The Ancient world View
In all creation accounts, the physical-realm came into existence from the Spiritual-realm. Common to all accounts:
The physical realm was conceived in the spiritual realm, as an idea.
The idea was ‘spoken’ into existence by a command.
Spiritual principalities, energies, and powers obeyed the spoken command.
Material chaos was brought to order and structure, under the power of these principalities and laws.
Life was impregnated into an ordered, structured, material-realm.
Life was given purpose within a hierarchy, by the original spiritual idea and laws established at creation.
Common to all early cultures and stories of the time, Ideas belong to the spiritual realm, they cannot inhabit the physical realm without becoming concrete. Babylonians, ‘categorized’ this process, Greeks expanded it.
Explaining early world terms and concepts
Our next task must be to explain some early terms that have found their way into scripture.
Long before the modern obsession to categorize everything, a Greek named Anaxagoras16 caused controversy by reminding people, the planets are merely, ‘bodies in a state of incandescence and not gods’. Nonetheless, the planets remained the source of moral and spiritual values in the mind of the Greeks, for many more centuries, because they had been categorized by the personalities of their associated god. Certainly, by the time of the Romans, a clear distinction between ‘Spiritual kingdoms’ and ‘Physical kingdoms’, had been established. At the trial of Jesus for example, Pilot fully acknowledged the concept ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’, and was not at all threatened by it.17
The Elohim
The idea itself also needed co-operation. An idea had to go through a process of explanation, motivation, planning, choice of material, and craft skill, to reproduce it in the physical realms. Sumerians had a word for spiritual beings who oversaw this process, they called them Elohim. The ‘Elohim council’ were largely understood to be there for the purpose of producing the supreme Elohim’s Idea. The Elohim with the idea was the owner of the idea, and it was he18 who set the function, the purpose, and destiny of the idea.
Language progressed then as now, it is our concepts that have moved away from theirs, it is not their misconceptions. They did not write with the twenty-first centuryAD in mind. Words like: spirit, word, life, kingdom, domain, and rule, developed entirely different concepts as time and history progressed. The task of the introduction is to iron out some of these concepts, by comparing them with modern understandings.
Realms and worlds.
Mention, ‘Spiritual Realms’, and you will cause a reaction. Some, will switch off, some will become fearful, some will laugh, and some will imagine disembodied spirits floating around the world unseen, (except of course, by those who can see auras glowing around saintly souls). That, is most certainly not how early Babylonians and Egyptians understood this realm.
Two universities dominated the thinking of the early civilized world. The Egyptian University, (which majored in Politics), was mainly concerned about: Hierarchy, Order, Law, Society, and other Humanities. Babylon University, (which majored in Science), was more concerned with: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the structure of the universe.19 Mainly, Egypt turned out: lawyers, Priests, Rulers, Economists, and builders. While Babylon turned out: Sages, Zoroastrians, Designers, Artists, Writers, and Archivists. Egyptian philosophy generally centred around, economy and wealth, (which they thought you could take with you into the afterlife). The Babylonian philosophy, believing their knowledge could outwit the gods, tried to get into heaven to de-throne them.20 This philosophy later raised its head again in the Greeks, who considered the gods behaved badly.21 Between these two universities, academics categorized a ‘Hierarchy of Life’, starting with spiritual powers and beings, then on through Pharaohs and Kings down to slaves and immigrants.
Powers and Authorities
From the model (Figure 1), we can conclude History and kingdoms operate within a hierarchy :
Every kingdom in history has built on a variation on figure-one.
No human attempt to organize the world under this structure, has ever brought utopia.
Every kingdom of history under this model has perpetuated wars, divisions, and conflicts.
Every kingdom, of this structure has given way to a stronger force at some time in history.
Every kingdom built on this model has weakened and disintegrated by: internal ambition, disobedience, or rebellion against authority.
At heart, lays rebellion against the authority and hierarchy. Rebellion, breeds anarchy. Humans will never be able to agree on right and wrong. The Babel tower, was an attempt to build on that basis, ‘We will unite make ourselves great and kill the spiritual gods’22. It ended as the greatest scattering and diversity of opinion of all time. If humankind cannot agree voluntarily, one human will rise as the strongest to impose his will by force. Unity can never be imposed by force. At more than one point in history, Israel believed that was how the kingdom of God would function. Messiah would come and kick the enemy out, set up a world empire and reign forever with Israel as top nation by force. When Jesus said He would not build his kingdom that way, people left in droves. But had he done so, He would be no greater than Pharaohs, Caesars, Dictators, Popes, and the like; So many have set themselves up to rule this way, so many have tried to shape, and control the world by strength of power. The nature of the physical realm has a built-in decline of power by the rule of age and time, so not one person has kept it for long.
Each of the creation stories portray this model. Each of the stories encounters rebellion, in the Spiritual Realm which is copied in the Physical Realm.
16 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae a philosopher and scientist in Athens who said the planets were just rocks. For this he was sentenced to death but evaded it by leaving Athens.
17 John 18 :35 ff : (the word is kosmos meaning world not eon, meaning age),
18 As far as I could see, it was always male, with possibly one exception.
19 Star motions, Trigonometry, and even the law of equal and opposite forces can be found at foundation here.
20 Several sources record this as the reason for building the tower of Babel: Josephus quotes Sibyl: the Sibylline Oracles Book III.
21 Xenophanes, Plato and Socrates
22 Josephus tells us this was the objective behind the great tower.