Responses
to Sitchin Worshippers
(Hey, at least they write)
PLEASE be patient - the images are essential and load slowly on a dial-up connection
I have a couple pretty simple rules for those who are sufficiently angered at my audacity to question the godlike presence of Zecharia Sitchin: (1) I will post YOUR email in its entirety on my site along with my response (I do this because you may not believe the arguments used - they can be amazingly incoherent); (2) I will invite YOU to do the same on YOUR site (so far no takers).
Here we go...
Erik Parker, Sitchin's webmaster and disciple
William Henry, researcher and disciple (also a Laurence Gardner sycophant)
Sitchin's
Disciple: Clueless but Courageous
Erik Parker's Response
to My Posting Refuting
Zecharia Sitchin's Mesopotamian Rocket Theory,
and My Rejoinder
As many visitors to Rense.com know by now, I have an academic bone to pick with Zecharia Sitchin. In the wide field of research into the anomalous, I am something of an anomaly myself : a credentialed scholar of Ancient Hebrew and Semitic Languages (see my CV) who takes these issues seriously (as opposed to just laughing at them). I have publicly stated I think Sitchin's theories are hopelessly flawed, and have tried to put the evidence for this claim into the public forum of the internet, as well as through radio shows like Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, and Jeff Rense's show. Disagreement with me on the part of Sitchin followers was inevitable, and so here we are.
In the past few days, Erik Parker, Zecharia Sitchin's webmaster, has tried to respond to my criticisms of Sitchin. Aside from finding it curious as to why Erik would do this, given that he has absolutely no knowledge of Hebrew or any other ancient language, I have to admire his pluck. He has more courage than his mentor for sure, since it has been 15 months since Art Bell asked if I would debate Sitchin on his show (I accepted the idea immediately). The call for a debate went out again this past weekend on Coast to Coast, but instead of a response from Mr. Sitchin himself, we get this, a clueless (but courageous) attempt by a devoted disciple to fight his master's battles. Oh well. In view of Mr. Parker's complete lack of understanding of the languages and issues, I don't want to criticize him harshly in my critique below. Like I said, he has guts. Nevertheless, a response is in order. Perhaps this has helped me explain my arguments more clearly for the lay audience. I have to admit, though, that trying to convince fawning Sitchin followers to look at actual data and scholarship is like trying to convince the Argentine authorities that a long-snouted mouse really hasn't mutilated over 100 cattle there; or like convincing Philip Klass that there really are UFOs; or like telling a Cubs fan that he'll never see a World Series home game at Wrigley Field; or like telling the Russian people that the Olympics really was rigged. In short, people want to believe things, facts be damned.
Below is Mr. Parker's posting - in the color gray. My responses are in green.
Michael Heiser Is Incorrect With His Analysis Of Elohim & Nephilim:
Reply From Zechariah Sitchin's Webmaster
From Erik Parker - Los Angeles; Webmaster for Zecharia Sitchin
via Ted Susu-Mago; smago@ashlandhome.net; 8-19-2
Mr. Heiser claims that the word Elohim in Hebrew, meaning "gods" is not a plural
word.
Wrong already (we lasted one sentence). To quote form my own website, I ask this question: "Does Elohim, since it is morphologically plural in Hebrew, always (or even most of the time) MEAN "gods" (plural)?" Apparently Erick does not understand the question, and perhaps I assumed too much of a knowledge base. Elohim is certainly morphologically plural. Morphology refers to the "shape" or construction of a word - its form. As anyone can see, I say that very clearly above. My point in the question, though, is that while Elohim is plural in form, is it plural in meaning? By itself, Elohim can be either singular or plural in meaning. Again, quoting from my own website:
The word "elohim" CAN mean either plural "gods" or singular "god" (or "God" as a proper name). The meaning of any occurrence of Elohim must be discerned in three ways:
A. Grammatical indications elsewhere in the text that help to determine if a singular or plural meaning is meant.
B. Grammatical rules in Hebrew that are true in the language as a whole.
C. Historical / Logical context
Please witness: there is no denial that Elohim can mean "gods". Mr. Parker either did not read my material, or (more probable) is so deficient in his understanding of grammar (even English grammar terms) that he hasn't gotten the point. To continue - what I am saying is that, by itself, the word Elohim is ambiguous in meaning - as are all words, to some extent - it needs to be put into a sentence (I hope I don't have to define "sentence"). We have words like this in English, such as:
"deer", "sheep", "fish" - the point is you need other words to help you tell if one or more than one of these animals is meant. Sometimes these other words are verbs that help you tell. Compare the two examples::
1) "The sheep is lost" - the word "is" is a singular verb (It goes with a singular subject; one wouldn't say, for example, "I are lost" - you would use a verb that goes with the singular subject ("I am lost").
2) "The sheep are lost" - the word "are" is a plural verb (again, another word next to our noun "sheep" tells us in this case that plural sheep are meant.
All of this is just basic grammar - and every language has grammar. Biblical Hebrew has its own ways of telling us if Elohim means ONE person or many gods. It matches the noun Elohim to singular or plural verbs, or with singular or plural pronouns (to use "sheep" again as an example: "Those sheep are white"). The word "those" is what's called a demonstrative pronoun - it automatically tells us that sheep in this sentence is meant to be understood as a plural.
Mr. Parker should at least get the argument right if he is going to criticize it. On the other hand, Sitchin ignores grammar everywhere, so maybe "like master, like disciple".
Continuing . . .
His [Heiser's] main proof is that it says in Hebrew "The Elohim Said" in a singular form not a plural form. This would indicate that the word Elohim was a name and not meaning plural gods. Of course this also could mean that the scribes of the Bible kept it in a singular form to show the monotheistic viewpoint.
Wrong again. If you look at what I have posted on the website, I point out that the Hebrew Bible contains just such evidence of plural elohim - in places like Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, Psalm 89:1-10; Psalm 29:1, etc., etc. Maybe you don't get this point here, either, Erik. How can you claim the scribes edited the text to cover plural gods, when such passages are in the Bible? This makes little sense.
Statistically, Elohim occurs roughly 2,500 times in the Hebrew Bible with singular verbs or other singular grammatical indicators. Far more than the plurals, to be sure, but there are absolute affirmations of divine plurality in the Jewish Bible. If you want to argue censorship of this, it occurred in late antiquity in rabbinical writings after the rise of Christianity (which used such pluralities to argue for Trinitarianism). Professor Alan Segal's book, "Two Powers in Heaven" documents how divine plurality BECAME a heresy to the rabbis during this period. My own view is that monotheism should be defined in context of this plurality - that monotheism means Yahweh is incomparable; no other gods can compare to him (as opposed to saying, as most Christians and Jews do, that other gods don't exist - which is a denial of their own Bibles). Put another away, "Yahweh is an Elohim, but no other Elohim are Yahweh - he is NOT a "species equal". Israelites had 4-5 criteria for determining how Yahweh was the "true god," but I won't launch into that here.
Continuing . . .
There are many uses of the plural term of the word Elohim in the Bible.
Again, I haven't denied there are plural uses (see above, and the website). "Many" is an overstatement, though - and most of what are there refer to the surrounding gods of other nations, not the God of Israel.
I have listed several plural forms below and it is in fact very hard to find any singular uses of the word.
That's because you don't
read Hebrew and don't understand Hebrew grammar. You don't understand what
morphology is.
The word Elohim is definitely plural and does indeed mean "gods" and it actually
contains two forms of the singular word for God inside of itself.
This "inside
itself" is something of a linguistic mis-statement, but oh well.
1. The word EL means God and it is the first part of the word Elohim.
Correct - El does mean "god" as in a single deity.
2. The word Eloah, also means God and it is the first part of the word Elohim.
Eloah in Hebrew is a three letter root which most Hebrew words contain.
Correct again - you're on
a roll, Erik. Eloah is singular for "god" (used most often in
Job), and has three radicals (consonants). Eloah is considered the base
for the plural form "elohim" (because of the "h"), but El is
also pluralized as Elohim, which you don't seem to understand.
Here we already have two singular forms of the word God inside the plural word
Elohim. Yet, Mr. Heiser has never mentioned these singular forms inside the plural
word. He still insists Elohim is singular knowing well that is already contains two
singular words for God.
Here's where you are beginning to show how far out of your field you are, Erik. I'm not going to reproduce the dictionary or all the Hebrew words / references to "god". It's a matter of space. Buy a dictionary. Your wording implies that since El and Eloah exist in the language, then Elohim can't be singular. Again, you conclude this because you have no background in Hebrew. Elohim is singular over 2500 times (and no, I'm not going to post all of them). Here are a few easy ones from the website (keep in mind Hebrew is to be read right to left):
The Universal Creator God
(note Erik sees this God as singular - one god; see a bit below for why this is noteworthy)
of the Bible known as Yahweh speaks and is quoted within the Bible. When he spoke to the ancient Hebrews while giving them the 10 commandments, he indeed used the plural word of Elohim meaning gods.
Yes, the word is elohim -
and the verbs are SINGULAR (but again, Erik - and Mr. Sitchin - it's about the
grammar)
3. And God said "You shall not recognize the gods of others in my presence" also
translated as "You shall not have other gods in my presence," (Exodus 20:3). Here
Yahweh uses the term Elohim to refer to all other gods (plural) that Israel shall not
worship or acknowledge. This also means that there were other false gods and they were forbidden to be acknowledged in Yahweh's presence.
Right again - but guess what? You just said above that "Yahweh" spoke this sentence (correct), but in Exodus 20:1, when the list of commands begins to be uttered, the word for the God who is speaking is ELOHIM (i.e., the God who is speaking the commands is identified in Exodus 20:1, prior to 20:3 which Erik quotes). Since you don't know the languages, you have unwittingly given an example of Elohim used as a singular - and hence proven MY point. Here's the passage, with your verse cited as well as the preceding 20:1:
Mr. Heiser is also incorrect when he refers to the translation of the Nephilim. The Nephilim mentioned in Chapter 6 of Genesis is spoken about right before the destruction of the flood and is implied they are the reason for the flood. It says that "the Nephilim were on the Earth in those days and also afterwards when the Children of the Gods saw the daughters of the Adam (humans) and took them as wives which ever they pleased."
No kidding - they were (part) of the reason. Where's the rebuttal? I don't see one. The nephilim (giants) survive, though (Gen. 6:4 - there were giants in those days and afterward"). The nephilim, the offspring of the sons of God, were to be wiped out. The book of Enoch goes over this in great detail. Here's a passage.
1 Enoch 6:1-7a
1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto 2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men 3 and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not 4 indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations 5 not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves 6 by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn 7 and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it . . .
Note that it is the angels who lust after the women, so as to have children (keep reading)
1 Enoch 7
1 And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms 2 and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they 3 became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed 4 all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against 5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and 6 fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.
Note that it is the OFFSPRING of the sons of God, the ones from heaven, that are the giants - the Nephilim. Sitchin constantly confuses the two (as do others, like Andrew Collins and Laurence Gardner). Keep reading for the rest of the story - and how it relates to Erik's objection.
1 Enoch 9
Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were (preserved) in heaven, which 7 men were striving to learn: And Semjaza, to whom Thou hast given authority to bear rule over his associates. And they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth, and have slept with the 9 women, and have defiled themselves, and revealed to them all kinds of sins. And the women have 10 borne giants, and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousness. And now, behold, the souls of those who have died are crying and making their suit to the gates of heaven, and their lamentations have ascended: and cannot cease because of the lawless deeds which are 11 wrought on the earth. And Thou knowest all things before they come to pass, and Thou seest these things and Thou dost suffer them, and Thou dost not say to us what we are to do to them in regard to these.'
1 Enoch 10:1-3
1 Then said the Most High, the Holy and Great One spake, and sent Uriel to the son of Lamech, 2 and said to him: 'Go to Noah and tell him in my name "Hide thyself!" and reveal to him the end that is approaching: that the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come 3 upon the whole earth, and will destroy all that is on it.
[Note that the birth and terror of the giants is one of the reasons for the Flood]
4. The word children is used as plural not singular child,
I have no idea what the point of this one is - I never said anything to the contrary.
and the Elohim are mentioned again in plural as "The Gods" In Hebrew the "hey" letter put in front of the word Elohim means "The",
Erik is talking about the form "ha-elohim" ("h" letter in front of elohim), and he is correct; that letter is the definite article in Hebrew (the word "the")
If the letter was left out it would mean "Children of Elohim" meaning Elohim as a name. But with the letter there in front it clearly means "Children of the Gods".
Once again, Erik, your ignorance of Hebrew grammar shows. You are assuming that the presence of the article ("h"; Hebrew letter "he[h]") denotes plurality. It can (grammar will tell us), but it also may not - try this one on for size:
Nephilim has the root from the Hebrew word for falling down or to fall, which yields the translations the "fallen ones" and in the context of the Bible they are mentioned as bad characters that have something to do with the Flood disaster.
As my work on the website
has shown, nephilim cannot mean "fallen ones" (as in humans fallen in
battle). If that were the
case, then according to Hebrew GRAMMAR, you'd
have to say nephilim was a masculine plural passive participle of the Qal stem.
If you consult any Hebrew grammar the masculine plural participle form would be
spelled "nephulim"
(try Seow, Kelley, Lambdin, Jouon-Muraoka, Weingreen, etc. - ANY biblical Hebrew
grammar). The form of the word (and hence the translation) for which you
are arguing is spelled all wrong. See the link to my PDF file on this for
more detail.
5. Nephilim used to be translated as Giants for many hundreds of years and it
comes from a 12th Century commentary known as Rashi
No, Erik; it comes from the morphology (the shape) of the word - the grammar. Besides, it's Aramaic anyway. Incidentally, the Aramaic root of nephilim (which is nephila') shows up in an Aramaic translation of the book of Job discovered at Qumran. The word is used to translate "Orion" (the giant - what else?). Check your chronology (among other things); the Dead Sea Scrolls are a lot older than Rashi.
that said the Nephilim were giants. But what nobody realized until Sitchin was that the word in Hebrew meaning giants is Anak, or Anakim for plural which is the same root and sounding as Anunnaki in Sumerian.
Anakim is a people name; its etymology doesn't "mean" giants, but it is no doubt associated with giantism. Sitchin shows ignorance of Sumerian here again. Sumerian is not related to Hebrew (in fact - mysteriously - it isn't related to any other ancient language).
So the Hebrew word for Giant was picked up from a memory of the word used thousands of years before, by the lineage of Abraham to describe their gods which are usually depicted as larger humanoids than humans. And the translation of the word Annunaki means "those who from Heaven to Earth came," and Sitchin's use of the word Nephilim means "Those that have fallen down from above."
This is linguistic poppycock. Readers should at this point go to the link above for a complete refutation of all this. I'm not going to type it again. You know, Erik, readers will no doubt notice that you haven't interacted with any of the verses or arguments I present in my PDF file at the above link. Didn't you think I'd direct them there?
So Anunnaki has the same sound as the word for Giant in Hebrew and the meaning is the same as the word Nephilim in Hebrew.
Doesn't work again - look up Numbers 13:33. The text point-blank says that the Anakim came from the nephilim. Your argument just went down the tubes. Have a look:
6. Before the burning bush Moses came to the mountain of the Gods. It says in
Hebrew once again "He arrived at the Mountain of the Gods." The Hebrew letter
"hey" in front of the word Elohim means "The" as opposed to saying "Elohim mountain" meaning the name of the mountain, it says "the Mountain of the Gods."
(Exodus 3:1)
Wrong again - see the discussion above about ha-elohim, and the example for refutation.
Not a single one of Erik's points are academically correct; not even close. But hey, he doesn't know Hebrew. Now for a personal note.
A Plea and A Challenge
Erik, I offer a plea to you at this point. You are no doubt a very competent webmaster, and, in view of how much time you've put into reading Sitchin, a zealous and inquisitive student. My plea is simple: Don't let Zecharia Sitchin use you to take the brunt of his flawed scholarship. You are way out of your field, and have no idea what what you're talking about. Save yourself the trouble, and invite - indeed, demand - that your hero stand on his own.
Addendum 4/14/03: Since my original response to Erik, he has posted a rejoinder on his website. As expected, he does not address any of the actual textual data in this presentation or the others on my website. He focuses instead on how I am trying to leech off Sitchin's greatness. I'll get around to responding eventually. I'd just like to see even one of my points in my open letter to Sitchin addressed coherently - with data from ancient texts (that's where all this knowledge is supposed to be coming from, isn't it?). For a running list of what Sitchin and Erik are avoiding, click here and go down to the open letter.
That ought to cover it.
Michael S. Heiser
PhD candidate, Department of Hebrew and Semitic studies,
University of Wisconsin-Madison
William
Henry's Response to my Sitchin
Papers on Nibiru and Cylinder Seal VA243
entitled "Show Him the Door"
This
was a difficult piece to write. When
I received an email about William Henry’s response to my papers on Nibiru and
Sitchin’s cylinder seal (VA 243), my first thought was, “How much time and I
going to have to waste responding to this?”
Turns out I had to spend a good bit, as Henry’s response was quite
lengthy.
What
made this so difficult, though, was not length.
It was the very nature of William Henry’s work and method.
In my eleven years in the classroom, I’ve easily graded over 1,000
papers. I’ve also written quite a
bit and am accustomed to the normal scholarly discourse.
Henry is about as far away from normal academic discourse as I can
imagine. Granted, I have heard him before on Coast to Coast and other
talk shows, and knew in a nutshell what he does:
go off in tangential directions—mostly a-historical
non-sequiturs—dizzying the reader with unrelated issues and barely coherent
lines of thought. What I didn’t
realize was how condensed the show formats were.
When I got this I faced over 20 pages of the most staggering abuse of
language I’ve frankly ever seen. It
was positively mind-numbing.
If
the reader is not familiar with William Henry, he or she cannot appreciate this
summation. His circumlocutions are
below for all to see, but I still think a little setup is necessary. I will briefly try to describe Henry’s approach.
Please understand I am not making up what follows.
In
a nutshell, Henry dispenses with all the methodological, literary, linguistic,
and anthropological (as that field pertains to language) knowledge accumulated
in the past few centuries. He
rejects facts we all know to be true—namely, in this case, the very idea that
sounds that come from the human mouth (i.e., spoken language) DIFFER AS TO
MEANING in different people groups. Lest
this sound unbelievable, or perhaps incomprehensible, what I mean here is that
Henry actually operates on the assumption that words can be taken apart by
syllable sounds and then spliced together with other syllables—even from
different languages—and meanings supplied to the results.
To someone who has had my language experience (a dozen or so ancient
languages learned from a deductive nuts and bolts grammatical perspective) this
is positively maddening—and utter nonsense.
I know the uninitiated reader may think I am caricaturing Henry’s
approach, but the proof is below. You’ve
got to see it to believe it.
Another
assumption that guides Henry is that words in texts cannot be taken at face
value. Rather, words cloak deeper,
mystical or symbolic meanings. They
are not signifiers of meaning – they are conduits for symbols.
In his own response to my work on Sitchin, you’ll see this over and
over again. This is little more
than relativism applied to language study—there are no absolutes or objective
meanings which provide ground rules for determining how a language is to be
handled or used. Just think about how communication would work in real life if
the words you use were not taken at face value be the hearer.
How could you communicate coherently?
Not surprisingly, Henry doesn’t expect his books (or his response to
me) to be taken any other way than at face value, and that points to the
inherent flaw in his linguistic relativism. It implodes on itself when you press
him to communicate this way. To communicate in the real world, words need to be
taken at face value. When one has
an intimate knowledge of a language, one becomes sensitive to nuances and double
meanings – but even those only become coherent or clever given your knowledge
of normal vocabulary. Henry dispenses with all this.
He apparently assumes that ancient people did not communicate with normal
face value written communication as we do today to make our discourse throughout
the day comprehensible. No, the
ancient person communicated in codes and symbols (or hacked up syllables spliced
with syllables from other words or languages). As a result, one is guided by
intuition (or an enlightened master like Henry) to decipher words, not things
like grammar or syntax. If this
sounds confusing, you may want to turn back now.
Third,
and perhaps most shocking, Henry’s major tool for determining the symbolic or
root meanings (etymological meaning) to the syllables he chops ancient Sumerian,
Akkadian, Egyptian, and Hebrew words in to is—I’m not kidding—the English
dictionary. That’s right, the English dictionary—whose word etymologies
derive from Indo-European languages which were compiled before the decipherment
of cuneiform. How is this possible
you ask?
Good
question. I honestly can’t even begin to describe the amazing extended
non-sequitur rabbit trails William is about to take you on.
I was truly stunned into silence a number of times, barely able to even
follow the lines of thought. The
matter turned from being laughable to disturbing, though, when Henry expressed
his opinion that these ancient languages were a kind of bird language (I’m
still hoping this doesn’t mean what it sounds like).
I am left with the impression that William may need some sort of help –
but maybe I misunderstood that point. Well, here we go.
As
is my practice, I have put the text of Henry’s response below in gray; my
responses are in blue. Unfortunately,
I can’t reproduce the images he had in his PDF file, so you’d have to go
there to view them. Generally, they're
unimportant. It's no revelation that various aberrant sects across the
Mediterranean would have associated Jesus with this or that. Even in the
Old testament era we have people making graven images of Yahweh, who was
invisible. This sort of thing is common, especially since ancient
religions were so syncretistic. William wants to argue these depictions are
"the truth" because they go against the historic church, pure and
simple (the logic: "if historic Christianity didn't say it or was opposed
to it, it must be true"). By the way, how do we even know if the person
depicted in some of this artwork is Jesus without some inscription (taken at
face value, I might add), or that it isn't much later (i.e., later and further
removed from the actual life of Jesus than those pesky gospels)? Another
thing I wonder is how people who want to deny the image on the Turin Shroud is
Jesus based on the idea that there is no historical portraiture lineage dating
back to antiquity, thus bolstering the medieval forgery view, all of a sudden
want to see Jesus in all this old work. (Note: I could care less what the
shroud is, and don't know William's position on this - just wondering). I guess if William insisted I say something more
about the images I would at a future time, but I'd like to be able to reproduce
them. My
responses now chiefly take the form of either showing the linguistic nonsense of
William’s arguments, or asking him directly to provide proof for his word
meanings and opinions. I also try
to illustrate the absurdity of his method with simple illustrations or examples
of how the approach wouldn’t work in real life.
I’ll also track the ad hominem
attacks for those at home keeping score.
As I always promise, if William provides textual evidence—or some sort of intelligible defense in the future - something we can all read and understand at face value since we lack his divinatory powers - I will post them. I'd like William to post my response to him on his site, but I doubt he'll do it. I refer to William below often as WH. (For my discussions of Sitchin's ideas on Nibiru and Cylinder seal VA243, click here and scroll down).
SHOW
HIM THE DOOR
Ad
Hominem attack #1
Short
sighted
1.
not able to see far.
2.
not able to understand things deep.
3.
defective or limited intellectual sight
INTRODUCTION
In
articles on his website and interviews on Coast to Coast AM (
Michael
Heiser has challenged to debate Zecharia Sitchin about Nibiru and the bible.
While
some critics claim Sitchin is out of step with mainstream archaeological
opinion, and that he takes liberties with his interpretations of Sumerian
tablets in his claim that Nibiru is a missing 12th planet in our solar system
from which extraterrestrial creator gods hailed, Heiser dismisses Sitchin’s
work as erroneous, flawed, and in a nutshell, wrong. He accuses Sitchin of
making up the whole idea of the 12th planet.
This
is correct; we’ll see if WH produces any Sumero-Mesopotamian (hereafter,
“SM”) material / texts to prove me wrong.
He
seems to think Sitchin is depriving some village somewhere of an idiot. Friends
of
Sitchin’s say the old school curmudgeon would never stoop to a debate with the
upstart Heiser.
True
- because he knows that he doesn’t have the textual material.
Question WH: Where in the SM
lexical lists – the actual ancient dictionaries – are Sitchin’s word
meanings found? In which SM
astronomical cuneiform text are his god-planet correlations verified?
If you are going to say the Sumerians believed something, you could at
least reference what they wrote and take what they
say at face value.
Ad
Hominem Attack #2
Critics
maintain his attempted demolition of Sitchin is merely a transparent ploy to
jump-start his writing career and get his visa punched on the interview/lecture
circuit.
Well
William, I’ll tell you what. I
will post my tax returns for the last two years on
my website (with names of spouse and children and
SS#s blacked out) to show you and the
world I’m not making money on this. I have nothing to hide.
I was told at the beginning that one never makes money telling people the
truth. I’d challenge you to do the same, but I really don’t care how much
money you make. You have every
right to earn your living and support your family as best you can.
You seem to be interested in how I’m doing, though.
Rest assured I am not a millionaire like Zecharia Sitchin, and earn less
than you. I get almost nothing per
book I sell. In fact, people who
sell my book on their websites get it for cheaper than I do.
I also offer my subscription at a break-even rate, as well as my other
files. Here are my tax returns;
we’ll see if your accusation holds (keep in mind the figure is for a family of
six and my wife doesn’t work). It’s
NEVER been about money. It’s
about a commitment to telling people the truth and to stimulate readers
(especially those in the Church, who need to start getting off their collective
academically lazy rears and get back into the text of the Scriptures).
Ready? By the way, I don’t ask for an honorarium when I speak- ever.
And I don’t have the audacity to ask $250 a head like Sitchin for a
“seminar” either. I hope you’re relieved.
With
this kind of approach he should go far (hopefully toward coming up with original
the
issue isn’t originality; it’s about accuracy and meeting the standards for
coherent scholarship.
and
the sooner he starts, the better. People know what a Zach Sitchin book is.
People don’t know what a Mike Heiser book is.
Again,
notoriety isn’t the issue either; Being on Coast to Coast hasn’t made me Mr.
popular. My ambition is not to make
a living at this (I’d be on welfare), but to have an academic career.
I only do this because of the bogus work being purveyed by Sitchin and
his followers. Again, check out my
tax returns.
Sitchin’s
isn’t the only fountain of knowledge Mike gargled on. In addition, on his
Now,
I don’t know what Mike’s problem is when he accuses me of ‘raping the
bible’.
The kind of abuse you inflict on the text is self evident below. But I agree, "rape" is a pretty inflammatory word. Torture would have been better and likely less offensive, so I apologize.
I
presume he’s referring to my inclination to interpret the numerous unexplained
and
Though
his anger- filled words indicates that the bible is his own entitled province,
he should realize I have the right to interpret and experience myth and
scripture in any way I like. Period.
Nope.
I will acknowledge that a word like “rape” would give the impression
I’m angry. I’m not; irritated
is more accurate. You, on the other hand, are the one who interprets things in self-styled
ways. No other person I know
does the things you do to words, William. It is truly stunning.
Do any scholars of the
ancient texts agree with you? Stargates
and portals? (By scholar here I am
referring to people who have the necessary language training – the Bible
wasn’t written in English – to do exegesis according to known laws of
linguistics and literary analysis. Not
necessary to have a PhD for this). Funny,
I can’t recall anyone credentialed in the relevant fields who would agree with
WH. You are the one whose work is
completely unbounded by the entire body of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic knowledge
accumulated since antiquity, not me.
I
don’t understand why some people believe any objection to their belief
The
issue isn’t my beliefs – it’s “are these things in the ancient texts or
not?” Are they?
Show me.
is
an assault, which, in return, has to be viciously attacked and destroyed. He
acts like the murderous Dark Age Church that, failing to convert the Cathars,
ruthlessly exterminated hundreds of thousands of these Christian ‘heretics’,
and their children, who claimed to possess the secret mystic teachings of Jesus.
Yes,
William, I want you dead if you don’t agree with me . . . and your puppy.
Give me a break. Can we say “hysterical”?
Investigations
beyond mainstream curriculum (read fundamentalist “Christianity”), such as
mine, have to be mocked and deconstructed by people such as this into hate
crimes: ‘I raped the bible’. Therefore, I (and others) must be vilified?
Fundamentalist
Christianity has longed since expunged me, William.
I lost one job because of it, and have suffered financially for nearly 20
years because of it. You are
clueless when you link me to it. If
you like, I can give you phone numbers and addresses of fundies who really
dislike me. I will agree, though,
that they wouldn’t see spaceships and portals in the Bible.
Ad
hominem attack #3
Pa-lease,
Mike. Get a clue. Get help. Get it. Make love, not war. Everything is
I
don’t need help, William, but I will try and watch my words better (really).
I stand rebuked here.
Normally,
I’d consider the source and let such an obvious agitated ego go.
Ad
hominem attack #4 (ego)
Ad
hominem #5 (paragraph below – so full of them I’d like to count more than
one!)
A
thought just hit me, William. My attack on you was (thus far) over ONE word – one
occurrence / misstep / careless remark. You’re
up to five ad hominem attacks now. Just
an observation.
Maybe he didn’t water his plants that week.
I hate plants
Or he had a bad hair day.
I'm bald (just kidding - and above too)
Or, maybe
he’s just the type who’d argue with a signpost. However, as a person who
believes in human rights and seeks to end religious oppression, it is my duty to
speak out. To quote Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in the movie
Ironically,
the data Mike brings forth to savage Sitchin
I
didn’t “savage” him – unless you call pelting him with actual tablets
and their contents savaging him (that’s my assumption).
I asked (listed) him to provide refutations – to give me SOME
indication that he is at all familiar with the Sumerian texts and ancient
languages – yet he has offered nothing (ditto for you, to this point as well
– just another observation). I’ll
continue to insist that Sitchin provide facts and evidence he isn’t clueless
in the languages. Your anger
doesn’t change that.
actually
fuels my ‘Nibiru is a stargate called the fiery furnace in
This
is classic WH – what possible link could Nibiru have – a star – with
Daniel’s fiery furnace??! (Just
wait!) (Just
wait!) Where
do the texts say anything about this? Yes, William, this is how scholarship in ancient material
works. (1) When you make a
reference to an item in a text (nibiru, fiery furnace); then (2) make a
connection between them, you (3) need textual evidence to support that
connection. Why TEXTUAL evidence?
Because, that way, it isn’t YOU putting the connection into the mouths
or minds of the ancients, THEY express the connection themselves. Otherwise,
your interpretation is self-styled. So
where do the ancients make this connection?
Please produce the data.
It
also lends support to my theory that Jesus updated the stargate religion of
Nibiru.
Which
text tells us about a stargate religion? And
Jesus’ connection to it? Please
produce these ideas you say the ancients had IN THEIR OWN WORDS – not yours,
or Sitchin’s.
For
this I am thankful to the gems presented by Mike, and have chosen to post this
commentary in hopes of furthering a dialog and opening new avenues of research
on the subject of Nibiru as a stargate with interested parties, rather than
burning the book(s) on it.
You
see, when Mike bellied up to the bar at college he got a full six pack alright,
but
What
I lack is your willingness to put words and ideas into the minds of ancient
people without a scintilla of evidence for it.
His
information is strictly scholastic,
Read:
“Mike sticks to those nasty texts and that evil grammar”
offering
little practical spiritual application.
Read
for “spiritual” : “Imaginative”
Mystics
say the stars, planets and constellations are in the human body.
Who
cares what mystics say when it doesn’t correspond to reality. This is basic
logic (known in philosophy as the correspondence view of truth).
During
his climb of the ivory tower Mike apparently was not told that the quest is to
The
inner Nibiru ?. . . (I’m trying not to laugh here).
Again, classic Henry. Obfuscate
the fact that all of us – every human being alive today – only know what we
know about the ancients because they WROTE something down.
Try interpreting material like WH does in real life. How many of us have an inner tax return?
An inner mortgage? Knowledge only transcends imagination and self-styled
interpretation when we take the words of the ancients at their face value, using
their own word meanings. Communicating
WH’s way is unlivable, but sounds so touching. I’m not interested in WH’s
“inner Nibiru” (and if it’s inner, why would he care what I say about any
text – oh, I forgot, because he will appeal to them as well – but you
can’t just trust the words, you have to trust your inner feelings about the
words). Again, try enforcing a
contract in real life like this or renting a video.
The examples of how we (and WH) depend on word “literalism” (as
opposed to “spirit”) are innumerable. William’s
approach is completely inconsistent since he doesn’t live that way (and
couldn’t) – unless he is writing about portals and inner nibirus.
I’m
not on a pedestal saying I can offer Mike the plastic thing. Filling in the
gaps,
Here
we go – using this inner, divinatory approach, William will fill in the gaps
for us. What I am offering is what
these people actually said. So
there’s your choice: the tablets
and their dictionaries, the manuscripts, etc., or intuitions and “spirit”.
This is really where WH becomes inconsistent as well.
While he seeks to cast his approach as a spiritual path to
interpretation, he will make reference to written sources and cast aside the
words. In their place he will take
syllables, sounds, etc. from word sand splice them together in preposterous
combinations to make “connections”. So, he is in fact at least partially dependent on them –
but no one with any amount of linguistic training or foreign language expertise
would agree with what he does with them. They
apparently have taken the “scholastic” path.
as
the initiate must, is his job (besides I’m only a New York Times Bestselling
Author candidate, like Mike I’ve haven’t actually earned my
certificate yet).
Who’s watching the wallet now? And "candidate" means all but dissertation - in my case, two masters degrees and 20 years worth of study. By the way, you seem to think the number of books sold is directly proportional to the amount of truth in the book, or its intellectual quality. Mein Kampf has been a good seller for decades, and I recall some recent bestsellers by pro wrestlers.
I
am saying his work presented some connections for me that he, and other
researchers of Nibiru, ought to consider. They’ll leave you grappling with the
12th planet in a very different way.
Now
that I can believe.
In
his article posted for the Coast to Coast AM Sitchin smash-fest,
Yes,
when the facts fly, people do get hit with them.
Thus far I haven’t been hit by a single one from WH.
His response has been twofold: (1)
ad hominem attacks; (2) mysticism. But
he’s gearing up for a stunning stream of amazing historical non-sequiturs (the coherence of which he is able to discern through
his spiritual approach, leaving those of us who depend on literal words and
contextualized meaning in real life – or ancient testimonies, like
dictionaries, breathless and reeling).
Mike
hammers out the law. ‘Nibiru’ is not a missing 12th planet roaming the far
reaches of our solar system beyond Pluto as Z. Sitchin maintains. Nibiru is the
name of a STAR, stupid, and means ‘CROSSING’ and ‘GATE’.
‘Narrow
is the way to it’, he quotes the Sumerian poem ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’.
Strange,
this is EXACTLY what the Nazorean pathfinder Jesus, the Cross-man who
I
pointed this out William. And we all borrow without attribution from a body of common
knowledge without any ethical violation (this is well within the bounds of both
scholarship and common discourse – sorry for the scholast-ese).
Your insinuation about Jesus was indeed noticed.
Hard to believe you can put Jesus on a lower ethical plane than yourself.
The
Sumerians would have been the ones that knew the facts about Nibiru.
No
kidding – I laid out what they SAY. Don’t
recall any stargates in the tablets.
Their
writings provide the raw materials out which all gateway religions, including
“Christianity,” have grown. Mike never connects the two words star and
gate to reveal the star- gate Nibiru.
So
(and I may be reading this totally wrong) the ENGLISH
words “star” and “gate” somehow point to the Sumero-Akkadian “nibiru”?
If that’s not what you’re saying, disregard this.
If it is, you should know Sumerian and Akkadian were around before
English, and have ZERO linguistic relationship to it.
As
a consequence of his shortsightedness, he does not connect Nibiru, the star-
gate, the ‘door to God’, with important star-gateway occurrences in the
bible, including that of Jesus.
Well,
I can agree that Jesus was the way to God (John 14:6).
The
stargate is the plastic thing. The Code Duella states that the challenged
gets to pick the grounds and time for the debate. The ground I choose is the
gate of Gilga-mesh, which I believe appears in the bible as the Gilgatha or
Gulgotha, ‘the place of the skull’, where the crucifixion of Jesus took
place. Far from strapping a Jewish carpenter to an instrument of torture, I
propose the crucifixion was a stargate event.
How
could the apostles and witnesses at the crucifixion have missed this?
Maybe they weren’t very spiritual.
Maybe it’s because the Old testament predicted a suffering Messiah.
Just a thought. The whole
idea running through both testaments is redemption by blood.
Maybe WH will deny they had blood sacrifice in the OT.
I wonder what the “code meanings” are behind the Hebrew words for
“guilt offering”, “atonement”, “sprinkling of blood” are?
And that silly apostle Paul – he thought in I Corinthians 10 that Jesus
was our Passover lamb, slain for the sins of the world.
Maybe the Passover didn’t involve blood either, but a stargate!
Jesus
assembled the teachings and technology of Sumeria and other ancient
civilizations and opened a gateway. For more on this subject please see my books
Cloak of the Illuminati, Blue Apples, Ark of the Christos, The
Healing Sun Code, and The Crystal Halls of Christ’s Court. As to
the actual debate, I’d like begin by showing Mike the Door, and Nibiru, as he
has never seen it.
Because
it isn’t there. OK William, can
you cite any language authority – Akkadian, Greek, or Aramaic – who would
buy the above “Gilgamesh” –
I’ll
begin with a commentary on his article on the meaning of the word Nibiru.
THE
MEANING OF THE WORD NIBIRU
As
Mike points out, the editors of the monumental Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (=
Mike
also notes that ‘Nibiru’ is preceded by a “d”, the superscript for
“deity” and
MUL
the cuneiform sign for “star.” From this he deduces that Nibiru is a “star”
and a “deity.” This makes sense. Taking a cue from Thomas Jefferson,
who said he’d part with all his 6,000 or so books save for one book, the
English Dictionary,
Hang
on to your hats, folks. Thomas
Jefferson lived before the discovery / decipherment of Sumerian and Akkadian.
The English dictionary he used was also compiled, edited, and written
before these languages were known. By
any connection to reality,
I
like to consult Webster’s Dictionary when researching ancient terms. I
find that it reveals surprisingly clear insight in simple terms.
Even
when those languages were unknown, undeciphered, and untranslated??
This says a lot about WH’s scholarship and ability to analyze what
I’ve done. It’s completely imaginary and self-styled.
This approach is utterly absurd. It’s sort of like a King James only
person – “forget that Greek and Hebrew, the English was good enough for the
apostle Paul, so it’s good enough for me.”
Imagine (no pun there): deciphering
Sumero-Akkadian word meanings from the English dictionary.
I have a simpler solution to offer readers and people who really want the
facts: use the dictionaries the
Mesopotamians compiled. Seems like
a no-brainer. You decide for yourself – all you need is common sense, not a
PhD in ancient languages.
Here
we go – off to the Henry etymological fantasy land!!
Consulting
Webster’s we find the root
In
what language?
Before
getting too excited, however,
I am trying to contain myself.
Mike
notes that in only a minority of cases (those references in astronomical texts)
does the word Nibiru or Nebiru relate to an astronomical body. Here is Mike’s
brief overview of Nibiru’s meanings, followed by specific meanings and
references in the astronomical texts. “Nibiru” (more technically and
properly transliterated as “neberu,” notes Mike) can mean several
things.
“place
of crossing” or “crossing fee” –
In the Gilgamesh epic, for example, we read the line (remarkably similar to one
of the beatitudes in the sermon on the Mount): “Straight is the crossing point
(nibiru; a gateway), and narrow is the way that leads to it.” A
geographical name in one Sumero-Akkadian text, a village, is named “Ne-bar-ti-Ashshur”
(“Crossing Point of Asshur”). Another text dealing with the fees for a
boatman who ferries people across the water notes that the passenger paid
“shiqil kaspum sha ne-bi-ri-tim” (“silver for the crossing
fees”).
Mike
also cites these meanings for Nibiru.
“ferry,
ford”; “ferry boat”; “(act of) ferrying” –
For example, one Akkadian text
In
my book, Ark of the Christos, I connect the Sumerian god E.A. or Enki
(who the
On
what basis – what is the linguistic relationship between these texts have with
Sumerian or Akkadian? (WH doesn’t say what language they are in – unless he
wants to rely on the English, which is a distinct possibility). William, please
cite a grammar or some authority (i.e., a person who knows these languages) to
validate this approach.
Like
E.A. (Oannes to the Babylonians), Makara (‘maker’) was portrayed as a
sea monster that was an intermediary (‘crossing point’, ‘nibiru’, ‘christ’,
‘bridge’, ‘door’) between Earth and Heaven.
This
is purely interpretive – and important for WH’s ideas forthcoming.
He want to link the sea monster with his “gate”.
Again, are there any texts that make this connection, or are we relying
once again on WH’s enlightened divinatory powers (though now armed with the
English dictionary)?
E.A.
is the model for all serpent or fish gods, including Jesus who was symbolized by
a fish-rope and was called ‘tekton’, meaning bridge builder.
Observations:
1)
Jesus was not a serpent god (or a fish god).
I am not familiar enough with WH’s writings to know if this is true,
but the “Jesus is from the serpent / dragon line” mythology is Laurence Gardner’s
approach, and is nothing more than recast Aryan racial mythology (part of which
involves the serpent line from the garden incident being the “good” or
“advanced” line; Aryan believers then go on to separate Jesus from the Jews. I am not saying WH believes this, but this is part of anti-semitic
mythology).
2)
Jesus is never called a fish god or a fish anything in the New Testament
(or any other Greek text I know of – but maybe some Greek speaker in the last
2,000 years did that – any texts, William?)
3)
“Tekton”
is Greek for “carpenter”, not “bridge builder” (there are two
occurrences in the New Testament; there wasn’t a big
need for bridges in
The
meanings in Liddell-Scott (online) for the various forms of tekton all relate to
the hand, working with the hands – specifically, carpentry (or, figuratively
to a poet – a “builder of verse”). See
here.
At
this point I am unable to reference the pictures WH offers, but this is needless
anyway. What I want to see are
references where the ancient peoples and the texts they wrote make these
connections. Even more
specifically, I want to see connections to Jesus referenced in the New
Testament, the most reliable (but not the only) source to the life and ministry
of Jesus. This is not (but can be
if people want it to be) a theological argument, but a text-historical and
text-critical one. It is simply a
fact that every New Testament book is referenced by the time of the early first
century. If WH wants to get into NT
critical scholarship and textual criticism I am ready.
Leave your English dictionary at home for that one, William.
Lastly
here, I should point out again that Jesus is never referenced as a fish.
The fish was an iconographic symbol used by the early church to
communicate in the catacombs (this is well known).
“Fish” in Greek is spelled:
When
Christians in the catacombs saw the fish sign
FILLING
IN
Though
Mike never connects the two concepts, it is clear that Nibiru is the holder of
the gate, and that this gate has to do with the stars. It is the star-gate
bridge of the deity. This is probably the gate featured in the Gilgamesh seal.
Clear?
Who’s nibiru – Jesus? Hardly – where are the texts?
Use something other than your imagination.
Another
of Mike’s sources explicitly states that Nibiru inexplicably changes positions
It’s
identified as Jupiter, Mercury and Mars. U- la- la! This is odd. How is it that
Mike can claim the Sumerians, who were accomplished astronomers, had precise
astronomical knowledge that excludes the possibility of a 12th planet beyond
Pluto, but they could not make up their mind about which PLANET is actually the
STAR Nibiru (‘the gate’, ‘the crossing’)?
This
is hardly a conundrum, William. (1)
We are dealing with observable stars / planets; (2) I said in the article that
the Mesopotamians could have mistaken a planet or star depending on the point of
observation or the precession issue. I
never claimed they had such “precise astronomical knowledge” in
contradiction to my other statements. Please read the material more closely.
All
he needs to do is bridge these two words STAR and GATE and he has the answer
Wrong
again. I never said that nibiru
“moves from planet to planet” – you supplied that.
I said the word was used in the cuneiform texts of all three planets.
Please read the material more closely.
But
why not earth? There are no
controls to WH’s method of inquiry once you abandon the words of the text
(i.e., I listed the objects to which the MESOPOTAMIANS link nibiru in the
article –why is WH not telling you this? Guess what?
Earth isn’t one of them – straight from the tablets.
Maybe this is in the English dictionary though.
Mike
wraps up this part of his argument with the statement that the “root idea”
of the nibiru word group and its forms as meaning something with respect
to “crossing” is clear. He elects to move on. Not so fast. Mike has omitted
valuable information.
You
can’t omit what isn’t there.
As
Mike observes, it is context that gives a word meaning. He obviously is not
about
30-40 pecent of the Hebrew Bible is poetry, William.
But I sense where you’re going – the spiritual, inner nibiru is about
to decipher the plain text into something “deeper”.
Read: Into something we (or
the Mesopotamians) would never have imagined without your help.
And guess what – the references to Nibiru I listed in my article
(remember those) do NOT come from poetic texts.
They come from star lists or astronomical compendiums like MUL.APIN.
If you were the least bit familiar with the Mesopotamian material,
you’d know how silly you are about to sound.
and
thus cannot fully define the gate of the gods (or the nibiru) as it appears in
the narrative poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
Can
you cite a single line of cuneiform text that calls nibiru the “gate of the
gods” This is absolutely
contrived.
By
the way, the word nibiru in Gilgamesh is NOT an astronomical reference. The
quotation is from Tablet X, ii:24 – I gave the reference in my paper.
He
forgets that the word elements NIB or
In
English? Can you cite sources for
breaking the word apart like this? Are
you referring to Akkadian? Sumerian?
Cite sources, please – a dictionary or grammar (and not an English one
– there is no such thing as cuneiform English).
It
is widely agreed by etymologists that language is fossil poetry and that the
creation of every word was originally a poem embodying a bold metaphor or a
bright conception of something real. Empires may disappear and nations
may sink into myth under cataclysmic waves of nature and invasion, says the
symbolist Harold Bayley, but place names and proper names, words,
typically preserved by word of mouth, remain to some extent inviolate.
I’m
going to say something here that I said to Erik Parker, Sitchin’s webmaster in
an exchange. Why are you talking
about linguistics when you have ZERO knowledge background, especially in ancient
texts? If I am wrong, post your
credentials or a transcript or something. All
you bring to the table in a discussion about cuneiform texts is an English
dictionary. Please cite some
published linguist with real credentials in regard to language being “fossil
poetry”. This is nonsense.
All language is not poetry in any sense.
The Siloam inscription or some record of sheep bought at market isn’t
“fossilized poetry.” What you
really mean is that it’s all symbolic – and this is all you have.
To prop up your ideas you MUST abandon what the texts say at face value,
because they do not support you.
In
addition to preserving proper names, the illumined ones of ancient cultures,
How
would we know what the symbols meant unless they told us?
Is there any rational basis or objective foundation to your work at all?
Does it al rest in the “inner nibiru”, the spiritual realm?
I suspect so, since no one can then tell you you’re wrong when arguing
on the same footing – it’s all in everyone’s head or heart.
The ancients wanted to communicate their heart – and they used WORDS
– just like we do. Again, try
your inner method of interpreting words in real life and see how ridiculous and
unlivable it makes life. You go in
for a haircut and tell the barber you want a little off the top.
He gives you a Mohawk, and when asked angrily by you why he would do such
a thing, he replies, “Well, your words spoke to me deeply.
Through years of carefully cultivating the transcendent inner self, I
know that the word ‘little’ can be broken down into ‘li’ which is part
of the word ‘line’ – so I gave you a line on your head to follow.
‘Top’ is part of the Greek word ‘topos’, which means ‘place’
so I chose the place on your head for your Mohawk.”
When you divide ENGLISH words into syllables and use them to argue what a
5,000 year old cuneiform text means, the possibilities are truly endless.
Just imagine what you could do here with the IRS, your spouse, your kids
. . . or your readership.
Words
and symbols are equations that have multiple levels of meaning.
See
the above – the barber looked deeper. My
point in the absurd example is that when we reduce language to syllables and
symbols and tinker with them and create absurd combinations and self-styled
interpretations, language—indeed communication—becomes meaningless if you
are the speaker or writer. The
reader becomes an interpretive god – exactly what WH accused me of at the
beginning is true here – he becomes a mystical gatekeeper of meaning.
You can’t just read the words at face value; you must forget the words
themselves and delve into the nebulous realm of symbology.
Try this with spoken communication – the barbershop illustration above
– and see how impossible meaningful communication becomes. What I am asking
readers is to look up sources and read them for themselves (and that brings up a
good question – how do people read your books William?
How do they tap the symbols behind your own words?
Or, when it comes to modern communication, do you use the face value
approach? Does your statement above
apply to your own books? And if so,
how can we ever hope to understand you correctly?
We would need you to decipher the symbols behind your own work.
Hopefully
the reader is getting the picture by now. I
offer texts and ancient word meanings drawn from the Mesopotamians themselves
(the lexical lists). Sitchin offers
made up ideas (in places); WH offers symbols and “multiple levels” for words
that make checking up on his interpretations impossible.
Lay readers with no background in language study or philosophy of
language may be impressed or taken in William; I have a background in this, and
am on to your method.
Both
are like round smoke rings when they leave the mouth . One can touch the ring of
a word or symbol – especially a living symbol like Nibiru – and enter into a
web of relationships. I’ll reconstruct examples of these word/symbol/puns
cited in Mike’s article as we continue.
Need
I say more? Let William unlock the
secrets behind the plain sense of the words.
Now nibiru is a living symbol. Yeah
– you’ll reconstruct it for us all right.
By no objective standard and without a single attempt to address the
questions I raised on my website. Just
take apart the syllables. Again, should people read your books this way?
Let’s
begin with the symbol/word/pun d.Nib-I-Ru.
The
sign here is not a cone – oops; there I go appealing to Sumerian signs for
Sumerian words – my apology. I almost overlooked another bungle – you say
the Sumerian sign resembles a DELTA?? Delta
is a GREEK LETTER – visually there is no resemblance at all. It’s absolute
chicanery. How can you do this with
a clear conscience?
About the cuneiform sign = AN
Sumerian. It developed in Sumerian times (3rd millenium BC) from the pictogram indicating a star ä. In Sumerian the sign is used as a logogram and has the following meanings:
an The name of the Sumerian god An, a supreme god, god of heaven, father of the gods, in Akkadian called Anum
later Anu with the Akkadian nominative ending -um, later -u.
an meaning 'heaven' as opposed to ki 'earth'
an 'dingir' meaning 'god' in general, for which the Akkadians have the word ilu(m)
Here's the question: Where in the world does William get a cone from this sign (either one)? Maybe it's a result of his inner dingir. Again, utterly baseless material not worth taking seriously.
Put
together, this renders Nibiru as a ‘deity, door star’
Thank
you for slipping up here – at last you TELL us you’re adding to the face
value of the word.
No,
it isn’t. It has nothing to do
with a door. Please show me from cuneiform astronomical texts where nibiru was
considered a door in the heavens. In
linguistic terms, this is a classic example of taking the meaning of a word in
ONE context (places – non-astronomical texts, mind you) where a word may refer
to a gate, and then importing that meaning into another text and ADDING the idea
of moving from planet to planet (which NONE of the texts ever says), and now
ADDING some idea about the “d” sign . It’s
amazing how you keep doing this.
And
that it moves from planet to planet?
Oh
boy; he’s not done. I can feel my mind numbing.
For
instance, the Old Testament prophets were called NEBI or NABI. Is
this because
This
is all crap. Nob has no such meaning in any semitic derivation.
And to take a syllable from one word (i.e., PART of one word) and splice
it to another to generate a meaning is just absolute linguistic deception.
Sitchin can’t approach this level of language quackery.
I’m beginning to get some respect for him (really).
Please see the entry below from Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Dictionary
– a standard in the field for decades (notice how William NEVER quotes a language resource
– you don’t need one when you make it up as you go).
Serpent
is con
or
and so now we are going to analyze its meaning using the sounds as reflected in ENGLISH?
This is no ordinary reptile. The serpent is
I’m just stunned. It’s hard for me to grasp the level of linguistic incoherence that WH so freely engages in. It’s utter babble. It’s like a world where any syllable can mean anything – where language and communication function outside reality. It’s like reading a dictionary compiled by someone on LSD. What can I say? It would take me dozens of hours and dozens of scans of pages of dictionaries and grammars to address this linguistic cesspool. I can barely follow it. A veritable stream of incoherence. Words mean nothing because they are hacked apart, each syllable given a meaning from an altogether different language, then spliced back together again. I’m groping for an analogy of what must be going on in William’s mind, but I confess I cannot grasp the concept of total commitment to linguistic relativism. Everything can mean anything. But an illustration comes to me . . . thank goodness.
What William is doing here is akin to taking auto parts piecemeal from 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 cars - all different makes and models - then putting them together to fashion his engine. Hey, they all came from cars, didn't they? Put them together and you've got a finely tuned machine! Hey, they're all syllables aren't they? They're all from words, right? So put them together for meaning! Or maybe it's like taking parts from every computer in a COMPUSA store, then putting them together to form one's own desktop computer. Never mind some of the parts came from a MAC and others from PCs - they're all computers, aren't they?). To pull this off, of course, we'd need an enlightened mechanic or computer tech. To pull off what William is assembling from the disparate and unrelated parts, one needs William.
I
think the only thing I can do other than spend a dozen hours unraveling this
bunk is to appeal to readers to look at what has been addressed above and sift
through my abbreviated comments below.
In
570 B.C. NEB-u-kad-nez-ar or Nebuchadnezzar was the king of
Where?
Where in the Greek New Testament do we have an Akkadian word (and a deity
name at that)
This
‘fiery furnace’ appears to be the same as the ‘burning bush’ experienced
by Moses. “Christians” claim the god, I Am, who appeared to Moses in the
burning bush was a prefiguration of Christ. These appearances, in
Again,
Webster’s English dictionary used to render Akkadian and Sumerian. How is this
line of thought even possible?
is
the same as bablah, which is not only blahblah, but is also bab-el-uh,
phonetically similar to bablahn or
Come on, reader - admit it; you thought I was kidding in the intro, didn't you?
The
heron delivers the ring or key of life.
The
sun-temple/ near
The
Tower
of
Again,
where is the text that associates the Tower of Babel with nibiru?
Texts please – and PLEASE, a modicum of coherence.
was
modeled after the original tower to God called Meru, the root of Su-Meru
or
like I said - you have to read it to believe it.
Nibiru
is said to have been located “at the center of Heaven”. is used on
maps
Holy
cow. The binary god. IAO = input and output. William, you need some sort of help.
I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I’m beginning to see how useless it is to appeal to you on the basis of
texts and the rules of language and logic. What was done to you?
Switched
the meanings (and frequencies) of words after the Babel/Meru incident babel was
transformed from ‘gate to god’ to ‘confusion’ and blah-blah to
‘nonsense’ A great literary black-op was performed. The Gate to God, ‘Nibiru’,
was covered up like a giant black or blah-ck hole. Now, when one cites
the true nature of the gate they are met with derision, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah. And now to push the circumference of this circle. Webster’s says Bablah
is a pod of the Acacia, the living wood out of which the Ark of God
was made. This is why Neb or Ne-bo became Nabe, the prophets of the navel
or navis (boat or
The
above (and below) is just more of the same. I
really don’t feel like critiquing it any more.
I am genuinely disturbed by what I have read.
It’s like the synapses in your brain are wired completely differently,
where logic is cast aside. I
don’t mean that as any kind of comment on your intelligence, either. It’s
evident you have a very active mind and are bright.
I’ve just never witnessed this kind of incoherent babbling before.
I’ve heard you on shows and that is but a taste.
This kind of sustained prattling is something I’ve never encountered.
Before
exploring this seal, and also Mike’s take on ZS’s 12th planet theory,
indulge
You
surely didn’t find a text or a word list.
(I can’t help but keep appealing to real sources; it’s what I do).
that
makes my point that ancient art carries an exoteric meaning for the uninitiated
and an esoteric meaning for those of the light. This diagram is copied from one
of the few Old Babylonian math texts that appear theoretical in content, meaning
it is a problem to be solved. ‘Theoretical’ means ‘to look at’, ‘to
view’, ‘to contemplate’. Oates found it in H.W.F. Saggs’ The
Greatness That Was
Someone
else who knows nothing about these ancient languages.
will
immediately recognize this phrase. What is it? comes from the Egyptian Book
of the Dead, the oldest complete book in the world. At every stage of his
journey to enlightenment and to the blessed star- field of the gods the pharaoh
asks the repetitive question, “What is it?” “What is it?” refers to
Manna, the holy substance, known as gold, symbolized by the Egyptians by
a cone (or a Nebo). The gods of Nibiru, the Anunnaki, notes
Is
there a single text that says this? Sitchin
is an amateur compared to WH. He
only makes up little snippets when he needs them.
This is almost wholly contrived.
“Christianity,”
which calls Manna the “body or host of Christ”
No
it doesn’t. The “r” in
Egyptian is the open mouth (look it up in a sign list). You have no idea what
you’re talking about. Please just
ONCE – site a grammar or dictionary (of the appropriate language) to make your
point.
Here are the signs William is talking about (unless he's made up his own equivalents) from Jim Loy's cool Egyptian language website. I have underlined the "r" (the open mouth). The sign list is from Sir Alan Gardiner's well know grammar (which I do not recommend for first year Egyptian - a number of better places to start). The lion sign shows up as "r" in later stages of the language:
Upright,
this symbol forms the Egyptian hieroglyph Ru, meaning ‘birth
passage’, ‘doorway’, ‘vagina’.
This
about says it all. There is no
reasoning with William. I want to say I regret trying, but my hope is that
readers of this exchange will see how hopeless a case this is.
While the open mouth sign would look like a vagina when inverted, there are problems (what a surprise) with William's "reconstruction" of the sign's meaning: (1) the Egyptians wrote it horizontally, which tells you it wasn't the vagina; (2) we know from the earliest semitic alphabet (Serabit el-Khadim), which borrowed Egyptian signs for its alphabet, that the sign was understood as an open mouth; (3) The actual Egyptian WORD for mouth is the above sign (horizontal) with a vertical line under it - which proves definitively it wasn't a vagina
I
find that Nib-Iru is a compound word/symbol/idea composed of Nib, ‘the
projecting end of anything’, ‘a lofty place’, a ‘mountain’ or
‘cone’ I, meaning ‘pillar or column’, and, Ru, ‘doorway’. In
other words, it is Meru. In addition to a boat, the neter, meaning ‘watcher’
symbol, , looks like an eye. The Chinese used the same symbol to represent ‘to
visit’ and eye. It is the same as the almond-shaped doorway seen in the
Neolithic tunnel – conduit – drawing presented here and the doorway of Jesus
who called himself the Door.
A
WORD ABOUT LANGUAGE
can you believe this heading?!
Of
course, ‘scholars’ might argue that I’m making up meanings to give wings
to my
Again,
William, English has nothing to do with SUMERIAN or any semitic language.
The
English dictionary is the code-key to the Language of the Birds,
Ooookaaaay.
English is the key to the language of the birds. I’m a little frightened now. How does anyone take you seriously? Skip way down
to the cylinder seal VA 243; the rest of this is just more syllable splicing and
punning.
a
phonetic cabala. This code poetically equates words that sound alike in
different languages, connecting word concepts by sound in English. It is
also called the Language of Angels. Christian O’Brien notes that the
Sumerians called this language eme-an, the ‘language of heaven’;
hence of the angels. In this language of poetry another linguistic variation of
‘bird’ is ‘bard’ (poet, wise Druid) and ‘bud’,
a verb meaning ‘to cause to bud, germinate, sprout’. Allowing for the
substitution of birds, bards, and buds renders the poetic
Language of the Birds as the Language of the Buds (or flowers). The Buds are
also the Budd-has. ‘Buddha’, the son of
Mero-dach
(Meru-Dock, ‘Star Dock’) or MARDUK,
another name for Nibiru, is a
THE
DISK
Let’s
next explore the simple disk symbol of Nibiru. This is the universal symbol or
ideogram for the sun. It is a circle or a ring (a key, tone, frequency or
vibration). is also a quantity, zero or none. Phonetically, none
and nun are the same. When most think of a nun they think of a woman
who is a supporter of Christ (the ‘bridge’, ‘gate’, ‘door’ between
Earth and Heaven). However, to the Egyptians, NUN is
Fascinatingly,
Source
please – sorry, I can’t help myself. Tell
you what, William. I’ll send this
poppycock to Dr. Black, a well known Sumerologist, and get his response if
you’ll post it in its entirety on your website.
You should be ashamed to link him with this.
The
Star-Gate. Actually, it is composed of four gates fused
VA
243
Heiser
calls our attention to a famous cylinder seal known as VA 243 to defend his
Cylinder
Seal VA
243
Star
system on seal VA 243.
In
simplest terms, the alleged “six-rayed sun” in the upper left corner of the
seal isn’t a sun, and so the artwork doesn’t depict the sun and our solar
system. Tom Van Flandern, Mike notes, has also shown that the sizes of the
planets in this solar system do not match our own. This clearly suggests Sitchin
could be describing a star system other than our own, jeopardizing his 12th
planet theory. But what about my stargate theory?
If
not the sun, then what is the six-rayed symbol? It’s a STAR, says Mike. We
know
I’m
starting to feel some relief here, as I noted on Coast that nibiru could have
some reference to precession or pole shift (which would likely involve
cataclysm). The only problem,
though, is that nothing on the seal links it to the star nibiru.
Here’s
Mike’s English translation of the seal’s inscriptions:
Line
1 (left hand sid of the seal) = dub-si- ga “Dubsiga” [a personal name of an
Line
2 (right hand side, top) = ili- il- la-at “Ili- illat” [another personal
name, this time
Line
3 (right hand side bottom) = ir3-su “dein Knecht” [German for “your
servant”]
His
full (and as he says rather boring) inscription of VA243 reads: “Dubsiga, Ili-
illat,
My point was that the text and the seal does not teach us about astronomy. If I found a picture in my attic that had the moon in it, would I conclude it is teaching me astronomical knowledge? I guess I could have worded that better, but it seems clear enough - it's either decorative or it marks a god. It may be a depiction of a constellation, but we don't know - it doesn't convey astronomical knowledge.
Mike will be interested to know that the word Ili, as in Ili- illat, means ‘light’,
Yeah, I am interested, especially since this isn't true; see below
and is
I’ve
been waiting for this (this is a Gardner argument as well). The
“light” word you refer to is based on English phonetic equivalents in the
Assyrian dictionary. There are a
number of words in Akkadian that have the “il” sound – but here’s the
kicker – THOSE SOUNDS ARE REPRESENTED BY DIFFERENT SIGNS IN CUNEIFORM.
In short, just because words sound the same doesn’t mean they are
written with the same signs – and so they are not related when written with
different signs. It’s sort of
like how “f” and “ph” can make the same sound in English – yet words
spelled with those “signs” need not (and nearly always do not) have any
relationship in meaning. Hence in
Akkadian, “ilu” means god (note the single " L " ), but “illi” does not
(note the difference in spelling - due to the fact that the word in cuneifor is
made of different wedge signs – even though the
sounds are the same. I know William
doesn’t care about this, but the reader might.
ILU (the entry is for "el" - god in Hebrew); "As." = Assyrian = Akkadian cuneiform (Assyria was part of Mesopotamia, and a huge amount of cuneiform material comes from there)
illu (more properly, ellu) shows up here - for Hebrew halal, "to shine" (no relation to 'el, the wod for god):
The
word illi was carried over to England where natives who contacted the
Illi upon
great
– more bird language.
called
them the Nob-Illi or the high or lofty Illi for “nob,” as in Moses’
Nebo, means high, sun and serpent. The Illi ‘light serpents’ or Anunnaki
were the rulers of Su-Meru . In many languages the letters ‘r and ‘l’ are
interchangeable. This allows us to write Nib-iru as Nibilu, or Nib-ili,
which is the same as Nob-ili.
Correction
– meaning is inserted.
More
astronomical information is encoded in the seated figure. This, says Mike, is a
Again,
a note to the reader. The horns on
Moses head in this statue are the result of a text-critical error in a
manuscript. It’s a famous
text-critical mistake by a scribe. You
can read about it (but Hebrew is likely necessary) if you get a good textual
commentary on the passage that talks about Moses face shining and needing a
veil. (the manuscript mistake has Moses with horns, not radiance). Henry’s
discussion here is nonsense.
This
is because Moses ‘Sinai’, like Nebo, is a metaphor for Meru.
There
are other gods associated with agrarian fertility.
It could be Dagon, but we can’t know for sure.
Dagon’s
name means ‘fish of light’.
There’s
no “light” element in the semitic spelling Dagon.
This is bogus.
Interestingly,
Mike cites Nibiru as MUL.APIN (“Plough Star”), seemingly without
The
rest is Jesus the penis man, maker of ploughs or something; skip to the end.
Undoubtedly
the most familiar star pattern in the entire sky is the seven stars that
In
Gnostic emblems the Gryphon is sometimes represented with its paw or claw upon
CONCLUSION:
‘Away’ We Go
In
conclusion, Heiser’s attack on Sitchin doesn’t really pack the punch he
intended,
Well, what can I say? 23 pages of blather later, what do we have?
Someone who interprets ancient texts with an English dictionary;
Someone who violates every rule of language meaning and linguistic philosophy I’ve ever seen or heard of, as well as the cumulative body of anthropological knowledge surrounding division of people groups by language;
Someone whose case is built on non-sequitur etymologies – where relationships of sounds (in English no less), syllables and language groups can be separated and spliced together at will to serve an interpretive agenda;
Someone who refuses to get his word meanings from Mesopotamian sources;
Someone whose approach to language cannot be applied in the real world lest it be shown to be utter nonsense.
It’s
hard for me to even express how his work would be viewed by people who actually
do language work. How can you reason with someone who rejects the most basic
features of language – that sounds made with one’s mouth are not the same
among different people groups? We all know this from either experience or taking
a language, yet William Henry casts this aside as though it wasn’t true in the
ancient world, and as though the English dictionary somehow overturns this basic
point of fact. I’m at a loss;
I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
I
have repeatedly asked him and Zecharia Sitchin to produce texts we can all read
at face value and just get information from the ancient sources.
It really is that simple. I
know it isn’t going to happen with William.
But that is only part of the picture.
William, I fear, is a disturbed man, and I honestly feel prayer should be
offered for him. My gut tells me the Church is to blame somewhere in his life.
No,
William, I’m not going away. Someone has to keep asking you to prove your
language method is workable in the real world of communication.
If you are unwilling to apply your slice and dice approach to your own
books and the language we encounter every day in our lives, your method is a
hypocrisy. This is the ultimate
test of written communication – is it in fact communicable to real people, not
an initiated elite who reduce it to the realm if the imagination. The
Mesopotamian scribes gave us their texts and their vocabulary, and we know from
bilingual texts that the words they used were ordinary words – words used
every day by the common person. Anyone
who could read the language could understand them without the linguistic
gymnastics you perform. We know
because we have them, and as Sitchin so ably pointed out in his intro to the 12th
planet (!) their knowledge was transferable – precisely because it was
transmitted in the normal vernacular of their day (don’t forget that Akkadian
was the lingua franca of the late second millennium – as English is today).
There was no coding, no etymological transplants, no language grafting as
we have seen from you.
I
am still waiting for any treatment from the texts, the ancient dictionary
sources, and some sort of coherent use of the body of linguistic knowledge that
is at the foundation of intelligible communication.
When is a door not a door?
When
William interprets it for us – it must have some higher meaning than the plain
old correspondence to reality. I
pray you’ll continue to enjoy life, feel productive, and earn a good living.
I also pray you’ll get help and/ or forgive those whose actions have
turned you to this path. I mean that sincerely as God is my witness.
Mike
Heiser
4/25/03
