Christ Conspiracy_ The Greatest Story Ever Sold - Acharya S [84]
These kings of Judah were sun-worshippers, as is made clear at 2 Kings 23:11, when Josiah "removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun..."
It is evident that there are a number of characters or factions in the OT depicting themselves as "the Lord," since in one book, the heavens are to be praised as creations of the Almighty himself, but, in another, to do so is considered idolatrous. On the contradictions within the Judeo-Christian scriptures, eminent freethinker Robert Ingersoll commented, "If a man would follow, today, the teachings of the Old Testament, he would be a criminal. If he would strictly follow the teachings of the New, he would be insane."
Ezekiel
Likewise, if he were to attempt to make literal the enigmatic passages in Ezekiel, he might go mad. Ezekiel, in fact, provides an interesting testimonial to the practice of polytheism and astrology by the Hebrews/Jews as in a "vision" he is given by Yahweh a tour of Israel's "abominations" that includes a trip into the Jerusalem Temple's "inner court that faces north, where was the seat of the image of jealousy, which provokes to jealousy." The "image of jealousy," of course, is Yahweh, El Qanna, the jealous god; however, it seems that the "living God" was even jealous of his own image, apparently considering it an idol. Next, Ezekiel is shown a hole in the north court wall, which he excavates to find a door:
And [God] said to me, "Go in, and see the vile abominations that they are committing here." So I went in and saw; and there, portrayed upon the wall round about, were all kinds of creeping things, and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. And before them stood seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, with Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan standing among them. Each had his censer in his hand, and the smoke of the cloud of incense went up. Then he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the dark, every man in his room of pictures? For they say, The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'" He said also to me, "You will see even greater abominations which they commit."
Thus we find the elders of Israel performing in the hidden chamber of the temple their secret, esoteric religion, which was basically astrological. This Shaphan, father of Jaazaniah, evidently and ironically was the scribe of Hilkiah, the Zadokite priest who purportedly "found" the law that caused Josiah to go berserk and destroy the other gods and high places. It should also be noted that El Qanna's inner court to the north was reserved only for the Zadokite priesthood, which became the Sadducees.
Ezekiel then goes on to describe the Hebrew women at the entrance of the Temple's north gate who were weeping for Tammuz, the Syrian/ Samaritan savior/fertility/sun god who annually died and was resurrected. Ezekiel is next shown "between the porch and the altar" of the "temple of the Lord" some 25 men, "with their backs to the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east, worshipping the sun to the east." Such were the "abominations" of the house of Israel, for which the jealous/zealous god commanded a group of Yahwist thugs to slaughter the Hebrews, smiting "old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women," who were not worshipping properly, according to the Yahwist bias. Consequently, El Qanna, the jealous/zealous god, orders the extermination of Jews and Hebrews who were worshipping other Elohim, as their fathers had before them.
Despite "the Lord's" purported hatred of these "abominations," he then goes on to show Ezekiel the zodiacal circle, the celebrated "wheel within a wheel," about which so much tortured speculation has been put forth, including the latest that the wheel represents a spaceship. Unfortunately for the X-philes, Ezekiel's allegories-and he is