Henry Makow wrong about OT

Creation vs. Evolution : 1) Henry Makow wrong about OT · 2) Graham Hancock had sth to Say on Göbekli Tepe · Φιλολoγικά/Philologica : 3) Stonehenge and Göbekli Tepe?

Somewhere he [Makow] wrote that the God of the OT is not God, but an egregore. Context was about Judaism, where the non-OT book was gong to be described as worse. But even for OT, he considered the God it presents as "not God, but an egregore".

I had to look that up.

You see, I am not a specialist in esoterica.*

Egregore means emanation of a collective mind.

There are individual minds, there is collectively shared mind content, but there are no collective minds, and therefore no emanations of collective minds, no egregores.

Moreover, believing there are such things as egregores is the kind of thing which Cabbalistic philosophies (not that I know such beyond generalities and a few details I didn't manage to avoid hearing about) are more prone to than Christianity is. In fact, Christianity doesn't believe such things. God is creator of all spirits as well as of all material objects and also all living things with a spirit in them. There is no room for egregores.

Moreover, if this were true, where would that leave Our Lord Jesus Christ?

Would He be an egregore of a newer community? Or would He have been mistaken about the God of the OT?

In the latter case, how would He be divine, how would He be God?

In the former case, how is that different from the old heresy of docetism?

So, for the sake and honour of Our Lord Jesus Christ, do not call the God of the OT an egregore.

Now, perhaps Makow is the kind of half Christian who doesn't really care about the honour of God Who Became Man for our sake.

Seeing he's of Jewish origin and these often do convert to half Christian rather than fully Christian theology, it would not be surprising.

However, no. I cannot share the sentiment.

Christ is True God and True Man. If He said the God of the OT is God, if He called Him Father, that is good enough for me.

Now, perhaps Makow meant God (in OT) was behaving more like a reflex of Jewish good but also bad traits than as one could expect from God.

But the fact remains, God is God.

It is our expectations which fall short of Him, not the other way round. Otherwise He would be just OUR egregore. He's not.

I can with full honesty, intellectually and morally, say that whatever passage in OT gave this impression, the passage can be understood in a better way.

God kills off all men because some are wicked? except Noah of course?

Or God buries a world contaminated with radiactivity in the waves, so as to give post-Flood humanity a better future (for some Millennia) than a third killed off by nuking, if not more.

God disperses tongues because jealous?

Or God avoids a second nuke disaster just after previous ones, by depriving a tyrant of the men he had come to use as tools.

You see, I certainly DO think and of whole heart believe every thing in the Bible is inerrant. Also, that every positive thing all Church Fathers agree on about it is infallible. But I do not believe it is always straightforward.

Here are two verses or passages that hide something, until you stumble across the solution, if mine is the right one.

[5] And God seeing that the wickedness of men was great on the earth, and that all the thought of their heart was bent upon evil at all times, ... [11] And the earth was corrupted before God, and was filled with iniquity. [12] And when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth,) [13] He said to Noe: The end of all flesh is come before me, the earth is filled with iniquity through them, and I will destroy them with the earth.

I think this wickedness is described in more historic detail - but without the theological understanding - in Mahabharata. That would argue atomic bombs and waste were used as weapons. Not just perpetrators, but also victims would be bending their heart - that is intellect - on wickedness all the time. And so much flesh would have been sacrificed to wicked perversions, even among the most innocent ones. That too, even more, was a hopeless situation in which death, in itself the last enemy, in God's wise hands (and not in someone else's) became a deliverer.

But suppose there could have been a general repentance (and some did repent while waters rose), it would have required a physical miracle to clean up the radioactive waste if this scenario is true. It came, but in a punishing way.

[4] And they said: Come, let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands.

A first note : Nimrod didn't first get power, then become a tyrant, then foist this on them. THEY decided, and he became a tyrant when carrying out their will, democratical or oligarchal as the decision might have been. It was certainly in a sense popular - for the moment.

But more, it does not say "a tower reaching into heaven", but "a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven".

Cape Canaveral. Rocket on ramp looks like top of the overall tower. Rocket itself looks like a tower, and only its top is finally going into space.

Now, we are using H₂ as rocket fuel. We are so far not provoking nuke disasters, whatever else we may provoke by this. But imagine Nimrod hadn't known about this use of H₂. Imagine he only came across U as an idea. U as in Uranium, that thing which some still recalled not just the effects of in the later poem Mahabharata, but the causes of.

Imagine he had come across the idea this could cause a disaster on earth, but given up or even not cared to contemplate to warn people. "Oh, some people left on earth would no doubt die" - one can imagine him saying - "but would it matter for Humanity if instead of Earth we could invade and live in Heaven?"

And he didn't know, in order to get past the pearly gates alive, you need Sanctifying Grace. And he and the hopeful aspiring astronauts who were planning on knocking them down and chasing God from above (yes, Satan as seen in Isaiah inspiring his and their fury) most certainly didn't have it and would have died if passing the Pearly Gates that way.

God prevented not just this disaster from happening, but even another attempt from being made the next, say 4500 years. Up to now.

No, that is NOT an egregore of a traumatised nation which reflects their pettiness in some things. Not even an egregore in the psychological sense the word might also carry.

It is a God who can act with utmost concern for the wellbeing of His creatures, and then stand back not taking full credit for it until, millennia later, some geek with lots more curiosity than goodwill, lots more learning than holiness, gets caught in a debate about this - and gives an answer, a guess.

A geek who might not have thought even this far, if he hadn't been educated by reading Tolkien's Akallabêth. One of the best novels there are about what Flood, what Tower of Babel and Nimrod, what end of days and Matthew 24 are all about.

But a geek who has - at least in theory, when not put to the test - full confidence in the God of the OT being the loving Father - or the loving Son, the Saviour. His answer to Nimrod's plan was going down and knocking down the gates of Hades.

And really doing some good to those caught down there by Adam's sin.

The plouman ansuered then the preste
Sir I beleue in Ihesu Christe
who suffred deth and harwed Helle
as I haue herd mine elders telle.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Saint Teresa of Spain
15.X.2016

* I had read a French fantasy novel in which egregores are taken back to the land of the collective unconscious. Only four or six egregores had actually become human during the training which had made them agents. However, I do not recommend the concept. It sounds a bit too much like "mental hygiene" of the type which gave us psychiatry.