Canaanites and Israelites?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Canaanite religion describes the belief systems and ritual practices of the people living in the ancient Levant region throughout the Bronze Age and Iron Age. the Canaanite religion seems to have involved a rich mythological tradition which served as a bridge between the more ancient Mesopotamian religions and the later Greek and Roman gods. Several of the most famous Greek gods, for example, clearly evolved from Canaanite antecedents, just as several of the Canaanite gods grew out of Mesopotamian roots.

The supreme deity of the Canaanite pantheon was El, together with his consort, Asherah. As with the Greek tradition, these early gods were later supplanted by younger, more immediate presences, especially the rain/thunder god Ba’al and his consorts, such as the warrior goddess Anat and the love/fertility goddess Astarte.

Early Israelite religion may once have shared the Canaanite belief in El and other gods, before the Jewish monotheistic tradition emerged. study of the Ugaritic material from Ras Shamra—together with inscriptions from the Ebla archive at Tel Mardikh and various other archaeological finds—have cast more light on the early Canaanite religion. Canaanite mythology was strongly influenced by Mesopotamian and Egyptian traditions.

At the same time, Egypt appears to have inherited certain religious traditions from the Canaanites as well. Canaanite religious beliefs were polytheistic, with families typically focusing worship on ancestral household gods and goddesses, while honoring major deities such as El, Ashera, Baal, Anat, and Astarte at various public temples and high places.

Kings also played an important religious role, especially in certain ceremonies, such as the sacred marriage of the New Year Festival, and may have been revered as gods. The Canaanite pantheon was conceived as a divine clan, headed by the supreme god El; the gods collectively made up the elohim. Through the centuries, the pantheon of Canaanite gods evolved, so that El and Asherah were more important in earlier times, while Baal and his consorts came to fore in later years.

Many of the Canaanite deities found their way into the Greek and Roman pantheon. For example, the characteristics of both El and Baal may be seen in Zeus, while Astart resembles Aphrodite, Anat is similar to Athena, Yam to Poseidon, and Mot to Hades or Thanatos. Some of the deities listed below are mentioned only briefly in the Canaanite texts, while others were important locally or nationally—such as Chemosh—but not throughout the region. Still others, such a Moloch, are known mainly from Hebrew texts

• Anat—goddess of war, ever-virgin sister-wife of Baal, honored as a protector, agent of vengeance, and bearer of life
• Asherah—early semitic Mother goddess, “Lady of the sea,” consort of El, also called Athirat, the mother of 70 gods
• Astarte—goddess of love and fertility, sometimes the consort of Baal/Hadad
• Baalat or Baalit—the chief deity of Byblos, also identified with Astarte and Aphrodite
• Ba’al—meaning “Lord,” god of rain, thunder, and fertility, sometimes synonymous with Hadad; also used as a title prefixing the names of local deities
• Baal-Hammon—god of fertility and renewal in the Phoenician colonies of the Western Mediterranean
• Chemosh—the national god of Moab, referred to in both Moabite and Hebrew texts
• Dagon—god of crop fertility, sometimes identified with Hadad
• El—the chief deity, god of the sky, father of many lesser gods and ruler of the divine assembly, also worshiped by the Israelites
• El Elyon—Special title of El as “God most High”
• Eshmun—Phoenician god of healing
• Kathirat—a group of goddesses appearing in the Ugartic texts as divine midwives
• Kothar—full name Kothar-wa-Khasis, the skilled, clever god of craftsmanship and weapon-making
• Lotan—the seven-headed sea serpent or dragon, the pet of Yam or Yam’s alter ego, related to the biblical Leviathan
• Melqart—also called Baal-Melkart, the god who is king of the city, the underworld, and the cycle of vegetation in Tyre, also the patron of the Israelite queens Jezebel and Athaliah
• Moloch—title for the god who is “king,” probably identical with Milcom and known mainly from the Hebrew Bible as the deity to whom child sacrifices were offered
• Mot—god of the underworld, sterility, death, and the waterless desert
• The eastern Canaanite prophet Balaam is represented in the Bible as a worshiper of the Hebrew god Yahweh, as were the Shashu, a people located in the land of Edom.
• Nikkal—goddess of fruit and orchards, married to Yarikh
• Qadeshtu—the Holy One, goddess of love, also a title given to Asherah and related to the Egyptian goddess Hathor
• Resheph—God of plague and healing
• Shalim and Shachar—twin gods of dusk and dawn
• Shamayim—the god of the sky or the heavens
• Shemesh—Mesopotamian god of the sun also worshiped in Canaan, meaning “sun” in Hebrew possibly related to the hero, Samson
• Tanit—Phoenician lunar goddess, worshiped as the patron goddess at Carthage, and sometimes identified with Astarte or Anat
• Yam—god of the sea
• Yarikh—god of the moon, after whom the city of Jericho was named; Lord of the sickle, provider of nightly dew; married to the goddess Nikkal
• Yahweh—The Israelite god, worshiped not only by the Hebrews but also by eastern Canaanites such as the prophet Balaam (Numbers 22) and the Shashu of Edom

In Ugarit, the gods were called ‘ilhm (elohim), or the children of El, a probable parallel to the the biblical “sons of God.” The chief god, a progenitor of the universe, was El, also known as Elion (biblical El Elyon), who was the father of the divinities. In the Urgaritic material, El is the consort of Ashera, who is described as the “mother of 70 gods.” In the Urgaritic Baal cycle, Baal, the god of storms and fertility, earns his position as the champion and ruler of the gods by defeating the tyrannical Yam, the god of the sea, and later triumphing over Mot, the god of death. Yam had been placed over the other gods by El but ruled them tyrannically. Asherah offered herself as a sacrifice if Yam will ease his grip on her children.

He agreed, but Baal boldly declared that he will defeat Yam, despite Yam’s being endorsed by El. With the aid of magical weapons given to him by the divine craftsman Kothar-wa-Khasis, Baal is victorious. However, the god of death and the underworld, Mot, soon lures Baal to his own death in the desert, spelling drought and ruin for the land. Baal’s sister/wife Anat retrieves his body and assaults Mot, ripping him to pieces and scattering his remains over the fields. El, meanwhile, has had a dream suggesting that Baal would be resurrected, which indeed takes place. However, Mot, too, had revived and mounted a new attack against Baal. After their titanic but indecisive battle, Mot finally bows before Baal, leaving Baal in possession of the land and the undisputed regent of the gods.

Thus, Baal came to replace even El as the most important deity, although El himself remained theoretically supreme. In practice, temples to Baal were fairly common in Canaanite culture, and many ritual objects devoted to Astarte and Anat have also been uncovered. Even the Israelites honored Baal and the “asherim,” the latter term referring to poles, standing stones, and even trees devoted to a goddess and accompanying altars to both Baal and Yaweh/El. In the Greek sources describing Canaanite religion, the union of El Elyon and his consort bore Uranus and Ge, Greek names for the “Heaven” and the “Earth.” Biblical scholars see a parallel between this and the opening verse of Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning Elohim created to the Heaven and the Earth.” A further parallel is seen with the story of the Babylonian creation myths. The Greek sources also describe El as married to Beruth.

This marriage of the divinity with the city seems to have biblical parallels with the stories of the link between Melkart and Tyre, Yahweh and Jerusalem, Chemosh and Moab, and both Tanit and Baal Hammon with Carthage. El Elyon is called “God Most High” in Genesis 14.18–19 as the God whose priest was Melchizedek king of Salem. Psalm 78:35 appears to identify El Elyon and the Hebrew God, Elohim, also called Yahweh (the Lord). The earliest Canaanite places of worship were simple stone or brick altars usually located at a high place. Sacred groves are also indicated, especially in Israelite texts, which speak of fertility rites practiced under trees: “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every spreading tree and has committed adultery there” (Jer. 3:6). Bronze Age Canaanite temples usually consisted of a large room, together with a porch and courtyard.

A stone altar for sacrifices is often found outside the entrance to the inner temple. Later examples sometimes contain inner sanctums within the main temple, referred to as a “Holy of Holies.” Sacred objects unearthed include incense altars, sacrificial offering stands, tables for drink offerings, bronze statuettes, numerous nude clay figurines of goddesses, vessels for oil and wine, seals, and standing stones. El is seen in Canaanite religious art as a seated male figure, often with arms raised in blessing. Asherah—and later Ba’al and Astarte or Anat—was associated with a cult of fertility. Asherah’s sacred animal was the lion, and Astarte is sometimes associated with a serpent. Priests or priestesses clothed and sometimes “fed” the deity through various rituals and offerings. In cities, the king had a particularly important relationship with the local patron deity.

Family devotions, especially to the female deity, are indicated by large numbers of goddess figurines found in private homes, as well as by biblical references such a Jeremiah’s: “The children gather wood, the fathers light the fire, and the women knead the dough and make cakes of bread for the Queen of Heaven. They pour out drink offerings to other gods to provoke me to anger.” (Jeremiah 7:18). Although the biblical writers cast Canaanite religion as the antithesis of Israelite monotheism, historians of religion tend to view the early Israelite religion as largely evolving out of Canaanite culture, of which it was once part.

The Book of Genesis itself describes the patriarch Abraham as a worshiper of El—also called El Shaddai and El Elyon—building altars, offering sacrifices, and paying tithes to him. Exodus indicates that the Hebrews knew God only as El Shaddai until the time of Moses, who learned God’s true name, Yahweh (the Lord), at Mount Sinai: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (El Shaddai), but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them” (Exodus 6:3).

Certain passages in the Bible imply that Israelite religion was once polytheistic. For example, Deuteronomy 32:8-9 indicates a moment when El Elyon assigned Israel to Yahweh: When the Most High (Elyōn) divided to the nations their inheritance, he separated the sons of man… the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted inheritance. Similarly, Psalm 82:1-6 says that “God (Elohim) presides in the great assembly; he gives judgment among the gods… I said, ‘You are gods; you are all sons of the Most High (Elyon).’ But you will die like mere men; you will fall like every other ruler.” What may be described in these verses is a process of El and Yahweh merging into the one supreme God and then reducing the other Canaanite deities into something less than gods altogether. Indeed, some versions of Psalm 82 render the word “gods” as “heavenly beings” or even “angels.” Similarly, Job 1:6 states that “One day the sons of God (also sometimes translated as “angels”) came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them.”

According to many historians of religion, the angels of later Jewish mythology were once members of the divine assembly consisting of El and the ben-elohim (sons of God), who were originally the lesser deities described in the Canaanite pantheon. Such a divine assembly appears several times in the Canaanite texts. The Hebrew prophets not only denounced Canaanite religion for its polytheism and idolatry but also for its sexual immorality and practice of human sacrifice. That the Canaanites practiced the rite of hieros gamos, involving ritual sex between the king or priest, representing a god, and a woman or priestess, representing a goddess, seems well attested—even if it was not as common as the prophets claimed. The practice of human sacrifice also seems to have occurred among the Canaanites, as it once did among the Israelites in the case of Jephthah’s daughter, for example (Judges 11). In the time of Jeremiah, Israelites still offered their children as sacrifices, a practice apparently intended to satisfy Yahweh Himself, who insists through the prophet that He never commanded such a thing, “nor did it ever enter my mind” (Jeremiah 7:31). Jeremiah similarly denounces the common practice of Israelite families of offering honey cakes to the Queen of Heaven.

Archaeological evidence also supports the fact that not only Canaanites, but Israelites as well, kept figurines of goddesses in their homes at least until the time of the Babylonian exile. Whether one sees Israelite religion as growing out of Canaanite religion or being perverted by it, the reality seems to be that Israelite religion did not completely separate from its Canaanite counterpart until the return of the Jews from Babylon or later. Joshua 24:11 – And ye went over Jordan, and came unto Jericho: and the men of Jericho fought against you, the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and I delivered them into your hand. Judges 3:3 – [Namely], five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sidonians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baalhermon unto the entering in of Hamath. Deuteronomy 20:17 – But thou shalt utterly destroy them; [namely], the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee. Their final fate, too, was a puzzle.

The Hebrew text offers one explanation for the destiny of the Canaanites: annihilation. The Israelites, per Deuteronomy 20:16-18, were commanded to “utterly destroy” the cities of various tribes including the Canaanites. Those who survived fled or became servants. A fragment of a painted limestone relief dating to about 3,400 years ago from Thebes in Egypt depicts defeated Canaanites. For three centuries, Egyptians ruled the land of Canaan. Armies of chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers under the pharaoh Thutmose III thundered through Gaza and defeated a coalition of Canaanite chiefdoms at Megiddo, in what is now northern Israel, in 3,458 years ago. The Egyptians then built fortresses, mansions, and agricultural estates from Gaza to Galilee, taking Canaan’s finest products—copper from Dead Sea mines, cedar from Lebanon, olive oil and wine from the Mediterranean coast, along with untold numbers of slaves and concubines—and sending them overland and across the Mediterranean and Red Seas to Egypt to please its elites. As with many colonial ventures before and since, military conquest led to a new cultural order in the occupied lands.

Across Israel, archaeologists have found evidence that Canaanites took to Egyptian customs. They created items worthy of tombs on the Nile, including clay coffins modeled with human faces and burial goods such as faience necklaces and decorated pots. They also adopted Egyptian imagery such as sphinxes and scarabs. For the Egyptians, Canaan was a major trophy. Artists in Egypt carved and painted narratives on the stone walls of temples boasting about vanquished subjects and depicting Canaanite prisoners naked and bound at the wrists. Yet Egypt’s presence in Canaan ended sooner than the pharaohs might have expected. With Canaan under assault from seaborne invaders and hit by drought so severe it caused food shortages, Egypt’s colonial rule began to crumble around 3,200 years ago, starting in the north and gradually spreading south. Egypt did not fall alone.

The eastern Mediterranean’s two other great powers of the day, the Hittites in central Turkey and the Mycenaeans in Greece, saw their capitals sacked and their governments fail. They all toppled in the pan-Mediterranean Late Bronze Age collapse of the 3,200 years ago. Egypt’s 2,000-year-old dynastic system survived, but it lost its trade ties throughout the Mediterranean and its valuable outposts in Canaan. At the port of Jaffa, on Tel Aviv’s south side, archaeologists Aaron Burke of the University of California, Los Angeles, and Martin Peilstöcker of Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz are finding that the fall of Egypt’s rule came the way Hemingway famously described bankruptcy—gradually, and then suddenly—and was at least partly due to homegrown factors.

The Egyptian outpost at Jaffa had an uneasy relationship with the locals, and it apparently met a fiery end. Burke and Peilstöcker have found evidence of two catastrophic blazes, ten years apart, that destroyed Jaffa, the second one occurring in about 3,125 years ago. That fire, Burke believes, marked the end of Egypt’s presence not just in Jaffa, but in all of Canaan. “Jaffa was the only Egyptian outpost that was purely military. This was their last line of defense, and once it fell, any remaining Egyptian centers in Canaan would have been cut off from Egypt,” says Burke. Egypt and Canaan were neighbors whose histories of war, trade, and migration intersected and intertwined over millennia. Egypt’s powerful centralized government ruled along the Nile, where pharaohs built the pyramids of Giza and reigned like gods over people who worshipped them. In contrast, Canaan was a land of warring city-states and hill tribes, spread out over what are now Israel, Lebanon, southwestern Syria, and the West Bank.

At Canaan’s peak, there were about 20 such city-states in the southern area alone. Their culture was rustic, their power decentralized and weak. Canaan had great mineral and agricultural wealth—and the Egyptians coveted it. As early as around 3,000 years ago, the Egyptians established busy trading posts in the coastal city of Ashkelon and in Gezer in the center of the region to buy up exotic products and transport them to Egypt on donkeys, which had only recently been domesticated. A few centuries later, the Egyptians began trading by ship with the seaport of Byblos on the coast of modern Lebanon, bypassing southern Canaan, whose ties with Egypt languished. Over time, Canaan’s states strengthened and, around 3,700 years ago, they invaded northern Egypt with a devastating innovation—the horse-drawn chariot—followed by settlers who built cities in the marshy Nile Delta. Known as the Hyksos, a Greek version of an Egyptian phrase that meant “foreign rulers,” they maintained their cultural habits and clashed with Egyptian rule to the south.

Ultimately, the Egyptian state, reunified under the pharaoh Ahmose (3,550–3,525 years ago), expelled the Hyksos and sent them back to their homeland around 3,540 years ago. A century later, newly self-confident and thirsty for expansion, the Egyptians found the right agent for their ambitions in Thutmose III (3,479–3,425 years ago). His lithe, commanding figure can still be seen today smiting Canaanite masses in temple carvings in the old dynastic capital of Luxor. To the south, Nubia fell under Egypt’s military might, too. “Egypt now saw itself as the center of the universe, and all its neighbors were considered enemies and targets for invasion,” says Daphna Ben-Tor, former curator of Egyptian archaeology at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. Egypt was at the threshold of the New Kingdom (1550–1070 years ago), the artistic golden age of Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamun. “As it became richer and reunified,” Ben-Tor says, “its appetite grew for the kinds of high-status goods that Canaan offered, such as copper, turquoise, and high-quality wood.” At Hazor, one of ancient Canaan’s largest cities, a team from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem recently found part of a sphinx made of gneiss, a valuable stone used by the Egyptians for statues of gods and rulers.

The sphinx bears an inscription to Menkaure (r. 2490–2472 years ago), a pharaoh who was originally interred in one of Giza’s pyramids. Yet the layer of the excavation in Hazor where the statue was found dates from centuries later in the 3,500 years ago. The sphinx had probably been imported from Egypt to lend status to a temple, a relic from the old days meant to lend prestige to Egypt’s new colony. Egypt’s power wasn’t felt only in mighty sculptures. It also wielded a strong cultural pull on Canaan’s elite, who were attracted to Egypt’s graceful jewelry and symbols. Archaeologists have found hundreds of Egyptian-style objects in Canaanite burials, including alabaster, glass, and carnelian jewelry, scarabs decorated with sphinxes and hieroglyphs, and clay pots. Wealthy Canaanites liked to stock their tombs with imitations of Egyptian ushabti, figurines of people who would tend to the dead in the afterlife. “There was an Egyptianization, so to speak, of Canaan’s material culture,” says Ben-Tor.

“The Canaanites were burying their dead with objects imported from Egypt or with local imitations of them.” Around 5,000 years ago, the Canaanites now generally recognize as Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. The Canaanites created the first alphabet, established colonies throughout the Mediterranean, and were mentioned many times in the Bible. But who were they and what ultimately happened to them? Were they annihilated like the Bible says? Over 90 percent of the genetic ancestry of present-day Lebanese was derived from the Canaanites referenced from the genomes of five Canaanite individuals who lived almost 4,000 to 3,700 years ago, one in a large jar burial along with genomes representing people from modern-day Lebanon, in addition a small proportion of Eurasian ancestry that may have arrived via conquests by distant populations such as the Assyrians, Persians, or Macedonians.

An estimate that new Eurasian people mixed with the Canaanite population about 3,800 to 2,200 years ago at a time when there were many conquests of the region from outside. “The Bible reports the destruction of the Canaanite cities and the annihilation of its people; if true, the Canaanites could not have directly contributed genetically to present-day populations. However, no archaeological evidence has so far been found to support widespread destruction of Canaanite cities between the Bronze and Iron Ages. We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age.” the study read.  In this study, we sequenced five whole genomes from around 3,700-year-old individuals from the city of Sidon, a major Canaanite city-state on the Eastern Mediterranean coast. We also sequenced the genomes of 99 individuals from present-day Lebanon to catalog modern Levantine genetic diversity.

We find that a Bronze Age Canaanite-related ancestry was widespread in the region, shared among urban populations inhabiting the coast (Sidon) and inland populations (Jordan) who likely lived in farming societies or were pastoral nomads. This Canaanite-related ancestry derived from mixture between local Neolithic populations and eastern migrants genetically related to Chalcolithic Iranians. We estimate, using linkage-disequilibrium decay patterns, that admixture occurred 6,600–3,550 years ago, coinciding with recorded massive population movements in Mesopotamia during the mid-Holocene. We show that present-day Lebanese derive most of their ancestry from a Canaanite-related population, which therefore implies substantial genetic continuity in the Levant since at least the Bronze Age. In addition, we find Eurasian ancestry in the Lebanese not present in Bronze Age or earlier Levantines. We estimate that this Eurasian ancestry arrived in the Levant around 3,750–2,170 years ago during a period of successive conquests by distant populations.

The Near East, including the Levant, has been central to human prehistory and history from the expansion out of Africa 50–60 thousand years ago,1 through post-glacial expansions and the Neolithic transition around 10,000 years ago, to the historical period when Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, and many others left their impact on the region. Aspects of the genetic history of the Levant have been inferred from present-day DNA, but the more comprehensive analyses performed in Europe have shown the limitations of relying on present-day information alone and highlighted the power of ancient DNA (aDNA) for addressing questions about population histories.

Unfortunately, although the few aDNA results from the Levant available so far are sufficient to reveal how much its history differs from that of Europe, more work is needed to establish a thorough understanding of Levantine genetic history. Such work is hindered by the hot and sometimes wet environment, but improved aDNA technologies including use of the petrous bone as a source of DNA14 and the rich archaeological remains available encouraged us to further explore the potential of aDNA in this region. Here, we present genome sequences from five Bronze Age Lebanese samples and show how they improve our understanding of the Levant’s history over the last five millennia. The Near East, including the Levant, has been central to human prehistory and history from the expansion out of Around 4,000 to 3,000 years ago, in the Levant, a distinctive culture emerged as a Semitic-speaking people known as the Canaanites.

The Canaanites inhabited an area bounded by Anatolia/Turkey to the north, Mesopotamia to the east, and Egypt to the south, with access to Cyprus and the Aegean through the Mediterranean. Thus, the Canaanites were at the center of emerging Bronze Age civilizations and became politically and culturally influential. They were later known to the ancient Greeks as the Phoenicians who, 3,500 to 2,300 years ago, colonized territories throughout the Mediterranean reaching as far as the Iberian Peninsula. However, for uncertain reasons but perhaps related to the use of papyrus instead of clay for documentation, few textual records have survived from the Canaanites themselves and most of their history known today has been reconstructed from ancient Egyptian and Greek records, the Hebrew Bible, and archaeological excavations. Many uncertainties still surround the origin of the Canaanites.

Ancient Greek historians believed their homeland was located in the region of the Persian Gulf, but modern researchers tend to reject this hypothesis because of archaeological and historical evidence of population continuity through successive millennia in the Levant. The Canaanite culture is alternatively thought to have developed from local Chalcolithic people who were themselves derived from people who settled in farming villages 10,000 to 9,000 years ago during the Neolithic period. Uncertainties also surround the fate of the Canaanites: the Bible reports the destruction of the Canaanite cities and the annihilation of its people; if true, the Canaanites could not have directly contributed genetically to present-day populations. However, no archaeological evidence has so far been found to support widespread destruction of Canaanite cities between the Bronze and Iron Ages: cities on the Levant coast such as Sidon and Tyre show continuity of occupation until the present day.

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so that they could travel by day or night.

• By day the “Bible God” was in a cloud pillar.
• By night the “Bible God” was in a fire pillar.

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Archaeology disproves the all the beginning of the bible,

thus discredits all Abrahamic religions are based on it, so this includes Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Mormon, etc.

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts, involves leading scholars Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman who draw on recent archaeological research to present a dramatically revised portrait of ancient Israel and its neighbors. They argue that crucial evidence (or a telling lack of evidence) at digs in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon suggests that many of the most famous stories in the Bible—the wanderings of the patriarchs, the Exodus from Egypt, Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, and David and Solomon’s vast empire—reflect the world of the later authors rather than actual historical facts. What they argue, in chapter after chapter, is that these books of the Bible make the most sense as coming out of a seventh-century (BC) context. A lot of the Bible is royal and elite propaganda to justify empire expanding through conquest. Overall the differing archaeology evidence and the complete lack of any confirming archaeology evidence is devastating to all the Abrahamic religions. Ref

Historians mostly agree that only the Kingdom of Israel and life in Jerusalem (roughly from King David onward) represents any actual possibility for history.

“Some stories in the Bible were meant to be history, others fiction. But modernity has obscured the original distinction between the two kinds of biblical writing, depriving readers of the depth of the text. Perhaps surprisingly, this confusion lies at the heart of the History Channel’s miniseries “The Bible,” which continues the pattern of blurring history and fiction, and thereby misrepresenting the nature of the Bible to its viewers. One way to understand the difference between history and fiction in the Bible is through the Old Testament’s natural division into three parts:

1. The world and its nature (Adam to Terah).
2. The Israelites and their purpose (Abraham to Moses).
3. The Kingdom of Israel and life in Jerusalem (roughly from King David onward).” Ref

“Even a cursory look reveals a clear and significant pattern. In the first section, characters live many hundreds of years, and in the second, well into their second century. Only in the third section do biblical figures tend to live biologically reasonable lives. For example, Adam, in the first section, lives to the symbolic age of 930, and Noah lives even twenty years longer than that. Abraham, from the second section, lives to be 175, his son Issac to 180, and Jacob “dies young” at the age of 147. But the lifespans from King David onward, in the third section, are in line with generally accepted human biology.” Ref 

“Furthermore, historians mostly agree that only the third section represents actual history. The reasonable ages in the third section of the Bible, and, in particular, the wildly exaggerated ages in the first, suggest that the authors of the Old Testament intended only the third part as history. Underscoring this crucial difference, some of the lifespans in the first two sections are so absurd as to defy literal interpretation. These hugely advanced ages are central clues about the point of the stories. The Old Testament contains a wide range of texts in addition to stories: laws, prayers, moral codes, and more. But even the stories come in more than one variety. Noah and the Great Flood are not in the same category as Moses and the Ten Commandments, and both are different than King David and the First Temple. History and fiction mingle throughout the Old Testament, so these divisions are just rough guides. Jeremiah’s historical description of the siege on Jerusalem is not the same as Ezekiel’s non-historical vision of the dry bones, just as there are historical elements (like the invention of fire-hardened bricks) even in the non-historical account of the Tower of Babel.” Ref 

“The interesting point here is not that some of these stories happened and some didn’t (though that’s almost certainly true). The point is that the Bible itself portrays them differently, only presenting some of them as having happened. In other words, sometimes “believing the Bible” means believing that a story in it didn’t happen. The situation not unlike a modern newspaper, which combines news with opinion, puzzles, comics, etc. The news can be accurate even if the comics are not. The same is true for the different parts of the Bible. The New Testament similarly offers more than just stories, and, as with the Old Testament, only some of the stories in the New Testament were meant as history. Others were intended to convey things like theology and morality.” Ref

“The account of Jesus’ life in the Gospels is not the same as the beast in Revelation or Adam’s life in Genesis. (The issue of different categories for Jesus and Adam is a matter of fierce modern debate because of its potential theological significance and its interaction with the theory of evolution.) All of this is important for people who want to believe, for instance, that a man named Jesus was crucified in ancient Jerusalem (as described in the Gospels) even if they don’t believe that a donkey spoke aloud (Numbers); or that Jews lived in Jerusalem during the first millennium BC (Kings, for example) even if they didn’t leave Egypt 600,000 strong (Exodus).” Ref

Pagan Yahwism: The Folk Religion of Ancient Israel

“The Bible imagines the religion of ancient Israel as purely monotheistic. And doubtless there were Israelites, particularly those associated with the Jerusalem Temple, who were strict monotheists. But the archaeological evidence (and the Bible, too, if you read it closely enough) suggests that the monotheism of many Israelites was far from pure. For them, Yahweh (the name of the Israelite god) was not the only divinity. Some Israelites believed that Yahweh had a female consort. And many Israelites invoked the divinity with the help of images, particularly figurines. I call this Israelite religion pagan Yahwism.” Ref

“The archaeological evidence we will look at comes mostly from Judah in what is known in archaeological terms as the Assyrian period, the span from 721 B.C.E., when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom of Israel, until 586 B.C.E., when the Babylonians conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple and brought an end to the Davidic dynasty in Judah. This period, to put it into perspective, is several centuries after King Solomon built the Jerusalem Temple in about 950 B.C.E. So the archaeological evidence we are about to discuss documents a level of Israelite paganism long after Solomon built an exclusive home for Israel’s god. While Yahweh was the god of the Israelites, other nations had their own national gods.” Ref

“The chief god of the Phoenicians was Ba‘al. For the Philistines, the chief god was at first Dagon and later also Ba‘al (Judges 16:23; 2 Kings 1:2). For the Ammonites it was Milkom. For the Moabites, Chemosh. For the Edomites, Qos. And for the Israelites and Judahites—Yahweh. Except for the Edomite god Qos, who appears only in the archaeological record, all of these gods are mentioned in the Bible (1 Kings 11:5, 7, 33). Interestingly, while each nation’s chief god had a distinctive name, his consort, the chief female deity, had the same name in all these cultures: Asherah or its variants Ashtoreth or Astarte. (As we shall see, this was even true of Yahweh’s consort.)” Ref

“Not only was the female consort the same, the various nations used the same cult objects, the same types of incense altars made of stone and clay, the same bronze and clay censers, cult stands and incense burners, the same chalices and goblets and the same bronze and ivory rods adorned with pomegranates. It was easy to take cult vessels of one deity and place them in the service of another one—and this was commonly done.” Ref

How Should We Study Ancient Israelite Religion?

“If we propose to study the history of the religion of ancient Israel, we must be governed by the same postulates that are the basis of modern historical method. Our task must be a historical, not a theological, enterprise. We must trace the origins and development of Israel’s religion, its emergence from its West Semitic, particularly Canaanite, past, its continuities with the past, its innovations, individual or peculiar configurations, its new emergent whole, and its subsequent changes and evolution. In the past historical questions of “origins” or “emergence” of the ancient Israelite religion could not be answered satisfactorily and indeed were rarely addressed. Today, thanks to the archaeological exploration of Israel and neighboring lands, the history of Israel has become part of the history of the ancient Near Eastern world. Israel’s ancient literature can be viewed increasingly as evolving out of the genres of kindred literatures. We possess Northwest Semitic epic literature from a century or so before Moses. The religion of Israel can now be described in its continuities with, and in its contrasts with, contemporary Near Eastern and especially West Semitic mythology and cult.” Ref

Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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“There is no direct evidence that people worshipping Yahweh sojourned in ancient Egypt, let alone during the time the Exodus is believed to have happened. There is indirect evidence that at least some did. What’s for sure is that thousands of years ago, Egypt was crawling with Semitic-speaking peoples.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Archaeology Disproves the Bible

1. Adm and Eve 6,000-Year-Old humanity Myth:

Genetic ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ Uncovered: https://www.livescience.com/38613-genetic-adam-and-eve-uncovered.html

“Researchers believe that modern humans left Africa between 60,000 and 200,000 years ago, and that the mother of all women likely emerged from East Africa. But beyond that, the details get fuzzy.” ref

Y-chromosomal Adam or human genetics Y-DNA most recent common ancestor (160,000-300,000 years ago): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y-chromosomal_Adam

Mitochondrial Eve or human genetics mt-DNA most recent common ancestor (100,000–230,000 years ago): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Did a discrete event 200,000-100,000 years ago produce modern humans: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22658331/?fbclid=IwAR1BjrR4iyHHaDebdPobOJY9jhJJCF2tsAmjp-WUPjMVosvHNs0UPzgkbIU

“Scenarios for modern human origins are often predicated on the assumption that modern humans arose 200,000-100,000 years ago in Africa. This assumption implies that something ‘special’ happened at this point in time in Africa, such as the speciation that produced Homo sapiens, a severe bottleneck in human population size, or a combination of the two. The common thread is that after the divergence of the modern human and Neandertal evolutionary lineages ∼400,000 years ago, there was another discrete event near in time to the Middle-Late Pleistocene boundary that produced modern humans. Alternatively, modern human origins could have been a lengthy process that lasted from the divergence of the modern human and Neandertal evolutionary lineages to the expansion of modern humans out of Africa, and nothing out of the ordinary happened 200,000-100,000 years ago in Africa. Three pieces of biological (fossil morphology and DNA sequences) evidence are typically cited in support of discrete event models. First, living human mitochondrial DNA haplotypes coalesce ∼200,000 years ago. Second, fossil specimens that are usually classified as ‘anatomically modern’ seem to appear shortly afterward in the African fossil record. Third, it is argued that these anatomically modern fossils are morphologically quite different from the fossils that preceded them.” ref

2. The Bible flood myth: 

Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)

Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?

Was Noah’s Ark found on Mount Ararat as claimed by Ron Wyatt? No, of course not.

3. The myth of the Exodus:

Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.

Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”

4. The myth of conquering the land of Canaan; the land which the tribes of Israel supposedly conquered after the supposed Exodus from Egypt (such as the lie of Jericho):

Canaanites and Israelites?

The Jericho Conquest lie?

Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble

5. The bible myth about a ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – the period of Saul, David and Solomon–as presented in the biblical account.

‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.

Have biblical archeologists traditionally tried to find evidence that events in the Bible really happened? 

William Dever: From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archaeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. [William Foxwell] Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the “archeological revolution.” Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that’s very disturbing to some people. Ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey 

“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity

“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref

“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref

“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref

“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref

Tutelary deity

“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref

Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States 

“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref

“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref

“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref

“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:

You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref

“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref

“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref

“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref 

Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)

“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref

“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref

“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref

“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:

• Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
• Domovoy (Slavic)
• Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
• Húsvættir (Norse)” ref

“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref

“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref

“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref

“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:

The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref

“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:

It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …

In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

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Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope’s Art

Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):

Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism

My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com