The Genesis Apocryphon
Presented on: Tuesday, June 27, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Dead Sea Scrolls
Presentation 13 of 15
Genesis Apocryphon
Presented by Roger Weir
Tuesday, June 27, 1989
Transcript:
In 1947 when The Dead Sea Scrolls were first found there were seven Scrolls. And we've taken all of the scrolls except one so far from that cache and this is the seventh scroll. And it's called The Genesis Apocryphon. An Apocryphon is a, a kind of an addition. it's a literary genre like in the Naga Hamadi material there's an Apocryphon of James. That is to say the letter of James in The New Testament. James who was the brother of Jesus. In The Naga Hamadi material, there's an apocryphal James.
So, we have tonight a Dead Sea Scroll, one of the original ones which is The Genesis Apocryphon. Genesis as it stands in The Old Testament is a magnificent mythic epic. It's an epic of how the Covenantal making power, which was established between God and a man, Abraham, was able to be passed on. And the whole story of Genesis, the whole mythic cocoon of Genesis, is to wrap that lineage and show the circumstances of the first four steps. And one can use the kind of archetypal designation 1, 2, 3, infinity. That once in this kind of a sequence you have the first three terms, you can then use an elliptical hiatus of any length, any duration and the fourth term is, is like an infinite extension. this gives you the curve. in this sense the curve of the Covenantal making power.
Abraham is the most important figure then in Genesis. He is the contact point at which the Covenantal making power is made. And we are given to understand that before this no one had ever made a covenant. No one had ever sustained that particular power. Not Adam. And not Noah. Nor anybody else but Abraham. so that Abraham is the fount from which the Covenantal making process is passed on. How is it passed on? It's passed on to his, to one of his sons. Not all of the sons can have it. Only one. In an Abraham's case it's passed on to Isaac. And then from Isaac it's passed on to Jacob and so forth.
But the important thing Abraham can pass it on to a son, but Abraham cannot by himself make a son. So that Abraham's wife will be who will be the mother of the next Covenantal making person. The wife of Abraham becomes the, a mysterious figure in this whole process. And her name is Sarah or Sarai.
And Sarah figures very prominently in The Genesis Apocryphon. In fact, we are given to understand by a couple of allusions to remember that in Genesis twice Sarah is put into a kind of a jeopardy. Her jeopardy is a sexual jeopardy. That is to say there is a purity of the bloodline kept intact through a physical sexual monogamousness, which is twice put into jeopardy in Genesis. Twice Abraham fears for his life and has Sarah say that she is not his wife but his sister. First time to the Pharaoh of Egypt. the second time to a powerful tribal chief named Abimelech. The two separate incidents in Genesis are Genesis 12 and Genesis 20.
The Genesis 12 is the most important of them all. And the encounter with the Pharaoh sets the archetypal tone. That is to say, Abraham and Sarah have a very peculiar special relationship. In saying that she is his sister he is not telling a lie. He's telling only a half lie because she is a half-sister to him. In other words, Abraham's father was the father of both Abraham and his wife Sarah, but that they had different mothers. So, they're their half-brother, half-sister. So, in a way there is a kind of an allegorical honesty in the lie. She is his wife, but she is also his sister. And so, what looks like a deception is actually under duress telling the whole complete truth. And Abraham because he is able to do this, able to divulge this, he is assured that his Covenantal making power energizes him to do God's blessing. He is able to exorcise demons. He is able to cure psychic pestilential diseases. And this goes with the covenant making capacity. Now this is not stressed in The Book Of Genesis but in The Genesis Apocryphon, it is stressed.
The Genesis Apocryphon, the scroll itself was heavily damaged. And only four of the columns were able to be saved. Plus, an indeterminate number of fragments. So that we have, because of the way that the deterioration of the scroll, we have the second column. And we have the 19th through the 21st column. All the rest of it has been fragmented quite a bit. Paradoxically in those two fragments we have an esoteric section dealing with Noah and the esoteric section dealing with Abraham.
Now the second column, the one that contains the story of Noah is not the second column in the manuscript. We know from the various sewn stitched fabric fragments, papyrus fragments, that indeed there were more columns. How many more we don't know. Not many more because The Genesis Apocryphon follows the basic tone of The Book Of Genesis. The basic pattern. The basic storyline. But what it does in the retelling is it enlarges certain aspects which are only given in a skeleton way in The Book Of Genesis in The Old Testament.
So, The Genesis Apocryphon is a retelling of Genesis. But in the re-telling there's an amplification. And in the amplification, there is an implicit Hermeneutical principle working. And the principle that works in The Genesis Apocryphon is that it is the seed document that shows the transition from a scriptural tradition to a commentarial tradition. An exposition. Out of this comes the whole of form of, for instance The Targums, which are translations with notes. And The Midrashes, which are interpretations and expositions that use quotations from the work.
So, The Genesis Apocryphon shows us, it was probably written somewhere around 100 B.C., it shows us that at the Qumran communities there was this birth of this new tradition. That Genesis as a scriptural document is a mythic epic. But The Genesis Apocryphon is the movement towards a historical understanding of the meaning. And in the meantime, as the historical understanding starts to become emphasized, the mythical shape of the old begins to loosen. And there is a differential that grows. And we can see that if this had occurred by 100 B.C., only four or five generations later at the time of the birth of Jesus that tradition of developing the history would have superseded the falling away of the mythic integrity. In other words, as the, as the mythic story is retold and amplified it loses its mythic coherence. And one gets more and more interested in trying to piece together what was the history. What did this really mean? But not in terms of the story but in terms of the amplified story. Let's bring in other sources and so forth.
So that we know, for instance, from other literature, Hellenistic Literature, that The Genesis Apocryphon is a linking document. Before it are The Book Of Enoch and The Enochian Literature. Then The Book Of Jubilees. Then comes The Genesis Apocryphon. Then comes the writings of persons like Philo and Josephus. And some quotations, Eusebius whose great book on the history of the church is the one usually remembered. But his other book The Preparation For The Gospel which has been reprinted in two large volumes here in Grand Rapids Michigan, has excerpts from many other works that would have been lost in antiquity.
One of the excerpts in here. And I give you the reference for those on the tape. It's a book 9, chapter 18, is an excerpt from a Greek historian named Alexander Polyhistor. Like poly history, all histories. And he gives a quotation in here from a man named Eumalpus and Eupolemus is the Greek pronunciation. I'm sorry of my English pronunciation. Eupolemus concerning the Jews of Assyria. And he tells us in here that, The city Babylon was first founded by those who escaped from the deluge, after the Great Flood.
And that they were giants and built a tower renowned in history. But when this had been overthrown by the act of God, the Giants were dispersed over the whole earth. And in the tenth generation he says that a city in Babylonia which some called the city were and which by interpretation is the city of the Chaldees. In the 13th generation Abraham was born, who surpassed all men and nobility and wisdom. And who was also the inventor of astronomy and the Chaldees art. And pleased God well by his zeal towards religion.
Notice now that Abraham surpasses all men in nobility and wisdom. And was the inventor of astronomy and the Chaldees art, meaning astrology. Now the time of Abraham is about 1900 B.C. Notice that Abraham occurs in the 14th generation after the destruction of the Tower of Babel. Where else do we hear of 14 generations? In the mystical chronology of Jesus at the beginning of The Gospel According To Matthew. There are fourteen generations from Abraham to David. There are fourteen generations from David to the exile. There are fourteen generations from the coming back from the Exile to the time of Jesus. So, there are three fourteens at the beginning of The Gospel According To Matthew. From this material we can see that the fourth fourteen belongs to the mystical lineage of Abraham.
So that from the fall of the Tower of Babel to the time of Jesus are four sets of 14. That is to say, to complete lunar cycles. Lunar cycles of generations. So that you have a double circle. And those have been coming to the Saturday class recognize this archetypal form. What is the archetypal form? The archetypal form of the double circle is the universal structure of complete education to perfection.
So that the fall of the Tower of Babel is the starting point for that mystical history. What is the end point? the end point is the day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and the disciples. And their being able to speak in tongues. Glossolalia it's called psychologically. Being able to speak all languages automatically.
So that the Tower of Babel confused man because he was unable to understand his fellow being because they spoke all sorts of languages. And the end of that cycle, archetypally, is the day of Pentecost where they can again speak all sorts of languages but can understand them all. So that there are then 56 generations in the archetypal cycle. In the mythic presentation of the archetypal cycle, from the Tower of Babel to the day of Pentecost.
Now we know this in retrospect but there is no way that anybody could have known this at this time. Because that cycle was not complete. The only thing that we have is like in the beginning of The Gospel Of Matthew the realization that somehow some event having to do with Jesus is in fact the archetypal event. The mythic reduction of that life pattern has made the event the crucifixion and the Resurrection. They are not the events. The crucifixion in the resurrection are not the major events. It's the descent of the Holy Spirit that is the major event.
So that we can see looking back Jesus says, says it himself very accurately. Understood this very accurately. I have to go because if I don't go the Holy Spirit cannot come. If I go, I can send the Holy Spirit to you. And then you will know all things. How will you know all things? You will be able to communicate universally with each other for the first time in all this time. All of this cycle. Now 14 generations before Abraham puts the Tower of Babel back, close to about 2400 B.C. something like that. So that we have almost a whole age here.
Notice here also in Eupolemus book, which is preserved only in Josephus. Only because he was quoting Alexander Polyhistor, who was quoting Eupolemus. It would have perished.
Abraham dwelt with the Egyptian priests in Heliopolis and taught them many things. And it was he who introduced astronomy and other sciences to them. Saying that the Babylonians and himself had found these things out. But tracing back the first discovery to Enoch. And saying that he and not the Egyptians had first invented astrology.
So that there is a kind of, of a development here. Eupolemus quoted by Alexandra Polyhistor, quoted by Eusebius, tells us that Enoch is the one who had actually invented all of this material. Had invented astrology. Had invented astronomy. The two aspects of the single celestial science. One dealing with the forms based on past patterns. And one dealing with the forms based on future patterns.
What is the relationship mythically of Enoch to Abraham? For that we have to go back and look at the story of Noah. Because Enoch in the Genesis situation is related to Noah. The father of Noah is Lamech. The grandfather of Noah is Methuselah, the person who lived the longest in The Old Testament. The father of Methuselah was Enoch. So that Enoch is the great-grandfather of Noah.
Now in The Genesis Apocryphon in the very first section that's been preserved for us, we have this birth of Noah. And it's a very mystical understanding of the history. Not the myth but the history expanding the myth into a historical sense. Here is what the fragment is. Lamech is speaking, So, then I thought in my mind that the conception was due to the Watchers. In other words, his wife is pregnant, was pregnant, and had a baby and the baby was very, very strange. The baby looked like a superhuman. It had odd. The baby had odd proper properties. This was Noah, is a baby the birth of Noah. So that I thought in my mind that the conception was due to the Watchers. Or that it was due to the Holy Ones. Or it was due to the nepheline, which are the, the giants. The, the sons of angels and the daughters of men. And my mind was disturbed because of this child. Then I, Lamech, went in haste to Betenos, my wife, and I said by the Most-High, by the great Lord. by the king of all Ages. Notice the historical designation. By a king of all ages.
The sons of heaven that you tell me everything truthfully. Tell me truthfully without lies, is this child mine? Then she spoke with great violence and said oh my brother, oh my lord. Now the note here on, on brother is that this is a usage of, of etiquette. It may be. But the usage here is tied up with Abraham and his sister wife Sarah. It's all tied up together. She says, Remember my sexual pleasure and the time of my panting breath within me. And I will tell you very truthfully this child is yours. But my mind was greatly disturbed. He still couldn't believe her. Even though as she testified to it.
So that Lamech goes to his father Methuselah. Old Methuselahs still around. And Lamech says you are able to contact Enoch. Even though Enoch is already gone. He has not died but he has gone to heaven. Methuselah knows how to contact Enoch, who is in heaven. And Enoch will know because, he is in Heaven, he will know whether one of the Watchers, one of the Angels, has cohabited with Betenos and produced this magical child. Or whether it has been some other holy one. Or some other giant, the naphthalene. And this happens. And we are told then that indeed Lamech is the father of this child.
Now notice here The Genesis Apocryphon in 100 B.C. is using the Enochian literature as if it were actually the truth of the history. There was no Enochian literature at the time the Genesis was composed. Genesis was first composed about 1200 B.C. And it was revised and enlarged and represented about 700 B.C. And pretty much sustained that form all the way down. The Enochian literature did, wasn't written until the 190s-180s B.C.
But the psychological history behind the Qumran material makes the Enochian literature true, historically. So that one can read the Enochian literature and it's, it's properties back into the Genesis mythological section. thereby destroying inadvertently and, and by happenstance destroying the mythic integrity of Genesis. But as the mythic integrity is destroyed through this introduction, through this amplification. And this is only one example of many that must have been there. We have another with Abraham. You open the whole issue up to understanding that this is a live history. One is not reliving the myth, but one is continuing the history. This is the psychological telling point. It's like a litmus test of consciousness. If one still sees Genesis mythically one still lives within the integrity of the Genesis myth. But as soon as that is amplified, exploded literally short slow action explosion by amplifying it. One can no longer live within that myth. One then is thrown out into determining what the true history is. And part of determining the true history is to determine where are we now. We are obviously on the living edge, the cutting edge of that history.
So, the question that comes up incessantly, which never comes up in a myth. Never comes up in the mythic understanding. What do we do next? What do we do to continue with integrity this historical development? And in the Qumran material about 100 B.C., one can see that the issue that inevitably arises is that there must be something which we need to do to carry this on.
And if I can get to it tonight, if not I'll get to it next week. The most mysterious page of all the fragments of The Dead Sea Scrolls is the one that's designated 11Q m-e-l-c-h. 11 for, because it was found at cave 11 at Qumran. Q for Qumran. And m-e-l-c-h is short for Melchizedek. Vermes translates the title as The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek. And we'll see how very, very strange and strong this is.
But The Genesis Apocryphon sets us up for that sets us up for breaking out of the mythic security and wholeness that was there. And then finding that inadvertently we have opened up a can of worms. The issue is that if it is a living history and we are the living edge of that history, what must we do to continue that history. God becomes instead of the center holding the mythic structure together, becomes the leading edge of a historical vector. The center is no longer in a position. It's no longer a God-centered static universe but is a God lead dynamic universe. God becomes the lord of history and no longer sits on a throne in the center of the mythic cycle. It is very important. Very important.
For the Jews. For those people who have remained Jews, they were unable to accept this fact. They were unable to accept the fact that the myth had been transformed into history. The archetypal prototype of the throne, which is in the temple, which is in the city, which is in the middle of the kingdom, it still holds today for the Jewish mind. Classic Rabbinic Judaism still believes that God is at the center of a mythic cycle. Which is always the same it just repeats itself and all one has to do is just keep living within that myth. That mythic cycle. One such person as this was Paul. And Saint Paul is definitely a Jew and not a Christian. Paul is not a Christian. No way.
We see in The Genesis Apocryphon when the first innocent steps towards this. Innocent in the sense because none of these issues in 100 B.C. we're able to be seen. By the time of 0 B.C. the issues were in a feeling tone on everybody's heart energy. And by 100 A.D. they were in the thought processes. So that Gnosticism is the thinking expression of the dilemma that is started by this material. Whose first example is The Genesis Apocryphon in The Dead Sea Scroll material. So, to give you what's called sometimes a trajectory. You have a wisdom literature in the 3rd century B.C. that begins to build. You have the Enochian literature that builds in the very beginning of the 2nd century B.C. Towards the end of that time period after the Teacher of Righteousness who produces The Book Of Daniel, The Book Of Job, The Thanksgiving Hymns sets the Qumran community in motion. Brings a kind of a neo Pythagorean community tone to the, to Qumran and the Jewish tradition. And by the end of that time period by 100 B.C. with The Genesis Apocryphon you have the amplifying of the old myths until they're literally pushed out of shape. The stories have been told with so many emendations that they no longer are able to be understood. And thus, have to have a kind of an adjunct interpretation.
Now a good myth you hear in a kind of a spoken way. A good myth teller tells the story. The best example ever, I ever saw this is one time in Canada I brought an old blind Blackfoot Indian in his eighties, **inaudible name** Bearfoot, to tell some legitimate Blackfoot myths. and as long as he talked even though we had to wait for the translation. as long as he talked the room was his. We existed within his voice. Within his story. Even though we couldn't understand it until we heard the interpretation. The storyteller cast this spell, as it were. That's why they, they used to spells are the mythic seeds that that are brought out that start the whole cycles going.
Once you start amending this. Enlarging the story so that it's no longer captivating. What happens is you start asking all kinds of critical questions. How come this? Why that? Well this is different from that. And how, where did this come from? And all that. those kinds of questions dissolve the mythic structure and promote the historical reconstruction. And at the same time, you have to have an interpretive. The Jewish word for that was a Midrash. You have to have a study. You have to be able to study that.
Now the genius of rabbinic Judaism is to make a mythic cycle of the Midrashes. Of the ribbon, rabbinic Judaism is putting the commentaries into a mythic cycle. Making myths out of the commentary. So that, for instance, the Mishnah is a mythology. There is a rabbinic commentary, a very large one, called The Genesis Rabbah in rabbinic literature. Two huge volumes. It itself is a rabbinic telling of Genesis. And Genesis Rabbah has not been changed one iota since the 2nd century B.C. It's always told the very same way. If you studied to be a rabbi you study exactly the same method, the same way that you would have 1,800 years ago. In other words, the commentaries were put into the mythic cycle and held there. And of course, they, they stay there and there's no development. And they, they are timeless in a sense. But to the historical consciousness they go nowhere. And they truncate all of the issues of consciousness which seeks to go towards a scientific cosmos as a, a final opening up of the intellectual purview of the universe.
So that the, the material here in The Genesis Apocryphon is very, very interesting.
So, we have this birth of Noah we have just one column with just these little fragments. Then all the rest of it that we have preserved, except for a few fragments of columns 19 through 21 concern Abraham. it begins, And I built an altar there. And I called there on the name of God. And I said you are my God. God eternal. Up till then I had not reached the holy mountain. So, I set out for I journey toward the South until I reached Hebron. At that time Hebron was built and I dwelt there for two years. Hebron is south of Bethlehem by about ten or twelve English miles I imagine.
The building of Hebron though was always matched with the building of a city in Egypt. They were built within a few years of each other. Hebron was built about 1875 B.C. And in about 1868 B.C. in the Nile Delta was built a city, which we know today archaeologically as Tanis. But in ancient times was called Zoan. Z-o-a-n. And it was to Zoan that Abraham went. In other words when he went to Egypt. He went he didn't he didn't go to Memphis. He went to Zoan. Later on, it is said in in the A.D. centuries quoted by Alexander Prehistor and preserved by Eusebius, that he went to study with the Heliopolis priests. Who went to study with the Heliopolian priests? Pythagoras did but not Abraham. He historically went to what we know as Tanis in the Nile Delta towards the eastern edge of it. Tanis is a long way from Memphis or Heliopolis.
It's just another indication of how the, the mythic tincture of the archetypal cycle was completed. It always completes itself in time. And all of the characteristics are, are passed on.
For two years Abraham dwells in Hebron. But at the beginning of that time period he contacts God. And God tells him that he is a very, very special man to him. And that he is going to be Abraham's protector.
Now there's going to be a ten-year cycle. Two years in Hebron. then there's going to be seven years in Egypt in Zoan, in Tannin. And then there's going to be a year of traveling around and coming back to Hebron. Abraham's traveling around is that he completely circumnavigates the, what we know today is the Arabian Peninsula. He goes all the way over to the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf, which was in antiquity was not called the Persian sea at all, it was called the Red Sea. there Arethian(?) Sea, the Red Sea. And he will circumnavigate the whole Arabian Peninsula. Going all the way down to Oman and Iman and coming back up and stop and stopping at Hebron. And he is told that everywhere that he has gone are going to be the limits, the boundaries, of his kingdom. That his inheritors will come from and maintain that kingdom.
Now one of the most incredible events in all of this is some 2,500 years after Abraham has this vision, Mohammed has his vision and sees very clearly that he is within the sacred perimeter and an inheritor of the true home fortress of God. And that the Arabian peninsula is well within this. That whole thing is the holy land.
How then does it come to be designated by the smaller conception of Israel? Well the reason for that is a selectively regressive kind of mythological statement that comes to be accepted later on. The center of the smaller Israel is Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem the center is the temple. And in the temple is the throne of God in the Holy of Holies. That's the, that's the static mythic reduction of almost classic proportions there.
The original name of Jerusalem though was not Jerusalem but was just Salem. S-a-l-e-m. And Salem was the place of God the Most-High.
Now high in ancient language was el. El. High. Most High carried a kind of a superlative like Elohim. And what the major function of the Most High was that from that perspective of being at the zenith, one could see everything from the apex. And because of that perspective God the Most High was the judge, judge of life and the judge of death.
The priest in Salem at the time of Abraham, of God the Most-High was Melchizedek. That was his name. He is the one who teaches Abraham that this is the place. Abraham in his own way has had vision from God that Hebron is his central place. But he learns from Melchizedek that not Hebron, but Jerusalem is the place where el sits especially in his function as the judge of life and death.
So that whenever you get to an archetypal condition of Judgment Day, the final day, more and more it becomes limited to Jerusalem. And more and more becomes limited to God the Most-High as the judges of, of the living and the dead. This is why later on all of this mythic material is transferred to Jesus. Who is the judge of the Dead after Armageddon? Is Jesus. Who sits on the right hand of God who is on his throne? The Christ
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END OF SIDE ONE
So, we have a 10-year cycle. Two years are spent in Hebron. seven are spent in Egypt. And one year is spent going around the boundaries, the border. And making the Arabian Peninsula linking that whole peninsula with the idea that from the Nile to the Euphrates and all of the Arabian Peninsula is the kingdom which is promised to the lineages of Abraham. In other words, linking the two great river civilizations. The Euphrates and the Nile. Linking them together will be this kingdom, which God will give to Abraham's descendants. And that that link includes the whole Arabian Peninsula. That's the, that's the Holy Land. That's the sacred land. And The Genesis Apocryphon bears this out it goes into great, great description from what we have.
But how does Abraham get to the point to where he is given this Kingdom? He gets to it by having to go through this initiation in Egypt. Notice here that the masculine initiation cycle is in Egypt. Remember what I said at the very beginning of this whole sequence about a year and a half ago, that for of the Jewish psyche, the Sumerian Assyrian Babylonian matrix is a maternal matrix. The Egyptian is a paternal matrix. For, for, the Jewish psyche to mature it has to go through an Egyptian threshold, initiation threshold. Cannot mature otherwise. That is to say, there is no real high consciousness. And if consciousness goes to a historical dynamic rather than a mythic static you have to go to Egypt. It's like the handwriting on the wall.
How do we know that Jesus did not go to Damascus? Or did not go to the, the Euphrates Valley? Or didn't go to India? Because it wasn't in the cards friends. The symbolic archetypal structure always reads from the very beginning through the whole thing, go to Egypt. That's what the dynamic historical consciousness finds its challenge and response. That's where the maturation comes. But one has to go to where the power, the psychic power, of Egypt is tied up. And in the time of Jesus you think that psychic power was still in Memphis or Heliopolis or Thebes. It was in Alexandria. Alexandria was, was to Egypt what New York City is to New York State. Almost all of the power is there.
When he goes to Egypt, just before, The Genesis Apocryphon reads this way.
At that time, we crossed the border of our land and entered the land of the sons of Ham. The land of Egypt. And in the night that I entered the land of Egypt, I Abram had a dream. And in my dream, I saw a cedar tree and a palm tree. And men came and sought to cut down and uproot the cedar but to leave the palm tree on its own. But the palm tree cried out and said do not cut down that cedar. For we are both from.
And then there's an ellipse and missing.
And the cedar was spared with the help of the palm tree and was not cut down. And in the night, I awoke from my sleep and I said to Sarai, my wife, I've had a dream. And I'm frightened because of this dream. She said to me tell me your dream that I may know of it. So, I began to tell her this dream and I made known to her the interpretation of this dream. And I said who will seek to kill me and to spare you only?
In other words, notice here that Abraham has the Daniel type capacity to interpret dreams in The Genesis Apocryphon. He also has a healer capacity in The Genesis Apocryphon. All of this is read back into Genesis.
He tells her that he's the cedar tree and she's the palm tree. And the men who were come will come mark Pharaoh's men. and they will kill him if they, because she is so beautiful. She's unparalleled beauty. And they will water for the Pharaoh. And they will kill him if he is the husband. So, he tells her say that you are my sister.
For five years they live in Tanis. And Sarai has prayed in her soul that no one should see her. And for five years no one sees her. But then they noticed her. Three emissaries from the Pharaoh of being entertained by Abraham. And they notice, look how beautiful she is? She should be the wife, a wife, of the Pharaoh. She is taken but Abraham is spared. But then he cries out to God do not let her being come unclean to me.
Why? Not just that she is his wife, but he does not yet have a male heir. He does not yet have a son. She is his only link in this covenantal process of being only a son by her is able to get the covenantal process. Now how that is and exactly why that is a very complicated situation.
Later on, we know that Sarah sends her maid Hagar in. and gives birth to Ishmael before Isaac is born. But in The Genesis Apocryphon, we learn that Hagar is an Egyptian woman. She's one of the maids that the Pharaoh gives to Sarai when she is ostensibly his wife. And later on, in the rabbinic literature, some 200 years after The Genesis Apocryphon, Hagar has made to be a daughter of the Pharaoh. So, Ishmael has royal blood. He actually should inherit the Egyptian throne. He should be the Pharaoh. He has that bloodline. And anyone who can trace themselves in lineage through Ishmael will have that. This is not an Islamic determination, it's a Jewish determination that's there already in the in Genesis Rabbah by the 2nd century B.C., 400 years before Mohammed has his vision. The Jews determined that.
But the Jewish covenantal making of inheritance can only go through a son of Sarah. this is why The Genesis Apocryphon makes such a big thing about her being that ancestress of the nation. The emphasis is always not that Abraham is the father of the nation, but that Sarah is the ancestress of the nation. The whole nation comes from her.
Now in our time is a very peculiar symbolic resonance to this. Because we know now from microbiological DNA studies run through high-speed computers. We know now that every human being who is alive now
Im gonna wait for these machines. Doesn't want to hear this. is it been turned? Let's try it.
We know now from DNA studies run through high-speed computers that every human being who is alive
Yeah. Don't worry about it. I've looked at it all my life. Well, we'll use another tape. Let it be.
We all come from a single ancestor. we can, we can run the DNA sequencing back through time. And we can see that in fact at some time in the past about four million years ago everyone who is alive now came from a single female. And that we're all literally on this timescale on a DNA genetic **inaudible word or two** we're all brothers and sisters. in other words, no matter how distant we are physically, racially, we are on a time scale of man as a single entity, all brothers and sisters. We know that as a scientific fact. But the apex of that is a woman. There was an ancestress of the race. Is this true? it's absolutely true.
In The Genesis Apocryphon there is the mythic sentence for the Jewish tradition that we have all had a single ancestress. And this is Sarah, Abraham's wife. So, it's a very interesting kind of a situation that's here.
For two years she is the wife of the Pharaoh, but he is unable to touch her. Why? Because he's sick. he has a pestilence. Not only him but most of the Egyptian officials have a pestilence. He cannot consummate the marriage. And finally, Abraham's nephew Lot, of the Sodom and Gomorrah stories, tells some emissaries of the Pharaoh who come to try and find Abraham to, that maybe Abraham's blessings. Because they've heard that he's very powerful. He has a healing capacity. Will he come and bless the Pharaoh. And Lot says my uncle cannot come and bless the Pharaoh as long as the Pharaoh has his wife. The messengers go back and tell the Pharaoh what the situation is. And right away the Pharaoh calls Abraham and says she should have told me this. Your God has, has given me this pestilence. And he gives him back his wife. But he gives a tremendous wealth to Sarah because she has been his wife even though it wasn't consummated. she is given gold and silver. And Hagar. And flocks and so forth. So that almost all of the added wealth that Abram has comes from Egypt. Comes from the Pharaoh. Comes from the fact that his wife was for a while the wife of the Pharaoh.
So, The Genesis Apocryphon emphasizes all of this that the total stay in Egypt was seven years. Divided into a five and a two. Five years together and two years separated. Then the tenth year, the five and two is seven and the two at Hebron after the vision was nine. The tenth year was the circumambulation of the entire kingdom in coming back to the place of the covenantal making beginning. This 10, that the 10th is the culminating sequence, came to be understood by the Qumran community as the key, the psychic key, to sacred history. And that on the in the tenth cycle of the Jubilees would be the culmination of the ages. Judgment Day. Yom Yahweh. The day of God. Which later on became associated with Armageddon, the end of the world.
The end of the world would come at the end of the tenth jubilee cycle. Why? Because the Messiah would come. And the Messiah would make a circuit of his kingdom. Of God's kingdom to him. And at the end of making that circuit having defined its boundaries by having made that circuit, that would be the end of the world. That would be the culmination.
Now mythically the way that this translates into a Christian mythic structure is that Jesus goes down to the nether world, to the underworld, and then comes back to this world and then ascends to heaven. In other words, the boundaries of his kingdom are the nether world, this world and heaven. All three knit together. And the Judgment Day, the end of the whole cycle, the Yom Yahweh, is not an Armageddon of, not an Armageddon of military weapons. Its not an Armageddon of sword. It's an Armageddon of language. And the glossolalia of the day of Pentecost is the Armageddon of the language ending that whole cycle that began with the Tower of Babel. 14 generations before Abraham. Its an enormous archetypal structure.
Notice that as long as one is in a mythic cycle you cannot understand this. All you can do is be mesmerized by the stories. Fascinated by the story. Remember them and wonder about them and so forth. But kept within the stories. There's no way that you can participate in moving the plot forward. A myth always stays in the stage of the feelings. Not a level of feelings. But stays in the feelings as if, imagine the feeling tone as a stage. It's a dramatic stage upon which the story always happens. And it always happens the way it is written. Walking off the stage into life is the whole transformation trigger.
Now as long as one stays within the, the mythic vehicle of the fixed place of God. either in the temple, which is in Jerusalem up on the hill. Or if God is not there anymore because this has been desecrated. Where is he? He's in the hearts and minds of those who maintain themselves in the monasteries. The proto monasteries like Qumran or the therapeutae community. As long as one remains in some static place like that, this is where God is now. This is where the center is. This is where the myth wraps itself around. As long as you stay there, there is no history. There's no development. There's no life. The trigger in it comes when Jesus says we've got to leave this place. We got to leave this therapeutae community and go back to the city. Go back to Alexandria. We have to stop sitting here and hoarding God's eternal integrity here in one place and put it into motion. We got to carry it back to town. We got to put it back into dynamic operation in history. We got to put it into life. And that's what conscious man can do.
And once that had been done in Alexandria, he went back to the scene outside of Qumran on the River Jordan. Where the head of the Clubman community at that time John the Baptist was baptizing. And he told those people it's time to leave Qumran. Its time to leave the monastery. Time to leave the retreat and go back into town. Go back into life. Go back into history.
Now a lot of people couldn't follow that. There were a lot of Essenes who couldn't follow that. Remember there were a lot of Essenes who couldn't follow the teachers righteousness, even in his own time. A lot of regression always happens. Not everyone makes it. many are called, few are chosen. Few are self-chosen.
So, The Genesis Apocryphon lets us know, gives us an example of exactly how this is happening. How this happens. And Abraham sees the promised land. here is the description. And I Abram set off to travel around and see the land. I began traveling around from the river Gyan, which is the Nile. It's a way of seeing the Nile. And I went along the coast of the sea until I reached the mountain of the Ox. Up in the northern part near Lebanon. I traveled from the coast of this Great Salt Sea, the Mediterranean. And I went toward the east by the mountain of Ox, through the breadth of the land until I reached the river Euphrates. I traveled along dear ladies until I reach the Red Sea in the East, that would be the Persian Gulf. I went along the coast of the Red Sea. That is a long where now is Kuwait and Bahrain off the coast and so forth. Until I reached the Red Sea in the East. I went along the coast of the Red Sea until I reached the tongue of the sea of reeds, which flows out of the Red Sea. And I travelled towards the south until I reached the river Gyan. And then I returned and came safely back to my house.
Now it's, it's a way of telling this. Here's the note to this. This is published by Cambridge University Press the Qumran community Michael Nib(?). It came out about two years ago. Abraham has journeyed all around the Arabian Peninsula as far as the Gulf of Suez. That is to say he's come all the way back around and now goes to the Gyan, the Nile. And the fact that he is said to travel south rather than west reflects the Palestinian viewpoint. So that we have now this establishment of the kingdom.
Very soon after that, following on that the very next column and the last column that we have. We see an incursion of five kings who come in to make war on five other their kings. And after the five kings that live around Abram are conquered and captives are being led away. Including Lot and all of his flocks and Families and so forth. Abraham gathers together 318 of his picked men and in a commando raid they destroy the invading host, take many captives and come back. And many people would like to have all of their material back. And Abraham says this, The king of Sodom heard that Abraham had brought back all the captives, all the plunder. And he went up to meet him came to Salem. That is Jerusalem.
While Abraham was camped in the valley of Shaveh. That is the King's Valley. The valley of Alkeezada. Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out food and drink for Abraham. And for all the men who were with him. He was the priest of God Most High. And He blessed Abraham and said blessed be Abraham by God most high Lord of Heaven and Earth. And blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies and to hi..your hand. And he gave him a tithe of all the property of the king of Elan and his allies.
Now right here in The Genesis Apocryphon is the origin of tithing. It comes from Genesis but as explained in The Genesis Apocryphon. Tithing was a quality that went with the religion at the site of Jerusalem before it was Jerusalem. When it was Salem. When the God was el Elohim, God the Most-High. And the priests of that God taught this to Abraham in Alkeezada.
Notice here that later on the Messiah will be called Melchizedek. And that his, his counterpart, Satan will be called Melkiresha. **inaudible few words**. Melkiresha is the esoteric name of the evil one, who is the brother of Melchizedek, who be, who is the Messiah. Now Melchizedek raised to an archetypal level is the Messiah. How does he know how to overcome evil? Because he knows from a family knowledge exactly who this is and how, how he works. He knows the inside of this. What is the evil structure? The evil structure is the regressive turning away from God in a perverse way being anti God.
Notice here that Melkiresha in a very esoteric way becomes a mythological regression, keeping man locked into a prison of unconsciousness. And notice that the Messiah, the messianic figure, Melchizedek is the one who frees men from this prison of the past. And frees him for the future, the New Jerusalem. Not a Jerusalem which is just a mythic image but becomes a living historical reality. There's very much this kind of an archetypal struggle between good and evil in the sense of two kinds of language. One that imprisons you on the level of your feelings and doesn't let you grow up any farther than that. You can be 13 years old but no older. And another language that brings the maturation of the person to live their full life-cycle, the full range of maturity. To put their personality into play into a historical life. Where new things really do happen. Where there is a future.
These are issues I hope to take up next week. And go into them as deeply as I can. Thanks very much you.
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