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.  Here’s your host, Dr. Jack Logan.

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Welcome to The Ancient Tradition.  I’m your host, Jack Logan.

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It’s great to be back with you today. If you’re a new listener,  welcome to the program. We’re glad to have you listening in.  And if you’ve been listening for a while, we’re really glad to have you back. Today’s program is titled, Who is God? A Father or Mother of a Divine Family. For the past several episodes, we’ve been looking at what the ancients taught about who God is. Now to this point, we’ve learned

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And this is based off of loads of evidence found in the ancient record, which we’ve presented in the Who is God series. So check out those episodes if you’d like to hear the evidence that the ancients taught that God is a corporeal being, a being who has a body that has the same form  as the human body with eyes and ears and a mouth and a nose, or rather that our bodies are shaped after the form of God’s body, which would make us human beings.

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The ancients taught, and we’ve discussed this in detail, that first and foremost, God is an upholder of the cosmic law, the cosmic law of righteousness. And because of that, his body is completely  sanctified or holy. And because of that, God’s body exudes an absolutely glorious light, a light that the ancients describe as fire. The ancients also taught that God’s body is  sexed.

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that the gods who inhabit the heavens are either male or female. Like here on earth, each God only contains one half of the reproductive capacity necessary to conceive children. And along with that, the ancients taught, and the ancient record is rife with examples of this, that God is a married being, that he is married to a beautiful goddess, who the ancients tell us is  the personification of sacred space itself.

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Which brings me to today’s episode. The ancients tell us that God  and his wife, be it Atum and his wife, Usas, or On and his wife, Ki,  or El and his wife, Asherah, or Zeus and his wife, Hera, or Odin and his wife, Frigg, or Brahma and his wife, Saraswati, or Izanagi and his wife, Izanami,  or Ametekutle and his wife, Omesewado. Joined together.

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and conceived children. And these children included gods and human beings. When we take a closer look at the records that are left behind by the ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Canaanites, and a bunch of others, something really interesting stands out. Unlike the way that many people talk about God today, these ancient cultures consistently taught that  one of the most important characteristics of God was his ability to conceive offspring.

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to beget children. And to make that point crystal clear, the ancients often used the image of a bull, a powerful image of virility, exceptional reproductive power to symbolize God and to emphasize his remarkable procreative power. As you’re gonna see throughout today’s episode, one of the most ubiquitous descriptions of God in the ancient world  is father. And for female goddesses,

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mother. It’s important to take a second here and stress that although there are many today who interpret these descriptors, father and mother, metaphorically, in large part the ancients did not. The ancients categorically taught that God and his wife produced children, offspring,  in the literal sense. And like I just mentioned, the ancients taught that this was one of the most important characteristics of God.

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The ancient Egyptians taught that Atum and Ussas produced Shu, Tefnet, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, and a lot more. The ancient Mesopotamians taught that On and his wife, Ki, produced the Anunnaki,  royal offspring. The ancient Canaanites taught that El and his wife, Asherah, produced 70 sons, including Baal and Yam. The ancient Greeks taught that Zeus and his wife, Hera, produced Ares,

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Hebe and Alithea. The Norse taught that Odin and his beautiful wife Frigg produced Balder and Hoder. The Hindus taught that Brahma and his wife Saraswati produced Manu, Marichi and Daksha, among others. The Shintus taught that Izanagi and Izanami produced Amaratu and Sukiyomi. The Aztecs taught that Omete Kutli and his wife Omese Waddle produced the

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Tessalocopochas. Each of these civilizations and groups of people attest that God and his wife are the literal father and mother of the offspring listed. They attest that God and his wife  are the parents of a divine family, which in academic speech is called a theogony. So, Theo means God and Agony means birth or begetting. This is why Hesiod’s ancient Greek epic poem

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which gives an account of the birth of the Greek gods and it gives a genealogy of the generations of gods is called Hesiod’s Theogony. What’s striking here is the consistency in which the ancient world taught that God is a married being who  begets offspring or children. This suggests to me that these traditions  sprouted from a common source in deep antiquity. Now, Dr. Stavro Kapulou, who we’ve mentioned on the program,

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She wrote God and Anatomy, a book about  the ubiquitous corporeal descriptions of God in the Bible. She argues on page eight that the ancient Hebrews were just creating a God in their own image. They were just creating a God who looked and acted like themselves. So in that light, it wouldn’t be surprising that they would create a God or gods who were husbands and wives who created a family and gave birth to children.

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There’s a lot of people today who believe this. It seems plausible, but the ancients taught something entirely different. See everything the ancients did in the ancient world from the myths that they passed down, the symbols that they used, the art that they produced, the architecture they built, the families they formed, and the rituals they performed was guided by  one all encompassing principle  as above.

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so below. They thought that everything done on earth was patterned or should be patterned after what was done in heaven. The ancients built their temples and even some of their homes as architectural replicas of the cosmos. They used symbols and built altars that were representations of the cosmic center. They performed rituals like the ring dance that we’ve talked about on the program that were reflections

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of rituals performed in the heavens. And they organized themselves socially in family units around marriage to mirror what was done in the heavens. Whereas God reigns in the heavens with his wife, so too ought human beings join in marriage in this life and follow the pattern set by God. This is why we see in almost all of the major ancient civilizations that the people performed a ritual called the Hiros Gamos.

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or sacred marriage, where the sacred union between a god and a goddess was symbolically performed. The ancients believed that this sacred marriage ensured fertility and prosperity  and astoundingly cosmic order or the keeping of that chaos monster at bay. They believed that when human beings followed the same pattern of marriage that existed in the cosmos,

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that they too would help ensure fertility, prosperity  and the cosmic order. That’s  amazing. We saw all of this in our last episode when during the Hindu marriage ritual, the wedding venue itself, the Mundap, was set up as a symbolic representation of the cosmic center. And we saw it when the groom arrived as a king shaded by a royal umbrella. Another  symbolic representation

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of the cosmic center, which marked him as a Chakravarti or a cosmic king, like a god. And when the bride and groom, according to the Vedas, were to consider  their marital union  as the sacred marital union between the god Shiva and his wife Shakti, just like Shiva and Shakti’s marriage ensured that the divine order or rita was upheld through Dharma, righteousness, the young Hindu couple’s marriage was to be built on Dharma. And if it was,

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Their marriage too would ensure cosmic order.

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So here we see that God and his wife sets the pattern and then the Hindu couple replicates that pattern during the Hindu marriage ritual. What’s amazing is that even today, despite the centuries, the Hindu marriage ritual is still an absolutely beautiful representation of the principle as above, so below. All of this brings me back to episode number 42 titled

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on key when earth was in heaven’s embrace. In that episode, which is densely packed by the way with textual evidence, we saw that the ancients symbolically compared God’s  marital union with his wife to the cosmic union of heaven and earth in the very early days of the creation. One of the strongest stubborn bits I’ve found in the world’s myths is

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the almost  universal attestation by the ancients that in the early days of the creation, the earth did not reside physically where it does now. Almost every single creation myth that I’ve come across attests that in the early days of the creation, earth resided  so close, like physically close to heaven, that it was like it was in heaven’s embrace. In Pyramid Text 432,

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The ancients expressed it like this, quote, the entire land, which refers to the entire earth is under you. You here refers to newt, the personification of heaven. So the text is telling us here that the earth is under heaven for you have acquired it. You  heaven have encircled for yourself the land, which is earth and  everything within your arms.

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So the visual that you should be getting here  is a visual of earth so close to heaven that heaven is embracing it. Now, as I just mentioned, the ancients symbolically compared God’s  marital union with his wife to the cosmic union of heaven and earth in the early days of the creation. Just like God and his wife’s sexual union or embrace brought about cosmic order, prosperity and fertility,  offspring.

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So too did heaven and earth’s cosmic embrace in the early days of the creation bring about cosmic order, prosperity and fertility. Which the ancients tell us was  so exalted that it produced an earthly state that was virtually indistinguishable from heaven itself. The ancients tell us that at this time, Tierra in Ilo Tempere, which in Latin means the earth at that time, the earth was a terrestrial

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Paradise where vegetation flourished producing flowers and trees and food in abundance Where the animals were tame docile creatures friendly creatures who lived  in? Complete harmony with everything on the earth and the people who inhabited the earth during this time were completely free From physical entropy there was no sickness. No disease. No aging no death and no pain

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When the earth was in cosmic union with heaven, earth was a garden of Eden. On page 65 of volume one of traditional cosmology, Marinus van der Sluis notes, quote, the characteristics assigned to this primordial state in far flung cultures are remarkably uniform and can be traced to the very earliest civilizations.

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So it’s not just Judeo-Christians who attest to the paradisal state of the earth in the beginning. This is a stubborn bit, as Vander Sluis notes, that can be traced back to the very earliest civilizations. If you haven’t listened to episode number 42,  On Key Earth and Heaven’s Embrace, I highly recommend that you give it a listen, maybe even before you listen to the rest of this episode, because that episode is densely packed with important

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textual evidence that sets the foundation for and adds to today’s discussion. The first time when Earth was in Heaven’s embrace is a very important time for a lot of reasons, one of which is fertility. Just as Heaven’s embrace of Earth, which is symbolized in the ancient Near East as a marital union, produced a lush, fertile Earth, an Earth full of life, so too

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God’s marital union with his wife produced life, the birth of offspring. As we mentioned earlier,  the ancient record is rife with examples of God and his wife producing divine children, gods. But the ancient record is also rife with accounts of God and his wife producing human beings, you and me, which suggests that we are all part of one grand divine family.

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In today’s episode, I want to take a closer look at a couple of those accounts. I want to start today with a general overview and then over the next couple of episodes, we’re going to take a look at some of the important themes that show up in those accounts. Today, I want to start with the Christian tradition. In the New Testament, in the Gospel of John, chapter 20 verse 17, the resurrected Christ

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appears to Mary Magdalene and says to her, quote,  I ascend  to my father and your father to my God and your God. If you’re not familiar with the New Testament, it was originally written in Greek, which means that translators have the tough job of taking the original Greek and then translating it into English in a way that captures

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not only the meaning of the original text, but also the nuance behind it. And as you might expect, translators,  they don’t always agree on what the original authors meant, nor how it can be best rendered into English, which is one of the reasons why there are so many different translations of the New Testament, and so many different versions of even  a single verse. Now I mention this because when it comes to this statement made by Christ, there’s no debate. Virtually every translation of the New Testament

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I mean, this includes like the NIV, the NET, the KJV,  the Amplified Bible. Translate what Christ says to Mary Magdalene here in exactly the same way  as, quote,  I ascend  to my Father and your Father to my God and your God. Now the consensus among translators here is very important because they leave no debate as to what Christ said.

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They all agree on what he said. This means that the only thing that can be debated is what Christ meant by what he said when he referred to God in familial terms as his father and said,  I ascend to my father and your father. Now, as you can imagine, there are several ways this statement can be and has been interpreted.

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Today I want to challenge the conventional interpretation, the one shaped by Platonist philosophy in the Council in Icaea. And I want to offer up an interpretation that’s grounded in the mountain of evidence we find in the ancient world that points to the theology of a divine family. A family made up of a divine king and a divine queen, a divine king and queen who were rewarded with thrones.

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in the sacred center of the cosmos for having conquered the awful sea monster and who as a father and mother give birth to  literal offspring, both gods and human beings. One of the important stubborn bits we find in the ancient world  is that the hero son is always the literal son of divine parents, the high god and his wife. Today I want to walk you through the textual evidence for this claim. So when we ask,

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Who is God? You’ll see that one of the answers to that question is a father or a mother who begets children and has a divine family. Which considering our past episodes in the Who is God series is largely dependent on and connected to God being a corporeal being, a sext being, and a married being. So let’s start by diving into the ancient texts. We’re going to start with a text in ancient Egypt. As you well know, if you’ve been listening to the program for a while,

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The oldest compilation of religious writings we have from ancient Egypt are the ancient Egyptian pyramid texts. So we’re gonna start there. The text I’m gonna read, Pyramid Text 214 is found in the pyramid of King Unas. He’s the last king of the fifth dynasty who reigned for 30 years between 2375 and 2345 BC. What’s remarkable about Pyramid Text 214?

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is that it takes place in the same context as that that’s found in the Gospel of John. In the former text, Christ has just been resurrected and he tells Mary Magdalene that he will now ascend  to his father. In the pyramid text that I’m going to read, pyramid text 214, King Unus has died and he’s being instructed in what he needs to do as part of the resurrection ritual.

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In fact, the title of this section of the pyramid text is actually called, quote, the resurrection ritual. And this heading wasn’t made up by modern compilers to kind of help enhance understanding. This heading, the resurrection ritual, is literally inscribed right on the walls inside King Eunice’s pyramid. So  both of these texts, the Gospel of John  and the ancient Egyptian resurrection ritual text, share the same context.

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that of resurrection. The ancient Egyptian king, King Unus, the human king, has died. And in pyramid text 213, the text right before this, Unus is told, quote, ho Unus, you have not gone away dead, you have gone away alive. This pyramid text, like Christ’s resurrection, clearly speaks to a doctrine of continued life after mortal death.

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Right after this, continuing in Pyramid Text 213, Unus is told he has been resurrected with a body, an aquified or glorified corporeal body, just like his father, the high god Atum. The text reads, speaking of King Unus’ resurrected body, quote, your lower arms are of Atum, your upper arms of Atum,

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your belly of Atum, your back of Atum, your rear of Atum, your legs of Atum. This is the same thing that’s attested to in the New Testament in the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 17, where Christ asks Mary not to touch him or cling to him after he’s been resurrected. This of course implies that Christ had a body that could be physically touched and clung to. And as we’ve discussed previously on the program,

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Christ attests that he does have a resurrected physical body in the Gospel of Luke chapter 24 when as the resurrected Christ he asks his disciples if they have anything to eat and they give him a piece of broiled fish  and a honeycomb and in verse 43 it says quote and he and this refers to the resurrected Christ took it the fish and the honeycomb and did eat before them

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In the Gospel of John chapter 20 verse 17, the resurrected Christ, like I mentioned earlier, tells Mary Magdalene, quote,  I ascend  unto my father and your father. In Pyramid text 214, the  resurrected Eunice, as remarkable as this is, is told  virtually the exact same thing. He’s told, quote, climb

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to the place where your father  is. In both passages, these resurrected persons, Christ and King Unas, must now ascend or climb to the place where their father resides, which we know, based on the astonishingly consistent cosmology we find taught around the world, is in the very heart, the sacred bosom of the cosmos.

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In both of these passages, these resurrected persons ascend so that they can be with their father. In English, father refers primarily to a male parent, a male who has fathered or begotten a child, a male who has fathered offspring. And this is exactly how it’s used in Pyramid Text 214. And  we know this because of what’s said in the very next text, Pyramid Text 215, which reads,  quote,

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So in this passage, we clearly see Eunice’s quote, father has a name.

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He’s a different being than Eunice. His father’s name is Atum, whom, if you’ve been listening to the program for a while, you know is the ancient Egyptian high god. Eunice’s father is the high god. And we also know that Eunice is a different being than his father because the passage clearly states that Eunice can be encircled or wrapped in the arms or hugged or embraced  by his father, the high god. And we know that Eunice is to be understood as the offspring of Atum.

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because the passage clearly states Unus wants Atum to see him like some of his other children. His progeny, who are referred to as, quote, imperishable stars, which we know in the ancient world is a symbol for deified human beings, which indicates that gods and human beings are of the same species of being. Listen to Pyramid Text 215 one more time. Quote, Ho Unus.

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Your envoys have gone, your heralds have run to your father, to Atum. Atum, bring me up to you and circle me inside your arms. See me as you have seen the forms of the progeny, the imperishable stars. This text makes it  absolutely clear that to quote, climb to the place where your father is,

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refers to climbing to the place in the cosmos where Eunice can embrace his father, Atum, the high god who conceived him. The text makes it clear that Eunice  is the progeny of God. In fact, in Pyramid Text 224, Eunice  is told to join his, quote,  brothers, Atum’s other progeny, his brothers who have already become occupied or glorified imperishable stars. The text reads,

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quote, how content is your situation is you become Ock,  oh, Eunice among your brothers, the gods. So this is basically saying, Hey, Eunice, mean, how content, how glorious, how wonderful that you have become glorified like your brothers, the other gods. That’s basically what the text says. So we can see in this text that Eunice is not  the only son of the high God, Atum. Atum has  many sons.

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all of whom the texts tell us are Eunice’s brothers. So here we see that the ancient Egyptians are attesting to a divine family. And Atum did not produce these children by himself. In episode number 56, Who is God, a Married Being, part one, we saw that the high god Atum conceived children with his beautiful wife, the goddess Yusas. In pyramid text 519,

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We read how the deceased Egyptian king attested that Eusas was his mother, that he’d been born through her. Pyramid text 519 reads,  and this is the deceased Egyptian king speaking, quote,  I am the son of the high God Ray, who is Atum, the rising sun, born from the goddess Eusas,  north of Heliopolis.

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Usas, who ascended on the primordial hill of the earth. So here the deceased king claims a divine  royal heritage. His mother is the goddess Usas and his father is the high god Atum. And if you remember, in ancient Egypt, the goddess Usas was symbolized by a sacred  tree, an acacia tree, which was located near the center of the world, Heliopolis.

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It was in this place, the center of the world, that Atum and Yusas’s children were born. The location of their birth is very important. Keep the association between the high god’s wife, the acacia tree, and the birth of human beings in your back pocket, because we’re going to talk a lot more about those in the episodes that are coming up very soon. In Pyramid Text 519, we learn that God’s wife, Yusas, quote, ascended on the primordial hill of the earth.

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Now we haven’t talked about this too much yet, but the highest point of the Primordial Mount, the pinnacle of the Primordial Mount,  marks where the center of the world connects to the center of the cosmos. So for this text to tell us that the goddess you saw us, quote, ascended the Primordial Hill where Atum reigns on his throne, we’re to get the picture of a divine couple. The goddess you saw us and the god Atum

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reigning as a divine king and queen in the center of the cosmos as a divine couple. A divine couple that conceive and give birth to offspring, a divine family  in the sacred center. This makes complete sense in terms of the Hermetic adage, as above so below, which attests that this earthly experience where we are organized in family units with a father and a mother and siblings  is

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patterned after the true order of the heavens, which the ancient Egyptians attest is organized in family units or in one grand divine family, which is something that we’ve noted a couple of times on the program is also attested to in the ancient Egyptian texts known as the Royal inscription of Kedi to Merikare, where we’re told that human beings are the sacred herd of God. The text is dated to between 2198

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in 1938 BC. And this is a pretty amazing text. Starting in line 284, the text reads, and take note how this passage mentions so many of the important theological tenets that we’ve discussed on the program. Quote, well-tended is humanity, the cattle of God. He, God, made sky and earth for their sake.

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He subdued the water monster. He made breath for their noses to live. They are his images who came from his body. Here we see the text explicitly state that human beings are made from God’s body, his flesh.  Note also how this text attests that God has a physical body here. Something that’s clearly attested to in the pyramid text too, like we just saw.

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when the resurrected king’s body looked  just like the high god Atum’s body. And did you catch that the text also says that human beings were made in God’s image? The text says, quote, they are his images who came from his body. Here the ancient Egyptians attest that human beings are theomorphic, that our bodies are formed in the image of God’s body. In addition, did you catch that God created this earth precisely for human beings?

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for us. The text says, quote, he, God, made sky and earth for their sake. Did you catch that God was able to create the earth because he conquered the dragon? The text says, quote, he made sky and earth for their sake. He subdued the water monster. See how everything we’ve discussed on the program is coming together here in a single

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coherent theology and cosmology. Here we learn that God subdued the water monster to create an earth for human beings, human beings whom God produced from his flesh, human beings who are his children, the cattle of God. And as we’ve already discussed on the program, human beings are called cattle here because  he, God,  is the bull of heaven. He’s symbolized by a bull in part

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like I mentioned, because bulls are virile. They have the exceptional capacity to produce offspring. So take note here how by symbolizing God as a bull, the ancient Egyptians are emphasizing that one of the most important characteristics of God is his ability to beget offspring, to have children. And as a bull, we, the bull’s progeny, are symbolically  described as cattle.

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because we are formed in his likeness. As far  back  as the earliest days of ancient Egypt to the first king. So this doctrine goes back to the very beginning of dynastic Egypt and it probably goes back even farther. King Narmer is depicted wearing the tail of a bull. You can see this depicted on one of the most important artifacts that we have from ancient Egypt. It’s known as the Narmer palette. On this palette, King Narmer is shown with a special mace.

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raised in his right arm, conquering an enemy of the kingdom.  And as above, so below, King Narmer subduing his enemies is akin to Atum-Re subduing the water monster. And when we look closely, we see that the palette clearly depicts a bull’s tail hanging from King Narmer’s waist, marking King Narmer as the son of the high god Atum,  the bull of heaven.

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The bull tail marks King Narmer as the son of God. That’s what this conveys. So  the doctrine that we are the high God’s children from his flesh goes all the way back to the beginning of dynastic Egypt. If you’d like to see a picture of the Narmer palette, which is permanently housed in the Egyptian museum in Cairo, you can find it on the webpage for this episode.

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While we’re here talking about the instruction for Mary Caria, I want to point out a couple of other interesting things that are said in this text,  because they’re very relevant to what we’re going to discuss in our next episode. The text reads, quote, He, God, shines in the sky for their sake. So note how God shines here. He made for them, human beings, plants and cattle, fowl and fish to feed them.

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So note how everything on earth, the plants and animals and fish were produced by God explicitly for human beings. He, God, slew his foes, reduced his children when they thought of making rebellion. So these last two lines are pretty interesting. It’s not entirely clear what rebellion this passage is referring to, but I pause it because of what’s said a little farther down in the passage.

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that this rebellion refers to a rebellion among God’s children, which took place in the primordial realm when the sea monster was thrown out of God’s kingdom for rebellion. Like we see in Mesopotamia when Tiamat rebels against God and a war in heaven ensues. If you’ll recall in ancient Egypt, the chaos serpent, Apep or Apophis, is the embodiment of rebellion because the serpent outright rebels against Ma’at.

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the cosmic law. Let’s continue. Quote, he, God, makes daylight for their sake. He sells by to see them. He, God, has built his shrine around them. And them here is his children. So this whole passage is about his children. So by building this shrine around his children, I posit that this text refers to the cosmic protective wall.

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that God built to establish the boundary of his cosmic shrine or temple, which has the express purpose to protect  everything and everyone inside it. When they weep, he hears. So this is a compassionate God, one that listens to his children. Now listen to this next part. Quote, he made for them  rulers in the egg, leaders to raise the back of the weak.

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Here the text makes reference to the egg. The egg refers to the egg laid by Gen Gen Weir, the great cackler or goose, which is a symbolic representation of God. The egg spoken of here is the cosmic egg, the cosmic center or the sacred center of the cosmos,  or as it’s expressed  by the ancient Hebrews, the holy of holies, out of which all life springs. So here in this passage,

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The ancient Egyptians tell us that while  in the egg  before the creation of the earth, God made  some of his children  rulers. The text reads, quote, he made for them  rulers in the egg. This is fascinating because it indicates that the ancient Egyptians believed that we existed inside the cosmic egg or the cosmic center with God before

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we came to this earth. And that out of God’s children who lived inside the egg, God made some of them leaders. And why did he do this? Well, the text tells us, quote, he made for them rulers in the egg,  leaders to raise the back of the weak. He made these leaders to help those of his children who were weaker.

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Remember the entire context of this text is in reference to human beings. So here we learn that God made the earth and everything on it for human beings, the children of his flesh. And that while we were in the egg before the earth was formed, some of God’s children rebelled. So he quote, slew his foes, reduced his children. And then out of his remaining children, he made some of their rulers so that they could help those of his children who were weaker.

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Then listen to what the text says next, quote, he God made for them, speaking of the rulers, Heka as weapons to ward off the blow of events. All right,  see what’s going on here. Here God gives the children he made rulers in the egg, special weapons. Yep, special weapons. The text says, quote, he made for them Heka as weapons.

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Translators usually translate the ancient Egyptian word Heka as magic in English. But that’s not a great translation because Heka is not magic as we understand it in the modern sense. A better translation for Heka would be a divine power or force. The ancient Egyptians taught that this divine power or force was what enabled Atum to create the world and that this divine power or force was what continuously

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upheld and maintained the order of the cosmos, even today. And for our purposes here, the ancient Egyptians taught that this divine power or force had the power to heal  and protect one from evil. From Apep, the rebellious sea serpent. And we suppose from this text, from the rebellious children that the text tells us were God’s quote, foes. And why did God give the leaders he made in the egg Heka as weapons?

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Well, the text tells this quote to ward  off the blow of events, to ward off blows. The blows referred to here are the wounds that are inflicted by the rebellious sea serpent. These are the blows that we talked about in episode number 22, the wounded hero. So if you haven’t had a chance to give that episode a lesson, you can find it in our back catalog. It’s worth a listen. You’ll learn all about the blows inflicted by the awful.

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Sea serpent when the hero, which is symbolic of all of us, takes  on the dragon. All right, the passage ends with the following quote, he made for them Heka as weapons to ward off the blow of events, watching over them by day and by night. So God watches over his children, the watchtower idea. He, God, has slain the traitors among them.

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as a man beats his son for the sake of his brother. So here again, we’re told that some of God’s children in the egg were,  traitors and that God slew those children, quote, for the sake of his brother, meaning that God dealt with his rebellious, traitorous children so that he could protect his non-rebellious children from them.  Note that throughout this text is speaking of a divine family. The traitorous children

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are the, quote, brothers of God’s non-rebellious children. The text ends with this very important statement. It says, quote, God has slain the traitors among them as a man beats his son for the sake of his brother. For God knows every  name. The statement here that God knows the name of each of his children is an important one which we’re gonna develop down the line.

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But it’s especially important here because as I’ve mentioned in the ancient world, names were far more than mere labels. They were believed to convey the very nature or character of a person. So for the text to say here that God knows every name, this means that God knows the true nature or character of each of his children. So he knows which of his children are rebellious and which are not because he knows their name.

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so much of what we’ve discussed on the program. The cosmic egg, the water monster, the rebellious sun, the creation of the earth, special weapons,  and in today’s episode, a divine family come together beautifully in this passage. We should all be asking ourselves, by what name will God call me? Eric Hornung, who wrote Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, notes the following on page 138.

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quote, in the instruction for Marikari, mankind, this herd of God is said to be quote, his likeness, who come forth from his flesh. Thus,  all men may be God’s children from birth. As we’ve seen, this text, the instruction for Marikari attests that human beings are the literal offspring of God’s flesh, his physical body.

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That’s what the text says. And coupled with Pyramid Text 519, we were born through God’s wife. Thus,  we are the  literal physical descendants of the high God who is our father and his wife who is our mother. Now, obviously God’s wife did not give birth to you or to me. So,

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This doctrine implies that the high god and his wife either conceived and gave birth to the first man and the first woman who inhabited the earth  or that the first man and first woman were direct descendants of ancestors who were conceived and born through god and his wife who then gave birth or physical bodies to the rest of god’s children. But genetically speaking we would still all be direct descendants of god and his wife.

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and would thereby be God’s literal children in the flesh. This is the theology of a divine family. And this brings me back to Christ’s statement in the Gospel of John, chapter 20, verse 17, where Christ attests to many of the same things.  In verse 17, he says, quote, I ascend to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Like Eunice tells us in ancient Egypt that

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father is God. Here Christ tells us in the New Testament that his father is God.  Both are claiming divine parentage. In fact, one of the  the most famous scriptures in all of Christendom, John chapter 3 verse 16, explicitly states that God begat Christ. The verse reads, quote, For God so loved the world that he gave

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his only begotten son. This verse is loaded with divine family language. Here we’re told that God begat Christ, which makes God Christ’s father. And in this verse, Christ is referred to as such, as God’s begotten  son. And what’s remarkable is that like Eunice is told that God has other children who are his brothers, in John chapter 20, Christ tells Mary Magdalene that

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his father  is  also her father and that his father is also the other disciples father which means that Christ, Mary Magdalene, the disciples and all of us  as the offspring of the same father who is God are siblings, divinely conceived brothers and sisters. Christ refers to God as his father extensively in the synoptic gospels.

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In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus uses the term father between 60 and 65 times to describe his relationship to God. And he uses it over a hundred times just in the Gospel of John. A scholar by the name of Robert H. Stein, who wrote on the fatherhood of God,  notes,  speaking of Jesus, that quote, father was his favorite term for addressing God.

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The fact that Christ so frequently used father to address God reveals that he understood God  as his father and he understood it as a fundamental relational reality. And he also used the more intimate Aramaic term Abba, which  underscores that he had a deeply intimate and familial relationship to God. I recognize that the interpretation I just gave you of

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Christ’s statement to Mary Magdalene is not the conventional interpretation that’s usually applied to such statements by Christ about his Father in heaven. But I’m arguing that in light of parallel statements made, like we see here among the ancient Egyptians,  where they attest that the earthly King  is the Son of divine parents, that the primary interpretation of Christ’s statement should be as the Son of divine parents,  beings

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separate from himself because that’s what’s attested to across the ancient world. Across the ancient world, the hero’s son is the son  of divine parents. As I noted in episode number 55, Who is God? A Sexed Being, part two. The conventional interpretation which  spiritualizes Christ’s words and contends that Christ is  one and the same as the Father was heavily influenced

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by Platonic philosophy and the determinations of the Council of Nicaea.  This  conventional interpretation is radically different than the theology of a divine family that’s attested to across the ancient world. And I argue based on attestations of a divine family in ancient Egypt, as well as what we’re going to see in ancient Mesopotamia, Canaan, and among other ancient civilizations.

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that what Christ says in these verses and others is best  interpreted  as a reference to a divine family. And this interpretation is further substantiated in the Old Testament in Malachi chapter two, verse 10, where Malachi asks, and this is the King James version, quote, have we not all  one father? Hath not one God created us?

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Why do we deal treacherously every man against his brother? So here we see the same doctrine of a divine family taught. Here Malachi attests that we are all the children of the same father, who is God, and as such, we are brothers. And because of that, we should treat each other much better than we do. All right, let’s shift our focus to the doctrine of a divine family  in ancient Mesopotamia.

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In ancient Mesopotamia, the divine family played a central  organizing role. It’s  the framework through which Mesopotamians understood the cosmos, kingship and human society. I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing this in previous episodes. So I’m just going to mention it briefly here as a reminder. If you recall in ancient Mesopotamia, the high god On was married to Ki and together they conceived children.

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are referenced in the ancient Mesopotamian literature  as the Anunnaki, where An refers to the high god An and Nun means royal and Ki refers to God’s wife. So Anunnaki means the royal offspring of An and his wife Ki. In the Sumerian literature, An and Ki’s divine offspring, the Anunnaki, make up a divine council or governing assembly of the gods. Decisions about

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creation, kingship, and destiny were made in these divine family council meetings. In the  18th century BC text, known as the Old Babylonian version of Atra-Hasis, the Mesopotamians tell us the following about the high god An  in Tablet 1, lines 5 to 7. Quote, the great Anunnaki made the Igigi. Now the Igigi are the younger children of Anunki.

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carry the workload sevenfold.  Anu,  their father, was king. And in tablet two, what was Anu’s intention as decision maker? It was his command that the gods, his sons,  obeyed. This text clearly describes the high god Anu as a father, a divine father. In this case, he’s the father of gods whom the text describes as his sons. But

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What of human beings? Well, in this text, we also learned that a goddess by the name of Belet-Ili, where Belet means lady or mistress and Ili means of the gods.  So Belet-Ili means the lady or mistress of the gods is charged with giving birth to human beings. Sometimes she’s referred to in the text as Mammy, which is a name or epitaph that literally means mother or divine mother.

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In the text, Mammy refers to the womb goddess, the one who shapes human beings in her womb. Other times, Belet-Ili is referred to by the name of or epitaph, Nintu, which means  lady of birth. So all of these names and epitaphs refer to the same divine role, the goddess who brings human beings into being. In the old Babylonian version of Atra-Hasis, we read the following about Belet-Ili.

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Belladilly the womb goddess is present. Let the womb goddess create offspring They called up the goddess asked the midwife of the gods. Why is mammy? You are the womb goddess to be the creator of mankind create primeval man Now this is a pretty amazing text because the text tells us that a female god in heaven was entrusted with the sacred task of

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creating the first humans to inhabit this earth. This,  just like we saw in ancient Egypt, attests that human beings are the offspring of divine parents, the children of a divine family. If we turn to Canaan into the Ugaritic literature, we find that the Canaanites also attest to a divine family. As we’ve noted on today’s program, in the ancient world, the high god was often symbolized by a bull.

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to highlight his exceptional capacity to produce offspring. And this was nowhere more salient than among the Canaanites, where the most ubiquitous epitaph found in the Ugaritic literature for the Canaanite high god L was bull. For example, in the Ugaritic literature, in Cuneiform tablet 3.5.35, the high god L is referred to as both a bull

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and as Baal’s father. The text reads, Bull El, his father, King El who created him. So here we can see that El’s virility as a bull is connected to his having fathered Baal. In the Ugaritic literature, El and his wife Asherah give birth to 70 sons who are referred to in the literature as the quote, sons of El.

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and the quote, sons of Adorot, who is Asherah, or the quote, sons of Kudzu, which if you’ll recall was an epitaph given to Asherah, which meant holy or sacred, one who is holy or sacred. In Keneiform tablet 4.4, Adorot, who again is Asherah, is called the quote, progenitress of the gods. The text reads, quote,  oh, lady Adorot of the sea,

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Why have you come here, O progenitress of the gods? One of my favorite things about the Ugaritic literature is that the Canaanites portray the high goddess Asherah as this exceptionally holy being. And they portray the high god El as an exceptionally loving, compassionate father, which is captured in one of his more common epitaphs, Lutpanu ilu du paidi, found in Cuneiform tablet 1.3.

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which  rendered into English means the kindly one, El the compassionate. In text UM 49.1.21-22,  El is given the epitaph, itpen illdipid, which means the kind one, the God of mercy. A scholar by the name of Ulf Oldenburg who studied Canaanite religion,

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wrote the following about the Canaanite high god El on page 21 of his book, The Conflict Between El and Baal in Canaanite Religion. Quote, he, El, is concerned with and cares for the welfare of gods and men. This is always characteristic of him. He is never portrayed in the Ubaritic texts as angry or brutal. The attribute of holiness is applied to El.

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He is called, quote, kind  and holy. In another text, UM 49.1.8, Oldenburg argues that the epitaph, Mulk ad Sinem, which was also given to the Canaanite high god El,  is best rendered in English  as, quote, the king, the exalted father.

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In another text,  5.2.1, we’re told by the Canaanites that El and his wife, Asherah, reign together on thrones. The text reads,  El is enthroned with a tart, and a tart here refers to Asherah. So these texts clearly described El and Asherah as an exalted king and queen who reign over a divine family of gods who are their children. But what do the Ugaritic texts say about human beings?

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Well, in Ugaritic text, UMKRT 37, line 151,  is given the epitaph, Ab-Atem, which translated into English  is, quote, the father of mankind. Oldenburg says the following of the Canaanite high god El on page 19, quote, besides being the father of the gods,  El is also the father of mankind,  Ab-Atem.

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It is he who answers prayer for progeny and blesses with childbirth, just as Yahweh in the Bible, as well as caring for the welfare of human beings as a loving father. Here we see that El is not only understood by the Canaanites  to be the father of a divine family of gods, they also attest that he is the father of human beings. As you’re gonna see down the line, if you haven’t already,

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began to see it in our discussions of the ancient Egyptians. The ancients taught that gods and men are not different species. They’re the same species, just in different stages of development and sanctification. And that the purpose, the main objective of religious ritual is to help human beings become like the gods, which is exactly something that we’re going to read in Genesis in an upcoming episode.

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Now in the Ugaritic text, as we mentioned earlier, Asherah is clearly identified as the progenitress of the gods. But as far as I can tell, the texts don’t identify her as the mother of human beings. However, scholars argue that as El’s consort, the texts imply that she functioned as his counterpart in the generative process of human beings, because that’s what the texts attest to in terms of the birth of the gods. The texts clearly state that the gods are her sons.

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So it follows that human beings are also her progeny. And don’t forget, like we saw with Yousas in ancient Egypt and in the Levant,  Asherah was also associated with a sacred tree or a wooden pole, both of which are gonna be incredibly important in upcoming episodes. Unfortunately, our time’s up, so I’m gonna have to leave it there. As we’ve seen in this episode, the ancient Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Canaanites attest that one of the most um

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One of the defining characteristics of God  is his procreative power. His power to produce offspring, to beget children with his wife, the exalted lady, where he and his wife reign in the heavens as a divine father and a divine mother  over a divine family of their sons and daughters.

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That’s it for me.  Today I’ll leave you with the words of the resurrected Christ.  Quote,  I ascend  to my Father  and  your Father.  I’m Jack Logan.

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