A New Type of Curriculum for the Entire Family: Honor and Shame in the Bible PLUS Lessons in Yeshua’s Torah

Are you ready for something completely different? How about a homeschooling-type curriculum for the entire family, geared towards the slower pace that kids need but covering the modern Ancient Near Eastern and First Century studies that are all the rage in the scholarly world? How about a Bible Study that treats your kids like scholars and teaches them how to look for and appreciate historical context within the most important Book ever written? Are you interested in becoming an entire family of context detectives, having real dinner table discussions about the world of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Messiah? Are you interested in having your kids become passionate about seeking out the treasures of the Bible because they understand the underlying culture?

Can a ten week Biblical Sociology curriculum change your life and your children’s future?

Tired of sending your kids out into the world with verses memorized and yet losing them to the faith before they finish college? Let’s face it, Atheists, unbelieving Bible hobbyists and even some believing College Professors tell our kids that the Bible was simply made up at a late date to reflect already existing beliefs.

The last 150 years of archaeology have proven the critics wrong but this information is generally not making it into the hands of the most vulnerable of believers – young college students. What if, as a family, you could study – in depth – what the people of the Ancient Near East and First Century knew, how they looked at the world and how they thought and interacted with each other? What if the Bible characters could become real flesh and blood people in the eyes of your children? What if they went out into the world armed with the kind of knowledge generally reserved for serious Bible scholars?

What if I told you that I could do that hard research for you and then present it to your entire family in an easy to understand manner?

Honor and Shame culture is how the ancient world operated – but their definition of words like honor and virtue are not in line with our modern understandings. Today the entire Islamic world operates according to these ancient understandings that Biblical people simply took for granted. Have you ever wondered why the crucifixion was really so brutal? Have you ever scratched your head wondering why Jesus and the Pharisees, Scribes, Elders and Chief Priests were always arguing – or why Nicodemus approached Jesus at night? Why was Saul trying to kill David, and why did Joseph’s brothers really hate him so much? For that matter – why do Muslims all over the world today take pride in killing the most defenseless members of society?

Honor and Shame culture is hidden in plain sight throughout the Bible, and understanding that will change the way you read it. Context will change and equip your children – it will change and equip you. After completing this course, you will not only have a foundational understanding of honor/shame culture in antiquity, but you will also understand what we are seeing in the news today regarding Islamic terrorism.

See a sample here.Context-For-Kids-Volume1-pp8-9

Available now at amazon.com in paperback and on kindle. Coming Oct 4, 2015 on youtube are my weekly kid’s context videos. Watch for them!

And are you interested in a Yeshua (Jesus) based family curriculum dedicated to exploring the first five books of the Bible?

My dear friend Sarah Hawkes Valente has compiled a MASSIVE year long curriculum, taking your family through the Torah portions with lessons, crafts and coloring pages – this is what I call a “mega-mom” book. Like mine, it is great for homeschooling or public schooling families who want to integrate Bible studies into their daily lives.

Sarah has a sample teaching available here – of course, she has “punched it up” considerably for the book. I got a preview file and this is a great resource for families. Click on this link to purchase – workbook available in kindle soon.

Bridal Revolution Part 1

Ladies, whether you call yourselves Christians, Messianic or Hebrew Roots – I’d like a moment of your time. Or, if you prefer to watch this in video, click here. I posted this a few days ago in response to some changes that God is working in my life – things that I want to share with you. The resulting fruit in my life has been amazing, but you would have to understand what life was like on the inside of me in order for me to explain the magnitude of what God is doing.

My name is Tyler Dawn Rosenquist, and I am a teacher of the Ancient Near Eastern and First Century context of Scripture – usually I come before you talking about that, but not today.

Ladies, we have an online witness problem that is bringing shame to our God and His Messiah Yeshua, more commonly known as Jesus. As any woman knows – it is women and not men who are the true civilizing influence of any society. Apart from the salvation of God through His Messiah, His commandments and the workings of the Holy Spirit in our lives, there is no greater civilizing force than women. What we allow to happen, will happen, whatever we participate in, will become the norm. Men throughout history have looked to the wisdom of women in order to know what limits they should place on themselves socially – we are their mothers and their wives, their sisters and the guardians over their sons and daughters. Men who make all the women in their home unhappy are not going to thrive.

But there is a problem, in our pursuit of unbiblical strength – in our relentless aggression, we have forgotten what it means to be truly strong women. We have forgotten how to control the public discourse through our steady wisdom. Instead, we have gone onto social media and have acted not like the best of men, but like the worst of them. Every day I see women aggressively arguing, picking fights, acting in a degrading and insulting manner not only towards other women but also towards men. I even see women standing by as others are brutalized right in front of them. Such things should not be.

Ladies, we have always held the moral high ground. We have historically set the tone of any conversation we were witness to –as long as we acted like ladies and demanded to be treated as such. A woman who acts wisely and demands dignity for both herself and others generally gets it – as long as many women stand together. We have the power to do something amazing – something that only the women in the Body of Messiah can do. We can diminish the shameful behavior going on in the online Body of believers, the behavior that doesn’t make either ourselves or the believing men look any different than the world we claim to be set apart from.

There are many wounded, hurting people on facebook – but where are the healers? They have been ejected from the building – the conversations over doctrine have become so insulting and so shameful that they are held at a distance.

Believing men who are not fully submitted to God are always going to behave as aggressively as we allow them to behave. If we behave badly, then they will behave worse. If we allow them to walk onto our social media walls and deprive others of their dignity, then they will never change. If we don’t act like strong, dignified women, then they will treat us exactly the way they think we deserve to be treated – and as we can see from what is going on online, in many cases that is very bad indeed.

Ladies, there are more female believers than male – especially online. We have the power to protect and elevate the online witness of our King, through changing our own behavior and changing what we will and will not tolerate. Right now it is very bad, as anyone can see.

To be a woman is to be strong – if anyone has seen me teaching online with my four male co-teachers, you know I am not some weakling. I am bold and I am strong – but my boldness and strength does not come through fruitless, divisive, insulting arguments. My dignity does not come from degrading others. My loudest witness comes from what I do and do not tolerate in myself and others. Years ago, when God started overhauling my character, I stopped picking fights, I stopped humiliating people online who I thought were wrong, I stopped tolerating bullying, manipulation and fighting on my social media page. I demanded to be treated with the same level of respect I was extending to others and adopted a zero tolerance policy towards divisive people and towards those who wanted to come on my page and slander others – especially those who would slander our Savior, or Christians, or Jews.

Ladies – we can’t lord authority over men, and we should not go after them on social media – I have seen women who go after men and they look like shrieking harpies. Truth is, we don’t have to. If we cut off access to our walls and groups to divisive men and women, if we refuse to tolerate their behavior, if we give them a warning or two and then deny them access to our walls – then wall by wall we will eliminate their outlets for bringing shame to our King.

I have seen it in the transformation of people on my own facebook wall – as we demand that people start maturing, they will and those who don’t can go and bring shame to God somewhere else. We need, with the unique social strength of woman, to change the online culture.

We are called in Gal 5:22-23 to good mature fruit – fruit that to the first century readers of Paul would have looked womanish and wimpy. God does not call us to weakness ladies, He calls us to strength. The Spirit empowers, and evidently the Spirit empowers us towards behavior that is less male than female.

Love – we must treat each other loyaly as covenant partners, laying down our lives for each other and refusing to tolerate anyone heaping up abuses on our social media pages

Joy – we must rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn, this has always been a great feminine strength

Peace – we cannot go around picking fights, and then go howling about being persecuted when someone hits us back

Patience – as mothers, we have had to learn that people need the time and space to grow and mature. We need to lovingly discipline others, with mercy and at the appropriate time – while still having a firm hand.

Kindness – we must be encouragers, giving dignity instead of stealing it away for ourselves

Goodness – we must never fail to be good examples

Faithfulness – we must be worthy of trust, we must be willing to admit fault and to apologize. If we have offended publicly, we must humble ourselves and apologize publicly

Gentleness – we must never think that we have license to exercise our flesh in insults and call it love or to turn our heads and allow anyone to be brutalized on our social media walls.

Self-Control – The game of correction police has got to end. If our whole days are spent looking for people to correct, then we are products of flesh and not re-creations of Spirit. It isn’t about us. In the same way, we have to stop promoting ourselves as bastions of perfection.

Ladies – we have control over our own walls, like we have control over what goes on in our own living rooms. There are far more of us ladies than are males. We have power – power over what kinds of teachers we allow to speak to us, power over the words that we speak and type, power to choose life over death, power over the way people are treated on our walls.

It’s time to act like ladies, and to demand – within our personal sphere of control – that people act like ladies and gentlemen. It’s time to remember that we are women, it’s time to show men what a Bride looks like. It’s time to refuse authority to anyone who would make our King look bad. No one does that on my wall, and I stay off of walls where people are allowed to act that way. Let’s starve them out, let’s model and demand better behavior – for the sake of our King and His hurting children, who need to lay down their burdens and be healed, but cannot find a safe place to do so.

Ladies, this can’t start with the men because this is not how they are powerful. There are too many people who are hurting from abusive fathers and abusive pastors. Let’s stop trying to be like men – it really isn’t a fruitful or worthy pursuit. We are called to this – it’s time for a revolution.

¿Quién fue Tamúz, por qué (y cuándo) las mujeres lloraban por él? Veamos a Ezequiel capítulo 8 desde el contexto del Antiguo Medio Oriente.

Gracias a Lisa Velazquez por traducir este articulo. Puede escucharla a traves de Teshuva.tv los Domingos a las 6pm en el programa radial: Caminando en Obediencia.

Quise escribir esto hace unos meses cuando algo extraño en la descripción del templo me llamó la atención – resolví esa pregunta acerca del templo pero me quede horrorizada por las implicaciones de lo que estaba pasando en el mismo trono de Dios en la tierra (Ezequiel 43:7) Tiene que darse cuenta, que soy el tipo de persona que lee sobre ese tipo de cosas y se echa a llorar desde el inicio de mis estudios del Servicio del Templo. Decidí averiguar exactamente lo que estaban haciendo en la Casa de mi Rey, para interrumpir la simple lectura del pasado con el fin de llegar al material del Templo Milenial en el futuro que describe Ezequiel. Mi mano se ha visto obligada por mi necesidad de aclarar mi estante de libros JSTOR y así que tengo que hacer algo con todos estos artículos acerca de Tamúz.

(Nota: Por favor no me contacten diciéndome que estoy calumniando otros ministerios al escribir esto – si no puedo cortésmente presentar material de investigación sin ser acusada de tratar de socavar a los demás, entonces hemos llegado al punto de muerte dentro del movimiento. Es común que personas se adhieran emocionalmente a leyendas, pero recuerde que, independientemente, soy su hermana en el Mesías – no simplemente alguien para arremeter en contra. Muchas religiones se basan en la supresión de información. Una cosa es estudiar los materiales que presento y estar en desacuerdo, y otra muy distinta es simplemente atacarme basado en suposiciones de mis motivos-especialmente si usted no ha hecho la investigación por usted mismo. Esto tiene que ser más grande que ministerios individuales – de lo contrario ¿que estamos haciendo sino seguir los errores religiosos del pasado? No estoy no sólo atacando a otros ministerios, pero personalmente me declaro culpable de tener información errónea y de difundirla antes de aprenderla y estudiarla por mí misma y encontrar fuentes de información fiables. Yo estaba demasiado confiada – la historia nos demuestra que siempre somos demasiado confiados).

Ahora, antes de continuar, por favor tenga en cuenta que antes de que realmente empezara a hacer investigaciones del AMO (Antiguo Medio Oriente) – hace años – yo era una de las personas difundiendo información errónea acerca de Tamúz que se originó en la década del 1850 en un libro seudo-arqueológico por un hombre llamado Alexander Hislop – sobre la cual muchos otros libros se basaron más tarde. Yo, como casi todos los demás, decidí que un pastor escocés no pudo haber fabricado pruebas en contra de la Iglesia Católica y tergiversar sus fuentes – lo cual es extraño porque mi antigua zona de estudio fue la Edad Media y el Renacimiento Europeo – una época de odio vitriólico entre católicos y protestantes que aún perdura hasta hoy día en lugares como Irlanda. Vivimos en una era de información y es difícil imaginar a alguien saliéndose con la suya durante tanto tiempo – pero la verdad es que pocos habrían tenido acceso a sus “fuentes citadas”. En la década de 1920, los estudiosos diligentes que tenían acceso a los libros que Hislop citó se dieron cuenta de que él no era honesto acerca de su material de origen, y literalmente se inventó un montón de cosas. Lo que es peor, justo después que Hislop escribiera sus panfletos originales, tablillas cuneiformes comenzaron a ser desenterradas a través de todo el Medio Oriente, en números abrumadores. De repente (bueno en realidad no de repente, se tomó mucho tiempo para compilar y traducir – el proceso todavía está en curso) tuvimos información en tiempo real sobre dioses y diosas que anteriormente sólo se había sido capaz de hacer suposiciones en base de mitos judíos medievales – como Dagón.

Tamúz es otro de esos dioses sumerios que vinieron a la vida a través de la pala excavadora. Tenga en cuenta que, aparte de los sitios web académicos serios como JSTOR.org, casi cada página web individual o meme relacionado con Tamúz o la Reina del Cielo se basan en el libro de Alexander Hislop, Las Dos Babilonias – a pesar de que a menudo se citan sin fuentes en absoluto.

Entonces, ¿quién era Tamúz, de acuerdo a la evidencia? ¿Quién pudo haber sido en el siglo 6^to AC, cuando Ezequiel vio las abominaciones en el templo? ¿Tenía algo que ver con la “imagen de celo”? – probablemente no. Cualquier ídolo colocado dentro de los terrenos del templo habría calificado como una imagen de celo – bien pudo haber sido una estatua de Baal, el dios cananeo de la tormenta, o Asera, la diosa madre, el dios El, jefe del panteón cananeo, o cualquier otro. Quiero que se imaginen lo que la “imagen de celo” significaba en esos momentos, y, específicamente, lo que significaba para El que le dio a Ezequiel la visión, es decir, Dios. He oído decir que tuvo que ser un gran símbolo fálico causándoles a todos a sentir celos – pero ningún símbolo fálico lo suficientemente grande como para ser visto de lejos, seriamente pudo haber causado que cualquier persona sintiera celos, especialmente Dios. No – el Celoso en el caso del Templo que fue difamado fue Dios mismo, quien no le interesó qué tipo de ídolo que era – sólo que había un ídolo. Quiero que se coloque dentro del contexto de Convenio de la escritura – Judá (Israel había sido exiliado desde hace tiempo) todavía estaba casada con YHVH a través del Convenio sólo por la fidelidad al Dios de David y los Patriarcas. El templo fue la Casa y el Trono de Dios en la Tierra. Con lo que en realidad traer un ídolo a Sus atrios equivalía a tomarme una foto con otro hombre con el cual estoy durmiendo (esto es sólo un ejemplo, no estoy realmente haciendo esto) y ponerlo en la mesa junto a la cama de mi marido. Sería una imagen “en tu cara” que provocaría celos. Cuando asumimos automáticamente que la imagen fue diseñada para hacer que la gente sintiera celos a través de motivos sexuales, estamos inyectando una mentalidad moderna en la mezcla. Si los hombres se hicieron verdaderamente celosos por tales ídolos entonces nunca hubiesen llegado a ser populares en el primer lugar.

Por lo tanto, hemos separado a Tamúz de la imagen de celos – de hecho no tenemos ídolos de Tamúz, sólo entallas esculpidas. En las esculturas, Tamúz aparece (de lejos) cargando lo que parece ser una cruz, pero si uno simplemente echa un vistazo, es evidente que él está llevando unas ramas largas con tres ramas curvas con hojas que salen de la parte superior. De hecho, es sólo cuando la imagen se oscurece lo que parece ser una cruz.

¿Entonces por qué Tamúz llevaba una rama? – la historia que yo solía creer y enseñar decía que él era o un dios del sol o que él era un hombre mortal descendiente de Nimrod y que Semiramis era un pre-Yeshúa (Jesús) un falso Mesías. Bueno, he hablado de Semiramis antes, ella si fue real, y era una reina que vivió justo antes de la época del rey David – ahora esa mujer ¡si fue tremenda! Ella fue una princesa de Babilonia que se casó con un rey Asirio, y su historia fue posteriormente adornada por los griegos. Principalmente sabemos sobre ella, porque un antiguo autor llamado Sanchuniathon (siglo 12 AC) escribió sobre ella – y de hecho Sanchuniathon fue un hombre del que tenemos una gran cantidad de nuestra información acerca de la antigua religión del Medio Oriente, porque él fue un sabio prolífico fenicio. Filón de Byblius (primer y segundo siglo AEC) tradujo sus obras, y por eso tenemos algunos de ellos todavía hoy. Pero ella no fue la madre de Tamúz, porque tenemos recuentos de la madre y la hermana de Tamúz a través de las leyendas que poseemos acerca de él. Compasivas, virtuosas y abnegadas, ambas (Sirtur y Gestinanna) sufrieron mucho en la búsqueda de su progenitor pastor que imprudentemente aceptó ser el esposo de la frívola diosa Inanna (Ishtar), la reina del cielo – la cual se había casado (y abandonado) a hombres, dioses e incluso animales. El amor poético centrado en la relación entre Inanna y Tamúz es bastante pornográfica (Pritchard, páginas 404-408). Para responder a la pregunta del por qué Tamúz cargaba una rama, es bastante simple – Tamúz era una deidad agrícola. En una manera indirecta, también podría explicar por qué las mujeres lloraban por él – en realidad hay dos posibles explicaciones ya que no tenemos ninguna evidencia absoluta (es decir, nadie escribió “esto es el por qué las mujeres lloran a Tamúz” – o por lo menos en todas mis investigaciones veo a la gente hacer declaraciones definitivas sin evidencia primaria, aunque podemos hacer conjeturas comparativas a partir de las culturas contemporáneas al antiguo Israel).

Diferentes historias sobre Dumuzi (Tamúz) describen bien o no su muerte. En cuanto a Inanna y Bilulu, Tamúz el esposo pastor (que parece ser una especie de semidiós en las epopeyas) salió con sus ovejas y fue asesinado por una malvada mujer Bilulu y su hijo Girgire durante una incursión de ganado – su cabeza fue magullada con un mazo. En el más famoso Descenso de Inanna, vemos a Inanna (Ishtar) destinada a morar en el inframundo por su hermana a menos que pudiese encontrar un reemplazo – regresando a la tierra para encontrar a alguien adecuado (para que ella pudiese estar con su amado esposo Dumuzi), ella descubre que él [ujum]…. no estuvo de luto por ella. {Tag – ahora te toca a ti.} Tamúz es enviado a bajar in-ceremonialmente al inframundo por su esposa enojada (después de haber sido perseguido por demonios), ni siquiera muerto, sino simplemente asignado a vivir allí durante seis meses de cada año. En el Sueño de Dumuzi, una versión alternativa, su madre y su hermana, Sirtar y Gestinanna, descienden al inframundo en busca de él y lloran por él todo el tiempo – cuando Gestinanna lo encuentra, ella noblemente se compromete a tomar su lugar en el inframundo por 6 meses de cada año.

Entonces, ¿cuál fue el motivo de “vivir en el inframundo durante seis meses”? Muy simple – los antiguos observaron que había una estación húmeda donde todo crecía y florecía y una estación seca en la que todo se extinguía. Debe haber una razón. Aunque la gente en el mundo antiguo valoraban la matemática y la ingeniería, no eran científicos (sí, las matemáticas, la ingeniería y la ciencia son totalmente diferentes. Soy una científica químico y mi esposo es un ingeniero – tuvimos que tomar algunas de las mismas clases pero tanto la ingeniería básica y las ciencias pueden existir el uno sin el otro – pero ninguna pueden existir sin la física o las matemáticas). Los pueblos antiguos no buscaban razones científicas por las cuales el universo funcionaba, ellos asumieron y promovieron razones sobrenaturales – es por eso que gran parte de las escrituras hebreas están escritas en lo que parece ser el lenguaje poético sobre conceptos como los “pilares de la tierra”, especialmente en el libro de Job. En sus mentes, absolutamente había un dios responsable por todas las funciones, y la agricultura era una función enorme. Así que ¿por qué su dios no estaba haciendo su función por 6 meses? ¿Por qué todo estaba muriendo? Obviamente debe haber desaparecido para no realizar su función cósmica. Así que durante seis meses (tiempo que no llovía y las plantas morían – un gran problema en las sociedades del desierto que generalmente tenían una capacidad muy limitada para almacenar productos y grano para su uso futuro – eran una sociedad de subsistencia, haciendo suficiente comida para este año y tal vez el siguiente), Tamúz tenía que desaparecer – ahora ¿dónde pudo haber ido que no podía hacer su trabajo? El único lugar donde un dios no podía ejercer su función era en el inframundo, por lo que debió haber estado allí. Como vemos en esta imagen tomada por Matthew Vander Els en el Golán, sería un momento terriblemente estresante.

Así que vemos a las mujeres hornear tortas para Inanna/Ishtar, (la esposa de Tamúz/Dumuzi) y vemos a las mujeres llorando a Tamúz. ¿Por qué están llorando? Dos posibles explicaciones – una es que están simpáticamente actuando el papel de las fieles Sirtar y Gestinanna ya que lloraron por su hijo/hermano (observe que no hay hombres, sólo las mujeres participan, así que esto es plausible). ¿Las mujeres lloraban a fin de garantizar que Tamúz volverá a bendecir la tierra de nuevo? La segunda opción es que, como en otras culturas, simpateticamente sus lágrimas son de fundición a la tierra que ha sido “maldecida” sin lluvia porque Tamúz está en el inframundo. ¿Podría ser una ofrenda de agua (lágrimas) a la tierra en la ausencia de fertilidad que Tamúz trae?

De cualquier manera, tenemos una práctica idolátrica que se lleva a cabo en el templo en nombre del “eterno” Tamúz – en el inframundo quien no está muerto. Te diré esto – hubiese sido mejor que lloraran a su fiel hermana. Su falta de empatía hacia la madre y hermana era completamente despreciable… debieron haberlo dejado allí. En el calendario babilónico, vemos que el mes de Tamúz corresponde aproximadamente con el mes de julio – el momento en que los pastos se marchitan y mueren. Las mujeres por cierto pudiesen haber llorado durante la temporada del verano/otoño.

Fuentes:
A Dictionary of Ancient near Eastern Mythology, Gwendolyn Leick, PhD Asiriología páginas 31-36, 86-93

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, James B Pritchard, Ed (todos los libros de Pritchard tienen pedigríes impresionantes y éste no es diferente – es la obra de diecisiete estudiosos serios del AMO [Antiguo Medio Oriente]) páginas 77-82, 404-408 (entre otros, hay una gran cantidad de información acerca de Inanna/Ishtar)

The IVP Bible Background Commentary, John Walton et al. Comentario sobre Ezequiel capítulo 8

Myths from Mesopotamia, Stephanie Dalley páginas 154-162

Handbook of Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Stephen Bertman páginas 83, 117

Toward the Image of Tammuz, Thorkild Jacobsen History of Religions, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), páginas 189-213 (disponible en JSTOR.org)

Tammuz and the Biblie (éste es genial), Edwin Yamauchi, Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 84, No. 3 (September 1965), páginas 283-290 (también disponible en JSTOR.org)

Who was Tammuz and why (and when) were the women weeping for him? Ez 8 from the Ancient Near Eastern Context.

“Lent is based on Tammuz worship.” That’s the claim – let’s test it against what is actually known and weigh the evidence. (What is it actually based on? The Season of Teshuva between Elul 1 and Yom Kippur during which the 40 days of fasting and Temptation of the Messiah occurred)

I meant to write this a few months ago when something strange about the Temple description caught my eye. I resolved that Temple question but was horrified by the implications of what was going on within the very throne of God on earth (Ez 43:7). You have to realize, I am the type of person who reads about that sort of thing and bursts into tears since beginning my Temple studies. I decided to find out exactly what they were doing in the House of my King, and to stop simply reading past it in order to get to the Millennial Temple material of later Ezekiel. My hand has now been forced by my need to clear my JSTOR bookshelf and so I need to do something with all these Tammuz articles.

(Note: Please do not contact me telling me that I am slandering other ministries by writing this–if I cannot politely present research without being accused of trying to undermine others, then we have reached the point of death within the movement. It is common for people to be very emotionally attached to legends, but remember that regardless, I am a sister in Messiah–not simply someone to lash out at. Many religions are built upon the suppression of information. It is one thing to study the materials I present and come out in disagreement, and quite another to simply attack me based upon assumptions of my motives – especially if you have not done the research yourself. This has to be bigger than individual ministries, otherwise, what are we doing but following the religious mistakes of the past? Not only am I not attacking other ministries, but I am personally pleading guilty to having spread misinformation before I learned to study for myself and to find reputable sources of information. I was too trusting–history shows that we are always too trusting.)

Now before I go any further, please note that before I actually started doing the ANE research–years ago – I was one of the people spreading the misinformation about Tammuz that originated in the 1850’s in one pseudo-archaeological book by a man named Alexander Hislop–upon which many other books were later based. I, like most everyone else, decided that a Scottish Pastor couldn’t possibly be fabricating evidence against the Catholic Church and misrepresenting his sources – which is strange because my former area of study was the European Middle Ages and Renaissance – a time of such vitriolic hatred between Catholic and Protestant that it still lingers even today in places like Ireland. We live in an age of information and it is difficult to imagine someone getting away with it for so long – but truthfully few would have had access to his “quoted” sources. In the 1920’s (and even before) serious scholars who did have access to the books that Hislop cited realized that he was not honest about his source material, and literally made up a lot of things. Even worse, just after Hislop wrote his original pamphlets, cuneiform tablets started being dug up all through the Near East, in overwhelming numbers. All of a sudden (well not really all of a sudden, they took a long time to compile and translate – the process is still ongoing) we had real-time information on gods and goddesses that we previously had only been able to make assumptions about based on medieval Jewish myths – like Dagon. Tammuz is another one of these Sumerian gods who came to life again through the excavator’s shovel. Note that apart from serious scholarly websites like JSTOR.org, almost every single webpage or meme related to Tammuz or the Queen of Heaven will be based on Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons, even though they will often cite no sources at all. (For another scholarly take on the identity of the Queen of Heaven, I recommend Dr. Dinah Dye’s book The Temple Revealed in Creation).

So who was Tammuz, according to the evidence? Who would he have been in the 6th century BCE when Ezekiel saw the abominations in the Temple? Did he have anything to do with the “image of jealousy?” Probably not. Any idol placed within the Temple grounds would have qualified as an image of jealousy–it could have been a statue of Ba’al Hadad, the Canaanite storm god, or Asherah, a mother goddess who was sometimes worshipped as Yahweh’s consort, El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, or any number of others. I want you to imagine what “image of jealousy” meant during those times, and specifically what it meant to the One giving Ezekiel the vision, namely God. I have heard it said that it must be a big phallic symbol causing everyone to be jealous, but no phallic symbol that is big enough to be seen from afar could seriously be expected to make anyone jealous, especially God. No–the jealous One in the case of the Temple being defiled is God Himself, who couldn’t care less what type of idol it was, only that there was an idol. I want you to take yourself into the Covenant context of scripture. Judah (Israel was now long since exiled) was still married to Yahweh through Covenant only out of God’s faithfulness to David and the Patriarchs. The Temple was the very House and Throne of God upon Earth. Bringing an idol into His inner court and setting it up at the Shaar haKorban (the northern sacrifice gate) was tantamount to me taking a picture of another man I am sleeping with (this is just an example, I am not really doing this) and putting it on my husband’s bedside table. It would be an “in your face” image that would provoke jealousy. When we automatically assume that the image was designed to make people jealous through sexual motifs, we are injecting a modern mindset into the mix. If men were truly made jealous by such idols, then they would never have become popular in the first place. I honestly don’t even know who came up with such an idea or why.

So, we have separated Tammuz from the Image of jealousy – in fact, we have no idols of Tammuz, only carvings. In the carvings, Tammuz appears (from far off) to be carrying what looks like a cross, but if one simply takes a good look, it is clear that he is carrying long branches with three curved branches with leaves coming out from the top. In fact, it is only when the image is obscured that it looks like a cross.

So, why was Tammuz carrying a branch? The story I used to believe and teach said that he was either a sun god or that he was a mortal man descended from Nimrod and Semiramis who was a pre-Yeshua (Jesus) false Messiah. I have talked about Semiramis before, she was a real Queen who lived about a hundred years before the deportation of the Northern Kingdom of Israel to Assyria. Now that woman was a piece of work! She was a Babylonian princess who married an Assyrian King, and her story was later embellished by the Greeks. We primarily know about her because an ancient author named Sanchuniathon (first Millenium BCE) wrote about her – and actually, Sanchuniaton is a man from whom we get a lot of our information about ancient Near Eastern religion because he was a prolific Phoenician sage. Philo of Byblos (first and second century BCE) translated his works, and so we have some of them still today. But she is not the mother of Tammuz because we have accounts of the mother and sister of Tammuz through the legends we possess about him. Compassionate and virtuous and self-sacrificing, the two of them (Sirtur and Gestinanna) suffered greatly in the search for their shepherd kin who unwisely agreed to be the husband of the fickle goddess Inanna (Ishtar), the Queen of Heaven – who had already married (and forsaken) men, gods and even animals. Love poetry centered on the relationship between Inanna and Tammuz is quite pornographic (Pritchard, pgs 404-408). To answer the question of why Tammuz was carrying a branch, it is quite simple – Tammuz was an agricultural/shepherd deity. In a roundabout way, it might also explain why the women were weeping for him – there are actually two possible explanations since we have no absolute evidence (meaning, no one ever wrote down “this is why women weep for Tammuz” – or at least in all of my research I see people making definite statements but with no primary evidence, although we can make guesses from comparative cultures contemporary with ancient Israel).

Different stories about Dumuzi (Tammuz) describe either his death or non-death. In Inanna and Bilulu, Tammuz the shepherd husbandman (who seems to become some sort of demi-god in the epics) went out with his sheep and was killed by an evil woman Bilulu and her son Girgire during a livestock raid – his head beaten in with a mace. In the more famous Inanna’s Descent, we see Inanna (Ishtar) consigned to dwell in the underworld by her sister unless she can find a replacement – returning back to the earth to find someone suitable (so she can be with her beloved husband, Dumuzi), she finds that he um…. isn’t mourning her. Tag! You’re it. Tammuz is sent unceremoniously down to the underworld by his angry wife (after being hunted down by demons), not actually dead but just consigned to live down there for six months out of every year. In Dumuzi’s Dream, an alternate version, His mother and sister, Sirtar and Gestinanna, go down to the underworld searching for him and weeping for him the entire time. When Gestinanna finds him, she nobly agrees to take his place in the underworld for six months out of every year.

So, what’s the “living in the underworld for six months” motif all about? Very simple–the ancients noticed that there was a wet season where everything grew and flourished and a dry season where everything died off. There must be a reason. Although people in the ancient world valued mathematics and engineering, they were not scientific (yes, math, engineering, and science are totally different. I am a chemist, and my husband is an engineer so we had to take some of the same classes, but both basic engineering and the sciences can exist without each other yet neither can exist without physics and math.). Ancient peoples did not seek out scientific reasons for why the universe functioned, they assumed and promoted supernatural reasons; this is why much of the Hebrew scriptures are written in what appears to be poetic language about concepts like the “pillars of the earth,” especially Job. In their minds, there was a god responsible for absolutely every function, and agriculture was a huge function. So why was the god not doing his job for six months? Why was everything dying? He obviously must be gone and unable to perform his cosmic function. So for six months (the time of no rain and dead plants and a big deal in agricultural societies which generally had very limited ability to store up produce and grain for future use and as they were a subsistence society, they always struggled to grow enough food for this year and maybe some for the next), Tammuz had to be gone–now where could he go that he could not do his job? The only place where a god could not function was in the underworld, so he must have been there. As we see in this picture take by Matthew Vander Els in the Golan, it would be a terribly stressful time.

So we see the women baking cakes for Inanna/Ishtar, Dumuzi’s (Tammuz’s) wife and we see women weeping for Tammuz. Why are they weeping? Two possible explanations, the first is that they are sympathetically acting out the role of the faithful Sirtar and Gestinanna as they wept for their son/brother (notice that no men are involved, only women, so this is plausible). Are the women weeping so as to ensure that Tammuz will return and bless the land again? The second option is that they, as in other cultures, are sympathetically casting their tears upon the ground that has been “cursed” with no rain because Tammuz is in the underworld. Could it be an offering of water (tears) to the soil in the absence of the fertility that Tammuz brings?

Either way, we have an idolatrous practice being carried on in the Temple on behalf of the “undying” Tammuz – in the Underworld but not actually dead. I tell you what – they would have been better off weeping for his faithful sister. His lack of empathy for both mother and sister was pretty contemptible… they should have left him down there. On the Babylonian calendar, we see that the month of Tammuz roughly corresponds with July – the time when the pasture lands wither and die. The women for certain would have been weeping in the summer/fall.

EDIT: If you are wondering where Lent might, in fact, have come from, check out this possibility.

Sources:

Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, Karel Van der Toorn, et al. pp. 828-834 (this is an incredibly pricey book, but Van der Toorn, Ph.D. is THE man when it comes to this stuff)

Nimrod Before and After the Bible, Van der Toorn, HTR 83:1(1990) pp 1-29

A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology, Gwendolyn Leick, Ph.D. Assyriology pp 31-36, 86-93

The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures, James B Pritchard, Ed (all of Pritchard’s books have impressive pedigrees, and this one is no different – being the work of seventeen serious ANE scholars) pp 77-82, 404-8 (among others, there is a wealth of information about Inanna/Ishtar)

The IVP Bible Background Commentary, John Walton (Ph.D. – an expert in Ancient Near Eastern world) et al. commentary on Ezekiel 8

Myths from Mesopotamia, Stephanie Dalley (Ph.D. – Assyriology expert and often quoted by other scholars), pp 154-162

Handbook of Life in Ancient Mesopotamia, Stephen Bertman, Ph.D. pp 83, 117

Toward the Image of Tammuz, Thorkild Jacobsen (Ph.D. Assyriology and Sumerian Literature) History of Religions, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Winter, 1962), pp. 189-213 (available on JSTOR.org)

Tammuz and the Bible (this one was great), Edwin Yamauchi (Ph.D. specializing in Ancient History, Old Testament, New Testament, Early Church History, Gnosticism, and Biblical Archaeology), Journal of Biblical Literature Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep. 1965), pp. 283-290 (also available on JSTOR.org)

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Tammuz

https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2937/semiramis/

Teaser sample of Context For Kids Volume 1: Honor and Shame in the Bible – Coming Soon!

Hey everyone! I wanted to show off the fabulous work that David Farley from DCO Branding (if you want to get in touch with him, just give me a holler) is doing on the formatting of my new curriculum series. I am still working on writing him an amazing review for his site (I’m an author, so it has to sound better than anyone else’s lol). Book will definitely be available in October, barring something unforseen – like my deciding it needs ten more chapters or something.

Context-For-Kids-Volume1-pp8-9 <——-Here’s the link to Lesson’s #4 and #5 – it’s a 10 week, or 50 lesson course. I know the cover says that it is for kids 10-15 but I changed focus early on and it’s a family curriculum now – a dinner table curriculum that can be used by homeschoolers as part of their normal schedule or by any family as part of their together time at night. I want families to learn together, and to talk to each other about what they are learning. I want Christian Schools to be able to use this too – I won’t be holding my breath that public schools will adopt it though.

My weekly context videos for kids will be available on the Context for Kids youtube channel starting on September 28 with Genesis 1 from the Ancient Near Eastern point of view.

What do I want? What is my goal? Nothing less than a revolution in how families study the Bible together. Hard core Bible study isn’t just for homeschooling families – we all love our kids and want them fully armed against the armchair atheist Bible hobbyists and College Professors (even within the Religious Studies department) who will tell them that the Bible was made up after the Babylonian exile. Archaeology proves otherwise.

It’s time to become Context Detectives – detective families and detective assemblies. It’s time to stop being confused about Abraham cutting animals in half and understanding what the big deal was about wearing long tassels, and why Jacob gave Joseph a special coat – and why his brothers all really hated him for it.