that twelve princes preside over the tribes. Numbers chapter 1 verse 16, after they’ve listed the names of the twelve princes, it says this, quote, These were the renowned of the congregation.

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princes of the tribes of their fathers, heads of the thousands in Israel. And then when we move on to chapter 2 of Numbers, we’re told that these 12 tribes pitched their tents at specific geographical locations around the perimeter of the Israelite Tabernacle, which was a portable temple. Numbers chapter 2 verse 3 reads, And on the east side, toward the rising of the sun, shall they have the standard of the

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pitch. Numbers chapter 2 verse 10, on the south side shall the standard of the camp of Reuben. Numbers chapter 2 verse 18, on the west side shall be the standard of the camp of Ephraim. And it goes on. In these verses we can clearly see an association between the 12 tribes and specific geographical assignments like we saw in Enki and the world order. The 12 tribes here

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Surround the dwelling place of Jehovah, his temple. And remember, this tabernacle housed a stylized tree of life, a menorah, which symbolized the fiery glory of Jehovah in the center of the camp, all of which clearly mirrors the cosmic setting of a divine council where the high God is surrounded by 12 enthroned gods. In Joshua chapter four,

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Listen to what the Lord commands Joshua to do. Starting in verse two, he tells Joshua, “‘Take ye twelve men out of the people. “‘Out of every tribe a man take twelve stones.’ Verse four, then Joshua called the twelve men “‘whom he had prepared of the children of Israel “‘out of every tribe a man.’ Verse eight, and the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded and took up twelve stones. Now listen closely to what Joshua did in verse nine.

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And Joshua set up 12 stones in the midst of Jordan in the place where the feet of the priest which bear the Ark of the Covenant stood. So they set up these stones near the Ark of the Covenant. And where did the Ark of the Covenant stand in ancient Israel? In the Holy of Holies. So Joshua is setting up the 12 stones around the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat or God’s throne.

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Again, this is a clear image of the cosmic setting of the divine council who surround the throne of the high god. In Joshua chapters 13 to 19, we see the land of Israel divided into 12 sections and given to each of the 12 tribes of Israel as their inheritance. A motif which again echoes back to what we saw in Enki and the world order. When Enki divided the Sumerian agricultural lands into sections and appointed in a Nunagad.

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or divine council member as vice regent over that land. Here in Joshua chapter 13 verse six, Joshua mentions a really, really intriguing aspect of the story and listen to what Joshua says. This is him speaking of the divvying up of the land. Quote, only divide thou it by lot unto the Israelites for an inheritance as I have commanded thee.

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Dividing up the land by lot is somewhat akin in the modern day to drawing straws. It’s a way to avoid preferential treatment a way to make an impartial decision. And I draw your attention to this because the casting of lot seems to have been an important administrative tool used by the gods in the divine council. An 18th century BC Akkadian epic of the Great Flood the story of Atra-Hasis the Akkadian Noah

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reads speaking of the divine council. Anu, their father, was king. They took the box of lots, cast the lots, the gods made the division. In this passage, the divine council uses lots to divvy up the assignments among the gods. The parallels here to the casting of lots among the 12 tribes of Israel is pretty clear. We see echoes of the divine council in a particularly salient fashion in Christianity.

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when Jesus appoints a council of 12 apostles to join him in the administration of the kingdom of God on earth. From the New Testament, we learned that the 12 apostles weren’t just Jesus’s friends. They occupied an ecclesiastical office. And this is evident when Jesus fills the vacancy that was left by Judas Iscariot with Matthews in Acts chapter one, verse 26. But listen to how the apostles go about choosing who.

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between Matthew and Joseph called Bar-sab-us. Men who must have been of equal character should fill Judas’ vacancy. Verse 26 reads, quote, “‘And they gave forth their lots, “‘and the lot fell upon Matthew, “‘and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.'” The apostles used lots, which here seems like a pretty clear echo of the use of lots by the gods and the divine council.

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and the lots used by the 12 tribes of Israel. From what we’ve read, the casting of lots appears to make an important and unique administrative characteristic of the divine council, an administrative characteristic that is mirrored here on earth by Jesus’s 12 apostles. We see other intriguing parallels between the 12 apostles and a divine council of 12 surrounding the throne of God in a text known as the Axe of John.

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one of the earliest apocryphal writings dated by scholars to the third century AD. And the passage reads, and this is speaking of Jesus, quote, before he was seized by wicked men and by the wicked serpent of Jewish authorities, he called us, and that’s referring to the 12 apostles, called us together and commanded us to form a circle, taking hold of each other’s hand. And he himself taking up a position in the middle

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uttered the amen. Then he began a hymn saying praise to the father and we standing in the circle followed him with the amen. In this text we get a mirror image of the cosmic order, the divine council surrounding the throne of God, Jesus standing in the middle surrounded by a circle of 12 apostles. And if that’s not enough to get you thinking in Matthew

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we read about Jesus telling the 12 apostles the following. Quote, and Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you that ye which have followed me in the regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon 12 thrones, judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

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In this verse, Jesus promises the 12 apostles that they will inherit a throne, which sounds just like what we learned in the Mesopotamian ball cycle where we are told that the council of the gods sat on princely thrones. We also see a divine council of 12 reflected in the book of Revelation chapter 21. In this chapter, John is shown the holy city, the new Jerusalem, where he sees God seated on a throne.

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One of the archangels guides John into the heavens and it reads, quote, and he, the archangel, carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain. There again’s the mountain motif, and shewed me that great city, the Holy Jerusalem. Then in verse 12, he describes the city, and this is what it says, quote, and it had a wall great and high and had 12 gates.

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verse 13, on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates, verse 14, and the wall of the city had 12 foundations, and in them the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb. John tells us here that the celestial city he saw had 12 gates or entrances into the city, the city where God resided. So again, we get the same divine council motif here

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the throne of God. The connection between Jesus’ Council of Twelve and the Divine Council is further substantiated in Luke chapter 22 verses 29 and 30 where Jesus tells the 12 apostles that they will be appointed a kingdom and will serve as judges in the heavens.

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unto you a kingdom as my father hath appointed unto me.” Notice here that Jesus uses the word I appoint which is something we saw all over in the Mesopotamian Ugaritic literature. Appointing is one of the chief responsibilities of the Council of the Gods. It’s in the council that the fates are decided, gods are commissioned, assignments are made, charges are given and lands are distributed and that’s exactly what Jesus is doing here in this

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Let’s read it one more time and listen to what Jesus appoints to the 12 apostles. Quote, and I appoint unto you a kingdom. Jesus is telling the 12 apostles that in the heavens, he will assign them a particular kingdom over which they will govern or reign. And of course, since we already read that Jesus told them that they would be enthroned, we assume that they will reign as vassal kings over their kingdom.

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And listen to what the rest of the verse says. And I appoint unto you a kingdom as my father hath appointed unto me. This verse is loaded with divine council imagery. Jesus is essentially telling the 12 apostles that in a divine council in heaven, that his father, the high God, appointed him, Jesus, a kingdom over which he was to reign. The divine council inference here is astounding.

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and the implications of the 12 apostles receiving a kingdom is nothing short of astonishing because having a kingdom like Jesus clearly suggests that the 12 apostles would become gods, just like the ancients said of the beings who made up the divine council, that it was a council of gods. Let’s keep reading verse 30. Quote, that ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

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We see mention of the 12 apostles receiving thrones again here, but I wanna focus on what they will be doing. They will be serving as judges. In the ancient Mesopotamian and Ugaritic literature, one of the prominent divine council themes that we see over and over again is that divine council served as a court. The members served as judges. And that’s exactly what Jesus tells the apostles they will be doing in heaven. They will be serving as judges. And if this hasn’t dawned on you yet,

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we can see remnants of the divine council every day in our court system where a chief judge presides over a 12 person jury. All of this is to say that the ancients taught that the heavens are a heavens of order. And what does that order look like? Well, from what we can glean from the ancient record, it appears that the order of the heavens is characterized by a God who is a father

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who reigns a supreme divine king, and who presides over a supreme high council of 12 princely sons who are gods. Now that is a lot to think about. I’ll leave you there with the words of William Shakespeare. Knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. I’m Jack Lobe.

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