BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 3: “The Forbidden Scriptures”

Dr. Robert Cargill provides a summary of the third episode of the new History Channel series

The History Channel’s new series Bible Secrets Revealed tackles the mysteries of the Bible over the course of six weeks. Bible Secrets Revealed airs on Wednesdays at 10 pm EST on the History Channel. Live tweet the show at #BibleSecretsRevealed.

Consulting producer Dr. Robert Cargill, who is an archaeologist and assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, has responded to Bible Secrets Revealed viewers’ questions throughout the series. Read the questions and answers here.

Episode 3, “The Forbidden Scriptures,” aired on November 27, 2013.

Click here to learn more about the show and to see a list of other episode summaries.


Summary of Episode 3 by Dr. Robert Cargill

Dr. Robert Cargill, professor and consulting producer

This episode explores many ancient Jewish and Christian documents that didn’t make it into the Bible. Scholars refer to these documents as the “Pseudepigrapha” (books written under a false name) and the “Apocrypha” (which came to be understood as the “hidden books”). The episode asks why these books were excluded from the Bible.

“The Forbidden Scriptures” Act 1: The Biblical Canon

The episode begins by noting that both Judaism at the time of Christianity and early Christianity were incredibly diverse. In fact, when it came to “Scripture,” different Jewish and Christian groups revered different books as authoritative and canonical. We first explore the concept of canonization, asking how and why certain books made it into, or were banished from, the Bible.

FREE ebook: The Holy Bible: A Buyer's Guide 42 different Bible versions, addressing content, text, style and religious orientation.

* Indicates a required field.

Particular attention was paid to the figure of Enoch and the books attributed to him.

Enoch was an incredibly popular figure in the late Second Temple period, and yet the books attributed to Enoch were left out of what became most Jewish and Christian canons. Of course, those responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls loved Enoch and the literature associated with the Enochic tradition (like the Book of Jubilees). But many Christians do not realize that a part of 1 Enoch actually did make it into the Christian canon. Scholars recognize that verses 14-15 of the canonical Epistle of Jude actually quote from 1 Enoch 1:9. We can compare them below:

Jude 14: Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones,
Jude 15: to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

The passage from which Jude claims that Enoch is quoting is actually a rough translation from the Book of Enoch:

1 Enoch 1:9: “And behold! He cometh with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment upon all, and to destroy all the ungodly: And to convict all flesh of all the works of their ungodliness which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard things which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

So despite the fact that the Book of Enoch was excluded from the biblical canon, it was so popular in the first century CE, that a part of it was retained in a quote from the Epistle of Jude.

Because the Book of Enoch is so closely tied to events of canonical Book of Genesis 6:1-4, the episode suggests that 1 Enoch exists, in part, as an apology for God. There seems to have been some ethical questions raised about why an all-knowing God would come to “regret” (cf. Genesis 6:6-7) creating humans and ultimately murder them all (except for Noah and his family, of course) with a flood. It raised questions about God’s omniscience and moral judgment. Thus, some scholars argue that the beginning of the Book of Enoch was attempting to make God look better by explaining the account of the Great Flood as a means by which to save humanity from the unstoppable Giants that were wreaking havoc all over the earth and devouring all of its resources (cf. Jubilees 7:21–25). Thus, rather than understanding the Great Flood as a murderous divine punishment of humans, the Book of Enoch seeks to make God look a little better by suggesting it was the only way to save humanity from the evil of the Giants brought about by the divine-mortal intercourse.

“The Forbidden Scriptures” Act 2: Gnostic Christianity

In Act 2, the show introduces the Gnostics and some of their beliefs. The corpus of texts discovered at Nag Hammadi leads to a discussion of Gnosticism and Gnostic Christianity and how this belief system differed from what would become mainstream Christianity. The Gospel of Thomas is highlighted, and there is a discussion about how the Gospel of Thomas differs from the canonical gospels. For instance, Thomas is a collection of sayings of Jesus, but contains no miracles or narratives about Jesus. These differences, coupled with its Gnostic teachings that would later be deemed heretical, are likely the reason it was excluded from the Christian canon.


Read about how the Nag Hammadi texts discovered in Egypt reintroduced the world to Gnostic Christianity in the Bible History Daily article “The Nag Hammadi Codices and Gnostic Christianity.”


“The Forbidden Scriptures” Act 3: The Figure of Mary Magdalene

In Act 3, the documentary examined the person and the Gospel attributed to Mary Magdalene. The show examined the Biblical and popular claims made about Mary—including that she was an important disciple (perhaps most important of the disciples) and that she was married to Jesus. The documentary also suggests that the later attempts to conflate Mary Magdalene with the unnamed “sinful” woman mentioned in Luke 7 were possibly designed to suppress the influence of Mary (and of women in general), while elevating the male disciples (the Apostles) to levels of greater importance within the early church tradition.

The act also discusses the Testimony of Truth and asks why Adam and Eve are prohibited from and then punished for pursuing knowledge by eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

“The Forbidden Scriptures” Act 4: Did God Have a Wife?

Act 4 begins with the Life of Adam and Eve, which offers a number of additional details about the first biblical family not included in the Biblical accounts, like the origin of disease and death.

This act also explores the concept that God may have had a wife. Inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud speak about Asherah as a consort of God in blessings made by those authoring the inscriptions. We have similar inscribed blessings invoking YHWH and Asherah from Khirbet el-Qom. This is a difficult concept for many because the Bible is very clear that God is a singular God (as one would expect in a monotheistic or monolatrous faith). Yet because the prophets were so adamant and repetitious about the fact that idols—including Asherah—were not be worshipped, it is seen as evidence that she was, in fact, being worshipped in ancient Israel and Judah and being invoked in blessings alongside YHWH.

I often use the example of the “NO SKATEBOARDING” signs one might see in public plazas when explaining this to my classes. If you see ubiquitous “NO SKATEBOARDING” signs all over a public place, it is likely that much skateboarding is, in fact, taking place there. (At least enough skateboarding to require a number of signs to discourage the activity.) The same is true for the worship of Asherah: given the fact that the prophetic texts offer so many repeated warnings about worshipping her, it is likely that she was being worshiped in ancient Israel.

“The Forbidden Scriptures” Act 5: The Apocalypse and the Book of Revelations

The final act introduces the concept of “apocalypse” and spends a moment discussing the Book of Revelation (aka The Apocalypse of John). Act 5 also highlights a trio of pseudepigraphical texts attributed to the Apostle Peter: The Apocalypse of Peter, the Gospel of Peter (which features a giant, resurrected Jesus and a floating, talking cross), and the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter. It is worth noting that many scholars see the Apocalypse of Peter as a likely inspiration behind Dante’s Inferno, as it was not only as popular as the ultimately canonical Book of Revelation, but also describes a hell where each punishment fits the crime.


 

Related Posts

Herod Tomb
Mar 24
How Was Jesus’ Tomb Sealed?

By: Megan Sauter

Giotto adoration of the magi
Mar 23
Where Was Jesus Born?

By: Megan Sauter

A stone relief created in 1958 by sculptor Ferdinand Heseding. The relief, which appears on a fountain in Dusseldorf, Germany, depicts the Biblical spies Joshua and Caleb carrying a cluster of grapes back from the Promised Land (Numbers 13:1-33)
Mar 19
No, No, Bad Dog: Dogs in the Bible

By: Ellen White

Mar 16
Eunuchs in the Bible

By: Megan Sauter


8 Responses

  1. Albert Shumate says:

    The ‘Gnostic Gospel’ would not have put the men in charge.

  2. D. Harvey says:

    http://www.unknown-pearls.com/proof_evidence.html

    Real Proof and Physical Evidence –
    Last Days – Ancient Knowledge Foretold:

    Isaiah 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the LAST DAYS

  3. SonOFElYah says:

    “There seems to have been some ethical questions raised about why an all-knowing God would come to “regret” (cf. Genesis 6:6-7) creating humans and ultimately murder them all (except for Noah and his family, of course) with a flood. It raised questions about God’s omniscience and moral judgment. Thus, some scholars argue that the beginning of the Book of Enoch was attempting to make God look better by explaining the account of the Great Flood as a means by which to save humanity from the unstoppable Giants that were wreaking havoc all over the earth and devouring all of its resources (cf. Jubilees 7:21–25)”.

    This is Blasphemy. The LORD GOD who knows the end from the beginning, who is all seeing and all powerful cannot repent. The books of Enoch that were given to us contains the truth. They are not to “make GOD look better”. No Man or text can make GOD look better. HE is GOD! Do you think we can judge our maker? It is our maker that gave us the ability to judge. Why would our judgement be more righteous than that of our maker? There is none good but GOD. They (books of Enoch) reveal the truth. It was not humanity that was saved, it was Mankind. (children of the kingdom only). This means that all those that perished were not children of the kingdom.

    Therefore, the reason why it is written Gen 6:5-7 that GOD repented is because it is a lie inserted into the bible to blaspheme the LORD GOD. Why would it then say in Numbers 23:19:

    GOD is not a man that HE should lie: Neither the Son of Man that HE should repent.

    An obvious contradiction within the bible. The LORD GOD is not an Author of confusion. The LORD GOD is the Author of Life. If Life is in the very WORD of GOD, then we must understand the WORD to meditate on it, to eat and assimilate the WORD so that we may have Life. GOD wants us to know HIM. That is why HE has sent us the LAW and the PROPHETS which is the Authority of the Kingdom, and the Angels of the church ages to lead the church back to Eden (the 3rd Heaven): Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Apostle Peter, ElYah Jude. That is why there are three Elijah: For they define the trinity. Everything that the LORD GOD gives to us is the WORD that gives us life through knowledge of HIM. One cannot love what they do not know, which is why we were given prophets – “sent ones”, to reveal who the GOD is and reveal the plan of Salvation (the LOGOS) that has existed from before the foundation of the World.

    The great Enoch and the Great Prophet Elijah of Tishbite are the only men to have run their race successfully and return to Eden (3rd heaven) without tasting death at all. This reveals that it is possible to return to Heaven without dying! And, these two HOLY Men of GOD achieved this before JESUS our Supreme LORD was crucified for the ultimate Atonement of the Original sin, death. Have you ever wondered why we call things evil? Where does the word evil come from?

    Evil spelt backwards is Live!

    Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you. The Flesh and the blood is the undiluted WORD of GOD. Why would the LORD GOD want to confuse us if the very way to life is in HIS WORD?

  4. Emmanuel says:

    I need to know the truth

  5. Hahayahdim says:

    *BEWARE the BEAST MAN*, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among *”AHAYAH’S”* (I AM)
    creations, he kills for sport, lust and greed. Yea, he will murder his brother Yahcob’ to possess his brother’s land. Let him [not] breed in great numbers, for he is the enemy of the earth and will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his mountain lair. STUDY HIM as he has studied you. Although you intend him no harm, without thought, provocation or hesitation he will MURDER you, your family and your offspring as swift as a cunning bird of prey. He knows his time is short. And just as his father Esau, he too hates you with an ever-lasting perfect hatred; for he knows who the Captured Slaves* truly are, oh’ *House of Ysrayl*. Trust in your father – the ANCIENT OF DAYS ! Be still, – Vigilant and learn to become a ‘Vagabond’, ready to leave the den of this wicked Predator as swift as Lions. Do not Fire unless Fired upon, – Stay Alert ~ *WARN YOUR CHILDREN*~; for he is the harbinger of DEATH. He is the Eagle of Obadiah, Esau of Malachi, of Rome, Idumiea, Khazaria, Amaleck, Ashkanaz and of the *CAUCUS MOUNTAINS*. -With his STAR of MOLOCH & FLAG of EAGLE, he rains death from the heavens, for he is DEATH and the DESTROYER of worlds. He goes by many names. He is a murderer as was his father Cain; a Lier, Trickster and Dangerous. He has the bloodline and DNA of the Fallen Ones!

    – *DO NOT TRUST HIM !!*

    *Man the Walls, Sound the Alarm, Blow the Trumpet !!!!*

    *WARN YOUR CHILDREN* !!!

    For – He is *EDOM* !!!

    aka: *White Man*

    … *BEWARE* !!!!!!

    Click below:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3aOGEjCi3k

  6. Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 3: “The Forbidden Scriptures” | When Was Jesus Born? New information is shocking! says:

    […] Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 3: “The Forbidden Scriptures” – Biblical Archaeolo… #alrp-related-posts h3, #alrp-related-posts h2{font-size:1.2em;font-style:normal;margin-bottom: 10px;} .alrp-thumbnail img { background-color:#fff; float:left; margin:0 10px 0 0; padding:7px; box-shadow:1px 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border:1px solid rgba(255,255,255,0.5); } .alrp-content { min-height:95px; border-bottom:1px dotted #ddd; margin-bottom:10px; } .alrp-content a { text-decoration:none; } .alrp-content p { padding-bottom:10px; } ul.rankershareLinks li { list-style: none; float: left; margin-right: 5px; } .twitter-share-button { width: 80px !important; } […]

  7. Robert R. Cargill says:

    Paul,

    Good catch. This is a typo. It should indeed be “Testimony of Truth”.

    I’ll ask the editors to correct this above.

    Thank you. -bc

  8. Paul Ballotta says:

    I felt compelled to correct Dr. Cargill about the fact that it is from “The Testimony of Truth,” and not “The Gospel of Truth,” that we are provided with an alternative interpretation of the Paradise myth (which is good since this gives me an excuse to rant about something).
    Bart Ehrman, in his “Lost Christianities” (p.126) offers an explanation as to perhaps why the Gnostic Christians were purged from the early church. They “operated principly within existing Christian churches” and “considered themselves to be the spiritually elite of these churches.” “The Testimony of Truth” is an example of what probably irked the establishment with its emphasis on chastity. It is a theme that is found throughout the Nag Hammadi Library, by replacing sexual intercourse with the mystery of the Divine coupling in a spiritual wedding chamber:
    :The Law commands (one) to take a husband (or) to take a wife, and to beget, to multiply like the sand of the sea. But passion which is a delight to them constrains the souls of those who are begotten … and they show that they are assisting the world, and they (turn) away from the light…”
    “The Testimony of Truth” also informs us that not all serpents are evil. The staff of Moses becomes a serpent that devours the wicked serpents of Pharaoh’s magicians (Exodus 7:8-12). The bronze serpent mounted on a pole (Numbers 21:9) serves as an example of Christ’s crucifiction (John 3:14,15) “so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”
    Another book from Nag Hammadi, “Asclepius,” named after the Greek god of medicine and whose symbol is a serpent entwined around a pole, emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge for the healing of passions:
    “But if there is ignorance, and learning does not exist in the soul of man, (then) the incurable passions persist in it (the soul). And additional evil comes with them (the passions) in the form of an incurable sore.”
    In an article from a BAR issue from March/April 2007 entitled “The Mystery of the Nechushtan,” King Hezekiah’s reforms to abolish idolatry also include the relic of the bronze serpent that the Israelites still worshipped since their wanderings in the wilderness (2 Kings 18:4). According to the article, the Nechustan was not considered evil, but was destroyed in order to remove the last vestiges of Egyptian influence so as to appease the Assyrians. Indeed, the article provides a photo (p.60) of a solid gold cobra found in Ekron, suggesting that the Nechustan may have been a cobra, a symbol of the Egyptian scribal god Thoth that was worn on the Pharaoh’s diadem, known as “Uraeus”:
    “The Uraeus protected the Pharaoh from his enemies by spitting fire at them. The Uraeus on amulets protected mummies from snakes in the underworld. The Israelite Nechustan functioned much like the Egyptian Uraeus. The Nechustan fashioned by Moses in the wilderness in Numbers 21:4-9 served as an apotropaic (protective) purpose, just as the Egyptian amulets did” (p.63).
    According to Herodotus in “The Histories” (2:76), there was a species of flying snakes that are described as resembling water snakes with bat-like wings that originated in Arabia. Upon approaching Egypt they were eaten by a species of Ibis, which is also a symbol of the god Thoth. I once saw a relative of the Ibis outside a wild bird preserve in Queens as it waded through a stream, ocasionally bending down to pluck its food out of the water with its long beak. The single plume of feathers on its head resembled a tuft of hair on a bald head that bobbed up and down like a scholar doting over his books.
    The place where the Israelites encountered these serpents was Punon (Numbers 33:43) and it was the place from which “copper is smelted from rock” (Job 28:2), at the copper mine at Khirbet en-Nahas (“ruins of copper,” in Arabic) that functioned from 1200 -900 B.C.E. This area, 30 miles southeast of the Dead Sea, would again be used by the Romans as a source of copper. Christians were sent there as slave labor and were worked to death and when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, heretics (like Gnostics) were sent there to their deaths:
    http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-places/condemned-to-mine-copper/

Write a Reply or Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


8 Responses

  1. Albert Shumate says:

    The ‘Gnostic Gospel’ would not have put the men in charge.

  2. D. Harvey says:

    http://www.unknown-pearls.com/proof_evidence.html

    Real Proof and Physical Evidence –
    Last Days – Ancient Knowledge Foretold:

    Isaiah 2:2 And it shall come to pass in the LAST DAYS

  3. SonOFElYah says:

    “There seems to have been some ethical questions raised about why an all-knowing God would come to “regret” (cf. Genesis 6:6-7) creating humans and ultimately murder them all (except for Noah and his family, of course) with a flood. It raised questions about God’s omniscience and moral judgment. Thus, some scholars argue that the beginning of the Book of Enoch was attempting to make God look better by explaining the account of the Great Flood as a means by which to save humanity from the unstoppable Giants that were wreaking havoc all over the earth and devouring all of its resources (cf. Jubilees 7:21–25)”.

    This is Blasphemy. The LORD GOD who knows the end from the beginning, who is all seeing and all powerful cannot repent. The books of Enoch that were given to us contains the truth. They are not to “make GOD look better”. No Man or text can make GOD look better. HE is GOD! Do you think we can judge our maker? It is our maker that gave us the ability to judge. Why would our judgement be more righteous than that of our maker? There is none good but GOD. They (books of Enoch) reveal the truth. It was not humanity that was saved, it was Mankind. (children of the kingdom only). This means that all those that perished were not children of the kingdom.

    Therefore, the reason why it is written Gen 6:5-7 that GOD repented is because it is a lie inserted into the bible to blaspheme the LORD GOD. Why would it then say in Numbers 23:19:

    GOD is not a man that HE should lie: Neither the Son of Man that HE should repent.

    An obvious contradiction within the bible. The LORD GOD is not an Author of confusion. The LORD GOD is the Author of Life. If Life is in the very WORD of GOD, then we must understand the WORD to meditate on it, to eat and assimilate the WORD so that we may have Life. GOD wants us to know HIM. That is why HE has sent us the LAW and the PROPHETS which is the Authority of the Kingdom, and the Angels of the church ages to lead the church back to Eden (the 3rd Heaven): Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Apostle Peter, ElYah Jude. That is why there are three Elijah: For they define the trinity. Everything that the LORD GOD gives to us is the WORD that gives us life through knowledge of HIM. One cannot love what they do not know, which is why we were given prophets – “sent ones”, to reveal who the GOD is and reveal the plan of Salvation (the LOGOS) that has existed from before the foundation of the World.

    The great Enoch and the Great Prophet Elijah of Tishbite are the only men to have run their race successfully and return to Eden (3rd heaven) without tasting death at all. This reveals that it is possible to return to Heaven without dying! And, these two HOLY Men of GOD achieved this before JESUS our Supreme LORD was crucified for the ultimate Atonement of the Original sin, death. Have you ever wondered why we call things evil? Where does the word evil come from?

    Evil spelt backwards is Live!

    Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you. The Flesh and the blood is the undiluted WORD of GOD. Why would the LORD GOD want to confuse us if the very way to life is in HIS WORD?

  4. Emmanuel says:

    I need to know the truth

  5. Hahayahdim says:

    *BEWARE the BEAST MAN*, for he is the Devil’s pawn. Alone among *”AHAYAH’S”* (I AM)
    creations, he kills for sport, lust and greed. Yea, he will murder his brother Yahcob’ to possess his brother’s land. Let him [not] breed in great numbers, for he is the enemy of the earth and will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his mountain lair. STUDY HIM as he has studied you. Although you intend him no harm, without thought, provocation or hesitation he will MURDER you, your family and your offspring as swift as a cunning bird of prey. He knows his time is short. And just as his father Esau, he too hates you with an ever-lasting perfect hatred; for he knows who the Captured Slaves* truly are, oh’ *House of Ysrayl*. Trust in your father – the ANCIENT OF DAYS ! Be still, – Vigilant and learn to become a ‘Vagabond’, ready to leave the den of this wicked Predator as swift as Lions. Do not Fire unless Fired upon, – Stay Alert ~ *WARN YOUR CHILDREN*~; for he is the harbinger of DEATH. He is the Eagle of Obadiah, Esau of Malachi, of Rome, Idumiea, Khazaria, Amaleck, Ashkanaz and of the *CAUCUS MOUNTAINS*. -With his STAR of MOLOCH & FLAG of EAGLE, he rains death from the heavens, for he is DEATH and the DESTROYER of worlds. He goes by many names. He is a murderer as was his father Cain; a Lier, Trickster and Dangerous. He has the bloodline and DNA of the Fallen Ones!

    – *DO NOT TRUST HIM !!*

    *Man the Walls, Sound the Alarm, Blow the Trumpet !!!!*

    *WARN YOUR CHILDREN* !!!

    For – He is *EDOM* !!!

    aka: *White Man*

    … *BEWARE* !!!!!!

    Click below:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3aOGEjCi3k

  6. Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 3: “The Forbidden Scriptures” | When Was Jesus Born? New information is shocking! says:

    […] Bible Secrets Revealed, Episode 3: “The Forbidden Scriptures” – Biblical Archaeolo… #alrp-related-posts h3, #alrp-related-posts h2{font-size:1.2em;font-style:normal;margin-bottom: 10px;} .alrp-thumbnail img { background-color:#fff; float:left; margin:0 10px 0 0; padding:7px; box-shadow:1px 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.5); border:1px solid rgba(255,255,255,0.5); } .alrp-content { min-height:95px; border-bottom:1px dotted #ddd; margin-bottom:10px; } .alrp-content a { text-decoration:none; } .alrp-content p { padding-bottom:10px; } ul.rankershareLinks li { list-style: none; float: left; margin-right: 5px; } .twitter-share-button { width: 80px !important; } […]

  7. Robert R. Cargill says:

    Paul,

    Good catch. This is a typo. It should indeed be “Testimony of Truth”.

    I’ll ask the editors to correct this above.

    Thank you. -bc

  8. Paul Ballotta says:

    I felt compelled to correct Dr. Cargill about the fact that it is from “The Testimony of Truth,” and not “The Gospel of Truth,” that we are provided with an alternative interpretation of the Paradise myth (which is good since this gives me an excuse to rant about something).
    Bart Ehrman, in his “Lost Christianities” (p.126) offers an explanation as to perhaps why the Gnostic Christians were purged from the early church. They “operated principly within existing Christian churches” and “considered themselves to be the spiritually elite of these churches.” “The Testimony of Truth” is an example of what probably irked the establishment with its emphasis on chastity. It is a theme that is found throughout the Nag Hammadi Library, by replacing sexual intercourse with the mystery of the Divine coupling in a spiritual wedding chamber:
    :The Law commands (one) to take a husband (or) to take a wife, and to beget, to multiply like the sand of the sea. But passion which is a delight to them constrains the souls of those who are begotten … and they show that they are assisting the world, and they (turn) away from the light…”
    “The Testimony of Truth” also informs us that not all serpents are evil. The staff of Moses becomes a serpent that devours the wicked serpents of Pharaoh’s magicians (Exodus 7:8-12). The bronze serpent mounted on a pole (Numbers 21:9) serves as an example of Christ’s crucifiction (John 3:14,15) “so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.”
    Another book from Nag Hammadi, “Asclepius,” named after the Greek god of medicine and whose symbol is a serpent entwined around a pole, emphasizes the acquisition of knowledge for the healing of passions:
    “But if there is ignorance, and learning does not exist in the soul of man, (then) the incurable passions persist in it (the soul). And additional evil comes with them (the passions) in the form of an incurable sore.”
    In an article from a BAR issue from March/April 2007 entitled “The Mystery of the Nechushtan,” King Hezekiah’s reforms to abolish idolatry also include the relic of the bronze serpent that the Israelites still worshipped since their wanderings in the wilderness (2 Kings 18:4). According to the article, the Nechustan was not considered evil, but was destroyed in order to remove the last vestiges of Egyptian influence so as to appease the Assyrians. Indeed, the article provides a photo (p.60) of a solid gold cobra found in Ekron, suggesting that the Nechustan may have been a cobra, a symbol of the Egyptian scribal god Thoth that was worn on the Pharaoh’s diadem, known as “Uraeus”:
    “The Uraeus protected the Pharaoh from his enemies by spitting fire at them. The Uraeus on amulets protected mummies from snakes in the underworld. The Israelite Nechustan functioned much like the Egyptian Uraeus. The Nechustan fashioned by Moses in the wilderness in Numbers 21:4-9 served as an apotropaic (protective) purpose, just as the Egyptian amulets did” (p.63).
    According to Herodotus in “The Histories” (2:76), there was a species of flying snakes that are described as resembling water snakes with bat-like wings that originated in Arabia. Upon approaching Egypt they were eaten by a species of Ibis, which is also a symbol of the god Thoth. I once saw a relative of the Ibis outside a wild bird preserve in Queens as it waded through a stream, ocasionally bending down to pluck its food out of the water with its long beak. The single plume of feathers on its head resembled a tuft of hair on a bald head that bobbed up and down like a scholar doting over his books.
    The place where the Israelites encountered these serpents was Punon (Numbers 33:43) and it was the place from which “copper is smelted from rock” (Job 28:2), at the copper mine at Khirbet en-Nahas (“ruins of copper,” in Arabic) that functioned from 1200 -900 B.C.E. This area, 30 miles southeast of the Dead Sea, would again be used by the Romans as a source of copper. Christians were sent there as slave labor and were worked to death and when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, heretics (like Gnostics) were sent there to their deaths:
    http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sites-places/biblical-archaeology-places/condemned-to-mine-copper/

Write a Reply or Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


Send this to a friend