- Origin – derivation of a source
- Source –
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The history of ownership of a valued object, or work of art or literature
The provenance for any religious text or belief can only be derived from its Author Being
- the Origin of Everything
- therefore the Authority / Sustainer on how Everything doesn’t degenerate into chaos
- therefore the Sustainer of Life after Time ends.
~1800 BC
Hammurabi, [Priest-] King of Babylon reunited Mesopotamia and instituted the Code of Hammurabi, a comprehensive set of laws addressing nearly all aspects of both civil and criminal offenses.
Hammurabi is portrayed receiving the laws directly from Sham-ash the sun god (a parallel to Moses can be made here). Shamash…is seated on his throne…Hammurabi…makes a powerful authority statement by addressing the god directly…he shows that he has a personal relationship with the gods while mere mortals do not.
- ~1400 BC
Moses “And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend.” (Exodus 33:11).
the [Mosaic] Covenant Code…depends directly and primarily upon the Laws of Hammurabiand that the use of this source text occurred [a thousand years after Moses] during the Neo-Assyrian period, sometime between 740–640 BCE, when Mesopotamia exerted strong and continuous political and cultural influence over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah…
- a model of literary dependence is the only viable explanation for the work.
- a commentary to the biblical composition from the new theoretical perspective.
- The Covenant Code, too, is an ideological work… a statement symbolically countering foreign hegemony.
How does this new assessment of history hold up to scrutiny?
History is as accurate as the historian recreating it.
And the accuracy of the historian depends upon the accuracy of his or her sources.
And that depends upon how much time the historian has spent, chasing up other sources to corroborate the initial ones.
Note the lack of other primary sources behind the author’s “new model, commentary, and new theoretical perspective.”
Note too, the bias from critiquing only the Mosaic Code. For example, the “new theory” discounts the possibility of divine revelation from YHVH as reported by Moses, but ignores the exact same claims from every other nation’s ruler at that time, specifically by Hammurabi.
Hammurabi didn’t invent law, and his Code was not the only source available to Moses who, after all, “was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” (Acts 7:22)
[T]he very beginnings of Western legal history.
Through a comparative examination of the legal systems and practices of ancient Mesopotamia (including Hammurabi’s Babylon, c. 1700 B.C.), ancient Egypt, ancient Israel, ancient Anatolia (the Hittite Empire, c. 1500 B.C.), ancient Greece and ancient Rome, we will investigate the historical origins of “law” as an idea…We will look at what differentiated the resulting legal systems, and what united them. We will examine not merely the ancient “law in the books”…but also the ancient “law in action” (the performances, rituals and ceremonies that created legal rights and duties in all these proto-literate societies)… emphasis will be placed on developing a broad interdisciplinary perspective on the ancient legal cultures examined…from religion, anthropology, archaeology, literature and communication studies.
The similarities between the Mosaic Code of Law and Hammurabi’s code actually provides proof of Moses’ independence from Hammurabi and their close proximity in time: statistical prevalence and incidence of shared similarities by all nations at that time.
The difference between Moses’ and Hammurabi’s Code is what matters, and that is statistically huge:
- Belief in One Almighty God or many lesser gods.
- Prevalence (continuity of faith) and incidence (new believers added as time passes)
Moses is claimed as a founder by the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Bahai as a prophet of God. His importance is substantiated by the prevalence of these religions even 3,500 years after he authored the foundational first five books of the Jewish Torah and the Christian Bible. Over 50% of world religions base their faith on Mose’s revelations about God.
Where are all the Hammurabians of the world?
The Bible validates that monotheistic religions found throughout history present the true God of Creation and salvation in a passage written well before Christianity or even Judaism had spread “unto the ends of the world.”
“For the scripture saith…the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him...Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.” (Romans 10:11-18)
scholars and archaeologists have uncovered excellent proofs of the truth of the Bible’s historicity.
There have been complete libraries [of tens of thousands of clay tablets] uncovered…
the…many ancient clay tablets that had been dated to long before the time of Abraham…held the key to the original writings of…the Book of Genesis…
most of the old clay tablets had “colophon phrases” at the end; these named the writer or owner of the tablet; they had words to identify the subject, and often some sort of dating phrase…Many of these old records related to family histories and origins, which were evidently highly important to those ancient people…
the book of Genesis consists of a set of tablets, each of which was written by an actual eye-witness to the events described therein. These tablets were finally compiled by Moses…
Tablet Starting Verse Ending Verse Owner or Writer 1 Genesis 1:1 Genesis 2:4a God “the LORD delivered unto [Moses] two tables of stone written with the finger of God;” (Deut 9:10)” 2 Genesis 2:4b Genesis 5:1a Adam 3 Genesis 5:1b Genesis 6:9a Noah 4 Genesis 6:9b Genesis 10:1a Shem, Ham & Japheth 5 Genesis 10:1b Genesis 11:10a Shem 6 Genesis 11:10b Genesis 11:27a Terah 7 Genesis 11:27b Genesis 25:19a Isaac 8 Genesis 25:12 Genesis 25:18 Ishmael, through Isaac 9 Genesis 25:19b Genesis 37:2a Jacob 10 Genesis 36:1 Genesis 36:43 Esau, through Jacob 11 Genesis 37:2b Exodus 1:6 Jacob’s 12 sons Exodus 1:6, “And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.”…added by Moses, after he inherited all the tablets, and…compiled all these tablets into one long record…during the 40-year wilderness experience…
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Despite the loss of the most ancient original records and the relatively late historical date of the extant – currently existing – writings of the Bible, the reflection of its content in other religions provides substantial evidence that the Bible is the original source for spiritual / hyper-dimensional matters.
1351 BC
Pharoah Akhenaten heads the earliest recorded monotheistic religion in Ancient Egypt.
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Only the biblical account of Creation establishes a thorough social scientific basis for trust with:
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- Supernatural proof of divine provenance
- Hundreds of prophecies coming true over long passages of time.
- None of its scientific or historical records ever having been proven wrong.
- Statistical proof by Incidence
- Its teachings have been accepted throughout all historical time and cultures.
- All other religions have a human origin.
- Statistical proof by Prevalence
- Its writings have been preserved for thousands of years despite many attempts to destroy them.
- Most other religions have an end.
- Statistical proof via internal reliability
- Consistent reports in multiple documents written by multiple authors in diverse cultures separated by geography and thousands of year,
- Statistical proof via external validity
- Multiple disciplines in the physical sciences are revealing that the biblical version of creation is scientific, not imaginative.
- An entire literary discipline devoted to discrediting every book in the Bible from Beginnings to The End demonstrate the influence the Bible exerts over those who read it.
- Banning or severely restricting ownership of a Bible by some autocratic governments, provides proof that this Word is more powerful than the sword.
- Supernatural proof of divine provenance
The Written Word Is The Final Authority
In the medical and legal professions where life and death hang in the balance, before a diagnosis like “cancer” or a verdict of “guilty” can be made, the evidence on which the determination has been made has to be documented in writing and presented as proof.
The Bible follows, even more stringently, the same written documentation process. Significantly, the God of the Bible does not expect humans to take anything on blind trust in a revelation – even by himself.
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“If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true…Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.” (John 5:31-39)
“we have not followed cunningly devised fables..but were eyewitnesses of his majesty…this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy…the scripture / written word.” (II Peter 2:16-21)
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“I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness
- against the sorcerers,
- and against the adulterers,
- and against false swearers,
- and against those that oppress
- the hireling in his wages,
- the widow,
- and the fatherless,
- and that turn aside the stranger from his right,
- and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts…
For I am the LORD, I change not…
- and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name / attributes,[ i.e. Creator, Owner so the owner, sustainer, and boss of it all.]
- And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels…
- Then shall ye…discern between the righteous and the wicked,
- between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.” (Malalchi 3)
Kingdom Come 