From Yahweh to Zion

by Laurent Guyenot

In this episode, I’ll be exploring the first chapter of Laurent Guyenot’s From Yahweh to Zion. This article is a perfect accompaniment: Israel, the Jewish Settler Colony in the Levant by Fadi Lama. Written as a mini-book with hyperlinked sections, it goes back to the influence of the Popes and the importance of ideology and military advantage for exploitative colonization. It then moves forward into the end game of Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates, which may be what the blue borders of the Israeli flag represent. Fadi gives a prognosis for how this might play out saying that, given the dominant genocidal mindset, he doesn’t expect the colony to survive another decade.

Fadi Lama is author of WHY THE WEST CAN’T WIN: From Bretton Woods to a Multipolar World. Thanks for the referral from Vanessa Beeley.

Israel: The Jewish Settler Colony in The Levant, a Prognosis

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When I tell any Truth it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it but for the sake of defending those who do.
William Blake https://EarthNewspaper.com/Quotes, thanks to Mark Elsis.

In Kevin Barrett’s prelude to From Yahweh to Zion, he describes it as “a scholarly interpretation of ideological history… of the idea of God.” Yet, he says, it could never be published by any major venue because “though God may be criticized, Jewish power must not be.” And Yahweh is the “embodiment and representation of Jewish tribal power in general, and that of Jewish elites in particular”.

He ends by saying that Laurent is “critiquing ideas, not biology” and states, “Fair-minded yet unflinching, it is a magisterial work by an uncommonly erudite historian, and deserves the widest possible readership.” I completely agree, so I’ve put together some quotes that struck me as significant, with some of my thoughts.

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any nation is a narration

In the introduction, Laurent writes:

The Bible has always been the ‘portable fatherland’ of the Diaspora Jews, as Heinrich Heine once put it. But it also became and has remained the heart of Israel, whose founders did not give it any other Constitution. … [13]

To show why Zionism has always been a biblical project, he quotes Avigail Abarbanel in Why I Left the Cult, who explained to fellow Israelis why she gave up her citizenship:

Let’s say you did ‘return home’ as your myths say, that Palestine really was your ancestral home. But Palestine was fully populated when you started to covet it. In order to take it for yourself you have been following quite closely the biblical dictate to Joshua to just walk in and take everything. You killed, you expelled, you raped, you stole, you burned and destroyed and you replaced the population with your own people.

I was always taught that the Zionist movement was largely non-religious (how you can be Jewish without Jewish religion is perplexing in itself). For a supposedly non-religious movement it’s extraordinary how closely Zionism—your creator and your blueprint—has followed the Bible. Of course you never dare to critique the stories of the Bible. Not even the secular amongst you do that.

None of my otherwise good teachers at my secular schools ever suggested that we question the morality of what Joshua did. If we were able to question it, the logical next step would have been to question Zionism, its crimes, and the rightness of the existence of our very own state. No, we couldn’t be allowed to go that far. It was too dangerous. That would risk the precarious structure that held us in place. [14-15]

Laurent presents his book as a critique of a toxic idea, whose first victims are the men and women who believe it. He sees the three invisible walls of the Jewish prison as the specialness of the ‘chosen people,’ the victim narrative culminating in ‘the holocaust,’ and Israel as a land title granted by god. His aim is to help liberate Jews from an identity shaped by the elite “who have built this prison throughout the ages, and kept its key.” He starts that liberation by looking at Yahweh.

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the people of seth

In a technique familiar to my readers, Laurent sees the history of Yahweh as an inversion of conquerer and conquered. A general named Jehu promoted the cult of Yahweh Sabaoth (Yahweh of armies) after seizing the throne of Israel in 842 BCE. In character Yahweh resembled Assur, the warrior god of the Assyrians, carried onto the battlefield in an ark, wreaking destruction on the competing temples of the conquered.

In 720 BCE, Israel allied with Damascus against assimilation and vassalage to the Assyrian Empire, while Judea stood under Assyrian protection. Israel was annihilated and Jerusalem doubled in size with refugees that included the Yahweh priesthood intent on vengeance. Isaiah reflects these fantasies of kings licking the dust at their feet, oppressors eating their own flesh and getting drunk on their own blood.

Israel’s punishment is blamed on worshipping other gods while Judea gains Yahweh’s favor, like Jacob over Esau or David over Saul (notice the similarity between Esau, Saul and Israel.) Samuel reads, “God established on David an eternal dynasty” and his son Solomon reigns over an empire. Laurent writes:

Despite two centuries of fruitless searching, archaeologists have come to admit that the magnificent Kingdom of Solomon has no more reality than Arthur’s Camelot. At the supposed time of Solomon, Jerusalem was only a large village, while Samaria hosted a palace. The myth of Solomon probably stated as a fantasy mirror image of Josiah’s political project, designed to strengthen the claims of prophet-priests that a new David (Josiah) would restore the empire of Solomon. The game of mirrors thus created between mythical past and prophetic future is a masterpiece of political propaganda. [26]

Josiah, however, is killed in battle against the Egyptian army and his sons reign as vassals of Egypt, then Babylon. When they rebel, King Nebuchadnezzar II burns Jerusalem in 588 BCE. Many of the elites are exiled to Babylon and Egypt, where some acquire great wealth. Jeremiah encourages them to pray for their hosts’ success.

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babel lets in the snake

In 555, this changes when Babylon and Egypt go to war against Cyrus of Persia. The Judean exiles side with Persia and exhort in their Psalms, “Daughter of Babel, doomed to destruction, a blessing on anyone who seizes your babies and shatters them against a rock!” Did the Judeans work from within to betray their hosts? It seems so because, when Cyrus wins, he repatriates 50,000 people to Jerusalem, which includes their servants and singers, with the project of rebuilding the temple under his protection.

Two parallel narratives then emerge. In the Torah under Josiah, there is a magical discovery of a scroll written by Moses himself. This becomes the Book of the Law, Deuteronomy, that Ezra brings back from Babylon. On history, Laurent writes:

the only near-certainty is that, around 458 BCE, a clan claiming to issue from a lineage of Yahwistic Judean priests and installed in Babylon won from the Persians the right to establish a semi-autonomous state in Palestine; and that in order to dominate the local population, they developed a version of history presenting themselves as legitimate heirs of an ancient tradition.

Deuteronomy establishes a theocracy ruled by a priesthood. The conquest of Canaan by Joshua (Yeshua) is a mythical projection of the repatriation to Canaan by the Jews of Babylon, making Ezra into the new Moses. The Lord gives them reign over ‘the people of the land’—the indigenous inhabitants who are now declared foreigners. Those who had returned in the preceding century and intermarried are told to repudiate their wives and children.

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xenophobia rules

According to the book of Ezra, ‘the people of the country’ want to help them build the temple as fellow Hebrews, but are rebuffed as Assyrian colonists practicing idolatry. Yet in the story of Moses, he states they will follow what leads them to water—which turns out to be a herd of wild donkeys or asses. A head of a donkey was said to be worshipped in the first Jerusalem temple, and Jesus is brought to Jerusalem on an ass. These seem like references to Assur the warrior god.

The Ezraites claim themselves as the rightful people of Judah and scorn the indigenous Judeans. They also usurp the name of Israel, which had been the prestigious northern kingdom. The name Ezraites echoes Israelites. Abraham’s journey seems another retelling of the Babylonian Ezraites infiltrating Canaan and conquering it from within.

Laurent points out that the tower of Babel could not have been written before the fall of Babylon to Persia. And the word Paradise in the Garden of Eden comes from the Persian word for garden, Pardes. The story of Noah cursing Canaan to be ‘his brothers’ meanest slave’ is certainly a slur against the indigenous Judeans, whether or not they had the means to enforce it.

Laurent compares the tales of Lot’s daughters getting him drunk and seducing him to produce the subservient Moabites and Ammonites. Yet when Judah fornicates with his daughter-in-law Tamar, dressed as a prostitute, she gives birth to the prestigious tribe of Judah. Keep this in mind for another episode when I’ll talk about the gnostic teachings of Seth and the results when women procreate without the permission of the male as opposed to the reverse.

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let’s do the time warp again

According to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, there are edicts from three successive Persian rulers—Cyrus, Darius and Artaxerxes—giving the Babylonian Ezraites the right to rule and build the temple from the royal treasury. These are all fake by common agreement among historians. Moreover, the claims could never have been written during the time they would be known as fake. Therefore, the books of Ezra and Nehemiah were written after the end of Persian rule in the Hellenist period of Alexander the Great circa 333 BCE.

And they are pure fantasy from the concept that these are returning Judeans whose ancestors had been exiled to Babylon, where they prospered and thrived. Why would Babylonian rulers have welcomed 50,000 elite Judeans, with their servants and singers, who had just lost the war against them? They defeat them and then invite the most powerful among them into Babylon so they could become more wealthy at the expense of Babylonians? Nonsense.

The Ezraites who came from Babylon after it was conquered by Persia had never originated in Judea. My guess is that they were Babylonians who became traitors and spies for Persia during the war. Afterwards, fearful for their lives, they fled Babylon when the people realized they'd been betrayed—much like in Germany after WWI when the Balfour Declaration came to light. These were opportunists and exploiters with no morality, a genealogy no one should want to claim.

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walk like an egyptian

Laurent cites that Judean refugees from the Babylonian conquest settled by the thousands in Egypt. Once again, it makes no sense that a country would expel people from their defeated nation only to welcome them into its own and share their land and resources with the people who were just killing their men.

And for this generosity, they betrayed the Egyptians to Persia. For their sedition, they became the ‘intermediaries’ aka enforcers between the ruling Persian elite and the people. Likely they were taxmasters again, as described with Joseph at the end of Genesis.

In 332 BCE they followed the same strategy helping Alexander the Macedonian take Egypt from the Persians. ‘The Jews’ were given the same privileges as the Hellenistic ruling class. As Josephus reports, this caused the Gentiles—Greeks and Egyptians!—to hate them.

But were these former Judeans? As Nefahotep writes:

The masters were known as Šagašu in ancient Sumeria; they were known as Habiru (Hebrew) when they held control in ancient Egypt, their rulers were known as Heka Khasut; they were known as the Archons in Ancient Greece, prior to Solon who created the Athenian "Democracy" which was a system of representative tyranny.

Remember that the names of the rulers are some times used to describe the whole people, while the majority of the people are not a part of the ruling group in reality, they instead maintain their own separate bloodline.

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triple-take

After Alexander’s death, his generals fight over his conquests and Judea changes from a possession of the Pharaoh in 300 BCE to belonging to the house of Seleucid a century later, along with Persia and nearly all of Asia. Laurent writes:

Hellenistic culture, born of the love affair of Greece and Egypt, then permeated the entire Middle East. The use of Greek spread from Asia to Egypt, although Aramaic, from which Hebrew and Arabic derive, remained the lingua franca in Judea and Mesopotamia.

In 167 BCE, the Seleucid king dedicated the Jerusalem temple to Zeus, prompting the revolt of the Maccabeans led by Judas and his brothers John, Simon, Eleazar and Jonathon. He defeated four Seleucid armies and put down a civil war of Hellenizers who wanted assimilation. After purifying the temple and dealing ruthlessly with sympathizers, Judas wins religious freedom but his brothers continue to fight for Judean political independence. Palm fronds are their symbol. They are heroes celebrated by Hannukah.

The zealot revolt is started a century later when the students of two teachers, Judas and Zadok, climb the temple and cut off the golden eagle that’s the sign of Roman rule. The sons of Judas include John, Simon and Eleazar. They kick out Rome for three years and ‘purify the temple,’ although Josephus says they defile it. They kick out the tax-collectors, kill two of the high priests, and make it their headquarters. Palm fronds are their symbol. They fight for religious freedom from the theocracy and political freedom from taxation. To Josephus, they are villains.

Jesus comes to Jerusalem on an ass, with palm fronds lining the street. He goes to the temple and takes a whip to the ‘money changers.’ Judas is his betrayer. Has this story been reversed?

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who is the real robber?

This destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE is the seminal expulsion in the myth of the ‘wandering Jew’. Yet Josephus writes that Titus gave permission to the Torah scholars and Davidic line of royalty to be preserved and incorporated into the Roman dynasty. Only the zealots, who rebelled against Rome and the theocracy of the Torah, were murdered, enslaved or expelled.

Josephus and Jesus both hate the zealots, who they refer to using the same word for thieves and robbers. They are vitriolic against the Pharisees, one of whom co-founded the zealot movement against the theocracy and ruling class. The theocracy was loyal to Rome, for whom they were the tax(task)masters. Did the priestly and royal class betray the Judeans and force them into slavery or exile? It would follow the pattern.

Laurent shows the pattern in the stories of Joseph, Esther and Daniel:

the stories … focus on the influence that can be exercised for the benefit of the Jewish people, by a member of the Jewish community infiltrated into the heart of power. … Joseph is the prototype of the court Jew who, having risen to a position of public responsibility thanks to his practical intelligence, promotes his tribe at the expense of the people he pretends to serve while actually ruining and enslaving them by grabbing their money and putting them in debt.

He compares this to another story in Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities:

This Joseph, a man ‘of great reputation among the people of Jerusalem, for gravity, prudence and justice’ was appointed as Judea’s tax collector by Ptolemy after promising to bring back double the tax revenues of his competitors. ‘The king was pleased to hear that offer; and because it augmented his revenues, said he would confirm the sale of the taxes to him.’

Joseph fulfilled his contract by murdering several prominent citizens and confiscating their property. He became extremely rich and was thus able to help his coreligionists. Therefore, concludes the historian, Joseph ‘was a good man, and of great magnanimity; and brought the Jews out of a state of poverty and meanness, to one that was more splendid.

Laurent concludes these were written at the same time and I would say by the same person, who was a Roman aristocrat named Piso and not a Judean at all. The repetition and hyperbole shows the Bible and Josephus to be all fabrications, for which there are no existing versions in Hebrew.

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the money-shifters

In conclusion, the only descendants of the ancient Judeans are the people currently being annihilated by those who want to erase their existence. As Shlomo Sand finds, Judean farmers were never expelled en masse from their lands. And the elite collaborators with power, who created slavery through taxation and sold out every country that took them in, were never Judean in all their sordid history. They have always been Heka Khasut, foreign rulers from behind who play everyone against each other in court politics.

As Laurent says:

The Torah is the instrument crafted by these master propagandists to subjugate and control the Palestinian population.

Laurent looks at the origin of the Hebrews or Hapiru and says that the name Cain in Hebrew is identical to the Kenites meaning metalsmith. Although he names several products that would require them to be nomadic, he doesn’t mention coinage. The prohibition against killing the Kenites would come in handy for the instruments of taxation slavery.

He also cites the Egyptian Amarna tablets on the Hapiru as nomadic wanderers from northern Arabia as the most likely etymology of their name. They are associated with disruption of the public order. But in the Bible, the term hapiru means bandits, thieves or robbers. “The Egyptians have a horror of all shepherds” says Genesis 46. Perhaps because they know they’re about to get fleeced.

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mirroring seth & osiris

Laurent ends this chapter where he began with the people of Seth. Like many biblical stories that invert Egyptian ones, Cain and Abel reverses the fratricide of the older brother Osiris by the younger Seth. And instead of the resurrection of Osiris in Horus, a new Abel is created in Seth, getting the inheritance without the guilt by pinning the murder on the oldest. This is a motif repeated throughout.

Laurent writes:

According to Plutarch, some Egyptians believed that, after having been banished from Egypt by the gods, Seth wandered in Palestine where he fathered two sons, Hierosolymos and Youdaios, that is ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘Judah.’ … There was also a persistent rumor in the Greco-Roman world that in their temple in Jerusalem, the Jews worshiped a golden donkey’s head, the donkey being the animal symbol of Seth. A contemporary of Plutarch, the Roman author Apion, accredited that rumor.

Josephus himself, from the “History of Egypt written by the Egyptian Manetho three centuries earlier, identifies the Hebrews with the Hyksos, a confederation of nomadic warriors … distinguished by the exclusive worship of Seth.”

Seth is “synonymous with domination and violence,” says Plutarch. “A diabolos in the etymological sense of divider, a pariah among the gods. … Whenever Seth takes over the management of the world, lies and violence prevail,” writes Laurent. Notice that lies come first. It’s only by exposing the lies that the violence will end. The first victims are the perpetrators held captive by the lies.

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Looks at Biblical analysis from the interviews by Rurik Skywalker of Laurent Guyenot, author of From Yahweh to Zion and Anno Domini. Asks whether the scriptures have turned hate into love and love into hate, sacralizing it. Some Bible critics reject the subservience to God but accept the superiority or cold hatred over others. Examines the metaphysics conspiracy of one Creator god who is good.

For my 67th birthday, I claim my power as a geriatric sex symbol, explain why young women particularly need hope, and tell my genius trick for putting your multiple personalities to work. I detail Isaac Middle's wholesome astrology chart, complete with Vedic nakshatras or lunar mansions. And I tell why we need the temple of Auset/ Isis to re-member the 13 pieces of Ausir/ Osiris, to heal the wounds of the last four years and the last four millennia.

Looking at etymology and Bible genealogies, I examine the puzzle of the Ashkenazi, quote Laurent Guyenot on Yahweh as 'a sociopath among the gods,' and ask whether Judean meant rebel against the Roman empire and the high priests who enabled it through taxation.

Puts the Biblical story of Babel in context of the genealogy of Noah, transferring the right to rule the world from Shem (Shemites) to Abram, the first Hebrew. Explains the thorny problem of how there are so many languages if everyone descended from Noah. Also looks at R.F. Kuang's excellent book Babel on translation, etymology and colonization.