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A Born-Again Planet

Benson C Saili

We call our planet Earth. Why that is so we  will explain at the appropriate time. It is the name by which ancient Greeks and the Sumerians of 6000 years ago called the planet whose relevance and aptness we wish to address at this juncture.

The ancient Greek name for Earth was GAEA. In what has been termed Greek “mythology”, GAEA is supposed to be the name of the Earth Goddess. It is therefore synonymous with Earth itself. But as we have said time and again, mythology is not simply mythology: all mythology has a basis in fact as we shall demonstrate shortly.

GAEA means the “Cleaved Watery One”.  It was at times rendered as GAIA and shortened as GA or GE. GE is the closest to what the Sumerians called the planet. They called it KI (which came to be pronounced as GE or GI by future civilisations) but this was an abbreviation. The full name was MUL-KI, meaning “a celestial body that has been cleaved apart”.    The term KI thus conveyed the meaning of something cut off (like a fragment), severed (like a stump), or hollowed out (like a valley, canyon, cleavage or ravine).  For example, KILA meant “excavation,” KIMAH meant “tomb,” and KI-IN-DAR meant “crevice or fissure”.  Today, KI is in most languages pronounced as GE. In English, all studies about some aspect of Earth’s physical features start with GE – Geology, Geography, Geometry. In Hebrew, “GAI” (which stems from GE/KI) means “valley”, a hollowed out landscape. What we refer to as Gehenna, the crevice-like narrow ravine south of Jerusalem, is actually Gai-Hinnom, meaning “Valley of Hinnom”.  

According to the ancient Greeks, GAEA came into existence after a chaotic cosmic event. In his famous epic, Theogony (meaning “Divine Genealogy”), Hesiod, the great Greek Poet (c. 750 to 650 BC),  writes thus of this incident: “Verily, at first Chaos came to be, and next the wide-bosomed Gaia—she who created all the immortal ones who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus: Dim Tartarus, wide-pathed in the depths, and Eros, fairest among the divine immortals … From Chaos came forth Erebus and black Nyx; And of Nyx were born Aether and Hemera.”

The “chaos” Hesiod talks about is the Celestial Battle and the tumultuous formation of the Solar System we read of in the Sumerian tablets, in consequence of which Earth arose from the destroyed planet Tiamat. Like the Sumerian chronicles, Hesiod recognizes that GAEA (Tiamat in this case) as the mother of the rest of the planets of our Solar System when he says GAEA “created all the immortal ones”.  Hesiod also lists the formation of three planets in pairs – Tartarus and Eros, Erebus and Nyx, Aether and Hemera, corresponding to what the Enuma Elish says in relation to Venus and Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.     

Note that at this stage of Hesiod’s   narration, “Heaven” is not yet in existence. It comes later as encapsulated in these following verses: “And Gaia then bore starry Ouranos —equal to herself—to envelop her on every side, to be an everlasting abode place for the gods. Equally split up. Gaia ceased to be Tiamat.” Listen carefully here: Hesiod says after Ouranos comes into being, GAEA is no longer known as Tiamat. That’s exactly what we’re told by the Enuma Elish – that GAEA (Earth) came out of the destruction of Tiamat. “Starry Ouranos” (Heaven) is what Genesis calls the “firmament” but whose literal translation is “Hammered out Bracelet”, that is, the Asteroid Belt. How true! The Asteroid Belt came into being only after Nibiru split Tiamat into two major components – Earth and the Asteroid fragments themselves.


Until January 1, 1801, when Guiseppe Piazzi “discovered” the first known asteroid called Ceres, astronomers thought the vast expanse between Jupiter and Mars was simply dark void. But 6,000 years ago, the Sumerians wrote in their clay tablets that in that space, there coursed a “watery” planet called Tiamat, which was broken up by an incoming Nibiru into two parts: one whole part which assumed a new orbit – our Earth – and pieces of floating debris which continued to drift in the same place – the Asteroid Belt. The Sumerians referred to the Asteroid Belt as RAKIA, meaning “Hammered-out Bracelet”. In the opening verses of Genesis, the term RAKIA is translated “firmament”. The firmament is alternatively called “Heaven” in these same verses, which is misleading as the word translated “Heaven” is SHAMAIM. SHAMAIM means “where the waters used to be”, that is, the place where planet TIAMAT used to be.  

That there existed a gigantic planet between Mars and Jupiter is not a matter of conjecture. It is scientifically and cosmogonically valid. As far back as 1776 in the modern age, the German astronomer and professor Johann Daniel Titius postulated that mathematical calculations made a planet between Mars and Jupiter warranted. In 1772, his compatriot Johann Elert Bode turned the Titius hypothesis into what became known as Bode’s Law. Bode’s Law holds that there by rights ought to be a planet between Mars and Jupiter. The Sumerians affirm that that indeed was the case: the planet was Tiamat and after its destruction by Nibiru, its remnants are what constitute Earth and the Asteroid Belt.

Now, we did at some stage put the Sumerian term Tiamat (meaning “The mother of all Life”, from ti = Life, ama = Mother, and t = feminine suffix)   in context. Tiamat in Akkadian is  rendered as TAMTU as per another respected Earth chronicler Robert Morning Sky whose mastery of ancient languages is staggering, and its meaning changes significantly but in fact reveals more.  TAMTU means “place of killed life” (from Ami [life]; Ata [to kill]; and Tu [at the place  of]), or simply Tamu, which means “of killed life”. Tamu is rendered Tehom (abbreviation for Tehomat) in the Old Testament, e.g. GENESIS 1:2, where it is translated as the “deep”.     

From the above, we can now appreciate why TAMTU was so-called. It means a “late planet”, a planet that was killed. That is the exact fate of Tiamat: it was killed by Nibiru! This scenario explains why in biblical times, the term Tehom no longer meant “of killed life”. It assumed new meanings, albeit related ones, which according to the authoritative Strong’s Concordance, could connote any watery deep such as the sea, large body of fresh water, or underground river; or abyss (a bottomless pit which could be the abode of the dead or a prison of fallen angels).  These newer meanings do have a direct bearing on Tiamat. Tiamat was a watery planet. After its destruction, the major remnant of Tiamat was planet Earth. For a time, Earth was figuratively a place of the dead since it existed for millions of years without life before it was seeded with life forms as related in the opening chapters of Genesis.  Earth is the killed planet Tiamat that reanimated and began life anew.     

The prophet Isaiah talks about the “Haughty One” (Tiamat) or “Tehom-Raba” (Mighty Tehom) who was “carved” by the “Lord” (Nibiru). Job makes mention of the “Lord” (Nibiru) who smote the “assistants (moons) of the Haughty One”. Job goes on to say, “The hammered canopy (Asteroid Belt)  stretched out in the place of Tehom; the Earth suspended in the void … His powers (Nibiru) the waters (of Tiamat) did arrest; His energy (Nibiru)  the Haughty One did cleave; His Wind  (Nibiru’s moon) the Hammered Bracelet (Asteroid Belt) measured out …”

Christians may deny the existence of Nibiru, not to mention the destroyed planet Tiamat but their very Holy Writ, the Bible, is replete with references to these most eminent celestial bodies!


Earth is a watery planet because Tiamat was a watery planet. But not all of Tiamat’s water was own-nurtured: much of it came from Nibiru, when it impacted Tiamat 4 billion years ago.

The Sumerian chronicles which characterise Nibiru as a watery planet abound. A considerable number of the 50 names that were assigned to the planet underscore its watery makeup. One of the planet’s other names was NAMTILLAKU, which meant "the god who maintains life” and there can be no life without water. Another was ASAR, the "watery king". The planet was also called   ASARU (“lofty, bright watery king") and ASAR-ULU-DU ("lofty, bright watery king whose deep is plentiful").  Furthermore, Nibiru was described as "bestower of cultivation," "creator of grain and herbs who causes vegetation to sprout … who opened the wells, apportioning waters of abundance", and the “irrigator of Heaven and Earth”.  The prophet Isaiah recalled to mind when the “Lord” (Nibiru) "carved the Haughty One (Tiamat), made spin the watery monster, dried up the waters of Tehom-Raba” and the Psalmist also says, in reverence to Nibiru, that "By thy might, the waters thou didst disperse; the leader of the watery monsters (Tiamat) thou didst break up."

When Nibiru slammed into Tiamat, a great deal of its water was imparted to the severed chunk that became Earth. As a cleaved, watery planet, how could Earth have looked like? Astronomers have puzzled as to why our planet is the way it is and no single astronomer has ventured a convincing answer. When we look at pictures of Earth that have been supplied us by NASA, we see a sexy, smooth, round globe. That is simply not the case. It is an exaggeration. What most people don’t know is that pictures of celestial bodies are first touched up by NASA before they are made public. Also, we have to bear in mind that when you take a picture of a celestial body, you are doing so at a considerable distance.  As a result, the picture will be substantially distorted because it is not a close-up.  

Certainly, pictures of celestial bodies all look perfectly spherical like a marble. Even the moon, not to mention the Sun, look perfectly globular when we look at them with the naked eye. That, rest assured folks, is an optical illusion. In 2014, the highly respected world-renowned black astrophycist Neil DeGrasse Tyson presented the world a more accurate image of Earth. He said Earth was not a perfect sphere but it was “pear-shaped” and was slightly wider south of the equator than north of it. This was quite a departure from what we had been given to understand all along – that Earth was a sphere albeit “slightly flattened at the poles”.  

What is not very obvious when we look at the traditional pictures of Earth is that it has  two distinct sides.  On the one side are all the seven continents, the land masses, and on the other side is a huge cleft that harbours a body of water we call the Pacific Ocean. If the Pacific Ocean were empty, Earth would have a huge gaping wound on its one side! Earth is the only planet in the Solar System which is like this and as we said earlier, planetary scientists are hard-pressed to come up with a viable explanation.

But the Sumerians did provide us the answer in their cuneiform clay tablets. They told us very plainly that Earth was once part of a large planet called Tiamat and when Tiamat was destroyed by Nibiru in the Celestial Battle, a huge piece was cut off to become the new planet Earth. Since this huge piece was “snapped” off another larger, watery one, it had a cavernous fracture on the one side. It was in this cavernous fracture that most of Earth’s waters collected as the Pacific Ocean.


At the time Earth became its own planet in the aftermath of the Celestial Battle, it was not made up of several separate continents like it is today. It consisted of one continuous land mass, a supercontinent surrounded by only one ocean – the Pacific. There were no other oceans such as the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and there were no seas like the Mediterranean for instance.

The primeval supercontinent has been dubbed “Pangaea” (from the Greek terms pan, meaning “all’, and gaia, meaning “Earth”) courtesy of the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener who first postulated the Theory of Tectonics in 1915.  According to this theory, the Earth’s crust, its uppermost layer, rests on a foundation which consists of movable plates known as Tectonic plates – about a dozen large ones and several small ones. From time to time in millions of years, these plates not only drift from one another but also come together as well as slip past each other. For example, it has been observed that the Pacific Ocean is actually narrowing whilst the Atlantic Ocean is widening.  

Pangaea, which covered about half the planet according to geophysicists, began to break up about 225 to 65 million years ago to give rise to the seven separate continents we have today. The Pangaea theory is a resounding attestation to what the Sumerians relate in their cuneiform clay tablets – that when Earth was severed from Tiamat 4 billion years ago, it was surrounded by water. Then over time, the water gathered into the other side which had a huge, canyon-like hole, leaving one intact side bare.  This intact side was what we now call Pangaea.   

The Theory of Tectonics was also pointed out in the Sumerian records as well as the Old Testament. There are several passages in the Old Testament that allude to the Earth as being established on a “foundation” of sorts. For example, PSALM 24 states that, “The Lord’s (Nibiru) is the Earth and its entirety, the world and all that dwells therein. For He hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.”


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A “Virgin” Conceives

2nd March 2021

Princess Mary falls pregnant only one month after her betrothal to Prince Joseph

To put the lineage of Mary the mother of Jesus in context, General Atiku, it is in order that we begin with her grandfather Yehoshua  (Jesus in Greek) III.

Mary was offspring of two royal lines, the Davidic line and the Hasmonean line. Yehoshua III was the Herod–appointed High Priest of Israel between 36 and 23 BC.  He had no sons, only three daughters namely Joanna, Elizabeth, and Anna, all of whom he organised dynastic suitors.

Elizabeth would be married off into the House of Aaron, the legitimate priestly line, and Joanna and Anna would be married off into the House of David, the legitimate kingly line. That’s how Elizabeth became the wife of Zechariah of the tribe of Levi and in due course the mother of John the Baptist.

Mainstream Israel up to the level of the Sanhedrin had recognised Anna as the eligible mother of the future King of Israel and not the sitting impostor Herod (it is not clear what happened to first-born Joanna but she probably passed away before she got married). Anna was accordingly married off to Alexander III, a Davidic and Hasmonean prince who was best known as Heli as indeed the genealogy of Luke clearly attests.

Heli and Anna too had no sons. They only had daughters, the firstborn of whom was Dorcas, whose was born in 26 BC and whose titular name was Mary.  Mary was orphaned early in her childhood when her father Heli was killed in 17 BC at the orders of the increasingly paranoid Herod and when her mother Anna died a year or so later.

Since she was a dynastic heiress, it was likely that Herod would come after her. The Essenes thus secreted her somewhere in remote Galilee. It was actually in Galilee that most members of the Davidic royal line were concentrated not only to keep as far away from Herod as possible but to also enjoy the protective custody of the Zealots, who were the secret military wing of the Essenes and a thorn in the side of both Herod and the Romans.  Joseph was also officially based in Galilee although both he and Mary were in truth based at Qumran in the Judean wilds.


Dynastic marriages are often more politically strategic than spontaneous, General. For example, the union of Prince Charles and Princess Diana was motivated by the need to fuse the Windsor genes with those of the Stuarts as the Windsors, being predominantly Reptilians, were finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their human form.

The Stuarts, the clan of Diana, had by far more human genes than Reptilian and they too were an aristocratic family. That’s why once Charles had produced a  “heir and a spare”, he completely sidelined Diana, who he had never loved, and devoted himself to his real love – Camilla Parker-Bowles.

The marriage of Joseph to Mary, General, was equally strategic. Although both were from the tribe of Judah and of the royal Davidic line, they were from different branches.  Joseph was a descendant of Solomon, whereas Mary was a descendant of Nathan, Solomon’s elder brother. The line of Solomon, as we once underlined, had been tainted by the Jeconiah curse.

The line of Nathan was clean. Since the son of Joseph and Mary would be the future King of Israel, it was important that he not be compromised by the baggage, rightly or wrongly, of the Jeconiah curse. Hence the desirability of the union of Prince Joseph and Princess Mary.

Now, both Joseph and Mary’s clans were Essenes. As such, their marriage process, formalities, and protocols had to strictly adhere to Essene dynastic rules. The Essenes were in ranks. Amongst the higher echelons were the two great dynasties, the Davids and the Zadoks, who had been the high priests and kings of Israel respectively before the destruction of the Temple by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BC.

The Davids and Zadoks lived a strictly holy life, typically in a monastery at Qumran, the reclusive headquarters of the Essenes. They were sequestered there so that they did not fall prey to the machinations of the bloodthirsty King Herod though officially their address was Galilee.  In fact, the major reason the Essene movement had come into existence was to preserve and safeguard the Davidic and Zadokite lines, the religio-politico haunt of Herod and the Hasmoneans initially.

According to the Essene code, General, the Zadoks and the Davids were not to engage in sex for recreational purposes because it was regarded as defiling: it diluted holiness. The only times they were supposed to do so was when need arose to produce heirs. In 8 BC, it was now opportune for Joseph, the David, to produce a heir and so he was excused from a life of chastity.

At this point in time in fact, the Essenes were focused on two dynastic figures. These were Joseph and Zechariah. The two were expected to produce the Messiah of David and the Messiah of Aaron, that is, the future King of Israel and the future High Priest of Israel.

According to Essene rules, the David had to marry at age 36, so that by the time he was 40, he had already sired a heir. The new heir had to be born when the David was 37. If the child was a daughter, she could not inherit, and so the David had to set about the procreation of a second-born, who hopefully would be a boy (copulation to that end was allowed only when the daughter was 3 years old).

The Davidic heir had to be born not in any other month but in September, the holiest in the Jewish calendar. In order to conform to these parameters, a betrothal ceremony was held at the beginning of June. During the betrothal period – the three months from beginning of June to end of August – sexual relations were not permitted.

Then at the beginning of September, a First Marriage was held. This was the beginning of the marriage proper as now the couple were allowed to become intimate. However, the intimacy began only in December, with a view to delivering a heir in September the following year. At the end of March, the Second Marriage was held for it was hoped that by that time the spouse was three months pregnant if there hadn’t been a miscarriage. With the Second Marriage, the wedlock was permanent: divorce was never allowed whatsoever.

Meanwhile, General, if the spouse hadn’t conceived in December, sexual relations were suspended till December the following year. The husband would then leave her spouse and return either to the monastery at Qumran or embark on a tour of duty elsewhere in furtherance of the Essene cause.


According to the Dead Sea Scrolls, General, the Essenes were not only a spiritual, revolutionary, and philosophical movement. They were also ardent believers in astrology. They meticulously studied the stars and the movements of planets to read what they portended about the future.

Thus the reason a Davidic heir had to be born in September was not only because this was the holiest month of the year: it was also in recognition of the fact that September was ruled by the constellation Virgo. In other words, September was astrologically the month of the virgin. That was what Mary was.

Mary was both a virgin physically and a virgin titularly. A bride of the future king was required to be a virgin. As an Essene, Mary belonged to the Order (not the tribe) of Dan.  This was the Order of Nuns, or virgins, both legal and physical virgins. Thus in the Order of Dan, a woman was not a virgin only before she slept with a man: she was a virgin until she was six months pregnant. In the case of a dynastic spouse like Mary, this was up to end of June.  From then henceforth, she was promoted within the Order to the first stage of a Mother.

Joseph’s betrothal to Mary took place at Qumran in June 8 BC. Now, in our day, betrothal simply means engagement to be married. In ancient Israel up to New Testament times, betrothal was part and parcel of the marriage contract. It was definite and binding upon both groom and bride, who were considered as man and wife in all legal and religious aspects, except that sexual relations were not permitted.

For example, in 2 SAMUEL 3:14, King David refers to his betrothed woman as “my wife”. Also in DEUTERONOMY 22:24, a betrothed woman is referred to as “his neighbour’s wife”.  In the betrothal formalities, dowry and bride price were included. If a bride and groom for one reason or the other wanted to opt out of the betrothal after the betrothal ceremony, they had to seek a formal divorce.

Since the betrothal took place in June, General, Joseph and Mary were not supposed to make love till December, that is, six months after the betrothal ceremony and three months after the First Marriage ceremony in September. Just one month after the betrothal ceremony (that is, at the beginning of July 8 BC), however, Mary became pregnant. Was it Joseph, General? Was it rape by a Roman soldier called Panthera as some contemporary records suggest? Or was it simply the supernatural act of the “Holy Spirit” as Christendom holds?


Those who hold that the circumstances of Mary’s pregnancy were supernatural, General, can be excused. This is because the language employed therein smacks of ethereality – Holy Spirit, Angel Gabriel, Son of the Most High, etc. To those who have read and rigorously studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, such terminology is well within the temporal context.

That is to say, it does not carry spiritual connotations as such. True, the idea of an angel speaking to Joseph and Mary in their sleep may seem supernatural but the dreams are theological interpolations, inserted into the gospels in onward editing to fit a contrived agenda – what Karl Marx called the opium of the masses.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are so named because they were discovered in caves around the Qumran plateau of the West Bank (about 40 km east of Jerusalem), at the northwest corner of the Dead Sea, in March 1947. The discoverer was a Bedouin shepherd kid who was looking for a lost goat. The scrolls were found hidden in jars.

The 1947 find was the initial discovery: more discoveries were made after further excavations on the same site spanning 11 years in a series of 11 caves. Altogether, 972 texts were   turned up. They are written in four languages, namely Hebrew (the majority), Aramaic, Greek, and Nabatean, mostly on parchment. Other texts were inscribed on papyrus and bronze.

Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are fragments. Fragments of all the Old Testament books have been found save for the book of Esther. The only complete book is Isaiah.  There are also apocryphal books (those arbitrarily excluded from the Old Testament canon by the Constantine-convened Nicene Council of AD 325) such as the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilees, and sect-specific writings that embody rules and beliefs of the people who compiled them.

The latter include commentaries on the Old Testament, paraphrases that expand on the Law of Moses, rule books of the community, war conduct, thanksgiving psalms, hymnic compositions, benedictions, liturgical texts, and sapiential (wisdom) writing. These texts have been given appropriate titles such as the War Scroll; Manual of Discipline; the Community Rule; the Temple Scroll; the Copper Scroll; etc.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written/preserved by the Essenes between 168 BC and 68 AD. We know this because Pliny, the first century Roman historian, wrote that, “On the west coast of Lake Asphaltitis (the Dead Sea) are settled the Essenes, at some distance from the noisome odours that are experienced on the shore itself.

They are a lonely people, the most extraordinary in the world, who live without women, without love, without money, with the palm trees for their only companions.”   The Essenes stashed away the scrolls sometime in 70 AD, when Roman General Flavius Titus overran Jerusalem and laid waste to the Temple following a catastrophic Jewish uprising – led by the Zealots, the military wing of the Essenes – that began in 66 BC.

This they did in heed of JEREMIAH 32:14, which says, “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Take these evidences … and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days.” The Dead Sea Scrolls have given us invaluable insight into the beliefs, customs, rituals, politics, philosophies, and traditions of first century Palestine.


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A crash course in publicity

2nd March 2021

The rivalry between luxury German automotive marques Mercedes-Benz and BMW is legendary. Both brands offer high-end, high-priced desirable models, always at the forefront of cutting-edge driving technology and excellence. And in the annals of the advertising world, a campaign between the two rivals is equally legendary and it happened on our own doorstep.

Many of you will be familiar with the coastal road out of Cape Town called Chapman’s Peak. It is a beautiful, sightseeing attraction, the road winding through spectacular coastal-mountain scenery, with cliffs sinking into the  Atlantic ocean on one side, and steep mountains towering over the road on the other. However, the road is also notoriously dangerous, with its 114 sharp, meandering bends . It’s reputation is well-deserved . Several years ago, when a major coastal cleanup campaign was launched, a helicopter pulled a total of 22 wrecked cars out of the water adjacent to Chapman’s Peak and it was one such accident which prefaced the notorious marketing battle. The story is thus:

In 1988 an Irish businessman lost control of his Mercedes Benz when driving along this road, plunging 100 metres down the cliff. Miraculously, he not only survived the accident, but crawled out of the wreckage with hardly a scratch on his body.

When Mercedes heard the details, the marketing department decided to base a new advertisement on the story to promote the safety features and stability of the brand. In the video ad they intentionally drove an identical model off the road in the exact same location, having it plunge off the edge of the cliff, the driver stepping out similarly unscathed, proving the phenomenal survivability and strength of Mercedes Benz.

When the marketing suits at BMW saw this ad, they took a bold and ingenious decision to mimic it but with a twist. Only a week later, whilst the first ad was still fresh in the public’s minds, they shot their ad showing a BMW driving along the exact same stretch of road in the rain. However, when it reached the point at which the Mercedes plunged off the cliff, the BMW negotiated it safely, and continued driving along the road.

The catchphrase of the ad was “BMW beats the bends” . Or was it? It was cunningly recorded so that it could equally have been ‘beats the Benz’, implying that their cars had superior cornering and stability to their rival, Even more sneakily, they launched their campaign on a Saturday, mindful of the rules on competitive advertising in South Africa, safe in the knowledge that no objectionable actions could be taken till the new working week.

Mercedes-Benz wasted no time on Monday in issuing an injunction, the ad was swiftly pulled but the damage was done and the dog had had its day. The ad campaign ranks high in the history of advertising and can still be found online to this day. Meanwhile the rivalry between the two automotive greats goes on.

I reference this piece of marketing history in the light of this week’s horror crash by golfing great, Tiger Woods. Driving from a luxury holiday resort in California to a nearby country club Tiger Woods lost control of his vehicle on a downhill stretch of the road, smashed through a road sign, crossed over the central reservation and rolled his car several hundred feet. He had to be cut out and pulled to safety through the windscreen and the vehicle was so badly damaged, the attending police officers said he was ‘lucky to survive’.

The vehicle Woods was driving was a rented Genesis GV80 SUV. If you are unfamiliar with the brand that is not surprising since it is a relatively new spin-off from the South Korean Hyundai marque. The Genesis utility vehicle, not available locally yet, retails for around $50,000 or half a million pula, placing it in the higher end of town and country SUVs in the USA.

The model has certainly been widely publicised in the media coverage of the high-profile sportsman’s accident and I suspect that if asked to comment, Hyundai/Genesis would disagree with the police assessment, putting Woods’ survival down to build quality and in-built safety features such as crumple zones, anti-roll bars and airbags, which were deployed in the crash and would most certainly have played their part cushioning the effects of the rolling and ultimate impact. There is , of course, no suggestion that the manufacturers will capitalise on Woods’ survival but certainly it will have done the brand no harm that he did indeed emerge with recoverable injuries.

Comparing the two accidents, the driver of the Mercedes driving along Chapman’s Peak was, of course, an ordinary member of the public whilst Tiger Woods is a household name. That said, in humanitarian terms each tale of survival carries equal weight but the fact remains that the former was just another local story of yet one more victim of a notoriously tricky stretch of road whilst the latter went round the world in an instant because of the fame and name of the driver.

There is also no evidence that that stretch of Californian urban highway carried any inherent risk. His appears to have been just a loss of control and a freak accident. However, in the event that Hyundai/Genesis should consider making capital from that accident, a note of caution needs to be sounded.

In the advertising world, the use of celebrities to promote a product is a fall-back stance to sell anything from washing-up liquid to whisky but statistics have shown that it can be a double-edged sword in that yes, the ads are memorable and the public love them when the celeb is popular and personable. But…..what is often remembered is the name of the famous promoter, not the name of the product. In other words, they sell themselves far better than they sell the item.

In golfing terminology Hyundai/Genesis are not ‘out of the Woods’ yet and maybe they should go with a completely different Driver!

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Pact with the Devil

2nd March 2021

How Jesus’s grandfather sold his birthright to megalomaniac Herod

If you were to ask a Christian to name the main Jewish sects, General Atiku, he would no doubt begin with the Pharisees (because Jesus had innumerable slanging matches with  them according to the gospels), followed by the Sadducees.  Yet there was a third, equally momentous sect – the Essenes.

Although there’s not a single, one mention of the Essenes in the Bible, General, the New Testament is filled with Essene-type language as anybody who has read the Dead Sea Scrolls would readily recognise.

In point of fact, it was the Essenes who produced Jesus as well as the infamous Jewish band of freedom fighters known as the Zealots. Furthermore, almost all the New Testament writers were either Essenes or champions of the Essene cause as is apparent in their language and the drift of their overall philosophy.   The Essenes have a palpable presence in the Bible, albeit a cloaked one.

The Essenes, General, were the most popular, the most esteemed, and the most influential of the Jewish sects. The Jewish historian Philo (20 BC-50 AD) devotes 90 percent of his description of the Jewish sects to the Essenes. He wrote that the Essenes  “dwell in many cities of Judea and in many villages and in great societies of many numbers”.

Hyppolytus of Rome (170-236 AD) devoted nine-and-half chapters to the Essenes and only one to the Sadducees.     The Essenes are the authors of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which were discovered in 1947 in Israel at a place called Qumran and which have given us even greater insight into the happenings in the first century than the Bible itself.

How did the Essene movement come about, General?  The Essenes, meaning “puritans of the faith”, were the Jewish sect that was the most loyal to the Davidic dynasty. They set themselves apart from the mainstream Jewish community circa 175 BC and established their headquarters at Qumran,  about 40 km from Jerusalem.

Since the Jewish nation revered the Davidic royal line, the only legitimate and rightful rulers of Judah in their view, they rallied to the Essenes en masse. And because the Essenes were disparaging of the Hasmonean rule (140 BC to 63 BC), the mainstream Jews also took a dismissive view of Hasmonean rule too.

The Essenes were so highly regarded because of their virtue and spirituality. The legendary Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (37-100 AD) writes thus of them: “They are more mutually affectionate than the others (Pharisees and Sadducees). Whereas these men shun the pleasures as vice, they consider self-control and not succumbing to the passions virtue  … Since [they are] despisers of wealth –  their communal stock is astonishing – one cannot find a person among them who has more in terms of possessions.

For by a law, those coming into the school (that is, the Essene fold) must yield up their funds to the order, with the result that in all [their ranks] neither the humiliation of poverty nor the superiority of wealth is detectable, but the assets of each one have been mixed in together, as if they were brothers, to create one fund for all.”

In time, the Essenes, General, became quite influential even with occupying powers. For instance, when the Greek General Pompey installed Hyrcanus II as ruler of  Palestine in 63 BC,  he sought the opinion  of the Essenes. The Essenes recommended that Hyrcanus go by the titles High Priest and Prince, not King, to which Pompey paid heed. In  142 BC, when Simon was installed by the Seleucids as ruler of Palestine, the Essenes had insisted on the same titular style. To the Essenes, everybody who occupied Israel’s seat of authority was simply holding fort for the real deal – the Davidic  King.

In 37 BC, when Herod became King of Palestine, the potential Davidic King was Jacob-Eliakim – the father of the Joseph of the gospels – who was an Essene himself. It was in order to win the blessings of the historically popular Jewish royal family that Herod sought to curry favour with the Essenes.


About the time Herod came to power, General, there were three citizens of considerable stature in Palestine – Hillel, Menahem, and Jacob-Eliakim, the grandfather of Jesus. Hillel is by all accounts ancient Israel’s greatest teacher and scholar.

He was the foremost spiritual sage in the development of the Talmud and the Mishnah, the most authoritative religious references of the Jews which are second only to the Old Testament in esteem.   The renowned “Golden Rule”, which is invariably attributed to Jesus, was actually coined by Hillel. It is not certain whether Hillel was an Essene but his teachings did have a profound influence both on Essene philosophy and that of Jesus, who was an Essene too.

It was Menahem, however, who was an incontrovertible Essene. The Essenes were of two main branches, General. First, there were the puritans, the Palestinian Essenes. Then there were the liberals, the Diaspora Essenes, who sneered at the Palestinian Essenes’ dogmatism and rather strict views on morality. Menahem was the leader of the  Diaspora Essenes.

He was also privilleged to be advisor to King Herod. Herod did hold Menahem in very high regard. Josephus relates that when Herod was a school-going lad, Menahem had patted him on his back and said to him, “one day you will be King young man.” Since the prophecy came to pass, Herod had a certain, atypical respect both for Menahem and the order of Essenes.

Jacob-Eliakim’s significance was by virtue of his pedigree. He was of the royal line of David and was therefore the uncrowned King of the Jews. Now, as we have already indicated, Herod had his own grand designs about rulership of the world notwithstanding the fact that he was in reality a vassal of Rome.

When he made overtures to the trio, they didn’t mince words: they told him that in the new Israel, the Israel that would rule Earth once the Romans had been toppled from the pedestal of world power, it was a Davidic King who would reign. Herod took very strong  exception to such a prospect. Herod was neither a full-blooded Jew nor of Davidic stock but he was royalty in his own right.

His father, Antipater,  had been the governor of Idumea and in due course Judea in  the Hasmonean government and was in fact the real ruler of the entire Palestine, with John Hyrcanus being a  mere figurehead king.  When he (Herod) was only 25 years old, his father had appointed him governor of Galilee.   Herod thus had strutted the corridors of power from the day he was born and he wasn’t going to give that up easily either for his own sake or that of his descendants.

As such, General, Herod maintained to the trio that in the new, overarching Kingdom of Israel, he was going to be the emperor and would be based in Jerusalem. Just like the Greek empire of Alexander had been a triarchy (a kingdom divided into three governments), the global Kingdom of Israel (“Thy Kingdom Come” in the Lord’s Prayer) was going to be likewise.

There was going to be a ruler in the east, a ruler in the west, and a ruler in the centre, that is Jerusalem, under the oversight of Herod himself. Hillel would rule in Jerusalem; Menahem in the east; and Jacob-Eliakim in the west. If these three happened to have disappeared from the Earthly scene by the time the Kingdom of Israel came into being, their descendants would observe the same setup.

The pecking order would thus be like this: Herod as the emperor; Hillel as the senior king; Menahem as the second-ranked king; and Jacob-Eliakim as the junior king. Put differently, Herod had by the stroke of a pen reduced the Davidic dynasty from foremost to least important as it posed the most serious threat to his office. Meanwhile, the three kings-in-waiting would go by the names of the Old Testament patriarchs.

Hillel would henceforth be called the Abraham, or the Father (or Papa, which later morphed into Pope), since Abraham was the Father of the Jewish nation; Menahem would be called the Isaac (Abraham’s son); and Eliakim the Jacob (Isaac’s son). Half a loaf was better than nothing at all and so Jacob-Eliakim meekly accepted this arrangement.

When Jesus later said, “Many will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the new Kingdom of Heaven (MATTHEW 8:11),” he did not mean an afterlife kingdom: he referred to the Earthly setup proposed by King Herod.


Those days, General, the Davidic heir used the title “Jacob” rather than “David” as the latter title was very risky, particularly under the Hasmonean government. Given that Joseph was the most beloved son of the Old Testament Jacob, the next in line, that is, the firstborn son of the Jacob, used the title “Joseph”.

In September 44 BC, a son was born to Jacob-Eliakim. As the crown prince to the Jacob, he was given the titular name Joseph, the name by which he became best-known.  Like his father Jacob-Eliakim, Joseph was a missionary. But he also had a trade. He was a carpenter, a boat builder primarily, and a master of his craft. The word translated “carpenter” in the Bible is the ancient Greek word “ho hekton” which means a master artisan or craftsman.

In 31 BC, Qumran, the Essenes’ Judean wilderness bastion, was struck by an earthquake. The hermitic Essenes had no choice but to trek back to Jerusalem, from where they operated indefinitely at a place they called the Essene Gate. Then in 23 BC, Herod struck again. He had Jacob-Eliakim killed on trumped-up charges of sedition, his motive simply being a continuation of a systematic purge of  the Davidic “pretenders” to his throne.

The Essenes were wroth. They now set about promulgating to the Diaspora Essenes that Herod would have no part to play in the coming Kingdom. Instead, the overall King would be Joseph, the son of Jacob-Eliakim. This, General, was the beginning of a permanent rift between Herod and the Essene sect.


The prospective global world, General, was subdivided into ten provinces to facilitate governance and tax collection. Palestine would have two provinces, Judea and Samaria, the latter of which would include Galilee. Asia Minor (largely present-day Turkey), where the bulk of Diaspora Jews were concentrated, would have five provinces.

The last three provinces would be Babylon, Rome, and Alexandria in Egypt. The future capital of the West was not Rome: it was Ephesus in Asia Minor. Having been allocated the West, it was in Ephesus and Alexandria that Jacob-Eliakim spent most of his time evangelizing to fellow Jews about the future Kingdom of Israel. This was the beginning of the New Covenant, whereby Jews who converted to the ideal of a new Kingdom of Israel were baptised by immersion in water.

To mainstream Palestinian Jews, General, Jacob-Eliakim was a sellout. Herod had demoted his pedigree but to somewhat placate him, he gave him the honorary title of Patriarch or Prince of Jerusalem. By subordinating the Davidic throne-in-waiting to Herod, Jacob-Eliakim had  gone against what the nation of Israel’s God, Enlil, the Bible’s main Jehovah, decreed – that every King of Judah had to be a descendant of  David. So when the unpredictable Herod had him killed in 23 BC for “sedition”, as part of a pogrom against the line of David, there was very little sympathy for him.

In 44 BC, Joseph had been born to Jacob-Eliakim. Joseph was a title: it was not his real name. At the death of his father, Joseph became the Jacob. However, he preferred the title “David”, the more apt one historically. Joseph would become the father of Jesus. When Joseph attained 30 years of age in 14 BC, his uncles and the Essene sages sent him to Rome and Alexandria to do his part in missionary work, which was simply about promulgating to the Diaspora Jews the future Kingdom of Israel in which a Son of David, that is a descendant of King David, would rule.   Egypt was also a special place because Joseph’s maternal relations were Egyptians.

Jacob-Eliakim, General, had two wives. The one was called Euchariah, a Jewish princess, of whom very little is known, and the other, the dynastic wife, was an Egyptian princess, a daughter of Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt and Julius Caesar. Jacob-Eliakim and this princess had three sons: they were Joseph, the father of Jesus, and the twins Cleopas (after whom James, Jesus’ immediate younger brother, whose given name was Cleopas, was named) and Ptolas. Joseph was thus the Davidian Prince of Israel as well as contender to Crown Prince of Egypt. Despite pretences to the contrary on the part of the Jews, Egypt and Israel have always had ties of monarchical kinship.

In 8 BC, General, Joseph was required by Essene custom to return home and fulfill his obligations for a dynastic marriage. A wife-to-be had already been chosen for him by his uncles  and other patriarchal Essenes. This was Dorcas, better known today by her title name Mary.


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