Answer:
In the beginning, the gods created the world. Day and night, the grass, all plant life, creeping things, birds, cattle, and sea creatures.
Then the gods said to each other, “Let us make humans in our image, after our likeness.” So the gods created humans in their own image; after their own likeness the gods created them: male and female.
And the gods said to the humans, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.”
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Then Elyon the most high God said to the gods, “Let us divide the humans between us all: each god shall inherit one human.” So they set the bounds of the people according to the number of the gods, and each god inherited a human being to keep and to teach. Elyon inherited Adam; his wife Asherah received Lilith; and so on. Thus, all the gods received their alter egos.
Now the god Yahweh was allotted as his inheritance a man named Jacob. Yahweh found him in a desert land, in the wilderness. Yahweh cared for him deeply; he led him about and instructed Jacob. He procured for Jacob the finest fields, and the fat of the land.
In those days, all the humans lived many hundreds of years. And they bore children and became nations.
Now Jacob’s nation began to displease Yahweh, for despite Yahweh’s good treatment of Jacob, and his showering of him with abundance of food and wine, the people of Jacob turned against their god: they honored the other gods more than their own benefactor. This infuriated Yahweh. So, the next time all the gods gathered before Elyon for their periodic meeting, Yahweh came among them and said:
“Look, the humans have begun to multiply on the face of the earth, and your nations have been intermingling with my nation; moreover, you gods have been coming down and taking wives of the daughters of my people: now my people no longer care for me at all. Therefore, I will destroy the whole earth with a flood.”
But Elyon and the gods would not permit such a disaster. So Yahweh made a storm that destroyed the people of Jacob, and he started over a new creation, all by himself, on that part of the globe. After his rain had been depleted to drown Jacob’s nation, Yahweh planted a pleasure garden for himself, which he called Paradise. He patterned it after the garden of the most high, so it had two trees in its center: Elyon’s tree of wisdom (the knowledge of everything from good to evil), and Asherah’s tree of immortality (whose fruit would sustain the youth and the life of its eater).
Yahweh then fashioned a portrait of himself out of clay, and breathed into the sculpture, and it came alive. And he named this new man Adam, after Elyon’s human.
“Eat only from this tree here,” said Yahweh to the new Adam, “so that you can keep on living indefinitely. But do not eat from that tree beside it: on the day that you do so, you will die.” (Yahweh gave this command for the same reason that the founders of the United States prohibited literacy to their slaves.)
Now Yahweh, being supermale, could not fashion a woman. So he tried to lure his Adam to beget offspring upon various wildlife, which he set before him, but the man would not comply. So Yahweh took the original Lilith from Asherah and set her in the garden, to be Adam’s spouse.
The Highest God Elyon then sent his light-bearer Nachash to scout out Paradise, to learn what Yahweh was up to. “Did he really forbid you from eating our lord’s tree of wisdom?” asked Nachash, while conversing with Lilith after meeting her strolling alone.
“I’m not sure – I’ve felt confused since I got here,” answered Lilith; “I awoke from a deep sleep, and Yahweh gave me instructions while introducing me to Adam, whom I’m told is my spouse; but beyond that, everything is hazy.”
“Sounds like you’ve had your memory erased,” said Nachash. “Eat some fruit from the tree of wisdom – that will give you total recall.”
So Lilith ate from Elyon’s tree, and her doors of perception were cleansed. She then called Adam over and gave him some fruit, and he ate too, and his eyes were opened. The two spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying different styles of mutual pleasure.
Yahweh approached while the couple was jouncing in a position that modern Christians would find extremely offensive. “What’s this?” said the god. “You partook of the evil tree?”
“A bad tree cannot produce good fruit,” said Lilith, happily undulating.
Yahweh turned away and retired to his grotto. He emanated two cherub stormtroopers to conspire with: “We must evict my son and that woman,” he said to these heavily armed spirits; “for they have eaten of Elyon’s tree, and now if they are not kept away from Asherah’s fruit of immortality, they’ll have become my equals. The problem is now how to preserve my line through my son while minimizing, with the aim of ultimately eliminating, the contaminants from that succubus. But first things first: go kick them out and block the door.”
So the cherubs strongarmed Adam and Lilith from the garden, then barred the gate; and Yahweh installed before the entrance to Paradise a fiery sword that slashed in every direction, plus guard dogs and a motion-sensitive alarm system.
Now, over the subsequent generations, secretly and from a distance, Yahweh kept an eye on the bloodline of Adam. Eventually a man was born who proved nearly a perfect match for Yahweh’s ideas of pedigree. This man, Abram, possessed almost zero trace of Asherah’s initial woman. So Yahweh visited Abram and explained that he should isolate himself from his tribe: “I plan on blessing you with the purest seed,” announced the god.
Ever since Yahweh had withheld access to the tree of immortality, humans no longer lived for hundreds of years; they all died young now. And this Abram whose blood so pleased Yahweh was unfortunately very old, as was his wife Sarai. The couple was also brother and sister. Yahweh had arranged for these two to be an item, for the same reason he singled out Abram from his people: both contained low levels of Lilith.
Now Yahweh’s challenge was to produce his desired seed through this elderly childless couple. Much time passed without results. Yahweh had renewed his promise of fertility to the siblings, emphasizing that nothing was too difficult for the Omnipotent; nevertheless, Abram began to lose faith in the flesh of his sister-spouse, and he decided one day to try begetting the promised offspring upon his Egyptian slave, Hagar. Hagar immediately became pregnant, and in the fullness of time she gave birth to a healthy child: Isaac.
One night, when Isaac was still a young lad, Yahweh paid Abram a visit. “The promise that I made to you still stands,” Yahweh announced: “Sarai shall conceive, and you shall beget the seed that I long for.” Then Yahweh said to Abram, “Tomorrow, take your child Isaac, which you begat upon that Egyptian servant-woman, and climb the mountain of Sinai. Bring wood, rope, and fire for a sacrifice, but do not take any beast along with you: I will provide the victim.”
On the morrow, therefore, Abram arose and took Isaac up the mountain with the fire and wood and rope. “Lo, father,” Isaac said to Abram as they climbed, “we are carrying all these supplies for a sacrifice, but we have no beast – did we forget to bring the victim?”
Abram answered his son: “Yahweh will provide.”
Then, when they reached the top, Abram arranged the wood and set it aflame.
Now, out of a nearby thicket, the voice of Yahweh called to Abram, saying: “Take now your only son Isaac, whom you love; bind him with the rope, and offer him here for a burnt sacrifice.”
Abraham went and took his son, and killed him before Yahweh, and cut him into pieces; then he sprinkled the blood round about upon the altar that was at the top of the mountain. And he placed the parts, the head, and the fat, in order upon the wood, and ignited the fire. Thus Abram offered his son Isaac up for a burnt sacrifice, and it was a sweet savor unto Yahweh.
Then at last Yahweh was able to make Sarai pregnant. And when the time came for Sarai to give birth, she brought forth not just a single child but twins.
However, Yahweh had determined that one of these babes was of Lilith’s line, while the other was of his own; therefore, while the infants were still within the womb, Yahweh smote the unwanted seed, so that it was stillborn. And when the corpse of Esau was delivered, lo, Yahweh’s chosen seed came out as well, for it was clutching the dead babe’s heel: and they called his name Jeshurun.
Now Jeshurun grew, and Yahweh blessed him. Yet when it came time for Jeshurun to seek a wife, he found Rachel, a woman from the nation that Asherah developed after Yahweh had taken Lilith. So this Rachel was a daughter of Eve, who was Lilith’s replacement. Rachel and Jeshurun fell in love. Now Yahweh abhorred this match, and he tried to divert Jeshurun from Rachel by flooding their marriage with concubines and handmaidens. And Yahweh dried up Rachel’s womb, so that she only bore one seed, while her competition produced twelve patriarchs.
Now when Yahweh saw that Jeshurun loved his son by Rachel more than all his other offspring, he devised a plan for the lad’s demise. Yahweh instructed the dozen patriarchs to take the problem child, whose name was Joseph, and to sell him into slavery. So the brothers sought out the same company of traders from whom their grandfather Abram had bought his slave Hagar, and the brothers made a deal with these human traffickers; thus, Joseph was bound and shipped to Egypt.
When Jeshurun learned that his other children had disposed of his only child by Rachel, who was his favorite, he was furious with Yahweh. He went to the mountain of Siani, which the god was known to haunt, and he found the cave that was there, and Jeshurun ambushed him. The two wrestled all night long, with neither gaining the advantage. Finally, when the sun began to rise, Jeshurun dragged his opponent toward the mouth of the cave. The god cried out: “Let me go, for the day is breaking!” and lashing out in a panic he almost hollowed Jeshurun’s loins: this left his manhood out of joint. The infuriated Jeshurun held his adversary before the rays of light, which were slanting into the cave, and as the gleam crept ever closer, Jeshurun shouted, “I will not let you go unless you tell me your true name.” The god writhed and roared but could not prevail; he gave up his ghost unto Jeshurun. His last words were: “Israel!—‘Godkiller’—that is my name, and now it is yours.” He thus conferred his title and his powers onto Jeshurun. The god’s form effervesced as his essence infested Jeshurun, whose flesh now glowed.
Meanwhile, over in Egypt, Jeshurun’s only beloved son Joseph was shackled in a dungeon. Lucky for him, he was an extremely handsome fellow; so, when the captain of Pharaoh’s army sent his daughter Asenath to purchase servants for their household, she chose Joseph: for she loved him at first sight. And he was installed in the captain’s house as the majordomo.
Now Asenath the army captain’s daughter came to Joseph while he was overseeing her father’s household, and she removed her garment and said, “Lie with me.” And the two became wed.
But once the captain of Pharaoh’s army found out that his daughter had married a household slave, he was vexed, and he said to Pharaoh: “Take this man to serve you in your palace. For although he is my finest steward, he is a burden to me, because of my daughter.”
Pharaoh accepted this gift from his army’s captain; so Joseph was transferred to the royal palace.
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One day Pharaoh suffered a bad dream, which he told to his magi, yet none of them could decode its meaning. Having overheard this exchange, Joseph offered his own interpretation: “Your nightmare forecasts a great famine.”
Pharaoh was shocked to hear this: “My god tells me you are correct.” Then Pharaoh added: “What can we do?” And Joseph answered: “Stockpile foodstuffs.”
Pharaoh was so impressed by Joseph’s powers of intellect that he promoted the man to the position of Vice Pharaoh; and Asenath his wife was restored unto Joseph: she came to live with him in the royal palace. Pharaoh put the entire governance of Egypt into the hands of Joseph.
In this capacity, Joseph established a great warehouse, against the upcoming famine.
Then, when the famine came, all the people paid money to Joseph the Vice Pharaoh of Egypt, in return for food. For he was the only leader in that region who had stockpiled ample nourishment in his warehouse. And when all the money ran out, Joseph induced the people to sell their property, their livestock, and eventually even their persons to the state, so that they might live. In this way did Joseph enslave the entire population of Egypt.
Now Joseph’s father Jeshurun, who was now called Israel, ‘Godkiller,’ as he had sorbed Yahweh, sent his children into Egypt, to buy food because of the famine. And when Joseph saw his brethren approach from the breadline, he remembered what they had done to him in his youth: how they had sold him into slavery. Although Joseph recognized his siblings, they did not know that this Vice Pharaoh was their brother Joseph, for he was attired in regal raiment, and he spoke only Egyptian.
Now, through an interpreter, Joseph said to his brothers, “Who is your father?” And they answered, “Israel.” And Joseph said, “No: Jeshurun.” And the brothers were terrified, not seeing how this Vice Pharaoh knew the birth name of their father.
“He is now Israel,” they explained, “because he fought with God and prevailed.”
Joseph was astonished to hear that his father was now their tribe’s deity. “Israel, you say?” he asked; then Joseph gave his brethren foodstuffs and commanded them to go fetch their father and bring him to Egypt.
“But he is an old man now,” they said.
“What does that matter,” argued Joseph, “since he is a god?”
And his brothers answered and said: “The former Israel, Yahweh, never disclosed the location of his life-tree, without whose fruit, even a deity is mortal.”
Then in frustration Joseph imprisoned the rest of his brethren, except for Judas, whom alone he charged to go bring their father back: “If you fail to return with Jeshurun who is Israel,” Joseph said, “all your brothers shall surely die.”
So Judas took the food from the Vice Pharaoh of Egypt unto his father, who was lying on his deathbed. He urged Israel, “You must come with me to Egypt.” And Israel answered, “If I do so, I die.” But Judas explained, “Either way, you will die, for you are weak; but if you stay here, all your children will perish as well, whereas, if you go to Egypt, the Vice Pharaoh has promised to spare the lives of all twelve patriarchs.”
Therefore, Israel entered Egypt. And he came to the royal palace, where his son now lived as Vice Pharaoh.
Joseph met his father and wept, as he revealed his identity to the man: “O Jeshurun,” he said, “I am Joseph: the only son of your beloved Rachel. Aton has blessed me in this land.” And he told his father how his fortune had unfolded, so that he had progressed from being a slave to enslaving all of Egypt.
And Israel wept and said: “O my favorite son Joseph!” and he made Joseph place his hand upon his manhood, and he told him about his encounter with the satan at Sinai, and he said: “O Joseph, my son, I bequeath my power unto you. Here is what you must do to receive divinity. Consume my flesh, and imbibe my blood; then you shall become as elohim, knowing all, from good to evil. Lo, do not neglect this rite: my flesh and blood are meat and drink indeed. Eat, therefore, my flesh, and drink my blood, for now I yield up the ghost: thereby will I dwell in you, and you in me. As Yahweh suffused me at his vanquishing, passing to me his true name Israel, so also now I shall suffuse you, and you shall be filled with the life of your Father, thus I rechristen you ‘Moses Israel,’ which means ‘Son of Godkiller.’ Now take, eat, and live by me. Howbeit, set aside my bones; for you must promise to take them and bury them in that same cave that I told you about, where I met our deity on the mountainside.” Then Israel died.
Now Joseph, whose new name was Moses, having ingested the body and blood of his holy father, saved Israel’s bones in a portmanteau case. Then Vice Pharaoh Moses went before Pharaoh and opened the portmanteau, and showed him the glowing bones of Israel, and he said these words:
“My father made me swear to bury his remains outside of Egypt. Now therefore, permit me to take this populace I purchased – all those whom I bought with foodstuffs during the famine – and let us go into a mountain of the wild land, so that we may bury Israel’s bones. After that, I will return to Egypt again.”
Now, when Pharaoh saw how his V.P. had become an elohim and acquired ownership of the population, his heart froze up, and he denied the request; for it appeared as though this ‘Moses,’ as the man was now called, was aiming to usurp his kingdom.
“Go alone,” Pharaoh said unto Moses, “and bury the bones of your heavenly father. But leave the people here in Egypt; for I greatly fear being overthrown in an uprising.”
Then Moses knelt and begged Pharaoh to reconsider, saying, “O Lord, I am your servant; it was in your name, and strictly for your glory, that I accomplished all that I have done here in this country. I have no designs on your crown. I only wish to honor my father, and to fulfill my vow to him. Let me therefore take the people to the outland, so that we may perform a proper funeral; for Israel was concerned about the fate of his remains: he requested that his bones might rest in the mountain, as he was eager to avoid spending eternity in a pyramid. I fear that if we do not perform what he asked of us, he will curse the whole land with hideous plagues. Look: being his heir, I have inherited power over disease; see how I can make my hand leprous and then cure it directly? I could also unleash pestilences in his name, but I’d prefer not to. I would rather turn Egypt’s waters to wine than blood. Let me therefore take the masses on this journey. We shall return within a fortnight: three days out, three days back; and about a week for the service.”
Pharaoh answered: “How about leaving only the army here? I would just like some assurance against foul play.”
Moses rose to his feet and said: “That is fair. We have an agreement. You keep the army. I’ll go with the people out to the mountain, and we will return.”
So Vice Pharaoh Moses left the presence of the Most High Pharaoh, and an announcement was sent out into all the land of Egypt declaring a national holiday for the funeral of Israel.
Moses then led the Egyptians out to the wilderness, carrying with him the portmanteau that held the glowing bones of his father. He presided over an elaborate funeral ceremony at Mount Sinai, in whose cave he deposited the bones of Jeshurun-Israel. When that was done, the sky broke out in thunder and lightning; the top of the mountain began to smoke, and lava erupted.
Meanwhile, back in Egypt, Pharaoh and his army bided their time in the eerie silence of that vacated land. Although it was still within the frame of the scheduled period, Pharaoh grew anxious, and he addressed his army as follows:
“I trust the Vice Pharaoh, but it would be wise for us to guard against potential treachery. For what if Moses, beguiled by his newfound power, yields to temptation? He might easily surprise us and accomplish a coup d’état. Let us therefore go out and meet him in the wilderness: if he seems peaceable, we will join his ceremony; but if he attacks, we shall rise up and repossess our kingdom.”
Thus, Pharaoh and his army left Egypt and marched into the wild outland. Just when Moses and his multitudes were preparing to make their return trip, the army of Pharaoh appeared over the horizon. The masses with Moses were frightened by this sight: “Lo, Pharaoh and his army have betrayed us,” cried the people; “they have come to destroy us!”
Therefore, the multitudes took flight, assuming that their slaughter was otherwise imminent. And the army of Pharaoh pursued them to the Red Sea:
“A dead end!” the masses cried unto Moses. But Moses waved his wand over the waters, and a great wind whipped up and split the sea, and it caused the waters to gather in heaps at either side, so that the people could pass through on dry sand. Now, once the masses had all traversed the sea, Pharaoh and his army came forth onto the same dry path and chased after them; but right when Pharaoh and his troops were at the midpoint of the sea, the wind died down, and the waters crashed back and drowned them.
The people cheered with relief when they saw this. But Moses was dismayed, for he would have preferred to give diplomacy a chance, rather than simply destroying his old friend, who had always been so kind and loyal, for a presumed breach of faith. Moreover, now Moses and the multitudes were in a part of the wilderness that was unfamiliar. He tried re-splitting the Red Sea, to find out if they might double back to Egypt, but the recent miracle had expended all his power. So he led the people forward, hoping to find another nation that might help them.
The multitudes wandered in those wild lands for days. Very soon their supplies ran out, and the people complained to Moses, saying, “We shall die from thirst!” And they were right: if they did not find a fresh source of water immediately, this would prove the end of their trek.
They arrived at a place that is called by several foreign names: Marah (“bitterness”), Massah (“testing”), and Meribah (“quarrelling”). It is also, in the American tongue, known as Fallout Rock and Lynch Peak. These epithets tell the story of what occurred there; for there was bitter quarrel between the people and Moses; they had a fallout, and Moses was tested: the multitudes demanded that he find water to save their souls; then when he failed to do this, they lynched him. Moses died there, and the people consumed him, as Moses himself had consumed Israel before him; thus were the powers of divinity transferred to the people as a whole. Before that time, the multitudes had always answered to one sole judge; now they had all become judges themselves, and every man did what seemed right in his own eyes.
They buried the bones of Moses at Fallout Rock, performing this office after the manner of Israel’s burial. So, as the father was laid in a cave at the side of Sinai, the son was lodged in a formless void of Lynch Peak. Yet, after the people had struck the rock with Moses’ wand, time and again, to hollow the tomb, just as they were preparing to seal the site with a stone, behold, a mighty spring broke forth: fresh water gushed out from the depths as a river, and the remains of Moses were swept away. (To this day, no one knows where those bones came to rest.)
§
So now the population, which had left Egypt and ended up in the wilderness on the far side of the sea, sought to settle the surrounding land. This resulted in an odd number of city-states that were loosely bound as a confederacy, without a central authority governing them. Then a seer named Samuel rose to popularity, and he united the states under a strong federal government by anointing the first president to supervise the entirety: That man’s name was Saul.
President Saul soon got assassinated by President David, who then defended himself against a whole lifetime of assassination attempts from almost everyone. When on his deathbed, David’s children began attempting to assassinate each other, in anticipation of being elected the next president. Among these siblings, Solomon survived to gain the support of the select committee, the small group of creditors that established popular opinion.
Throughout his life, until the end of his term, President Solomon dodged enough assassinations to get his own son Rehoboam into the next running. For that election, however, the select committee determined that there was no clear winner of the office: for 85 percent of the country was against the establishment’s darling, leaving Rehoboam with only 15 percent of the vote. The split was along economic lines, with the southern creditor class being in the minority, while the northern working class gave its majority support to one of their own. Thus, from that point on, there were two competing Prezzez. The upper-class Creditor Prez was Solomon’s son Rehoboam, and the Workforce’s Prez was a bricklayer named Jeroboam.
The North’s Prez-chain, the family tree of its working-class presidents, was riddled with assassinations: for prez after prez, there were nonstop attempts at overthrow and frequent successes; the political murders never ceased. On the other hand, the South’s Prez-chain proved a smoother succession of figureheads, as the creditor class was more reliant on bloodlines and nepotism to transfer power.
Eventually both North and South got subsumed by conquering countries. The North was taken captive by Assyria, and the South a little later by Babylon. The working class of the North just gave up and settled into their new life of servitude; whereas the creditors of the South stubbornly clung to what remained of their fallen nation.
A remnant of the South’s creditor class maintained a modicum of power over the passing years, and in the first century of the Common Era they found themselves existing as a client state under the Roman Empire. Although always on the lookout for opportunities to grab more power, the creditor class was relatively content with this arrangement. Contrariwise, any workers that existed among that southern remnant were disgruntled; and so were the workers of Rome. Now a Nazarene named Jesus was one of these dissatisfied laborers. He became an agitator (or, from the Empire’s perspective, a “terrorist”), and he went around rousing the rabble with an anti-debt message. This message won over the client state’s working class, whose people joined the Nazarene’s movement, the popularity of which grew rapidly and ended up appealing also to the working class of Rome.
Now, beholding this Nazarene Jesus’ pro-worker movement, the creditors from both the client state and the Empire grew anxious about its potential for revolution, so they did what creditors always do in such situations: they assassinated the opposition’s leader.
Unfortunately for the creditors, the Nazarene’s message was so infectious among the workers of the world that it continued to spread even despite the founder’s death. The simple truth that he taught was hard to stomp out. Yet over the next few generations, the creditor classes from both the client state and the Empire worked to divide and conquer what remained of the anti-debt movement; and about three centuries into the Common Era, Jesus’ movement had been thoroughly tamed and rendered innocuous to the ruling powers: it was then declared the official religion of the Empire. And to this day, it remains an effective tool of oppression.
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