A Theoretical Reconstruction of God

Those of you who have read my books or the summaries thereof will know that in my opinion Jehova does not exist (Moses was the firstborn son of Amenhotep III) and that everything about Jesus Christ, also known as Simon Magus and who later adopting the alias St Paul of Tarsus, was a lie. What should we think then of all the ancient priests and prophets who claimed that God spoke to them? In fact, how exactly does God speak to a human being? Certainly not in an audible voice, since that is physically impossible. In dreams? That would mean that when the priests, televangelists and pastors claim that God has a message for us, we have to listen to their dreams? The answer most likely is that they merely give us their interpretation of the ancient texts, but anyone who claims that God has spoken or revealed anything to them, is lying, as were the ancient Jewish priests and prophets.

In this article I will propose, from a theoretical point of view, what I think the best is that we could possibly hope “God” to be.

Just some of the difficulties with the Bible

In defence of my work

Reconstructing God …

Just some of the difficulties with the Bible

Not only that, by far the majority of these preachers seem to be unaware of or unwilling to acknowledge the fact that many of the foundations of their religion can also be found in other religions, creating all sorts of problems for the message of the Bible.

• As an example, the Old Testament priests recorded that Moses was put in a bitumen-sealed basket on the Nile for an Egyptian princess to find. By an almighty coincidence, though, that was exactly what had supposedly happened to the Babylonian king Sargon, who predates Moses by about 1000 years:

  "My lowly mother conceived me, in secret she brought me forth. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she closed my door. She cast me into the river, which rose not over me. … Akki, the irrigator, with … lifted me out. Akki, the irrigator, as his own son … reared me … While I was a gardener, the goddess Ishtar loved me, and for … four years I ruled the kingdom.”

Clearly, this Babylonian fable was adopted by the early Hebrew scribes to hide the true origins of Moses. A question to the televangelists, pastors, priests and the like - would you dare mention this to your flock, your sheep, or do you dishonestly cower away from doing so?

Even more importantly, we have to story of the Serpent and the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve sinned and caused all of us to be doomed forever. To modern preachers - are you familiar with the fact that the slaying of the Serpent under the Tree of Life was well known in Egyptian and even Babylonian cultures long before biblical times, but that in Egypt the slaying of the Serpent was done by Bastet, and not Jehovah? See more in my discussion of The Atlanteans and the Jews in Egypt, The Burka and the Original Sin and The Garden of Eden in Egypt. How would you interpret these ancient legends, which predate the Bible? Scared that you may confuse the flock, who are supposed not to think but only to “believe”?

The ultimate proof that the Bible is built on a lie. Dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were (are) real. We have found there fossilized remains all over the world. Where do they feature in the Bible? They could not, because human beings, as we define ourselves, were not yet present on the earth back then. Whence then the so-called creation myths, of which many exist? In the Bible we read that God created the earth, which was initially engulfed in darkness and the sea. The water eventually receded and land (re)appeared, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden and God later instructed Noah to build an Ark to survive the coming Great Deluge. All of this was supposed to have happened about 10 000 years ago. It is quite obvious, and I’m sure others must also have realized this, that the deluge must have come before the so-called “creation” of the world and not the other way round (see here), and that the deluge must have been caused by the impact of a comet or asteroid or some other celestial body, with Earth.

More than 500 Noah (deluge) legends can be found in many cultures around the world (see for example here), with at least 62 of these having been found to be entirely independent of the Mesopotamian and Hebrew accounts. In the Epic of Gilgamesh a character called Utnapishtim was tasked by the god Enki to abandon his worldly possessions and construct a giant ship to weather the Great Deluge that would destroy mankind. Like Noah, he was instructed to bring all of his relatives and all a pair of all living species aboard the vessel (let’s rather not discuss the practicality of that.

So, if all animal species were created after the biblical creation of the Earth, where do the 240 million years from the arrival of the dinosaurs on Earth to our day and age fit in?

And if a loving, caring God exists, as religious people in general claim, why did he, she or it give us the ability to reason and then allow us to find dinosaur fossils embedded in solidified rock layers which are millions of years old? To deliberately confuse us and send us to hell forever?

And then we have the issue of eternal punishment. Due to the nature of my work, I would certainly qualify to be condemned to burn in hell forever. How long might forever be? If we consider every grain of sand in the ocean to represent a billion years, we can think of all the grains of sand in the sea as representing eternity. Actually, that would then still only be like the first second of eternity. And all that time I would be screaming my lungs out in physical agony, horror and hopelessness, all inflicted upon me by God’s angel of Wrath, the devil. How do Christians reconcile their god with such cruelty? Are they not like the Nazis who worshipped Hitler while he was annihilating the world? In the words of John Collier (1850-1934),

"An omnipotent Deity who sentences even the vilest of his creatures to eternal torture is infinitely more cruel than the cruellest man."

Anyone who believes in eternal punishment is positively insane.

In defence of my work

Before I continue, I have often been asked why none of the thousands if not hundreds of thousands of scholars who have studied the Bible and still do, seem to have come to just about any of the significant conclusions that I have. To be honest, I find it quite incomprehensible that they have not been able to connect the dots. Perhaps their minds have simply become so cluttered with vast volumes of information, that they cannot stand back and look at the picture (puzzle) as a whole. Some pieces are in perfect condition and known to be part of the puzzle, while others (such as myths and legends) have become stained or frayed at the edges over time. Yet, they still help us complete the puzzle, even though a large number will probably remain missing.  This is quite possibly the reason why none of them agree with me – I studied every myth and legend with an open mind, as it might just contain a vital piece of information.

As an example, Manetho is the only ancient historian who names Amenhotep III as the pharaoh of the Exodus and therefore the time of the Exodus, yet no modern scholar seems to even mention Manetho. I have uncovered substantial evidence that Moses and crown prince Tuthmosis, Amenhotep’s firstborn son, were one and the same person (see brief discussion once again below).

Another example is my identification of Simon Peter with Josephus’s Simon bar Gioras. Albinus and Agrippa attempted to eliminate the sicarii, the murderous assassins of Simon bar Gioras, the leader of one of the factions which rose against the Romans. Bar Gioras abducted the loved ones of his enemies, whom he then exchanged for his captured followers. In the apocryphal (i.e. not something scholars would never take seriously) The Acts of Peter, XXXIV, from M. R. James’s 1924 The Apocryphal New Testament, we learn that the beautiful wives and concubines of Albinus and Agrippa just happened to leave their lives of luxury to join Simon Peter, an uneducated, poor fisherman?? He abducted them!!! Josephus recorded that Albinus and Agrippa both raged, knowing the fate of beloved wives. This is the DNA at the crime scene, and once you have realised that, lots of supporting evidence can be found – you just have to look hard enough in the right places (such as, if Simon bar Gioras and Simon Peter were the same person, could John the Beloved not be identified with John of Gischala, and Lazarus with Eleazar, the leaders of the other two factions opposing the Romans? The answer quite simply is, yes, they were the same persons).  Come on!! How could you have missed this?? Most likely because you do not read widely enough. There was no penny to drop.

Academics and scholarship

I would like to give you an example of brilliant and intense scholarship, that ended up in, well, just about nothing. Let me begin with one of most important discoveries I have ever made regarding Jesus Christ. It came the moment I read a specific part in Robert Eisler’s The Messiah Jesus and John the Baptist, which he published in 1931. Eisler was truly a formidable scholar as is summarised appropriately in the Wikipedia article about him,

Robert Eisler (27 April 1882 – 17 December 1949) was an Austrian Jewish polymath who wrote about the topics of mythology, comparative religion, the Gospels, monetary policy, art history, history of science, psychoanalysis, politics, astrology, history of currency, and value theory. He lectured at the Sorbonne and Oxford, served briefly on the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation in Paris after World War I, … He is best remembered today for advancing a new picture of the historical Jesus based on his interpretation of the Slavonic Josephus manuscript tradition, proposing a dual currency system to control inflation, and arguing for a prehistoric derivation of human violence in Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism, and Lycanthropy.

In other words, he became a major contributor in just about everything field of study that interested him. In his Author’s Preface to his book, he claims that his work is “fundamentally different in method, scope and outlook from any ‘Life of Christ’ or any other Jewish People in the Time of Jesus”. He claims to show,

Why do I mention this lengthy extract from his Author’s Preface? Obviously, because I believe he was 100% correct in these assertions and I could never have described it more eloquently than he did. However, as I will show next, I do not necessarily agree with his conclusions, for good reasons.

Amongst numerous aspects of this study, and this was probably the main focus of his work, Eisler was interested in the physical appearance of both Christ and Paul and dedicated three entire chapters to it (pp.312 – 456). He soon came to the realisation that their physical appearances were for all intents and purposes identical (pp. 446, 452),

“A glance at the personal description of Paul already given shows at once that the tradition has come down to us in a form exactly corresponding to the one found in the iconismus (imagery) of Jesus, … This resemblance of Paul to Jesus ….”

His reasoning throughout is a brilliant example of scholarship, pages upon pages, back and forth, also involving the speculated physical appearance of the Antichrist, etc., etc., so as to explain how such a confusion might have arisen. His conclusion, in the end, is very simple yet rather underwhelming,

“Josephus, or his secretary, has done nothing beyond copying the Acta Pilatii, the governor’s report about the judicial procedure against Jesus from the Commentarii of Tiberius.”

After all the scholarly reasoning, that’s that. However, the moment I read the statements on two pages quoted above, my immediate realisation was,

“So that’s how you did it, you little devil (not the real word)!”

So how did he do what? His ascension into Heaven. What did the witnesses see? Two or four angels, each grabbing a foot and/or a hand, flapping their wings until they disappeared as a tiny dot high up in the sky? Or did they all magically evaporate, like mist before the sun? No, but the answer is quite literally to be found ‘in the mist’. The Lord had to wait 40 days for mist of sufficient density to roll over the mountain so that the ‘angels’ could appear from the mist, take him by the hand and lead him up the mountain, all of them finally disappearing in the mist. Once he reached the top, he descended on the other side … as Paul! He was never taken into heaven, but as he was supposed to be just there from then onwards, he needed a new identity on Earth. ‘Paul’ would do just fine.

Once that clicked, I concentrated on finding more evidence supporting Christ’s identification with Paul and it was not particularly difficult, although time-consuming. Sources from all over independently confirm some curious yet identical aspects of Christ and Paul, over and above what Josephus might have said – see my summaries from Barbelo – The Story of Jesus Christ, namely The Physical Appearances of Jesus and Paul, as well as Jesus and Simon Magus. You may also have noted that I have added (yes, me) this information to Race and Appearance of Jesus – Wikipedia (Early Church to Middle Ages) and Paul the Apostle – Wikipedia (5. Physical Appearance). Everything that is added to sensitive sites like these is rigorously checked by moderators (in fact, the public in general as well, who may object and report only if the statements or references are either incorrect or false). On neither site did I mention anything about the two individuals possibly being the same person, as that would not have been allowed for several reasons – the moderators could argue that it is based on speculation (they wouldn’t dream of allowing any reference to Barbelo) and that it may (should, actually) have grave repercussions for the Church.

Scholar against scholar

For those of you (my visitors) not acquainted with biblical scholarship, you will be astonished at how much infighting and lack of agreement there can be amongst scholars, probably because of the prestige involved in revealing something authentic. For example, when David Rohl (a qualified and decorated Egyptologist) identified the biblical king Saul as the Amarna contemporary Labayu, one prominent scholar (archaeologist), Israel Finkelstein, acknowledged that he saw a great deal of similarity between the Saul and Labayu narratives, while another, also an archaeologist (Bryant Wood) stated that “There is not one iota of similarity between the two individuals”. Dear Bryant, there actually is. They were one and the same person.

So, what are we plebs supposed to believe? In my opinion Rohl is 100% correct, but he made a serious mistake when he attempted to move the well-established (time-wise) Amarna Era (ca. 1353-1336 BCE) to the rather speculative date of Israel’s United Kingdom under Saul, David and Solomon (ca. 1020 to 922 BCE). Had he done the opposite and moved Saul, David and Solomon earlier in time to the Amarna Era, many pieces of the puzzle fall into place – the Megiddo ivory showing Solomon being visited by Nefertiti as the Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia (identified as such by Josephus, but also known as The Queen of Sheba, or rather Sheba’s Queen, Sheba being David’s main political opponent, who was murdered by David), Osman’s much-ridiculed identification of the biblical Joseph with Yuya and the claim in The Story of Joseph and Asenath, that the two of them together ‘ruled’ Egypt for 48 years (see my book Thera and the Exodus but particularly my Addendum to Thera and the Exodus for the reason why this statement is actually very close to the truth).

Belittling Those Outside and the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome

Some of the most severe scholarly insults to a person who had discovered something that academics had not themselves been aware of, followed when Ahmed Osman, an independent Egyptologist and author, published his Stranger in the Valley of the Kings in which he identified the biblical Joseph as Yuya, a high-ranking official in the court of Amenhotep III. With his permission, I summarised his twelve most important parallels between Yuya and Joseph in Thera and the Exodus (Section 5.3, pp. 45-47), and also some of the criticisms against his theory, of which only two are worth naming. 

The first is a particularly scathing review which was presented by Donald B. Redford, a Canadian Egyptologist and archaeologist,

This ingenious work is one of those books whose author inexplicably fails to do his homework in one part, and lets his critical judgment lapse in the other. Sadly, Mr. Osman has no new evidence to offer, nor any new reconstruction of history other than that which, at one time or another, has suggested itself to many an undergraduate, only to be dismissed upon sober reflection. I find myself wondering, then, why Mr. Osman felt obliged to write the book at all. But he did write it, and my remarks are directed toward those who might be misled into taking it seriously. …

The author treats the evidence as cavalierly as he pleases. He presents himself as a sober historian, yet when it suits him, the Biblical evidence is accepted at face value and literally... When the Biblical evidence does not suit Osman, it is discarded. …

I did not consider it worthwhile reading his entire article, let alone attempting to refute anything he had written. The review by Dr Deborah Sweeney, who has several qualifications in Egyptology, was much more professional and to the point. However, she merely generalised many of Osman’s claimed parallels between Yuya and Joseph (i.e. the same could be said of numerous high court officials under various kings), but specifically questions why the Bible never mentioned that the Pharaoh had married a daughter of Joseph (Amenhotep III had married Yuya’s daughter Tiye). However, in The Story of Joseph and Asenath, it is stated that Joseph and Asenath ruled Egypt for 48 years. She had been married to Amenhotep right from the beginning to the end of his reign (38 years), and according to Manetho he and his court had (then) retreated into Nubia for 13 years. In Nubia he was later depicted as a sickly old man and he probably died there, most likely after 10 years. During that time Yuya, the king’s ‘double’, and Tiye were guests of Akhenaten (possibly Yuya’s grandson like crown prince Tuthmosis) in Akhetaten. So, to spell it out, 38 + 10 = 48! Taking the Amarna scenario into account, one can quickly recognise why later Jewish scribes identified Tiye with Asenath, supposedly the most beautiful woman of her time. In both Thera and the Exodus and specifically my Addendum to Thera and the Exodus I present additional proof that Osman was 100% correct. In fact, in my opinion The Story of Joseph and Asenath should be part of the canonical Bible.

The same actually happened to me when I approached a professor in theology at the Oxford University for his opinion of my work.

On Thera and the Exodus I received the following response:

“As for the plague of darkness, we cannot be confident how historical the reference is. But I would observe that Exodus does not actually say that the darkness made it so that people could hardly breathe. That is your invention. What the text does say is that the darkness could be felt. That would be compatible with the darkness having been brought by a severe dust storm such as Egypt is known sometimes to get. You will have noticed that a couple of verses before the reference to the plague of darkness mention is made of a severe wind (Exodus 10:19).”

Dear Professor, don’t you think the Egyptians and the Jews would have known the difference between a sand storm, no matter how severe, and the very peculiar type of darkness described by different sources? By stating that I ‘invented’ the description of people having experienced difficulty in breathing, i.e. I am lying, actually implies that you haven't done your homework – you’re supposed to know more than a novice like me! Actually, you should have read my book before making such a statement - it is a quotation straight from Josephus (Antiquities 2.14.5),

“their sight being obscured, and their breathing hindered by the thickness of the air.”

Furthermore, according to Ginsberg in his The Legends of the Jews (‘The Plagues Brought Through Moses.’ The Legends of the Jews, Vol. 2), 

“the darkness was so dense that they could not stir from their place. They either sat the whole time, or stood; as they were at the beginning, so they remained until the end. … The darkness was not of the ordinary, earthly kind (i.e. not a sand or dust storm); it came from hell, and it could be felt. It was as thick as a dinar … The light of the fire kindled for household uses was either extinguished by the violence of the storm, or else it was made invisible and swallowed up in the density of the darkness. Sight, that most indispensable of all the external senses, though unimpaired, was deprived of its office, for nothing could be discerned. … None was able to speak or to hear …”

As for the wind you mentioned,

 “… there is often a lot of rain, lightning, and thunder during an eruption (i.e. a storm).  This is because all the ash particles that are thrown up into the atmosphere are good at attracting/collecting water droplets. We don’t quite know exactly how the lightning is caused but it probably involves the particles moving through the air and separating positively and negatively charged particles … there are all kinds of effects on the wind circulation and where storms occur.” ^{Oregon State University}

I also asked him to comment on Barbelo, to which he replied,

“it quite clearly contains a lot of incredible and impossible assertions … Before you try to write books about Biblical studies you need undergo years of training at a good university, mastering the ancient and modern sources you need for your work and reading them in the original languages. You also need to learn how to produce judicious arguments, rather than just trying to be new and sensational.”

As a matter of fact, professor, I am an engineer with a PhD in Electronic Engineering, with close to 30 years of experience behind me. I know how to make 'judicious arguments'.

Incredible and impossible assertions? Name me one, and we can discuss it in a civilised manner. But the truth is, my dear Professor, that the Ivory Tower has effectively been destroyed by the Internet. We can read your minds through everything you publish, be that an article in a journal or a book on a relevant topic, not to mention Wikipedia, the undisputed and rigorously monitored source of information to the general public. The domain of religious studies no longer belongs to you only! It is open to us all, meaning to everyone who has an interest in it and a desire to learn more about it. And just by the way, why would it be necessary for me to read the ancient sources in their original languages?? You and your colleagues have already translated all of them over and over again, and published about their different interpretations ad nauseum!

To those of you who were brave enough to attempt reading my books, it was only after a couple of years following the publication of my books that I began to realise that I had actually written both Thera and the Exodus and Barbelo more as highly theoretical dissertations than as books which the public would find easy and enjoyable to read. My apologies, but I knew no other way of presenting my conclusions (and still don’t, apart from having made brief summaries on my website of key points in both books). At the very least, you will notice how I had to struggle with the same issues academics still do.

Despite of much information that may initially clutter the scene, in my opinion the most significant contribution of Thera and the Exodus is my identification of Crown Prince Tuthmosis as the biblical Moses. I sent the key points to a number of professors for their comments, but before I present some of the feedback I received, just the key points again.

My key arguments about who Moses was are based on the following (see p. 463-467 of my Appendix to Thera and the Exodus ):

• Manetho claimed that Moses (the biblical adopted prince into the royal household) sent ambassadors to the kings of Jerusalem, summoning their assistance in his rebellion against the king Amenhotep III, and 200 000 of them invaded Egypt to join Moses. Amenhotep retreated into Nubia with his army and court, i.e. disappeared from Egypt. Amenhotep’s prolonged stay in Ethiopia is attested by scarabs of him found in that country, rock carvings at Soleb depicting him as weak and sickly (effectively proving that he was in Ethiopia at the time) and numerous of his monuments being scattered all over the country. Manetho is the only ancient historian to name the Pharaoh of the Exodus, so that should be the very first lead to investigate.
• In the El Arish Shrine Text (EAST) it was king Shu’s son Seb (not named as Moses), “who sent messengers to summon to him the foreigners and Asiatics from their land”. They likewise invaded Egypt complied, and Shu “had departed to heaven with his attendants” (i.e. disappeared from Egypt). Several other aspects of the EAST match the biblical Exodus.
• The Story of Joseph and Asenath relates how the firstborn son of the Pharaoh (who would be Crown Prince Tuthmosis) sent ambassadors to them, summoning them to come to his aid as he wanted to kill his father! They complied and invaded Egypt.
• According to the Bible, the Pharaoh’s army drowned in the sea (i.e. disappeared from Egypt).

We therefore have three independent accounts that describe the same, absolutely unique event in Egyptian history, but from completely different yet complementary perspectives! And together they point to the biblical Moses and Crown Prince Tuthmosis being the same person. The details of these accounts can be found in my book and the Addendum to the book.

Apart from that, the following information supports this identification of Moses as a historical person:

• According to Josephus, Moses was the only heir to the Egyptian throne (therefore firstborn son), i.e. Moses and CP Tuthmosis were the same person.
• According to Graham Phillips, Prince Tuthmosis was recognised as heir of Amenhotep III … If Moses really was brought up us a royal prince during the reign of Amenhotep III, then Tuthmosis is the only known historical figure who fits the profile. … if Tuthmosis had abandoned the old gods and decided to drop the god-element Tuth from his name, he would actually have been called Mosis, i.e. CP Tuthmosis was the only Egyptian heir-to-the-throne who had simply vanished under mysterious circumstances.
• Prince Thutmose served as the high priest of Ptah (in ancient Memphis), while Manetho’s Osarsiph (Moses), likewise was a priest, albeit from Heliopolis. Seb of the EAST ‘went not to Heliopolis’, suggesting perhaps that this was where he had originally come from, but nevertheless thereby also linking Seb as Tuthmosis to Heliopolis.
• Artapanus links Moses, a priest, and his Pharaoh in identical fashion to the first burial ceremony of the Apis Bull, which is known to have been performed by CP Tuthmosis as priest and his father Amenhotep III. This, by itself, should be the DNA found at the scene.

Most of the professors I contacted via email did not even bother to reply, but two did and indeed in a very friendly manner, one suggesting that the three ambassadors-to-Israelites narratives may not be “independent of each other”, whatever that might mean. I can think of one way in which to interpret this statement. That there was only one story initially, let’s say Manetho’s, upon which an Egyptian priest somehow got hold of it and adapted and wrote his own version of the story on the El Arish Shrine stone, and then finally, the Israelites also got hold of Manetho’s story and filled in the gaps as they imagined it would have been seen from their side. To me that would be completely absurd. The other simply stated that he did not read the EAST the same way as I did. How is it possible not to see any similarities? The EAST also mentions several aspects that can be linked to the Exodus – the plague of darkness, Moses’s staff, a magic box of metal that could be the Ark of the Covenant and even snakes, which would have been the uraeus (cobra) on the crown which Tuthmosis would have worn as successor to his father.

How can there still be any doubt?? Whatever has become of logic and common sense??

By the way, I experienced the same level of antagonistic criticism when I discovered a flaw in a particular aspect of electromagnetic theory (aperture theory and the equivalence principle), in which Professor Roger Harrington proposed (1961) that a certain type of problem, which require a priori knowledge of both the electric and magnetic fields in aperture of an antenna (they are typically related in a complex manner, but the electric field distribution is usually relatively easy to determine) could be solved by an alternative approach, which would eliminate the need for any knowledge about the magnetic field. This alternative approach, however, would then become more difficult to solve in terms of radiation from the aperture, as the current density associated with the electric field no longer radiates in an unbounded medium and the free space radiation integrals could, therefore, no longer be used (these are very easy to calculate). For the reader in general, it is not necessary to understand any of this, only that two different approaches had been proposed. However, two of the leading authors of antenna textbooks commented that,

The problem of a magnetic current density radiating in the presence of an electric conducting surface must be solved. So it seems that the equivalent problem is just as difficult as the original problem itself,

and

This leaves a magnetic current density Ms radiating in the presence of the electric conductor … these problems are difficult to solve as long as S is a general surface.

Regardless, this solution has been copied and pasted from Harrington’s book in every single antenna textbook that deals with aperture theory, for decades.

I had long ago written an antenna design package based on the free space radiation integrals and quickly ran into the problem of not knowing the H-field distribution in the aperture of a specific antenna (ca. 1997). Through trial and error, though, I eventually realized that a minor modification of Harrington’s theory would allow you to still use the free space radiation integrals, for arbitrarily shaped aperture antennas (see here).

Before I presented it at an Antennas and Propagation Symposium in Orlando in 1999, I distributed an invitation to attend my presentation to all the well-known academics I could recognise, for fear of it being attended by only a couple of disinterested students who knew nothing about the topic. It was like inviting lions into your den. Despite being able to show the examples in which there was perfect agreement between measurements and my free-space calculations for two antennas, the comments ranged from “Who do you think you are, telling us that what we know is working, is incorrect (something like that)”, to “Don’t worry, we know the equivalence principle is difficult to understand” and even “You’re a brave boy” (I was a lot younger back then). When I again pointed at the close agreement between the measured and calculated results (they surely couldn’t have thought that I had falsified it), I merely received a sarcastic remark from one professor, “I’ll think about it”. Which he actually seemed to have done, as he later published a very complicated article that seemed to imply the same conclusions that I had arrived at.

Regardless, at first I felt so humiliated that I didn’t feel like showing my face at the conference again. However, humiliation turned into anger as I knew I was right, but it also made me realise that I would have to derive a mathematical proof of my theory. Working on and off on the topic, I managed to get a rather heuristic proof published in 2003. Still not satisfied and continuing to work on and off on the problem, I finally managed to derive a much more elegant proof of my theory, which was published in 2016. I am pleased to say that the reviewers seemed to be quite impressed,

Irrespective of how modern, extremely advance analytical software packages solve this problem, whenever it is stated in a textbook that ‘the free space radiation integrals can no longer be used as the magnetic current density (the one linked to the electric field) no longer radiates in an unbounded medium’, it is simply not true. By applying my method, which after all the effort spent turns out to be a minor adaptation of Harrington’s original formulation, one can use these equations to calculate radiation from arbitrarily shaped aperture antennas. In 2019 I sent a copy of my article to two of the leading authors of antenna textbooks, but I am yet to receive a response from either. They would never concede that this was something they had never properly thought through. And just to let you know, I understand the equivalence principle very, very well.

Mark Harris on Thera and the Exodus

“In common with earlier Thera theories, Sivertsen (and myself) tends to read the text quite literally when a naturalistic explanation presents itself, but otherwise treats the text relatively loosely.”

He also states,

“One thing is clear: the Thera theories are following a trajectory towards increasingly complex naturalistic scenarios while the historical, theological and textual questions raised by critical scholarship are largely overlooked.”

I have no idea what exactly he means by treating the text “rather loosely”. Every statement I have made is supported by either recognised facts, or records of ancient historians like Manetho (mainly as quoted by Josephus), Artapanus and others. But sometimes one must use logic to connect the dots – is this what he refers to? And I can assure him that I have looked at many, many of the “historical, theological and textual questions raised by critical scholarship” during my research leading up to the publication of my book.

In fact, due to the fact that I had not been taught what to read and what not (i.e. myths and legends), nor “how to think”, I read and made notes of everything I could lay my hands on and then merely connected all the dots I had spotted. I am convinced that the reason why academics can’t stop chasing their own tails is their myopic view of myths and legends. They simply ignore them, while I have discovered that many of them contain a goldmine of evidence!

Returning to Professor Harris, what really annoyed me was the lecture he presented to a select audience (LINK), in which he discussed this very article.

His discussion of my work begins 18’20” into the video,

“(The engineer Riaan Booysen) … He doesn’t believe in miracles. Everything in the text must be explained naturistically, or else be rejected. The irony is, that having said that, he’s able to explain the plagues and sea-crossing entirely naturistically, in fact he does it so well, he multiplies them, so, there’s not one [laughter], but three eruptions of Thera (1800 BCE, 1550 BCE, 1360 BCE), so it’s a real intensification over Sivertsen. He also has an eisodos, that’s the entry of the Hyksos into Egypt, and two Hyksos Exoduses. Each one … is facilitated by a different eruption of Thera. So, this means that we have three sea events in the book, there are three tsunamis sweeping the Egyptians away three times, … you’d think they would’ve learnt their lesson the first time [laughter]. Anyway, I don’t want to make fun of it  [this is exactly what you're doing]… I mean this is fantastic data for the way that science and the Bible is being used in the popular imagination here. The ingenuity though is really quite remarkable … but it illustrates a wider trend in these Thera theories …”

In the first instance, I never suggested that the Egyptians were swept away three times. Africanus recorded that one of the two great floods in ancient Greek history, that of Ogygus, had occurred ca., 1796 BCE. The Parian Chronicle gives the date for Deucalion’s flood, the other great flood in Greek mythology which occurred 250 years after that of Ogygus, as 1529 BCE, implying that the flood of Ogygus occurred ca. 1779 BCE. Both dates when rounded become 1800 BCE. Great floods in that area could only have been caused by eruptions of Thera. So here we have two independent confirmations of a great flood having occurred ca. 1800 BCE, which also just happened to mark beginning of the Second Intermediate Period of Egypt, the rule of the Hyksos over Egypt. Furthermore, Manetho recorded that a ‘blast of God’ struck Egypt during the reign of a king called Tutimaeus (Timaus in Josephus’ version) and that the Hyksos subsequently overpowered Egypt without striking a blow. It seems that nobody has ever considered the possibility that the ’blast’ may actually have been just that – an eruption of Thera. The Egyptian defences in Lower Egypt (the Nile Delta and surrounding low-altitude areas), would have been swept clean of Egyptians, hence the Hyksos could take over that area ‘without striking a blow’.

We also have The Prophecy of Neferti (see Appendix G in Thera and the Exodus) which describes a natural catastrophe that could only have been caused by the eruption of a volcano,

“The land is completely perished … The sun disc is covered over. It will not shine (so that) people may see. No one can live when clouds cover over (the sun). Then everybody is deaf for lack of it. … and the land is prostrate because of woes from that food, the Asiatics who are throughout the land. Foes have arisen in the east, and Asiatics have come down into Egypt ... and no one knows the result which will come about, which is hidden from speech, sight, or hearing. The face is deaf, for silence confronts. ... No one knows when midday falls, for his shadow cannot be distinguished ..  when the is in the sky like the moon”

The text is usually dated to ca. 1970 BCE, but I discuss the probability that this dating may be incorrect in Thera and the Exodus, pp. 282-285. In this document a king called Snefru (Sneferu, Snofru) requests a sage called Neferti, to tell him about Egypt’s future. Neferti then envisions Egypt in a state of physical and social chaos, overrun by Asiatics. In particular, he refers to the land as ‘completely perished’, the sun ‘covered over’ to the extent that people cannot see, and the sun looking like the moon. This could be the result of either a thick ash cloud from a volcanic eruption descending upon Egypt, or a severe sand storm. Egyptians would, however, have been accustomed to sand storms, so one would not expect the sage to make any specific mention of a sand storm, no matter how severe. The prophecy predicts that Asiatics would invade Egypt and settle in the Nile Delta, which was exactly what the Hyksos had done.

So, Professor Harris, I didn’t suck this out of my thumb, and you gave me no opportunity to defend myself.

As for the second eruption, which has been dated to ca. 1613 BCE, more and more scientists now believe that it must have coincided with the reign of Ahmose I ^{Minoan Eruption}. I really battled with the date of 1550 BCE because it simply did not make sense, and in Thera and the Exodus I several times suggested that Ahmose’s reign should be moved earlier in time to match the 1613 BCE eruption (e.g. pp. 319, 327-8). This time the Hyksos defences in Lower Egypt would have been swept away, and NOT the Egyptians (Thera and the Exodus, p. 289) That would have allowed Ahmose I to eventually overpower them. And it is high time that the Egyptologists get their act together with respect to Egyptian chronology.

Professor Harris, did this part just slip your mind, or did you specifically but falsely add the Egyptians having been swept away THREE times, for amusement?

In his article Harris remarks “Putting aside the question of whether there is material evidence for so many eruptions of Thera...”, but various ancient sources recorded that the Greeks indeed suffered many natural disasters, mostly through fire and flood (there could be no other culprit than the volcano on Thera), like for instance (Thera and the Exodus, pp. 271-274):

• Plato recorded that the Egyptians often ridiculed the Greeks for their apparent lack of history, “Thereupon one of the priests, who was of a very great age, said: O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are never anything but children, and there is not an old man among you. Solon in return asked him what he meant. I mean to say, he replied, that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you why. There have been, and will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes; the greatest have been brought about by the agencies of fire and water, and other lesser ones by innumerable other causes.”
• The Egyptians evidently shared their knowledge with the Greeks in 600 BCE because the Greeks had lost their records during recurrent catastrophes and they (the Greeks) needed these records so that they could ‘recover their memories’.
• Josephus recorded that, “But as for the place where the Grecians inhabit, ten thousand destructions have overtaken it, and blotted out the memory of former actions, so that they were ever beginning a new way of living, and supposed that every one of them was the origin of their new state.”
• We get confirmation of this (more or less) from Wikipedia, Minoan Eruption, “Geological evidence shows the Thera volcano erupted numerous times over several hundred thousand years before the Minoan eruption.”

So, Professor Harris, how would you explain these remarks – all independently sucked out of the thumbs of various individuals?

That a second eruption of Thera followed the one in 1613 BCE can be deduced from a photograph of tsunami debris taken by Bruins and his colleagues on Crete (see below). The volcanic Santorini ash was geochemically dated to the Minoan (1613 BCE) eruption, and in the words of the authors, 

 Volcanic ash as distinct intraclasts

“the volcanic ash (from Thera’s eruption) … appears as distinct intraclasts in chaotic geoarcheological tsunami deposits … These deposits are geologically dated to the Minoan Santorini eruption, because the embedded volcanic ash is proven to have the geochemical fingerprint of this eruption … The volcanic ash was evidently reworked by the tsunami and redeposited … it can be concluded that airborne volcanic ash deposition over eastern Crete preceded the tsunami. The volcanic ash was most likely deposited at Palaikastro during the 1st eruption phase (Plinian) with winds blowing from Santorini to the southeast … The tsunami was apparently generated during the 3rd or 4th eruption phase, according to stratigraphic evidence of tsunami deposits at Thera … Therefore, in terms of environmental geological dating, the tsunami came after the deposition over eastern Crete of airborne volcanic ash, but before the ash layer became dispersed by erosion and soil-biological mixing.”

I could not help asking myself how intelligent people like these could make a statement like this. The ‘intraclasts’ are clearly rock-hard – how could the volcanic ash, which had to be slowly driven by winds towards Crete before softly descending over the island, have become solidified to that degree in a couple of hours or days, before the tsunami eventually arrived? The answer is simple, even to a novice like me. Many years must have passed after the 1613 BCE eruption, which had originally left a thick layer of ash over Crete. Over time (many years, 250 perhaps?) fog, rain or other biological agents must have systematically hardened this layer of ash into a hard, solid crust, much like sprinkling water on gypsum plaster powder.

This then brings me to the third eruption, during 1360 BCE, of which there appears to be no direct, but possibly indirect, evidence. I’ll first summarise some of the legends regarding the floods of both Ogygus and Deucalion, which occurred 250 years apart. It will be shown that the flood of Ogygus matches the 1613 BCE eruption, and that Deucalion’s can then be dated to 1613-250 = 1363 BCE, rounded to 1360 BCE, see Thera and the Exodus p. 273 onwards.

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In St Augustine’s The City of God, we find Varro’s account of a flood,

Africanus wrote,

“We assert, therefore, on the authority of this work, that Ogygus, who, having been saved when many perished, has given his name to the first flood, lived at the time of the Exodus of the people with Moses from Egypt.”

Eusebius confirmed the same, “Ogygus is said to have been the first [king] of the Athenians. The Greeks relate that their great ancient flood took place during his reign,” and also stated that “After Ogygus and until the time of Cecrops, it is said that there was no king in Attica for 190 years, because of the great destruction caused by the flood.”

However, unlike Africanus, Eusebius places Moses not in the time of Ogygus but in the time of Cecrops, during whose reign the flood of Deucalion occurred:

The Kings of the Athenians. Cecrops Diphyes, 50 years. … At this time, Moses had become recognized amongst the Hebrews, as we will show in due course. Also at this time, the flood of Deucalion is said to have occurred in Thessaly, and fire devastated the land of Ethiopia in the time of Phaethon.

Syncellus, while discussing Africanus, states that the first flood at the time of Ogygus in Attica was followed by another flood 248 years later, during the time of Deucalion in Thessaly. Eusebius confirms this period almost verbatim, “… Ogygus’ flood, which in turn preceded Deucalion’s flood by 250 years.”

According to Manetho (as quoted by Syncellus): The sixth, Misphragmuthosis, for 26 years; in his reign the flood of Deucalion’s time occurred. Total, according to Africanus, down to the reign of Amôsis, also called Misphragmuthosis.

That a flood occurred during the reign of King Ahmose is unequivocally confirmed by his lamentation in the so-called Tempest Stele of Ahmose (see Thera and the Exodus, pp. 275 onwards).

A cataclysmic eruption of Thera would no doubt have sent shock waves throughout the Mediterranean Sea and the countries that border it, including Egypt. American archaeologists have recently unearthed ancient tombs belonging to Amenhotep, guard of the temple of Egyptian deity Amun, and his son Sa-mut (Simut), respectively. The tombs date back to the New Kingdom of the 18th Dynasty (1543-1292 BC). Amenhotep, along with Ramose, was one of viziers during the last decade of Amenhotep III’s reign46 and he was most likely the Amenhotep to whom one of the tombs belonged. Simut47 was an Egyptian priest who held the position of Second Prophet of Amun towards the end of the reign of Amenhotep III and would, therefore, most likely have been the vizier Amenhotep’s son. That places them ca. 1360 BCE (they had not yet died, as ‘Many of scenes represent the tomb owner and his wife in front of an offering table and a view of a goddess nursing a royal child as well as scenes of the daily life’). It is clear that the type of damage they suffered (collapsed ceilings and walls, see photographs below, @Ministry of Antiquities) could only have been caused by an earthquake.

Furthermore,

“The name and titles of the tomb owner, some hieroglyphic texts and scenes in addition to the names of the god Amun were deliberately erased.”

This would confirm my proposed reason for the populist uprising against Amenhotep III and the priesthood of Amun, the high priest of which had advised the king to issue a decree that all firstborns should be sacrificed in fires so-as to appease the wrath of the gods and free Egypt from the plague that was decimating its population (i.e. the tenth plague). This failed, horrific sacrifice led to the Egyptians rejecting Amun as their primary deity and adopting the Aten instead, during the reign of Akhenaten (see my book as well as the Addendum to Thera and the Exodus).

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From the above quotations it is clear that even the early historians did not know exactly how to interpret the two floods, or rather, which to connect to the biblical Exodus (they chose both). The truth is that there were indeed two Exoduses, the first occurring after the flood of Ogygus during the reign of Ahmose, who let 240 000 Hyksos slip through his fingers. They managed to do so by walking through the flattened sea of reeds in a north-western direction, towards Thera. There would have been no means of maintaining a steady direction, except by following the ‘pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night’, which can have absolutely no other interpretation than being the eruption column of a volcano. Just as described in the Bible, they turned eastward when they reached the sea and the pillars of cloud and fire “moved behind them”. The ‘path through the sea’, which allowed them to escape was the narrow sandbar which separates the northern lakes Manzala and Bardawil from the Mediterranean Sea. The journey across the flattened reeds and along the sand bar (which would have been significantly wider back then compared to today) would have remained etched in their memories, hence the ‘parting of the sea’ narrative (several others have come to this conclusion before me). The second exodus followed the flood of Deucalion during the reign of Amenhotep III, which is evidenced by the well-known plague which decimated the population of Egypt during his reign. The mention of fire devastating the land of Ethiopia at the same time the flood of Deucalion occurred, suggests that this eruption of Thera was so huge that it caused ‘rain of fire’ to descend over Egypt, as far as Ethiopia!

By not mentioning my version of the 'parting of the sea', Professor Harris tacitly implied that mine also depended on an unrealistic, fortuitously-timed sea-event of some sort.

What kind of nutcase would have sucked these pillars out of his thumb, not to mention all the plagues of Egypt, which exactly match the after-effects of a volcanic eruption? And why did you not mention my interpretation of the most important ‘plague’ of all - the death of the firstborn, which was the decree of Amenhotep that all firstborns were to be sacrificed in fires to appease the gods and bring the plague to an end? Too outlandish? Or too ‘naturalistic’? It was this failed sacrifice which resulted in the rebellion against the Amenhotep and the priesthood of Amun, and the reason why Akhenaten embraced the Aten as Egypt’s god instead.

As mentioned by the chairman of Mark’s session, a volcanologist from the University of Vienna conducted several excavations in Israel, including at Megiddo, looking for evidence of Theran ash deposits and covering sections of the later phases of the middle to the late bronze age, but could find none (no site in Israel produced evidence of the Thera eruption). His conclusion was that Thera’s ash cloud was blown east of the state (of Israel) and not towards Egypt in the south. How could he tell that if he hadn’t found any trace of Thera’s fallout anywhere? It would even be possible that the ash cloud never reached the Levant at all ! Megiddo specifically is quite high up north in Israel.

If not a volcanic ash cloud, what else could have caused such a widespread plague in Egypt? As I have pointed out in Thera and the Exodus (p. 175), the plague also reached David in Jerusalem, killing 70,000 men and probably at least three times as many people if women and children are included. It is possible that the highly infectious ash cloud descended over the southern parts of Egypt, causing the plague which then rapidly spread northward, all the way into Israel. If nothing could be found in Israel, then that is where one should be looking for traces of Thera’s ash cloud.

Reconstructing God …

So, if none of today’s gods actually exist, what are we supposed to believe? If “god” does not exist, we simply go to sleep forever when we die, as if having been administered an eternal anaesthetic. We will not be aware that we exist because we will not exist. However, coming from a scientific background I simply cannot believe that the scientific world that we have come to know, which by the way did not exist 2000 years ago, had come into existence purely by chance. We are only now beginning to understand this incredibly sophisticated scientific world. Someone must have created and engineered it all. If a God actually exists - one who created the universe and that small part of it that we call “us” - then that God must certainly be perfect beyond comprehension. And if God is perfect, then the logical conclusion is that we must also be perfect, just like every other form of life on earth. In other words, we can do no wrong - we are meant to do the things that we do. Consequently, there is no such thing as “sin”; there is no punishment, no reason to fear God, and no reason to fear death. Of heaven we might not be sure, but there definitely is no hell.

So what should we tell our children when they ask us about “God”. Perhaps we should in a scientific way use the information we have at hand to form an idea of what God might be like.

• All forms of life we know are male and female, so why should we not have a Mother-god and a Father-god?
• A foetus in its mother’s womb may subconsciously be aware of something happening on the ‘outside’, without having the faintest idea what that might be. Some people of all religions claim that their god guides them and that they can experience their god’s influence in their lives. If true, is that not merely a case of ‘god’ guiding those people through a ‘language’ they will understand - Christians through the Bible, Muslims through the Koran, Jews through the Torah, utter silence to atheists and so forth? There can be only one god.
• The foetus then suffers the most horrific experience imaginable – it is born. Is that not perhaps what happens to us when we die? Are we not simply just being ‘born again’?
• And what could we then expect? Ideally nothing but a Mother-god and Father-god who await our arrival as eagerly as any parent in our three-dimensional, time-constrained world. And what might the fifth dimension, the world on the other side, be like? As different from ours as the womb compared to our three-dimensional world. With the whole universe out there, we cannot even begin to imagine.

There is of course no proof for any of this, but it would be infinitely better than anything concocted by any priest, prophet or son of God.