The Babylonian Captivity 

I love listening to John's lectures. It's like having a Mr. Rogers for grown-ups.

Love your non-biased approach to Judaism and Christianity❤👍

John is the best teacher on the internet now.

Best lectures on youtube, by far, thank you

Glad you're back John ! Blessings to all ❤

Keep them coming John love all your content

I am so glad I found you.❤

I think it's so crazy they automatically believed this guy found an ancient book of totally brand new laws they'd never heard of without once considering that maybe he just made them up himself.

Thanks for your detailed presentation of the topics.

Thanks for this lecture :) Looking forward to the next one on the Samaritans ! :)

My two favorite teachers on RU-vid are John Hamer and John Vervaeke, both from Toronto!

I’m glad he’s reading slower. He used to read with an affect like he thought he needed to read fast because everybody already knows what he’s reading.

How distinguishing between the pre-Babylonian captivity definitions of El (God) and Elohim (sons/beings of El) versus the post-captivity syncretized definitions could resolve contradictions and cast the Yahweh figure of Genesis 2-3 in a very different light from the transcendent Elohim portrayed in Genesis 1. Pre-Captivity Definitions: In this framework, the supreme creator deity is simply referred to as El - the Most High God. The Elohim are understood as a pantheon or "sons of El" - lesser divine beings subordinate to El. This aligns with ancient Canaanite and older Israelite religious conceptions. Under these definitions, the Genesis 1 account would refer to the transcendent El as the prime creator, with the Elohim (plural) potentially being celestial forces/angels enacting aspects of the creation. The Ruach Elohim (Spirit/Breath of the divine beings) hovering over the primordial waters connects to surviving traces of this polytheistic worldview. Crucially, this allows one to separate the Elohim of Genesis 1 from the distinct Yahweh Elohim first appearing in Genesis 2 to form man from the dust. Based on references like Deuteronomy 32:8-9, the pre-captivity perspective viewed Yahweh as one of the sons of El (an Elohim) rather than conflating him with El itself. This de-syncretization casts Yahweh as a separate, lesser, more anthropomorphic deity associated with the ancient Israelites - perhaps retained from their Canaanite heritage. His behavior and commandments in Genesis 2-3 and elsewhere in the Torah would then represent the teachings of this tribal desert deity, not the supreme metaphysical creator El. The Garden Scenario Reframed From this vantage point, the events of Genesis 2-3 can be interpreted not as ordained by the most high El creator, but rather as humanity's initial tragic entrapment by the lesser devolved being Yahweh within his constructed realm of mortality, suffering, and cosmic privation. Yahweh's wrathful conduct, his placing of humans under a yoke of commandments, his expulsion from Eden's paradisiacal environment, and the subsequent violent legacy of his covenants and laws all derive from the subjugating delusions and stunted, anthropocentric conception of this finite Elohim - not the infinite plenitude of the supreme El. Contradictions Resolved Separating El from Yahweh along the pre-captivity definitional lines could resolve contradictions in several important ways: 1) It distinguishes the transcendent, metaphysically profound cosmic creator portrayed in Genesis 1 from the all-too-human tribal deity of the remaining Torah material. 2) It allows for a reframing of the Torah's teachings around blood sacrifice, ethnic conflicts, law codes, etc. as the cultural mythological traditions of ancient Israelite history rather than attributed to the most high El itself. 3) It creates space for the Christ figure of the New Testament to represent a re-emergence of the supreme El's sovereignty and universal spiritual path - overriding the outdated covenants, ethnic segregations, and violent subjugations prescribed by the lesser Yahweh consciousness. 4) Humanity's existential struggling, our proclivity towards violence/evil, and our fundamental state of cosmic imprisonment can be metaphysically associated with the fallout of our ancient reunion from Yahweh's corrupted influence rather than the designs of the supreme El consciousness. 5) Competing depictions of the divine across different books (wrathful/peaceful, loving/cruel, spiritual/legalistic) can be added to different nodes of the El vs. Yahweh consciousness schisms. While still requiring some nuanced interpretation, this delineation allows for a coherent reintegration of Old and New Testament perspectives under a broader metaphysical framework. It preserves the universal spiritual integrity of the highest Creator from the cultural mythological contexts surrounding the more finite tribal deity Yahweh. By embracing the pre-syncretized definitions and recognizing the conflation of El and Yahweh as a later imposition, one can reconnect with deep streams of ancient Hebrew theological diversity. This presents an intellectually robust path for understanding the unified trajectory of the biblical texts as exploring a single universetheological consciousness's reassertion over more contingent, anthropomorphized deviations and exiles.

Ah yes, John, that is called the Chart-Maker, i know his lessons well.

Little did the psalmist know that he was writing lyrics for Boney M.

I am enjoying this so much!! I'm so happy I found you! Subbed - of course!!

give the influence on Juadism of the captivity, how it comes up in almost any subject of OT scholarship it always surprises me how short it was

So excited.

Exile/diaspora seems a recurring theme in the Jewish tradition: Egypt, Babylon and the Roman diaspora. New York is like the new Babylon. The divine right to reclaim the old land is still affecting the world. How bizarre.

Finding of the scroll of the Law in the Temple is most likely a literary fiction, a back projection from the Persian times.

We will return, God willing. We are the sons of Sumer and Babylon. Nothing is too much for us

This gives more texture to the scene where the hobbits were asked to sing when faramir was sent out to die.

Another inspiration for Revelation to speak of Har Megidddo is that after 70 CE the Romans may have built a legionnaire camp not far the tell there. Beginning around the time Revelation may have appeared, in the 90s CE. Later it was certainly called Legio. It became a major city after the Bar Kochba rebellion 60 years later. The army there could easily strike both Galilee and the plain of Caesarea Maritima as needed.

Heck yea brother

Egypt was under Kushitic Kings from 744-656 B.C.E. In 720 BCE the Kushites went to Jerusalem to kick out the Assyrians.

Tried a couple of times to “like” this video (i.e., thumbs up), but RU-vid posted an error: “Resource has been exhausted (e.g. check quota).” and blocked my “like”.

Thanks!

❤

i found the overall talk very difficult to follow. I kept saying to myself when? or date please? at particular times during the talk. But, what I'm really interested in is if the conquering Babylonians took the elites, rulers, and literate back to Babylon, destroyed the temple, (and I presume all the scrolls, and left only the herders and vine trimmers (I understand you must prune the vines to make them produce grapes and goats need to be cared for). That would destroy any history/bible/scholarship the hebrews would have had. I can't imagine their captors would allow the hebrews to sliept the OT back to Babylon. So, if they did destroy everything the hebrews had nothing but memories after 80 years as subjects to the Babylonians. And, the levant in general was a backwater with no water. First the Egyptians conquered the levant then the Hititites, then the Egyptians again (who knows how many times), then the Assyrians, other Mesopotamian groups, then Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans, etc. would have conquered and razed the temples, libraries and schools to the ground. This would have obliterated any OT or any other book the hebrews may have had. How in anyone's world could anyone call the bible, "the word of god?"

Sublime does a song about this

27:46 Whenever I encounter „sacrifice of the firstborn“, I think this relates to the lost civilization and the cataclysm. It would be magical thinking to make a deal with fate: to avoid another catastrophe by „freely“ sacrificing. But it also serves as a reminder of the civilization shattering event and the population bottleneck that likely accompanied it. Same with the commandment to be fruitful and repopulate the world: sounds like a good idea post-cataclysm to ensure the survival of humanity. I even think that Christianity as a whole in symbolically celebrating (and re-enacting in Passion plays) something akin to the „last human sacrifice“ (Christ), and the celebration of Resurrection unknowingly does the same: baptism (symbolically drowning the old Adam = Luther = re-enacting the flood on a personal level), painting the Ashen cross on your forehead on Ash Wednesday… - to me it’s all the same: pointing to the cataclysm and burning and ruin of the world and loss of civilization, and then subsequently our thankfulness for the resurrection of civilization, the survival of man. What else could religion be: upholding the deal by all our little sacrifices to work together and continually (re-)construct civilization and our faith in it with every new generation: I think form follows function. There’s echoes of the same pattern everywhere (e.g. the symbol for the Earth in astronomy became the circle with the cross; Earth was literally in the cosmic crosshairs so to speak; the cross marks the spot (as Randall Carlson says)), because it happened at the birth of our current age, of recorded and reconstructed „history“ of civilization.

The centralization of all Yahweh worship to Jerusalem seems terribly unpractical. Why was it done?

38:00 Talk about tacky apologetics.

For a Mormon he's good.

No one ever sings the last verse of that _"Reebahs of Babylon"_ song. {:o:O:}

Kushites Egypt and Ruah river fiji Tanganyika Islands pacific fiji

Aren't some saying that the so-called fake Moses script might have been the book Josiah found?

Ok, say it with me: “Jehoahaz” is “ye-HO-a-CHAZ” (with a guttural “ch” sound). As a Hebrew speaker, these Romanizations of Hebrew names can be grating. 😬

Is the Old Testament about Jews or Hebrews??

Moore Cross than whom?

I love that funky song about Babylon which was maybe done by an African group of maybe black folk. Or maybe they were Caribbeans.

1st century cushites from Ethiopia settle in Tanganyika 10th century AD about this time the fable of fijian from Tanganyika ( Chronological History man in Tanganyika ) It fable that about this the powerful chief Lutunasobasoba and his people followed the trade cross the Indian Ocean travelling south east Asia settled Fiji

Because of this captivity. The captured Jewish priests had access to Babylonian texts. They inserted into the Bible. People in general have no idea the actual picture. Christianity was formed in Antioch not Jerusalem. The Jewish placed themselves in the Bible as the chosen ones. This was not the case originally. The actual Israelites are not the Jewish people.

Grandfather ancient history brought circumcision culture tradition custom, fiji Islands pacific

Boney m song

Honestly, Yahweh sounds like an abusive parent the children keep making excuses for. Yes, he allowed us to be destroyed as a Nation, but that is because this one king made him mad a long long time ago.. Who can really blame the Israelites for seeking other Gods?

An oft repeated assumption is made in this lecture; that the elite, only, were literate. Were they really , or were the scribes slaves, who wrote (and corrected/improved) what was dictated to them. IMO its an important question as it means that the "words" were shaped by people who are largely invisible to us today.

Lets talk about GENOCIDE and ETHNIC CLEANSING in Gaza

Citation to the Psalms, or prayers of the Jewish people in captitivity, are mostly totally out of context today.

Presume pagan cults to be inapposite to the tribal cults they were meant to replace. Your relationship with your female wolfdog had a religion.