My LIFE magazine collection - November 30, 1962

"7 Sid Caesars In A Wacky Show, Caesar's many roles in the new Broadway musical, 'Little Me'" grace the front page along with "A Glorious Opera, Rigoletto in 12 exciting paintings".

A "bold, beautiful Buick" from 1963, the size of the Lusitania, is one of the first interior ads.

An editorial is "seeking a tax cut that makes sense" comes up. The percentage of federal revenue from direct income taxes is at 83.4% in the US and the second leading country is New Zealand at 66.5%. In the previous year the top tax bracket of 91% of incomes over $200,000 only produced 14% of the total tax revenue from income. In 1902 there was no income tax and the US got 99% of its taxes from consumption taxes. Last year that figure was only 15% as compared to Switzerland's and Great Britain's 50 and 41% respectively.

WOW. Look at the size of the Chrysler Imperial!

A big article on the despotic, "The Rich, Royal Way of King Saud", his over 60 offspring and the more than 2,000 resultant princes.

"Up High, Up Front In An Inscrutable War" chronicles the continuing war between India and Red China. Sub-heading on the next page is, "Cruel Test for The Jawan and His Aging Weapons". Then, on another page, "Even Nehru Agrees- A Long Battle Ahead". Anyone remember Nehru? How about the Nehru Jacket I wore in the 1960's?

Then "Fire and death in a fearsome week at sea" about the many sea disasters that week and the hundreds that died.

Charlie Chaplin's pretty daughter hopes to dance to fame.

King Gustav VI of Sweden turns 80.

Lucille Ball pretends to be Charlie Chaplin as "The Little Tramp".

Greta Garbo gets away from it all, almost, with a young stud who looks an awful lot to me like George Peppard.

Lord Snowden visits the set of that depressing movie, The Victors. That really made me sick when I was a kid and watched it, especially the end.

"The Passing of the great Niels Bohr" is lamented.

"Want to buy a moon?" Lawn ornaments.

Frank Boyden has been a "friend to boys for sixty years" at Deefield Academy. (not a pervert either)

"Rigoletto, the memorable moments of an immortal opera". Some pretty impressive paintings.

There is a phony letter from the Cassius Clay that the boxer was named after, sort of fatherly advice. Its interesting seeing as Muhammed Ali recently acknowledged his Irish ancestry by visiting his ancestral home in Ireland.

"The Two Lives of Robert McNamara", a story way before he did his worst damage.

"Rack it up for the girls" about women pool players.

"Make Way for Clowns Crazy and Classy" about Sid Caesar's riot of roles.

"A Busy Comic Kingpin" about Anthony Newley and his one man (and many women) show. They mention his hit single, "What Kind of Fool Am I?"

"A Hilariously Lunatic Fringe" showcases Dudley Moore and his partner Peter Cook in their revue, "Beyond the Fringe", long before the movie "10". Way long before.

First Thessalonians, Chapter Three

1 ¶ Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone;
They could not wait any longer. Forbear is also used in 1 Kings 22:6.
Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said unto them, Shall I go against Ramothgilead to battle, or shall I forbear? And they said, Go up; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king.
Notice that forbear is used in contrast to “go”, “shall I go” or “shall I forbear”. In this example, separated by a comma after “battle” you find, not the synonym or definition, but it’s opposite.
Again in the following verses we have forbear used in contrast with an “or” to show that they are meant to be opposites but the contrast is to hear.
Ezekiel 2:7 And thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear: for they are most rebellious.
Ezekiel 3:11 And go, get thee to them of the captivity, unto the children of thy people, and speak unto them, and tell them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.
In each instance of forbear it is used in contrast to someone who is going or hearing. In this instance the contrast is in the next verse.
2 And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellowlabourer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith:
He sent Timothy to the Thessalonians and Paul remained behind in Athens. Timothy is a brother in Christ, a preacher, and Paul’s fellowlabourer in Christ’s gospel. His goal was to comfort the Thessalonians. We will find out why they needed comfort. There must have been some uncertainty or confusion. Sometimes churches need an evangelist from the outside to calm things down, or to stir things up. We know from the previous verse 14 that the Jews were stirring things up. You can put this in context today with liberal Christians making it rough for those who believe God’s Bible.
3 That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.
Here is an important, but frightening point that Paul makes. The Christian is appointed to trouble. We are going to have Tribulation, persecution, and suffering. Its part of our plot on earth. It’s something we have to face square on. No one should be shocked or upset by the afflictions we suffer, will suffer for being Christians, even at the hands of other Christians.
4 For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.
Paul had plenty of experience in suffering for Christ.
5 For this cause, when I could no longer forbear, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labour be in vain.
Paul’s concern was that Satan had somehow made an inroad into that church body. He was concerned about them enduring. A reading of Galatians plus his reference here in this letter to the Jews makes you realize that what he is worried about are the Judaizers, those who want to put the new believers back under the Law. We have this no less today in our fundamentalist churches.
6 ¶ But now when Timotheus came from you unto us, and brought us good tidings of your faith and charity, and that ye have good remembrance of us always, desiring greatly to see us, as we also to see you: 7 Therefore, brethren, we were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress by your faith: 8 For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord.
Timothy’s report of the Thessalonian church’s faith and love for each other, charity, their good memory of him, and the fact that they are standing fast in the Lord and not falling for the Jews’ connivance as he warns about in Galatians, comfort Paul in his troubles.
Here, it says to “stand fast in the faith”;
1Corinthians 16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.
Here, to stand fast in the liberty where Christ has made us free from the Law;
Galatians 5:1 Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Here, to stand fast in one spirit.
Philippians 1:27 Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;
And here to “stand fast in the Lord”
Philippians 4:1 Therefore, my brethren dearly beloved and longed for, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, my dearly beloved.
9 For what thanks can we render to God again for you, for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes before our God; 10 Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith?
Paul is getting to a point here in his letter. Something is lacking in the Thessalonians faith. He puts it in the form of a question. He wants to complete or perfect what is lacking. What is lacking in our faith?
11 ¶ Now God himself and our Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, direct our way unto you. 12 And the Lord make you to increase and abound in love one toward another, and toward all men, even as we do toward you: 13 To the end he may stablish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints.
There is a key here that some angry fundamentalist Christians should read over and over. Paul asks the Lord to make the Christians abound in love toward each other and to all men, and then shows that as a condition of holiness.

World History, Chapter Six, revised

Nebuchadnezzar to Antiochus Epiphanes
1 Chronicles 1 to Malachi 4

Durant tells us the Nebuchadnezzar II (Nebuchadnezzar was also the name of an earlier king from the early 12th century BC Bienkowski tells us) was the son of Nabopolassar who, in alliance with the Medes liberated Babylonia from Assyrian control. Nebuchadnezzar’s inaugural address to Marduk, god-in-chief of Babylon, as Durant calls him, or another alias for Satan as I call him, gives us a hint of the new king’s character and goals;

“As my precious life do I love thy sublime appearance! Outside of my city Babylon, I have not selected among all settlements any dwelling…..At thy command, O merciful Marduk, may the house that I have built endure forever, may I be satiated with its splendor, attain old age therein, with abundant offspring, and receive therein tribute of the kings of all regions, from all mankind.”

Daniel, in chapter 2 of his book and in verse 38, states that Nebuchadnezzar is the head of fine gold of the image mentioned beginning in verses 31 and 32, the most excellent and powerful of kingdoms, representing the height of human power and self-glorification. All others after him would be inferior to him. Nebuchadnezzar was illiterate and not quite sane, as both Durant and the Bible reveal, but also the most powerful ruler of his time in the Near East, and the greatest warrior, statesman, and builder in all the succession of Babylonian kings after Hammurabi himself in Durant’s estimation. His destruction of Solomon’s temple marks the beginning of the times of the Gentiles, 400 years after the beginning of the building of the Temple. With 400 years between Testaments I am wondering what’s going to happen around 2011. Think about it. When Egypt rebelled, conspiring with Assyria to reduce Babylonia to slavery again, Nebuchadnezzar met the Egyptian army at Carchemish and almost annihilated them. Babylonian merchants then controlled all the trade from western Asia and the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea and, after all, that is what is important as it keeps the money flowing now as then.

Bienkowski says that Nebuchadnezzar was married to the daughter of the Median king which is interesting in that as it was an alliance between Babylon and Medea that destroyed Nineveh, it will be an alliance between Medea and Persia that will destroy Babylon. Greek historians declare that he invaded Egypt and laid siege to Tyre for 13 years as does Jeremiah 43:8-13 with regard to the Egyptian invasion.

His reputation is based on the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the Jewish people and his fabulous building works in Babylon, including the so-called “Hanging Gardens of Babylon” which were ranked by historians as among the Seven Wonders of the ancient World. The Seven Wonders of the World, by the way, are some things you should know about to be literate in history. These were not a single list but represented several lists compiled by Greek writers. The most famous lists were made by Antipater of Sidon and Philon of Byzantium. Most lists agree on six of the seven items.


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The last place on some lists was awarded to the Walls of the City of Babylon. On others, the Palace of Cyrus, king of Persia took the seventh position. Finally, toward the 6th century A.D., the final item became the Lighthouse at Alexandria. Since it was Greeks who made the lists it is not unusual that many of the items on them were examples of and glorified Greek culture.

The writers might have listed the Great Wall of China if then had known about it, or Stonehenge if they'd seen it, but these places were beyond the limits of their world. It is a surprise to most people to learn that not all the Seven Wonders existed at the same time. Even if you lived in ancient times you would have still needed a time machine to see all seven.

While the Great Pyramids of Egypt were built centuries before the rest and are still around today (they are the only "wonder" still intact) most of the others only survived a few hundred years or less. The Colossus of Rhodes stood only a little more than half a century before an earthquake toppled it.”

I am now going to digress a bit and go over these Seven Wonders, or at list one list of them, so that you will have an idea of their history when it is brought before you in later education or just watching the Discovery or History Channel on television, if you can stomach their anti-Bible bigotry.

The first shrine to the Goddess Artemis was probably built around 800 B.C. on a marshy strip near the river at Ephesus. The Ephesus Goddess Artemis, sometimes called Diana, is not the same figure as the Artemis worshipped in Greece. The Greek Artemis is the goddess of the hunt. The Ephesus Artemis was a goddess of fertility and was often pictured as draped with eggs, or multiple breasts, symbols of fertility, from her waist to her shoulders. The shrine was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the next few hundred years. By 600 B.C., the city of Ephesus had become a major port of trade and an architect named Chersiphron was engaged to build a new large temple. He designed it with high stone columns. Concerned that carts carrying the columns might get stuck in the swampy ground around the site, Chersiphron laid the columns on their sides and had them rolled to where they would be erected. This temple didn't last long. In 550 B.C. King Croesus of Lydia conquered Ephesus and the other Greek cities of Asia Minor. During the fighting, the temple was destroyed. Croesus proved himself a gracious winner, though, by contributing generously to the building of a new temple. This was next to the last of the great temples to Artemis in Ephesus and it dwarfed those that had come before.

The architect is thought to be a man named Theodorus. Theodorus's temple was 300 feet in length and 150 feet wide with an area four times the size of the temple before it. More than one hundred stone columns supported a massive roof. The new temple was the pride of Ephesus until 356 B.C. when a tragedy, by name of Herostratus, struck.



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Herostratus was a young Ephesian who would stop at no cost to have his name go down in history. He managed this by burning the temple to the ground. The citizens of Ephesus were so appalled at this act they issued a decree that anyone who spoke of Herostratus would be put to death. Shortly after this horrible deed, a new temple was commissioned.

The architect was Scopas of Paros, one of the most famous sculptors of his day. Ephesus was one of the greatest cities in Asia Minor at this point and no expense was spared in the construction. According to Piny the Elder, a Roman historian, the temple was a "wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration." The temple was built in the same marshy place as before. To prepare the ground, Piny recorded that "layers of trodden charcoal were placed beneath, with fleeces covered with wool upon the top of them."

The building is thought to be the first completely constructed with marble and one of its must unusual features were 36 columns whose lower portions were carved with figures in high-relief.

The temple also housed many works of art including four bronze statues of Amazon women. Piny recorded the length of this new temple at 425 feet and the width at 225 feet. Some 127 columns, 60 feet in height, supported the roof. In comparison the Parthenon, the remains of which stand on the acropolis in Athens today, was only 230 feet long, 100 feet wide and had 58 columns. According to Piny, construction took 120 years, though some experts suspect it may have only taken half that time.

We do know that when Alexander the Great came to Ephesus in 333 B.C., the temple was still under construction. He offered to finance the completion of the temple if the city would credit him as the builder. The city fathers didn't want Alexander's name carved on the temple, but didn't want to tell him that. They finally gave the tactful response: "It is not fitting that one god should build a temple for another god" and Alexander didn't press the matter. Politicians have never changed.

Piny reported that earthen ramps were employed to get the heavy stone beams perched on top of the columns. This method seemed to work well until one of the largest beams was put into position above the door. It went down crookedly and the architect could find no way to get it to lie flat. He was beside himself with worry about this until he had a dream one night in which the Goddess herself appeared to him saying that he should not be concerned. She herself had moved the stone in the proper position. The next morning the architect found that the dream was true. During the night the beam had settled into its proper place, the legend goes.

The city continued to prosper over the next few hundred years and was the destination for many pilgrims coming to view the temple. A souvenir business in miniature Artemis


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idols, perhaps similar to a statue of her in the temple, grew up around the shrine. It was one of these business proprietors, a man named Demetrius that gave Paul a difficult time when he visited the city in 57 A.D.

Paul came to the city to win converts to the then new religion of Christianity. He was so successful that Demetrius feared the people would turn away from Artemis and he would lose his livelihood. He called others of his trade together with him and gave a rousing speech ending with "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" They then seized two of Paul's companions and a near riot followed. Eventually the city was quieted, the men released, and Paul left for Macedonia. It was Paul's Christianity that won out in the end, though.

By the time the great Temple of Artemis was destroyed during a raid by the Goths in 262 A.D., both the city and the religion of Artemis were in decline. When the Roman Emperor Constantine rebuilt much of Ephesus a century later, he declined to restore the temple. He had become a Christian and had little interest in pagan temples.

Despite Constantine's efforts, Ephesus declined in its importance as a crossroads of trade. The bay where ships docked disappeared as silt from the river filled it. In the end what was left of the city was miles from the sea, and many of the inhabitants left swampy lowland to live in the surrounding hills. Those that remained used the ruins of the temple as a source of building materials. Many of the fine sculptures were pounded into powder to make lime for wall plaster.

In 1863 the British Museum sent John Turtle Wood, an architect, to search for the temple. Wood met with many obstacles. The region was infested with bandits. Workers were hard to find. His budget was too small. Perhaps the biggest difficulty was that he had no idea where the temple was located. He searched for the temple for six years. Each year the British Museum threatened to cut off his funding unless he found something significant, and each year he convinced them to fund him for just one more season. Wood kept returning to the site each year many despite hardships. During his first season he was thrown from a horse, breaking his collar bone. Two years later he was stabbed within an inch of his heart during an assassination attempt upon the British Consul in Smyrna. Finally in 1869, at the bottom of a muddy twenty-foot deep test pit, his crew struck the base of the great temple. Wood then excavated the whole foundation removing 132,000 cubic yards of the swamp to leave a hole some 300 feet wide and 500 feet long. The remains of some of the sculptured portions were found and shipped the to British Museum where they can be viewed even today.

In 1904 another British Museum expedition under the leadership of D.G. Hograth continued the excavation. Hograth found evidence of five temples on the site, each constructed on top of the other.

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Today the site of the temple is a marshy field. A single column is erect to remind visitors that once there stood in that place one of the wonders of the ancient world.

The ancient city of Babylon, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, must have been a wonder to the traveller’s eyes. “In addition to its size,” wrote Herodotus, the Greek historian, in 450 BC, “Babylon surpasses in splendor any city in the known world.” Herodotus claimed the outer walls were 56 miles in length, 80 feet thick, and 320 feet high. Wide enough, he said, to all a four horse chariot to turn. The inner walls were “not so thick as the first, but hardly less strong.” Inside the walls were fortresses and temples containing immense statues of solid gold. Rising above the city was the famous Tower of Babel, a temple to the god, Marduk, that seemed to reach to the heavens. While the archaeo-
logical examination has disputed some of Herodotus’s claims (the outer walls seem to be only 10 miles long and not nearly as high but be careful of calling an eyewitness wrong) his narrative does give us a sense of how awesome the features of the city appeared to those that visited it. Interestingly enough, though, one of the city’s most spectacular sites is not even mentioned by Herodotus; The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Accounts indicate that the garden was built by King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled the city, it is believed for 43 years starting in 605 BC (there is another, less believed story, that the gardens were built by the Assyrian Queen Semiramis during her five year reign in 810 BC). This was the height of the city’s power and influence and Nebuchadnezzar constructed an astonishing array of temples, streets, palaces, and walls.

According to accounts, the gardens were built to cheer up Nebuchadnezzar’s homesick wife, Amyitis. Amyitis, daughter of the king of the Medes, was married to Nebuchadnezzar to create a political alliance between the nations. The land she came from, though, was green, rugged, and mountainous, and she found the flat, hot, sun hardened terrain of Mesopotamia depressing. The king decided to recreate her homeland by building an artificial mountain with rooftop gardens.

The Hanging Gardens probably did not really “hang” in the sense of being suspended from cables or ropes. The name comes from an inexact translation of the Greek word Kremastos or the Latin word Pensilis, which means not just “hanging”, but “overhanging” as in the case of a terrace or a balcony.

The Greek geographer, Strabo, who described the gardens in the first century BC, wrote, “It consists of vaulted terraces raised one above another, and resting upon cube shapped pillars. These are hollow and filled with earth to allow trees of the largest size to be planted. The pillars, the vaults, and terraces are constructed of baked brick and asphalt.”Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian, stated that the platforms on which the garden stood consisted of huge slabs of stone (otherwise unheard of in Babel), covered with layers of reed, asphalt, and tiles. Over this was put “a covering of sheets of lead, that the wet which drenched through the earth might not rot the foundation. Upon all these

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was laid earth of a convenient depth, sufficient for the growth of the greatest trees. When the soil was laid even and smooth, it was planted with all sorts of trees, which both for greatness and beauty might delight the spectators.”

How big were the gardens? Diodorus tells us it was about 400 feet wide by 400 feet long and more than 80 feet high. Other accounts indicate the height was equal to the outer city walls. Walls that Herodotus said were 320 feet high. In any case the gardens were an amazing sight; a green, leafy, artificial mountain rising off the plain. But did it actually exist? After all, Herodotus never mentions it. But, perhaps it wasn’t impressive to him. He didn’t mention the Sphinx either.

This was one of the questions that occurred to German archaeologist Robert Koldewey in 1899. For centuries before that the ancient city of Babel was nothing but a mound of muddy debris. Though unlike many ancient locations, the city’s position was well known, nothing visible remained of its architecture. Koldewey dug on the Babel site for fourteen years and dug up many of its features including the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of the Tower of Babel, Nebuchadnezzar’s palaces and the wide processional roadway which passed through the heart of the city.

While excavating the Southern Citadel, Koldewey discovered a basement with four-teen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient records indicated that only two locations in the city made use of stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, and the Hanging Gardens.

The north wall of the Northern Citadel had already been found and had, indeed, contained stone. This made it seem likely that Koldewey had found the cellar of the gardens. He continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported by Diodorus. Finally a room was unearthed with three large, strange holes in the floor. Koldewey concluded this had been the location of the chain pumps that raised the water to the garden’s roof. The foundations he discovered measured some 100 by 150 feet,
smaller than the measurements described by ancient historians, but still impressive. One can only wonder if Queen Amyitis was happy with her fantastic present, or if she continued to pine away for the green mountains of her homeland.

In 377 BC the city of Halicarnassus was the capital of a small kingdom along the Mediterranean coast of Asia Minor. It was in that year that the ruler of the land, Hecatomnus of Mylassa, died and left control of the kingdom to his son, Mausolus Hecatomnus, a local satrap to the Persians who had been ambitious and taken control of several neighboring cities and districts. Mausolus in his time extended the territory so that it included much of Southwestern Asia Minor.

Mausolus, with his queen Artemisia, ruled over Halicarnassus and the surrounding territory for 24 years. Mausolus, though he was descended from the local people, spoke


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Greek and admired the Greek way of life and government. He founded many cities of Greek design along the coast and encouraged Greek democratic traditions.

Then in 353 B.C. Mausolus died, leaving his queen Artemisia, who was also his sister (It was the custom in Caria for rulers to marry their own sisters), broken-hearted. As a tribute to him, she decided to build him the most splendid tomb in the known world. It became a structure so famous that Mausolus's name is now associated with all stately tombs through our modern word, mausoleum. The building was also so beautiful and unique it became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Soon after construction of the tomb started Artemisia found herself in a crisis. Rhodes, an island in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Asia Minor, had been conquered by Mausolus. When the Rhodians heard of his death they rebelled and sent a fleet of ships to capture the city of Halicarnassus. Knowing that the Rhodian fleet was on the way, Artemisa hid her own ships at a secret location at the east end of the city's harbour.

After troops from the Rhodian fleet disembarked to attack, Artemisia's fleet made a surprise raid, captured the Rhodian fleet, and towed it out to sea. Artemisa put her own soldiers on the invading ships and sailed them back to Rhodes. Fooled into thinking that the returning ships were their own victorious navy, the Rhodians failed to put up a defense and the city was easily captured quelling the rebellion.

The Mausoleum overlooked the city of Halicarnassus for many centuries. It was untouched when the city fell to Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. and still undamaged after attacks by pirates in 62 and 58 B.C. It stood above the city ruins for some 17 centuries.

Then a series of earthquakes shattered the columns and sent the stone chariot crashing to the ground. By 1404 A.D. only the very base of the Mausoleum was still recognizable. Crusaders, who had occupied the city from the thirteenth century onward, recycled the broken stone into their own buildings. In 1522 rumours of a Turkish invasion caused Crusaders to strengthen the castle at Halicarnassus (which was by then known as Bodrum) and much of the remaining portions of the tomb was broken up and used within the castle walls. Indeed sections of polished marble from the tomb can still be seen there today.

In 1846 the British Museum sent the archaeologist Charles Thomas Newton to search for more remains of the Mausoleum. He had a difficult job. He didn't know the exact location of the tomb and the cost of buying up all the small parcels of land in the area to look for it would have been astronomical. Instead Newton studied the accounts of ancient writers like Pliny to obtain the approximate size and location of the memorial, and then bought a plot of land in the most likely location. Digging down, Newton explored the surrounding area through tunnels he dug under the surrounding plots. He was able to


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locate some walls, a staircase, and finally three of the corners of the foundation. With this knowledge, Newton was able to figure out which plots of land he needed to buy.

Newton then excavated the site and found sections of the reliefs that decorated the wall of the building and portions of the stepped roof. Also a broken stone chariot wheel, some seven feet in diameter, from the sculpture on the roof was discovered. Finally, he found the statues of Mausolus and Artemisia that had stood at the pinnacle of the building.

Today these works of art stand in the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum. There the images of Mausolus and his queen forever watch over the few broken remains of the beautiful tomb she built for him.

In the fall of 1994 a team of archaeological scuba divers entered the waters off of Alexandria, Egypt. Working beneath the surface they searched the bottom of the sea for artifacts. Large underwater blocks of stone were marked with floating masts so that an Electronic Distance Measurement station on shore could obtain their exact positions. Global positioning satellites were used to further fix the locations. The information was then fed into computers to create a detailed database of the sea floor. Ironically, these scientists were using some of the most high-tech devices available at the end of the 20th century to try and discover the ruins of one of the most advanced technological achievements of the 3rd century, B.C.: The Pharos. It was the great lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The story of the Pharos starts with the founding of the city of Alexandria by the Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great in 332 B.C.. Alexander started at least 17 cities named Alexandria at different locations in his vast domain. Most of them disappeared, but Alexandria in Egypt thrived for centuries and continues even today.

Alexander the Great choose the location of his new city carefully. Instead of building it on the Nile Delta he selected a site some twenty miles to the west, so that the silt and mud carried by the river would not block the city harbour. South of the city was the marshy Lake Mareotis. After a canal was constructed between the lake and the Nile, the city had two harbours: one for Nile River traffic, and the other for Mediterranean Sea trade. Both harbours would remain deep and clear.

Alexander died soon after in 323 B.C. and the city was completed by Ptolemy Soter the new ruler of Egypt. Under Ptolemy the city became rich and prosperous. However, it needed both a symbol and a mechanism to guide the many trade ships into the busy harbour. Ptolemy authorized the building of the Pharos in 290 B.C., and when it was completed some twenty years later, it was the first lighthouse in the world and the tallest building in existence, with the exception of the Great Pyramid.

The lighthouse's designer was Sostrates of Knidos. Proud of his work, Sostrates, desired to have his name carved into the foundation. Ptolemy II, the son who ruled Egypt

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after his father, refused this request wanting his own name to be the only one on the building. A clever man, Sostrates had the inscription:

SOSTRATES SON OF DEXIPHANES OF KNIDOS ON BEHALF OF ALL MARINERS TO THE SAVIOR GODS

chiseled into the foundation, then covered it with plaster. Into the plaster was chiseled Ptolemy's name. As the years went by the plaster aged and chipped away revealing Sostrates' declaration. The lighthouse was built on the island of Pharos and soon the building itself acquired the name. The connection of the name with the function became so strong that the word "Pharos" became the root of the word "lighthouse" in the French, Italian, Spanish and Romanian languages.

The lighthouse was apparently a tourist attraction. Food was sold to visitors at the observation platform at the top of the first level. A smaller balcony provided a view from the top of the eight-sided tower for those that wanted to make the additional climb. The view from there must have been impressive as it was probably 300 feet above the sea. There were few places in the ancient world where a person could ascend a man-made tower to get such a perspective. How then did the world's first lighthouse wind up on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea? Most accounts indicate that it, like many other ancient buildings, was the victim of earthquakes. It stood for 1,500 years but was damaged by tremors in 365 and 1303 A.D. Reports indicate the final collapse came in 1326. Did the divers actually find the remains of Pharos in the bottom of the harbour? Some of the larger blocks of stone found certainly seem to have come from a large building. Statues were located that may have stood at the base of the Pharos. Interestingly enough, much of the material found seems to be from earlier eras than the lighthouse. Scientists speculate that they may have been recycled in the construction of the Pharos from even older buildings.”

We have already discussed the Great Pyramid in previous classes but interestingly enough, although this pyramid is dated to great antiquity, it might not be mentioned in the Bible, which is odd, and it isn’t mentioned in secular sources until Herodotus around 450BC. Well, that’s one of the earliest sources but it is a fact worth investigating. How old really, are the pyramids on the Giza plateau?

The island of Rhodes was an important economic centre in the ancient world. It is located off the southwestern tip of Asia Minor where the Aegean Sea meets the Mediterranean. The capitol city, also named Rhodes, was built in 408 B.C. and was designed to take advantage of the island's best natural harbour on the northern coast. In 357 B.C. the island was conquered by Mausolus of Halicarnassus, fell into Persian hands in 340 B.C., and was finally captured by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C..

When Alexander died of a fever at an early age, his generals fought bitterly among themselves for control of Alexander's vast kingdom. Three of them, Ptolemy, Seleucus,

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and Antigous, succeeded in dividing the kingdom among themselves. The Rhodians supported Ptolemy (who wound up ruling Egypt) in this struggle. This angered Antigous who sent his son Demetrius to capture and punish the city of Rhodes. The war was long and painful. Demetrius brought an army of 40,000 men. This was more than the entire population of Rhodes.

When Demetrius attacked the city, the defenders stopped the war machine by flooding a ditch outside the walls and mining the heavy monster in the mud. By then almost a year had gone by and a fleet of ships from Egypt arrived to assist the city. Demetrius withdrew quickly leaving the great siege tower where it was. To celebrate their victory and freedom, the Rhodians decided to build a giant statue of their patron god Helios.

They melted down bronze from the many war machines Demetrius left behind for the exterior of the figure and the super siege tower became the scaffolding for the project. According to Pliny, a historian who lived several centuries after the Colossus was built,
construction took 12 years. Other historians place the start of the work in 304 B.C..

The statue was one hundred and ten feet high and stood upon a fifty-foot pedestal near the harbour mole. Although the statue has been popularly depicted with its legs spanning the harbour entrance so that ships could pass beneath, it was actually posed in a more traditional Greek manner: nude, wearing a spiked crown, shading its eyes from the rising sun with its right hand, while holding a cloak over its left.

The architect of this great construction was Chares of Lindos, a Rhodian sculptor who was a patriot and fought in defence of the city. Chares had been involved with large scale statues before. His teacher, Lysippus, had constructed a 60-foot high likeness of Zeus. Chares probably started by making smaller versions of the statue, maybe three feet high, then used these as a guide to shaping each of the bronze plates of the skin.

The Colossus stood proudly at the harbour entrance for some fifty-six years. Each morning the sun must have caught its polished bronze surface and made the god's figure shine. Then an earthquake hit Rhodes and the statue collapsed. Huge pieces of the figure lay along the harbour for centuries.

It is said that an Egyptian king offered to pay for its reconstruction, but the Rhodians refused. They feared that somehow the statue had offended the god Helios, who used the earthquake to throw it down.

In the seventh century A.D. the Arabs conquered Rhodes and broke the remains of the Colossus up into smaller pieces and sold it as scrap metal. Legend says it took 900 camels to carry away the statue. A sad end for what must have been a majestic work of art.



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In ancient times the Greeks held one of their most important festivals, The Olympic Games, in honour of the King of their gods, Zeus, who is the same god as Bel in Babylon and Baal in Syria, and ultimately, Satan himself. Like our modern Olympics, athletes travelled from distant lands, including Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt and Sicily, to compete in the games. The Olympics were first started in 776 B.C. and held at a shrine to Zeus located on the western coast of Greece in a region called Peloponnesus. The games, held every four years, helped to unify the Greek city-states. Sacred truce was declared during the games and wars were stopped. Safe passage was given to all travelling to the site, called Olympia, for the season of the games. The site consisted of a stadium (for the games) and a sacred grove, or Altis, where temples were located. The shrine to Zeus was simple in the early years, but as time went by and the games increased in importance, it became obvious that a new, larger temple, one worthy of their King of the gods, was needed. Between 470 and 460 B.C., construction on a new temple was started.

The designer was Libon of Elis and his masterpiece, The Temple of Zeus, was completed in 456 B.C.. This temple followed a design used on many large Grecian
temples. It was similar to the Parthenon in Athens and the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus. The temple was built on a raised, rectangular platform. Thirteen large columns supported the roof along the sides and six supported it on each end. A gently-peaked roof topped the building. The triangles, or "pediments," created by the sloped roof at the ends of the building were filled with sculpture. Under the pediments, just above the columns, was more sculpture depicting the twelve labours of Heracles, six on each end. Though the temple was considered one of the best examples of the Doric design because of its style and the quality of the workmanship, it was decided the temple alone was too simple to be worthy of the King of the gods. To remedy this, a statue was commissioned for the interior- a magnificent statue of Zeus that would become one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The sculptor chosen for this great task was a man named Phidias. He had already rendered a forty-foot high statue of the goddess Athena for the Parthenon in Athens and had also done much of the sculpture on the exterior of that temple. After his work in Athens was done, Phidias travelled to Olympia to start on what was considered his best work, the statue of Zeus. On arriving he set up a workshop to the west of the temple.

The first archaeological work on the Olympia site was done by a group of French scientists in 1829. They were able to locate the outlines of the temple and found fragments of the sculpture showing the labours of Heracles. These pieces were shipped to Paris where they are still on display today at the Louvre. The next expedition came from Germany in 1875 worked at Olympia for five summers. Over that period they were able to map out most of the buildings there, discovered more fragments of the temple's sculpture, and located the remains of the pool in the floor that contained the oil for the statue.

In the 1950's an excavation uncovered the workshop of Phidias which was discovered beneath an early Christian Church. Archaeologists found sculptor's tools, a pit for casting

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bronze, clay moulds, modelling plaster and even a portion of one of the elephant's tusks which had supplied the ivory for the statue. Many of the clay moulds, which had been used to shape the gold plates, bore serial numbers which must have been used to show the place of the plates in the design.

Today the stadium at the site has been restored. Little is left of the temple, though, except a few columns. Of the statue, which was perhaps the most wonderful work at Olympia, all is now gone.

Just remember, the study of history is highly subjective and is based as much on opinion, conjecture, guesswork, and just plain bias as it is on fact. So, if one of you becomes an archaeologist or an historian don’t assume you are going to be a purely objective investigator. There is not now nor has there ever been such a thing, not in history or science.

As Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian empire engulf the ancient near east, some historians claim that the country of Lydia established the first standard coinage in the ancient world. Thales of Miletus, the Greek philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, is born in present day Turkey (d. 547BC). He predicts a solar eclipse which stops a battle between the Lydians and the Medes. He then develops deductive geometry and a theorem which carries his name although he may have derived it from the Babylonians. He studies magnetism and then goes on to theorize that water is the basic element of all things. The Greeks promote the theory at this time that the world’s history was affected by a great flood or floods. Duh. This is called the “diluvial” doctrine. Philosophers Xenophanes and Anaximander are given credit for this by traditional historians, as they can not possibly acknowledge the Biblical and Godly origin of this statement of fact. Anaximander did, however, in this century, until his death, like Thales, also in 547BC, practically invent the theory of evolution, which is a basic tenet of Hinduism, concerning long ages of history and life forms developing and improving, growing into more complicated life forms although there is no evidence in nature of any one celled animal becoming a two celled animal, becoming a three celled animal, becoming an ape. Greek philosopher, Pythagoras, argues that the earth is a sphere and that the sun, moon, and stars revolve around it. He thinks the autonomous movement of these celestial objects creates music, called the music of the spheres.

Pythagoras must have read Isaiah 40:22 and Job 38:7 in the King James Bible. Just kidding.He came up with the Pythagorean Theorem which you will study in Geometry class if you are so unfortunate as to have to study Geometry (I flunked it) even though he “borrowed” the theorem from the Babylonians who developed it in about 1900BC, according to traditional historians. He is also credited with observing that the brain is the seat of higher activity, perhaps after reading the ending of Judges 19:30. Joking again.

Backing up a bit, about the 700’s the Greek poet, Hesiod, writes Theogony, the oldest surviving account on the origin of the Greek gods, and Works and Days, advice on

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farming and moral life. He could have just as easily have read Genesis 6:4 for the former and Proverbs for the latter.

Greek sculptors begin experimenting with the perfect human form in their work which still affects us today. A long series of reliefs from the Assyrian palace of Sargon II at Dur Sharrukin, illustrating the conquests of the royal armies, is the first large scale narrative to describe the progress of specific events in time according to traditional historians, completely excluding the Bible narrative.

It is about this time that the main building material for Greek architecture becomes marble. The Greeks develop their basic temple structure during this time. Their architecture is named Doric, for the Dorian or mainland Greeks, Ionic for the Ionian tribes of Asia Minor and the Greek islands, and Corinthian for the Greek city-state of Corinth Archaic pottery, named for the period of Greek style called Archaic, employs black figured painting on clay that becomes orange red after firing.

Sparta, a Greek city-state, later known as a warfare state, becomes a great center of music drawing poet-musicians like Alcman, Tyrtaeus, and Terpander, who might be a mythological person. Religious festivals in Sparta include music competitions.

Artists in Crete make statues by nailing hammered sheets of bronze over a wood core. This is the predecessor of a technique called hollow bronze casting. The first truly free standing stone images of human beings are created as religious statues in Greece.

By the way, back to Pythagoras. He is credited with developing the octave, and the major and minor scales come into being according to traditional historians. I wonder how Greek music compared to the music we find described in Psalm 150?

Cyrus is predicted to be the ruler who will demand that Jerusalem be rebuilt in Isaiah 44:28. Remember, Isaiah is dead when Cyrus comes to power. Herodotus gives us an account which is also found in Trogus Pompeius’ “Justin’s History of the World” of how Cyrus was supposed to have been exposed as an infant and left for dead due to a fear by his grandfather that he would take power. A poor shepherd and his wife raise him and leave their own baby in his place to die. Then, when he is grown the shepherd reveals to him his origin. Cyrus does rise to power.

Nebuchadnezzar spent the tolls of the tribute given to him by conquered nations to beautify his capital, making Babylon the unrivaled capital of the ancient near east, the largest and most magnificent metropolis of the ancient world. The better buildings were
all made of brick and nearly all of the bricks recovered from Babylon bear the inscription, “I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon”.

Approaching the city the first thing you saw was a tall ziggurat, a type of pyramid, rising 65 stories, “crowned with a shrine containing a massive table of solid gold, and an

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ornate bed on which, each night, some woman slept to await the pleasure of the god”, as Herodotus says. Nebuchadnezzar ruled over a land tilled by tenant farmers and slaves using ploughs drawn by oxen or stone hoes. Like the ancient Sumerians, canals were used to irrigate farmland and it produced a wide variety of cereals and grains. Milk, once rare, became a staple food source. Meat was rare and costly, but fish from the rivers were an abundant source of protein for even the poorest. Mining, as in Egypt, was extensive. The ass was used to pull the local transport, the wagon. He improved the highways and countless caravans made Babylon the wealthiest of nations.

In spite of all of this success the book of Daniel tells us of how Babylon, as a political entity, came to an end. Traditional historians say that for a few years his name disappears, then reappears, and then falls away, they claim in 562BC. Within thirty years of his death, his empire crumbles. A successor, Nabonidus preferred archaeology to progress and spent a great deal of time excavating ancient Sumeria while his own kingdom fell apart. When Cyrus and the Persians stood at the gate, it is said that the people opposed to the church-state opened the city to him and welcomed being liberated, in a manner of speaking. For two centuries Persia ruled Babylon as one of the greatest empires history has ever known.

Now, we turn to Persia and to the Medes, who helped them come to power, just as they had helped destroy Assyria. No one is certain as to the origin of the Medes. The first mention of them is on a tablet recording an expedition of Shalmaneser III into a country called Parsua, in the mountains of Kurdistan about 837BC according to Durant. There, supposedly, 27 kings ruled over 27 thinly populated states called Amadai, Madai, and Medes. The sacred scriptures of the Persians, called Zend-Avesta idealized the memory of this homeland and described it as a paradise. It is possible that the people here migrated from Central Asia where their ancestors had wandered after the flood. They found a mineral rich land in Persia with copper, iron, lead, gold, and silver, marble, and precious stones. Their first king, Deioces, founded their first capital, Ecbatana. According to Herodotus Deioces achieved power with a reputation for being just but then became a vicious tyrant.

Under his leadership the Medes became a threat to Assyria, which repeatedly invaded them. Assyria, however, was unable to put down the constant struggle for freedom. It was the greatest of Medean kings, Cyaxares, who destroyed Nineveh. The peace treaty they had with the Lydians after the eclipse foretold by Thales was sealed by the combatants drinking each other’s blood. His brief empire included Assyria, Persia, and Media.

Within a generation it was gone. The Medes gave Persia the Aryan-Indo-European language, as it is termed by historians and linguists alike. They also gave the Persians their Zoroastrian religion of good god, Ahura-Mazda, and bad god, Ahriman, and the law that Daniel and the book of Esther refer to as being unalterable. Cyaxares’ son, Astyages, immediately frittered away the kingdom in luxury and effeminate fashion. The once simple, warlike people became slaves to wealth and comfort. Astyages was a brutal tyrant

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who once forced someone to eat the body of the unfortunate victim’s own son. This person, Harpagus, got his revenge by helping Cyrus the Persian take power, and instantly the Medes, who were masters of the Persians, became their servants, and Persia began its destiny to conquer the entire Near Eastern world.

Cyrus was a natural leader, the kind of which, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher said, at whose coronation all men rejoice. To quote Durant, “Royal in spirit and action, capable of wise administration as well as of dramatic conquest, generous to the defeated and loved by those who had been his enemies-no wonder the Greeks made him the subject of innumerable romances, and – to their minds- the greatest hero before Alexander.” He was handsome by all accounts and a natural leader. His ambition was his
undoing as his constant warfare resulted in his death in a campaign against an obscure tribe. Like Alexander, he created an empire but did not live to enjoy it. His one weakness was typical oriental cruelty, which his half mad son, Cambyses inherited. His attempt to conquer Egypt and add it to the empire succeeded but resulted in his complete insanity. He lost 50,000 soldiers in the desert and his campaign to conquer Carthage ended in failure.

At its greatest size, under Darius (Dar-i’-us), the Persian empire included 20 provinces or satraps embracing Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Lydia, Phyrgia, Ionia, Cappadocia, Cilicia, Armenia, Assyria, the Caucasus, Babylonia, Media, Persia, modern Afghanistan and Baluchistan, India west of the Indus river, and more. Never before had history recorded so extensive an area brought under one government. Persia ruled for 200 years from the country now known to us as Iran. Quoting again from Durant, “The real basis of the royal power and imperial government was the army; an empire exists only so long as it retains its superior capacity to kill.” Japheth will be enlarged. (See Genesis 9:27).

The culture of Persia was closely akin to the Aryan culture of the invaders of India. Darius I, in an inscription at Naksh-i-Rustam, described himself as “a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan descent.” The Zoroastrians spoke of their mountainous, inhospitable land that produced such a hardy race of warriors as Airyano-vaejo, “the Aryan home”. Make note of this and remember it when we talk much later about the rise and philosophy of Adolf Hitler in Germany. As in most Near Eastern cultures and, in fact, most cultures throughout history, the common man was illiterate and devoted his entire life to farming, however primitive. Barley and wheat were their staple crops but meat was also a staple as was the drinking of a great deal of wine. When the Persians did take to writing they used the Babylonian cuneiform for their inscriptions and the Semitic alphabet for their documents. Cyrus served wine to his army and the Persian councils,

Durant tells us, never made a decision while sober. Persia had a very low level of industry and depended upon its conquered nations to produce luxuries. They, like their predecessors, did engage in great building projects and the great highway from Sardis to Susa, built by Darius I, was 1500 miles long. Also, like Assyria and Babylon before it,

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the life of Persia revolved around the military rather than the political. Its wealth was based not on industry but on sheer power.

Persian government was unusually competent, though, and highly organized, as the Bible reveals. From the emperor who was called “king of kings”, called by the Greeks “Basileus” or simply, the king, down to the lowest noble governmental ruler governing was about absolute power. The king had total control over life and death and there are many stories regarding what would be regarded by us as pure cruelty but what was regarded by them as absolutely necessary for proper government. One story explains the cruelty as a father begged the emperor not to take his last and only surviving son for the army, only to watch the army march out between the two halves of that very son, cut in two by orders of the emperor in punishment for such presumption on the part of a commoner. Another story has a father only being able to compliment the emperor on his archery skills after that emperor executes his son with an arrow. This is the legacy and the consequence of permitting rulers to have absolute power.

With regard to religion, Persian divines reported that a great prophet appeared in the ancient home of the Aryans, named Zarathustra. The Greeks call him Zoroastres. He was supposedly divinely born after his guardian angel entered a plant and passed the juice onto a priest who offered a sacrifice after which a ray of heaven’s glory entered a bosom of a girl of noble lineage. Once again, Satan counterfeits Genesis 3:15, in many shapes and forms. The rest of Zarathustra’s story is interesting but very fanciful, from having his entrails filled with molten lead and not minding it one bit to his writing of the book of knowledge at the hands of the good god, Ahura-Mazda. The Zoroastrian religion is now born. It is from this that the Roman Catholic Church got their “angels with wings”, of which there are none in the Bible, and Islam received their view of heaven as a garden as opposed to the Bible’s heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. Persian religion was mixed with Persian government, as in other cultures we have discussed, and the specter of the church-state alliance always ruled over the people. For example, minor moral offenses could be punished by flogging or death, however, their idea of morality was vastly different from ours. Pedophilia was learned from the Greeks according to Herodotus in spite of the fact that the Avesta lists such behavior as the unforgivable sin.

The Persian world was eventually conquered by the Greek world militarily in the person of Alexander the Great but we will go into much more detail about that and the fourfold division of Alexander’s empire, along with Greek culture, philosophy, and science when we come to Alexander’s study as he represents the height of the Greek world. It is during that class that we will also discuss the failed attempt by Persia to conquer Europe through Greece and how the moral and physical backbone of Persia was broken at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platea.

According to Ussher’s dating, Cyrus marched against Babylon in 539BC and took it in 538BC which surprised the Babylonians, who believed they could withstand a twenty year siege or so Herodotus tells us. The Medean-Persian alliance permits Darius to take

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over the administration of Babylon. In 537BC Cyrus gave permission for all of the Jews to return to their country. Reading Daniel will give you a more personal look at the last part of the reign of the Babylonian kings and the first part of the reign of the Medean-Persian kings. The events of Esther take place later, beginning in 518BC. Trouble with Greece began, for the Persians, about 501BC. In 480BC, the Persian king, Xerxes, marches on Greece with an army of more than 2 million men. Persia’s attempt to subjugate Greece fails with devastating defeats at the battles of Marathon and Platea. Xerxes’ mission met its greatest failure at the naval battle of Salamis.

As Alexander the Great will represent the height of Greek military success, so will Antiochus Epiphanes reflect the utter depravity of the Greek culture. But, before we study Greece in detail let us first look to the beginnings of Rome for there are many lessons to be learned from history’s greatest man-made empire.

My LIFE magazine collection - November 16, 1962

The front page has a picture of a serious looking Indian soldier on it peering over a sandbag or some embankment. It says, "WAR IN INDIA". Down at the bottom it says "Indian Soldier Ready For Battle".

Another article advertised is "Why Good Teachers Quit"

Still another says "The Men Who Got The Votes"

On the inside of the front cover are advertisments for Clairol hair coloring and for Listerine.

Isn't it interesting how crises can work to a president's advantage as President Kennedy's party didn't bomb out in the mid-terms, the first time since 1934, probably because of the Cuban Missile Crisis (in which, if you remember, he almost got us into World War Three. Fortunately Kruschev realized what an amateur he was and a danger. We have Kruschev more to thank for averting the end of civilization than we do Mr. PT109.)

Still, the Republicans did well.

Valdese, North Carolina industry, (most of which is gone now), suffered a "phase reversal" due to a mistake by the power comany, Duke, and machinery started running backwards. It was a Twilight Zone sort of thing.

In spite of the Dems victories, GOP Governors Scranton of Pa., Romney of Michigan, and Rockefeller of NY are poised to be the Republican contenders in 1964. Mitt Romney's father gets a nice write up.

A handsome Ted (Teddy the Bear) Kennedy enjoyed a landslide win in Mass.

An impressive article on Red China's war with India follows. It seems everyone in India, women included, are drilling to fight to protect the homeland.

Eleanor Roosevelt dies, "A Great Lady is Dead".

Did I ever tell you that Newport refreshes while you smoke?

These aren't cars, they're battleships on wheels.

"Hit and Run to Cuba with Alpha 66", a story about an abortive raid on the communist island.

Connecticut' s First Annual Hartford County Old-Fashioned Firemen's Muster parade is covered. Cute.

"Here's how to make 4 great drinks."

"Big Call for Antique Phones". Of course, they can't show the phones without a hot mama dressed in lingerie?

Tommy Myers, Northwestern' s quarterback is an "Ice-Cold Hero with a Hot Arm".

A story about supersalesman, Vic Sabatino; "A modern parable: Vic Sabatino's fierce vision of money and power, THE LASH OF SUCCESS". By the way, he lost everything that was important, his wife and daughter, but in the 1962 world he came out a winner because he kept his 16 stores profitable.

"Bring 'em Back Dancing" has dance historian, Katherine Dunham, bringing West Africans to America as she studies the origins of dance for her new Broadway show 'Bamboche'.

"They can't take the system - and you can't blame them, How We Drive Teachers To Quit". 125,000 public school teachers will quit in 1962. School boards hire administration that care only about pleasing the school boards, looking over the shoulders of the teachers and constantly criticizing, and just bureaucratic nonsense. Sound familiar teachers? Has anything changed?

Nature lovers offering "help in a Flamingo calamity" in Africa.

The Spanish Riding Academy in Vienna and "Some Remarkable Animals Pace a Brace of Films" if you remember Disney's 'The Miracle of the White Stallions" and the French cartoon "Gay Purr-ee"

"A Cuddly Beast Off-Camera for a Jungle Role" has a 550 pound Lion named Zamba, acting like a kitty cat for 12 year old Pamela Franklin playing in the movie, "The Lion". Seriously, this is off camera, she is hugging the lion and he looks absolutely in ecstasy at the attention. She says he was so sweet to work with.

Jimmy Durante costars with an elephant.

Finally, a photo of a football practice makes a player look like he has no head. Just for kicks.

World History, Chapter Five, revised

From Majesty to Mockery
1 Kings 6:1 to 2 Kings 21 and the kingdom falls apart
God’s Hammer
2 Kings 22 to 2 Kings 25 and prophecy fulfilled


This period of time covered in this class; from 1004BC and the dedicating of the temple until 588BC and it and Jerusalem’s destruction by the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s guard, is called “the fifth age of the world” by Archbishop Ussher.

Solomon has built the temple, dedicated it, and finished his own palace, as you will find by continuing to read the Biblical narrative, by the time ancient historians tell us that Shishak, also called Sefonchis, in the Egyptian chronology, came to rule in Egypt in 978BC. Some equate the Shishak of the Bible with Sheshonq I, founder of the 22nd dynasty of Egypt, called the Libyan dynasty, and the temporary takeover of Egypt. It is said that he reigned from 945 to 924 in distinction to Ussher’s date. K.A. Kitchen, in his "Ancient Egyptian Chronology for Aegeanists" recently published in Mediterranean Archaology and Archaeometry, (2002), Vol.2, No.2. pp. 5-12 moves the date of his reign up to 925BC and declares unequivocally that Shishak and Shesonq I are the same king.

The Harper Encyclopedia of Military History places the reign of David from 1010 to 973 and the reign of Solomon from 973 to 933BC. Ussher has David’s reign end with his death in 1015BC and Solomon’s ends in 975BC. The difference in dates is so minimal as to not be important. I just want you to be aware that there is no absolute agreement on dating at such a great distance in the past. Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, begins his reign in 975BC according to Ussher and by his harsh attitude lost the ten northern tribes of Israel, who proceeded to stray from the true worship of God while the Southern Kingdom is known as Judah. According to Josephus, the Jews kept a solemn fast in memory of this disaster on the 23rd day of the third month, called Sivan.

Jeroboam promotes pagan idolatry in 1 Kings 12:25-31. In 971BC, Shishak, possibly invited by Jeroboam, with whom he lived for a time, invaded Judah and attacked Jerusalem. All the treasure of the temple and the king’s house were what it cost to make him go away. The Egyptians received back all that their ancestors had given the Hebrews during the time of the Exodus (not the specific items probably but the value).

In 957BC, King Abijah of Judah defeats Jeroboam in the bloodiest battle recorded in the Bible. Israel loses 500,000 men in the battle. Jeroboam’s entire dynasty is wiped out by Baasha in the reign of his Jeroboam’s son, Nadab.

In 941BC Zerah, the Ethiopian, invades Judah with a million foot soldiers. King Asa of Judah met this army with 300,000 soldiers from Judah and 280,000 from the tribe of Benjamin.



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In 929BC, Baasha’s entire dynasty in Israel is eliminated when Zimri rebels and assassinates his son, Elah and all of his descendants. The traitor only rules for seven days before his overthrow and death.

The Syrian disaster at Aphek in 1 Kings 20:30 takes place in 900BC. Modern historians scoff at the body count as they did with regard to the Battle of Towton which took place
on a snowy Palm Sunday in 1461 in England’s “War of the Roses”. While chroniclers of the time offered a count of nearly half a million engaged in the battle with 30,000 dead, modern historians would only admit that a late medieval army could only field 10,000 or so. So, we were told that people whose livelihood depended on counting sheep and chickens could not count soldiers or corpses. However, the excavations at Towton since 1996 have produced a count of at least 30,000 human remains. So, don’t dismiss the Aphek account too easily. History might some day catch up to the Bible.

God’s hand in each of the aforementioned events is clearly seen and explained in the Bible account; explanations that no secular historian would accept.

In 884BC by Ussher’s account, the dynasty of Ahab is eliminated by Jehu when he killed Jehoram, the rest of Ahab’s family, and all the priests of Baal.

Reading through the books of 1st and 2nd Kings and 1st and 2nd Chronicles will give you the detailed accounts of the agony of Israel and Judah as they are ruled by good and bad kings and continue in apostasy until their destruction as independent nations.

When we come to the time of approximately 808BC, we find two of the most prosperous kings ruling in both kingdoms, Uzziah ruling in Judah, and Jeroboam II ruling in Israel. Isaiah the prophet graced Judah with his presence as well as Joel. The ancient historian, Codomanus, noted that Joel prophesied prior to Amos because he predicted a coming drought that Amos said had already happened. During this time Ussher says that both Jonah and Hosea prophesied in Israel.

During Isaiah’s long prophetic career, Rome is founded; by traditional historians in 753BC. The Greek colony of Syracuse is founded in 769BC. Macedonia, future birthplace of Alexander the Great, was founded in 814BC. Carthage, the Phoenician colony that so plagued Rome until its destruction, home of Hannibal, was founded in 850BC.

In Lydia, Ardysus begins his rule in 797BC, according to Eusebius. Ussher, quoting Eusebius, has Macedonia founded in 794BC rather than 814BC. At this distance in time, these few years are small issue. I’ll side with Ussher’s chronology based on the Bible. When Jeroboam II dies, Israel takes a nose dive to the bottom, and that is in 784BC.




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In the summer of 776BC, the first Olympiad took place, according to Greek chronologers. According to Latin historian, Varro, this marks the end of the mythological period of Greek history and the beginning of true Greek history.

According to Julius Africanus, quoted by Ussher, Boccaris Saites rules in Egypt when Menahem fights Pul, king of Assyria, in his attempt to invade Israel. Pul is said to be the
father of Sardanapalus. To illustrate the confusion that historians face when attempting to place names with kings in relation to the evidence they find, many chronologers agree that he is the same person but call him by different names. Example, Julius Africanus called him Acracarnes, Eusebius called him Ocrazapes, Stephanus Byzantinus called him Cindaraxes, and Strabo, Arrian, and Suidas called him Anacyndaraxes or Anakyndaraxes. Ussher thought that Pul was the same king of Assyria at Nineveh who was brought to repentance by Jonah’s preaching and that God raised up a repentant, heathen man to take vengeance on unrepentant Israel. He came to this conclusion by calculating genealogies backwards.

Assyria emerged very early north of Babylon as a nation and developed a warlike attitude in its unending attempt to remain a free country. They had already had one high point in the middle of the second millennium BC but due to the strain on their economy with an army always in the field had declined. For a time Assyria conquered Elam, Sumeria, Akkad, Babylonia, and Egypt. Durant states that “Sumeria was to Babylonia and Babylonia was to Assyria, what Crete was to Greece, and Greece to Rome: the first created a civilization, the second developed it to its height, , the third inherited it, added little to it, protected it, and transmitted it as a dying gift to the encompassing and victorious barbarians”. Ashur, according to traditional historians was the original capital and residence of kings and then Nineveh, where Jonah preached and against which Nahum prophesied. Durant says that the reign of Tiglath-Pileser, mentioned in 2 Kings 15:29 as taking away many people from Israel, was a symbol and summary of Assyrian history; “death and taxes, first for Assyria’s neighbors, then for herself.” He was a conqueror and a hunter. Ashurbanipal II followed in conquest as did Shalmaneser III and Tiglath-Pileser III. Sargon II, an officer in the army took over in a coup d’etat, the French words for a sudden seizing of the reigns of government.

His son, Sennacherib, put down revolts in Persian Gulf provinces and attacked Jerusalem and Egypt without success. The account of his army being wiped out by the angel of the Lord in 2 Kings 19:35 is another one of those hotly contested events in the Bible, especially considering that the Egyptians claimed that their own deliverance in this campaign was from field mice who ate the Assyrians quivers, bow strings, and shield straps so that they were easily defeated the next day. If God can permit 20 million people to die in a relatively short time in 1918 from the so-called “Spanish Flu”, including more soldiers than were killed in actual combat in World War One, and if He can permit nearly a million people to die in one earthquake in China in 1556, then how is it so difficult to imagine that by His own direct actions that He could personally kill 185,000 Assyrians in one night? I can see the need to look for naturalistic explanations for supernatural events

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but NOT when that search is in direct contradiction to the Bible’s clear statements. When those who question why there are no Assyrian records to this catastrophe stop and think they will realize that no ancient king is going to immortalize his failures in stone as that was reserved only for his glory.

In fact, the existence of Assyria itself was doubted for years by scholars because they had found no archaeological record of it. When they did in the 1800’s it all changed and now one hardly ever reads that it was once thought to be just another “made up” story from the Bible.

From the website of the Archaeological Institute of America we have this account;
“In 1847 the young British adventurer Austen Henry Layard explored the ruins of Nineveh and rediscovered the lost palace of Sennacherib across the Tigris River from modern Mosul in northern Iraq. Inscribed in cuneiform on the colossal sculptures in the doorway of its throne room was Sennacherib's own account of his siege of Jerusalem. It differed in detail from the biblical one but confirmed that Sennacherib did not capture the city. This find generated an excitement that is difficult to imagine today, because amid the increasing religious doubt and scriptural revisionism of the mid-nineteenth century, it gave Christian fundamentalists an independent eyewitness corroboration of a biblical event, written in the doorway of the very room where Sennacherib may have issued his order to attack. The palace's interior walls were paneled with huge stone slabs, carved in relief with images of Sennacherib's victories. Here one could see the king and army, foreign landscapes, and conquered enemy cities, including a remarkably accurate depiction of the Judean city of Lachish, whose destruction by the Assyrians was recorded in II Kings 18:13-14.”
http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/nineveh/
Assyrian conquest was cruel and vicious. Impaling, beheadings, and mutilation of living prisoners were commonplace. An example will suffice to show from Durant; “The severed head of the Elamite king was brought to Ashurbanipal as he feasted with his queen in the palace garden; he had the head raised on a pole in the midst of his guests, and the royal revel went on; later the head was fixed over the gate of Nineveh, and slowly rotted away. The Elamite general, Dananu, was flayed alive, and then was bled like a lamb; his brother had his throat cut, and his body was divided into pieces, which were distributed over the country as souvenirs.”

Another reason why the Assyrians were hated was that they practiced deportation. This is not something they invented but something they used quite well. They resettled conquered people from rebellious communities in other places, often in the heartland of Assyria itself. It is estimated by Snell in his “Life in the Ancient Near East” that nearly 5 million people were deported in three centuries, most in the period between 745 and


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647BC. This tactic might have worked for a short while but in the long run created patches of extreme anti-Assyrian hatred.

Assyrians may have seen themselves as a civilized people against the world and yet they did not seem to constitute a self-conscious ethnic group. There was, though, a military elite and military families who took pride in their martial history and conquests. In an earlier Assyrian period, called Middle Assyrian by scholars, women were treated oppressively, and even wore veils to keep them hidden from all but male relatives in a mirror of today’s Islamic custom. Women often were heads of families when widowed by war but were not involved in the legal system it would seem from the record. Prostitution flourished, however, and prostitutes who owned taverns were called “alewives” and loaned money like a modern bank.

Ussher has Rome being founded in 748BC, five years later than traditional historians. He reports the founding of it by the legendary Romulus of Romulus and Remus fame, two boys raised by a she-wolf, which became a very potent symbol in ancient Rome. He quotes the earliest of Roman writers, Fabian Pictor, for this information. His dating of the event is derived from the accounts of the secular games held faithfully by the ancient Romans. The Roman poet, Virgil, later wrote an epic poem called the Aenead, which declared that Aeneas, a refugee from the city of Troy founded Rome, giving the Trojans revenge on the Greeks when Rome conquered that civilization.

Like Rome, Assyria called for sculptors and architects from its vast empire to come to the capital to build temples and monuments. The kings, particularly Ashurbanipal, called for scribes and for all of the classic writings of Sumerian and Babylonian literature and gathered these copies in the library at Nineveh, where they were found intact by modern scholars over 2500 years later. Assyrian leaders, drunk with success, like Roman, became effeminate and pretentious over time, making the decline of their empire inevitable. They lacked the spiritual element that allowed the Roman Empire to simply morph into the Roman Catholic Church with the Pope taking the emperor’s role and the cardinals the senate on down to the lowest ranking administrator of a vast spiritual empire, the priest.

Durant says that; “The government of Ashurbanipal-which ruled Assyria, Babylonia, Armenia, Media, Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia, Sumeria, Elam, and Egypt- was without doubt the most extensive administrative organization yet seen in the Mediterranean or Near Eastern world; only Hammurabi and Thutmose III had approached it, and Persia alone would equal it before the coming of Alexander. In some ways, it was a liberal empire; its larger cities retained considerable autonomy, and each nation in it was left its own religion, law and ruler, provided it paid its tribute promptly.”

Empire has throughout history been Satan’s way of gathering people together to oppose God as a unified group, often with many so-called religions and ideologies but all with the same goal, to uplift man as a god on a physical earthly throne or as their god’s vicarious representative with a multitude of belief systems allowed, permitted as long as

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they do not conflict with the god-man’s deification. Most secular historians don’t see this because of their view of history. There are at least two ways to look at history. One is the accidental method that evolutionists and atheists use; history is one big accident and everything just happens by chance and although the similarities and patterns are interestingly similar, they mean nothing in the long run as humankind is working toward
a utopia where we will all come together as one big, cooperative human family. The other view is the conspiratorial view, where forces are seen working behind the scenes to accomplish some goal, usually dark and sinister. To the secular person, the conspiracy is of men working secretly together in the backroom to create a new world order, while to the Bible believer, the author of the great movements of history apart from God’s redemptive plan through the Lord Jesus Christ is Satan, aka Lucifer or the Devil, the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4). As Jesus Christ was manifested not only to take away our sins (1 John 3:5) but to destroy the works of the Devil (1 John 3:8) we must see the work of the deceiver clearly in human history, opposing God and all He requires from us.

As it is recommended to look for Christ in every passage of the Bible you read, it is helpful to look for Satan as you read history.

If, on the other hand, you admit that the imperial principle is good, in spreading law, order, commerce, and peace and that as many states as possible should be brought either by force or by persuasion under one government or even form of government then Assyria had established on a larger region of the earth a more stable order and prosperity than, as far as we know, had ever been established before in history. The army was the most vital part of the government and progress in the art of war was the most important progress. This pattern will be repeated again and again. Weapons of war became very sophisticated, from battering rams tipped with iron, to armor almost as confining as a medieval knight’s. Soldiers, rewarded for every head of a fallen enemy they brought in from the foe, engaged in mass decapitation.

Next to the army, the king relied on the church most heavily and paid well for the support of the priests. In Assyria, the formal head of state was the god, Ashur; all edicts were given in his name, all laws were the function of his divine will, all taxes were for his treasury, and even the king declared himself as the incarnation of the sun god, Shamash.

The law was as ruthless as the military tactics. Slitting of the nose and ears, castration, public whippings, pulling out the tongue, gouging out the eyes, impalement, and beheading were common forms of punishment. Under certain kings drinking poison or being forced to watch your son or daughter being burnt alive on the altar of a god was ordered. Trial by ordeal was often employed, where the bound prisoner was thrown into the river to see how his guilt or innocence would be decided by the gods.

All in all, Assyrian government was an instrument of war and we shall see the rise of the warfare state throughout history. War is more profitable than peace; it creates


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discipline, intensifies patriotism, and concentrates power in the hands of a few at the top. But it creates an addiction to violence. That is its weakness.

Assyria and Babylon were very similar, being the northern and southern part of essentially the same civilization. Irrigation was essential to their survival. Sennacherib, the king who lost his army to the angel of the Lord overnight, built the oldest aqueduct
for bringing water into Nineveh we have found and he also created one of the first examples of official government coinage that has been discovered. A tablet of Sennacherib’s is the oldest known reference to cotton, as well.

Like all military states, Assyria encouraged a high birth rate and abortion was a capital crime. A woman who caused herself to have a miscarriage, even if she died while attempting it, was to be impaled on a stake. Although some women did rise to power their overall position in Assyria was not very high. As I said before, they were not allowed to go into public unveiled and strict penalties were enforced for adultery even though their husbands could have as many concubines as they wanted. A husband could legally kill his wife if he caught her in the act of cheating, a law which was still on the books in many states in our country until a few decades ago.

In the early 600’s BC, according to Durant, when Assyria came under attack from the combined forces of Nabopolassar and an army of Medes, Nineveh and Assyria, were destroyed. In one blow, mighty Assyria was wiped out, and Nineveh was forgotten, except in the record of the Bible, until it was uncovered over a hundred years ago. Ussher said that this destruction took place in 626BC.

Before I review information again about Babylon, which took Assyria’s place, the king of Babylon even assuming the title of King of Assyria, let’s take a look around the world in the latter half of the first millennium, or thousand years, BC.

Tradition states that while in prison, one of the founders of the Chou dynasty in China, Wen Wang, wrote the Book of Changes, or I-Ching. This book is still used and I used it in high school. The I-Ching is a book of divination, a pagan, Satanic book based on what the Chinese call the eight Kua, or mystic trigrams invented by legendary emperor Fu Hsi. These trigrams are identified with the laws and elements of nature. Each trigram consists of three lines- some continuous and representing the male principle or yang, some broken and representing the female principle of yin. Yang represented the positive, active and heavenly principle of light, heat and life, while Yin represented the negative, passive, and earthly principle of darkness, cold, and death. You would think that neither Fu Hsi nor Wen Wang had much of a liking for women, wouldn’t you?

Wen Wang doubled the number of strokes and raised the possible number of combinations of broken and unbroken lines to 64. All science and history were supposed to be found in that book. All knowledge even was to be contained in it. Confucius, the most famous of Chinese philosophers, edited a volume and declared that it ranked above

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all other writings. Wen Wang’s work allegedly took place in the early 12th century BC. The Shang dynasty under which Wang my have been imprisoned would have ended at that time or a couple of hundred years later, around 1050BC, depending on who you read. Both Shang and Chou dynasties used horse drawn chariots, organized armies, and human sacrifice as a means of governing and religious expression. Ancestor worship was very important and gifts of food and wine were brought to special places and temples to keep the ancestors happy. The Shang used Oracle bones, which they called Dragon bones to communicate with their ancestors by heating them until they cracked and then reading the cracks. Remember, even in the Ancient Near East there was a sort of backhanded ancestor worship, as even the main gods of Assyria, can be traced back to Noah’s sons or grandsons (Ashur – Genesis 10) Not surprisingly, the rich lived in large palaces, drank out of bronze cups, and were buried in lavish tombs while the poor lived in squalor and poverty. The peasant farmers lived in thatched roof huts with mud walls in winter and in bamboo huts near the rice fields in summer. Disease was rampant due to always working, standing in water in the rice paddies.

In spite of the rampant die offs from various plagues I want to state again a truth that confuses historians and epidemiologists alike and I’ll refer to William McNeill’s classic, ‘Plagues and Peoples’. There seems, from a secular point of view, to be a dynamic between the environment and human beings that allows them to resist disease organisms up to a point where an epidemic sweeps through a country or a new disease organism is introduced. Rapid population growth is amazing considering the hazards that face humanity. Remember, most of the great medical breakthroughs of today don’t affect the billions who live in poverty at all as they are only affordable for a few, relatively speaking. This is another reason not to believe in evolution. Under the most primitive conditions of the last 4,000 years population has grown exponentially. Presumably, if these diseased, pathogenic conditions existed alongside of human beings for tens of thousands of years or even hundreds of thousands of years we would have had five times the population we have right now with those that would die in hideous plagues being rapidly replaced.

By 1,000BC the Chinese were burning coal for fuel and not just wood. They stored ice by refrigeration for future use. By 700 they were keeping records of comets, meteors, and meteorites. In 1057BC, or possibly 1027, the Battle of Mu Yu took place in the Southern Honan area of China in which Wu Wang, the king of Chou, defeated the Shang dynasty. Chou Kung, who assumed the kingship upon his death put down the final Shang rebellion and established a governmental organization that lasted for nearly 800 years. The Chou expanded between 1000BC and 900BC and after 800BC gradually declined. The Chou began to breakdown into fighting among 140 autonomous warlords, 7 of which were important; Ch’i, Chin, Ch’in, Wu, Yueh, Sung, and Ch’u. An interesting thing to note is that for a short period of time, during the 8th and 7th centuries warfare became more ritualistic than violent with battles resembling more theater than actual, bloody clashes. The Western Ch’u developed a military organization similar to our modern platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, corps, and armies.

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In India, the formation of the Vedas takes place between 1000BC and 500BC. The Upanishads are written between 800 and 500BC. The kings of the Vedic period of India often raided their neighbors for cattle and, like Ethiopia today, marriage was often the result of forcible abduction of the bride or her purchase, by mutual consent. Marriage by
mutual consent was thought, however, to be less honorable, and more of a compliment if the bride were stolen or purchased. The Rig-Veda speaks of all of the perversions we encounter today; incest, seduction, prostitution, abortion, and adultery, but in general, there is a high moral standard between the sexes and the family is very important.

Women enjoyed far greater freedom in India during this period than in later times. Women could appear freely at feasts and participate in religious sacrifices. If she was a widow there were no restrictions on her re-marriage. She could study and engage in philosophic disputation like the famous philosopher and composer of hymns, Gargi. Other female philosophers and hymn composers of the time were Maitreyi, Lopamudra, and Ghosha. Vedic Indians bartered and ate cows, unlike today, They planted barley but knew nothing or rice, it would seem, at that time. There were no banks or alewives, as in Assyria, to lend money. Whatever you had was hid in your own home. Money itself was a late development as bartering in cows and goods was the original means of exchange. Later, during the age of Buddha, credit developed.

The Aryan invaders displaced the religion of the earlier residents which is still found in places much like the Aryans found among the Nagas; animistic worship with totems and symbols much like parts of Africa today. Serpents and dragons were divinity and we can make the connection safely with Satan’s religion spreading around the earth. Hanuman, the monkey god, is still worshipped, as is Nandi, the bull god. The earliest gods of the Vedic period were forces of nature such as sky, sun, earth, fire, light, water, and sex, all good and evil spirits. We have the ‘Atharva-veda, or Book of the Knowledge of Magic’; one must recite spells to obtain children, to avoid abortion, to prolong life, to ward off evil, to go to sleep, and to destroy enemies. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad formulas were given for forcibly seducing a woman by incantation. They remind one of the Emerald Tablet written by the Egyptian magician.priests. Many of the Indian gods we know of today, were, like the gods of Greece, local gods who had not assumed their all important, universal power, such as Krishna, whom George Harrison of Beatles fame created a famous hymn to called “My Sweet Lord”, which, unfortunately many young Christians who didn’t listen to the lyrics carefully enough, were deceived by.

The language of the Vedic period was Sanskrit which is labeled as one of the oldest of the Indo-European language group although Hebrew is older and, is perhaps, God’s language. It is probably the mother tongue of all languages. Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and English all have some similarities in numerals and family terms. For instance, English one, two, three, four, and Sanskrit ek, dwee, tree, chatoor sound similar as do words for mother and father. The Sanksrit of the Vedas appears to be a scholarly tongue used only by scholars and priests. The word means, “prepared, pure, perfect, and sacred”. Vedic script is still pictographic and it isn’t until the 8th or 9th century that merchants bring

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actual semitic writing from the area of Israel that the “Brahma script” came to be developed, as did all of the later alphabets of India. For centuries writing was confined to commercial and administrative purposes. Merchants, not priests, developed the art of writing in early India. Even the Buddhist canon does not appear to have been written before the 3rd century BC. The oldest inscriptions known were thought to have been done at the time of Ashoka, the Indian religious teacher of the 200’s BC.

Nearly all of the information that modern scholars have about ancient India comes from the Vedas. The word, Veda, means knowledge. The Vedas, though, are essentially collections of Hindu religious writings.

The Upanishads, on the other hand, are more philosophy and psychology. The word comes from “upa”, near, and “shad”, to sit, as in sit near the teacher and learn. They consist of 108 discourses composed between 800BC and 500BC. The number, 108, becomes significant in an occultic way through Indian martial arts that come to China and eventually Japan and are found in modern forms like the way of the Samurai and Tai Chi Ch’uan. Later, Alexander would bring Greek Pankration, a fighting sport, to India, which then was converted into a native art, Vajramushti, which was passed on to China and became Shaolin fighting, the father of Japanese martial arts. While Japanese, Chinese, and Indians will say that their unarmed punching and kicking combative arts developed on their own, we know that the first fighting styles indigenous to any ethnic group had to do with wrestling, rocks, and knives. Anyway, the theme of the Upanishads is basically, why are we here? One clear teaching of this religious expression is that the individual soul will eventually go back into the impersonal soul of the universe. In other words, one thing you lose when you finally die in the long chain of reincarnation, is your personal identity. On the other hand, the God of the Bible does not teach that you cease to become an individual when you die. The supreme god in this combination of religion and philosophy is Brahma, the creator, followed later by Vishnu, the preserver, and then by Shiva, the destroyer. The Hindu religion and its offshoot, Buddhism, have permeated our western culture much to the efforts of many celebrities from the American Standard Version Bible translator, Philip Schaff, to the American actor, Richard Gere, as well as the rock group, the Beatles.

At the beginning of this era one of the largest migrations in human history takes place as the Bantu peoples of Africa begin moving south of the present day Sahara into Southern Africa, a movement that took approximately 2,000 years. The Bantu are considered to be linguistically related descendants of Ham. Part of their culture depended upon the importation of the banana, a native of Asia, and more stable crop production which allowed them to move beyond just mere survival. Political organization was primarily local and it is not until much later that larger kingdoms develop. From about 750 or 600BC Kush or Nubia ruled Egypt from their capital of Meroe in Upper Egypt. A mixture of Ham and Shem, or African people from Ethiopia and Semitic people from Arabia formed the culture of Aksum that settled around the Red Sea by 500BC. The Nok, ancestors of the Yoruba people, settled in Nigeria.

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It is interesting to note that the Christian Buba clan of the Bantu Lemba tribe of Zimbabwe claims to be descended from Jews who migrated over a thousand years ago from the area of Yemen and DNA tests have revealed that this is true. They practice
Jewish rituals and religious practices as well as Christianity, including male circumcision, and identify themselves as being of Jewish descent, which scientifically speaking, they are.

In the area of Mexico in the America’s at this time we have the Olmec civilization of the East Mexico lowlands that are considered to be the forerunners of all Middle or Meso-American civilizations. The Olmec called themselves Xi (Shi). There have been over 170 Olmec monuments found, predominantly at three sites in the territory they inhabited, from Southern Mexico, through Eastern Guatemala. They were advanced mathematicians and astronomers and created accurate calendars. As was the case with other civilizations they used a hieroglyphic style of writing. The culture existed on farming. Oddly enough, when Olmec cuneiform was compared to a type of Libyan pictograph it was felt that it could be deciphered. Some people, a few, believe they must have migrated from the old world while others insist they were indigenous and Bible believers know they are part of the ongoing migration of mankind away from the ark begun over a millennium before their rise to prominence. They had advanced irrigation systems like the Sumerian, Assyrian, and Babylonian cultures and used buried stone drain lines.

Colossal stone heads are the hallmark of the discovery of the Olmec culture beginning in 1862. One interesting thing to note is that these heads are often African in appearance which confuses historians to no end. Afro-centrists, who believe all civilization came from Africa, claim that this is proof of African colonization of Middle America.

In Peru, you have what is called by Archaeologists, the Chavin culture, elements of which go back to 1,000BC by traditional scholar’s representations. It is a culture characterized by beautiful, if abstract artwork, and a similarity to the Olmec designs, suggesting either a common origin or cross cultural influence. They also evinced a highly advanced technology with regard to the production of clothing using the hair of the type of camels found in South America such as the alpaca, vicuna, and llama.

About 1000BC the Ciboney tribe left the mainland and began to emigrate eastward to settle the Caribbean islands, particularly Cuba, until almost 2000 years later they were displaced and killed by the more warlike Arawaks, whom the Spanish eventually destroyed.

At about the same time Polynesians settled the Pacific island of Samoa. No one knows how long it took the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aborigines (from the beginning), to reach it. They are among the oldest, by modern scholarship standards, of so-called indigenous peoples on earth. Remains of Aboriginal culture have been dated by traditional Archaeologists to 40,000 years ago, at a time when many large, now extinct

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animals were to have had the run of the continent, like giant kangaroos and giant wombats. This 40,000 year traditional dating also encompasses the time in which early North Americans were to have begun their walk across the now submerged Bering Straits land bridge between Alaska and Eastern Asia.

The science that tries to put together the migration of now extinct animals around the world is called Paleobiogeography.

In Europe, we have the beginnings of the Etruscan culture in Italy in the area known today as Tuscany. It is a beautiful part of Europe that had a large reserve of tin in those ancient times. The Etruscans may have emigrated from Lydia in western Asia Minor. Their culture had some Greek and some Middle Eastern influences. They were a powerful culture who dominated the Latins, whom we came to know as the Romans, until the Latins fought they way to freedom. From around 700BC to 500BC Rome was reduced to nothing more than an Etruscan colony. This constant warfare created a distinctive martial, as in warlike, society.

Further north in Europe, the Celts, who started out it seems in Eastern France, expanded all over Western Europe. They were an iron using people who traded salt as far south as Italy and as far north as Germany. By 400BC they had spread to Britain and all of Western Europe. They were also farmers who lived in villages. Two periods that modern scholars recognize of Celtic development as a people are the Halstatt Culture and the La Tene’ culture.

Now, returning to the Biblical narrative, we have finally come to king Manasseh, Hezekiah’s son, being carried away to Babylon by the king of Assyria in 2 Chronicles 33. Remember, what I said about Babylon and Assyria, being the southern and northern parts of essentially the same culture and that the King of Babylon was also known as the King of Assyria (2 Chronicles 33:11).

Hezekiah, according to Ussher, dies in 698BC. The Babylonian Talmud, which we will discuss later, the early Christian leader, Justin Martyr in his work, Tryphon, and Jerome, the Bible translator, all refer to the passage in Hebrews 11:37 as being a reference to the prophet, Isaiah, being sawn asunder by king Manasseh.

According to ancient historian, Ptolemy, in his Canon of Kings, Regebelos ruled over Babylon five years after this, then came Meisisimordakos, and then finally beginning in 688BC there was no king in Babylon for 8 years. In Egypt, beginning in 687BC there was no king for two years and then an oligarchy, or a group of men, in this case 12 ruled for 15 years. The political events of the ancient near east were constantly swirling around one city or kingdom rising against another, falling, and rising again, or disappearing from the historical record, like Nineveh and although the wicked king, Manasseh, seems to have changed his ways at the end, the apostasy of Judah has sealed its fate just like the northern kingdom of Israel, as God’s judgments against His people come to pass. The

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setting is now prepared for the greatest corrupter of religion and one of the greatest kingdoms of history to enter the scene again in full force. Babylon will play a part spiritually in all the following chapters of human history and is even referred to in the end time prophecies of Revelation.

We come to the king Josiah, the likes of which were none before or after according to 2 Kings 23:25, turning to the Lord God with all his heart, all his soul, and all his might according to the law of Moses. Still, his reformation of Judah does not prevent him from making a key mistake in challenging Pharaoh Necho of Egypt who had come to fight against the Assyrian-Babylonian war machine.

Necho was the son of Psammetichus, and reigned in Egypt for sixteen years according to Greek historian Herodotus. This leader began a channel from the Nile to the Red Sea, a public works project that cost the lives of 120,000 Egyptians. He abandoned the work when it was half done. He sent Phoenicians to sail around Africa. Leaving from the Red Sea they sailed south and arrived at the Pillars of Hercules, of which Gibraltar in Spain is one and Monte Hacho in Ceuta in Africa is the other, at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, three years later. This can be found also in Herodotus’ “The Histories”. These events occurred around 616BC, according to Ussher.

By God’s command, Pharaohnecho set out to go into battle against the king of Assyria, who was at war with him at the time, and was planning to besiege Carchemish on the Euphrates River. Josephus stated that he went to fight against the Medes and the Babylonians, who had overthrown the Assyrian controlled empire in his work, “Antiquities of the Jews”. Carchemish, at the time of Sennacherib, belonged to and was occupied by the Assyrians according to Isaiah 10:9. However, when the Assyrian hegemony was destroyed , it returned into the hands of the Babylonians,. Just as the time when the king of Persia had defeated Babylon and Assyria, in Ezra 6:22 he was called the king of the Assyrians. In addition, as I have said before, the secular authors also state that Babylon and Assyria were south and north of essentially the same culture and civilization while the Bible even states that the kingdom of the Chaldeans, the tribe that became associated with Babylon and its science and religion was founded by the king of Assyria in Isaiah 23:13. In God’s judgment of Israel and Judah, think of Assyria-Babylon as the hammer (Jeremiah 50:23) and Egypt as the anvil between which they are smashed under God’s direction.

When Josiah foolishly entered into this war, he was killed. This took place in the valley of Megiddo which belonged to the tribe of Manasseh (Joshua 17:11). Herodotus said that Necho attacked the Syrians with an army and overthrew them in Magdolus. After the battle he took a large city of Syria called Cadytis. The Huguenot Historian (a Huguenot was a French Protestant, much murdered and persecuted by the Roman church), Joseph Scaliger, noted that Cadytis was actually Kadesh, which is mentioned in Numbers 20:16. Scaliger also believed that Magdolus and Megiddo were located near


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each other. Because Magdolus was the more famous place, secular historians said the battle took place there.

In the same way it is understood that the battle between Alexander and Darius at Gaugamela is said to have been fought at Arbela, since the former place was unheard of. It is even more likely that Magdolus and Megiddo are the same place, since that is the
place where Mary Magdalene derived her surname. In Matthew the name is given as Magdala (Matthew 15:39). The Syrian renders it Mageda and the old Latin translates it Magedan, which is similar to Megiddo.

Josiah’s death may have delayed the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 22:20). When Necho returned from Assyria he deposed Josiah’s successor and placed his own choice on the throne. These are the days of the work of the prophets Jeremiah and Habbakuk. Jeremiah foretells the rise and conquests of Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon and then prophesies the downfall of Babylon. Today, the Arabs that live near Babylon have insisted to American soldiers that the ruins are haunted by demons.

Nebuchadnezzar is viceroy of Babylon by 607BC and until his father, Nabopolassar, dies, and as Jeremiah predicts, he defeats the Egyptians at the Euphrates, cutting off Necho’s forces at Carchemish (Jeremiah 46:2). He also takes Tyre in Phoenicia as Ezekiel prophecies in chapter 29:17-19. Tyre, of which Ezekiel predicts the complete annihilation of, begun by Nebuchadnezzar and finished by Alexander, was an important, if not the most important Phoenician seaport. Tyre was an important caravan destination depended upon by merchants from all over the ancient Near East and quite wealthy. The Holy Spirit, speaking through Ezekiel, not only predicts its downfall but equates its king with Satan in the Garden of Eden. Tyre was located along a trade route that included Sidon, Sardis, and Carchemish, and then down the Euphrates. Durant says that the coast of Phoenicia was a narrow strip of land 100 miles long and 10 miles wide between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, being guarded by the mountains and hills from the rest of Mesopotamia. They were the busiest merchants of the ancient world and masters of the sea once they became liberated from Egypt about the time of the Exodus. They manufactured various products of glass and metal, enameled vases, weapons, ornaments, and jewelry; and had a monopoly on the purple dye so valued by royalty. Purple was the color of royalty in the ancient world. They extracted this dye from mollusks that lived in plenty along their shores. The women of Tyre were famous the ancient world over for beautifully, colored needlework. Tyre was extremely wealthy and powerful in that everyone had a stake in their continuing to supply every luxury to every city in the Middle East and around the Mediterranean.

They were shrewd traders and not content with this, enslaved thousands in Spain to mine precious metals. They were not only merchants but pirates and often stole the entire cargoes of their rivals and enslaved their sailors. They established garrisons around the sea that eventually became flourishing colonies; Cadiz, Carthage, Marseilles, in Malta, in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and even in England. They occupied Cyprus, Melos, and

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Rhodes. They took the arts and languages of Egypt, Crete, and the Near East and spread them in Greece, Italy, and Spain. The Tyrean-Phoenician mercantile empire tied the East and the West together with the common thread of greed.

Tyre was built on a rock several miles off the coast. It began as a fortress but its great harbor and its security from attack soon made it the metropolis of Phoenicia. The high
rise skyscrapers that Strabo reported as being taller than anything Rome produced existing there were later completely destroyed by Alexander, as promised in Ezekiel 26-29.

At this time, the Medes, later important players in the politics of the ancient world, are at war with the Lydians, whom are thought to be the ancestors of the Etruscans, accord- ing to Michael Grant in his book, “The Etruscans”.

Now, Necho’s defeat at Babylon’s hand keeps him from leaving Egypt for the rest of his reign. The date of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is hotly argued among historians. Dates given range from 606/607BC to 588BC. The date does become important with regard to prophecy but not for the purposes of this course.

“Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD'S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.” Jeremiah 51:7

Babylon is the head of the statue that Nebuchadnezzar dreams of in Daniel, a head of gold. It is the ultimate kingdom, the foremost empire, that conquers the world both physically, which is always temporary and never lasting, but also spiritually. Several religious ideals and doctrines that have caused so much controversy in later history and so much death have their origin in Babylon. In the Chaldean mysteries, before any instruction could be received it was required that absolute obedience and submission would be practiced by a type of baptism. Even in Hinduism, early missionaries found that Indians were familiar with being called “twice born” men after a trip to and immersion in the sacred Ganges River. The early church “father”, Tertullian says that, “in certain sacred rites of the heathen”, referring to the worship of Isis and Mithra, “the mode of initiation is baptism”. The baptism practiced by the pagan religions was a saving act in itself, not merely a sign of a prior belief, a public statement, if you will. It was a pretty tough ordeal as another early church leader informs us that if they survived the baptism they were initiated into the mysteries. Tertullian tells us that there was a great reward for submitting to this process, as once baptized or immersed, the person was promised a pardon from all sins, a regeneration. Scandinavian worshippers of Odin, the Norse god that is comparable to Zeus, were known to have practiced baptismal rites, dunking babies into streams and rivers and lakes to wash away their sin. Baptism for the purpose of regenerating a person was found by Cortes when he invaded Mexico. Accounts of this can be found in Prescott’s work, ‘History of the Conquest of Mexico’, one of the most famous history books ever written. Reading from his book, "When everything necessary

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for the baptism had been made ready, all the relations of the child were assembled, and the midwife, who was the person that performed the rite of baptism, was summoned. At early dawn, they met together in the courtyard of the house. When the sun had risen, the midwife, taking the child in her arms, called for a little earthen vessel of water, while
those about her placed the ornaments, which had been prepared for baptism, in the midst of the court. To perform the rite of baptism, she placed herself with her face toward the
west, and immediately began to go through certain ceremonies...After this she sprinkled water on the head of the infant, saying, 'O my child, take and receive the water of the Lord of the world, which is our life, which is given for the increasing and renewing of our body. It is to wash and to purify. I pray that these heavenly drops may enter into your body, and dwell there; that they may destroy and remove from you all the evil and sin which was given you before the beginning of the world, since all of us are under its power'...She then washed the body of the child with water, and spoke in this manner: 'Whencesoever thou comest, thou that art hurtful to this child, leave him and depart from him, for he now liveth anew, and is BORN ANEW; now he is purified and cleansed afresh, and our mother Chalchivitylcue [the goddess of water] bringeth him into the world.' Having thus prayed, the midwife took the child in both hands, and, lifting him towards heaven, said, 'O Lord, thou seest here thy creature, whom thou hast sent into the world, this place of sorrow, suffering, and penitence. Grant him, O Lord, thy gifts and inspiration, for thou art the Great God, and with thee is the great goddess.'"

Now, how do we get to Mexico from Babylon? Von Humboldt found, in his travels that the Mexicans looked upon Wodan as the founder of their race just as our own ancestors did. You have to go back to earlier researchers because the purely pagan elements of the native Mexican people had not yet been buried and fused with Roman Catholic elements has thoroughly as in the last 200 years. "According to the ancient traditions collected by the Bishop Francis Nunez de la Vega," says Humboldt, "the Wodan of the Chiapanese [of Mexico] was grandson of that illustrious old man, who at the time of the great deluge, in which the greater part of the human race perished, was saved on a raft, together with his family. Wodan co-operated in the construction of the great edifice which had been undertaken by men to reach the skies; the execution of this rash project was interrupted; each family received from that time a different language; and the great spirit Teotl ordered Wodan to go and people the country of Anahuac." Comparative mythologists will explain how the concept of baptismal regeneration and the baptizing of infants was held in common by not only the Mexicans but by the Egyptians, the Persians, and the Babylonians who worshipped the Chaldean “queen of heaven”.

In the Chaldean mysteries baptismal regeneration is part of a worship and commem-oration of the great flood and Noah becomes worshipped as Dipheus, or twice-born, represented as a god with two heads looking in each direction. Quoting directly from Hislop’s ‘The Two Babylons’; Noah “was represented as a god with two heads looking in opposite directions, the one old, and the other young. Though we have seen that the two-headed Janus in one aspect had reference to Cush and his son, Nimrod, viewed as one

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god, in a two-fold capacity, as the Supreme, and Father of all the deified "mighty ones," yet, in order to gain for him the very authority and respect essential to constitute him properly the head of the great system of idolatry that the apostates inaugurated, it was necessary to represent him as in some way or other identified with the great patriarch, who was the Father of all, and who had so miraculous a history.

Therefore in the legends of Janus, we find mixed up with other things derived from an entirely different source, statements not only in regard to his being the "Father of the
world," but also his being "the inventor of ships," which plainly have been borrowed from the history of Noah; and therefore, the remarkable way in which he is represented in the figure here presented to the reader may confidently be concluded to have been primarily suggested by the history of the great Diluvian patriarch, whose integrity in his two-fold life is so particularly referred to in the Scripture, where it is said (Gen 6:9), "Noah was just a man, and perfect in his generations," that is, in his life before the flood, and in his life after it. The whole mythology of Greece and Rome, as well as Asia, is full of the history and deeds of Noah, which it is impossible to misunderstand. In India, the god Vishnu, "the Preserver," who is celebrated as having miraculously preserved one righteous family at the time when the world was drowned, not only has the story of Noah wrought up with his legend, but is called by his very name. Vishnu is just the Sanscrit form of the Chaldee "Ish-nuh," "the man Noah," or the "Man of rest." In the case of Indra, the "king of the gods," and god of rain, which is evidently only another form of the same god, the name is found in the precise form of Ishnu. Now, the very legend of Vishnu, that pretends to make him no mere creature, but the supreme and "eternal god," shows that this interpretation of the name is no mere unfounded imagination. Thus is he celebrated in the "Matsya Puran": "The sun, the wind, the ether, all things incorporeal, were absorbed into his Divine essence; and the universe being consumed, the eternal and omnipotent god, having assumed an ancient form, REPOSED mysteriously upon the surface of that (universal) ocean. But no one is capable of knowing whether that being was then visible or invisible, or what the holy name of that person was, or what the cause of his mysterious SLUMBER. Nor can any one tell how long he thus REPOSED until he conceived the thought of acting; for no one saw him, no one approached him, and none can penetrate the mystery of his real essence." (Col. KENNEDY'S Hindoo Mythology) In conformity with this ancient legend, Vishnu is still represented as sleeping four months every year. Now, connect this story with the name of Noah, the man of "Rest," and with his personal history during the period of the flood, when the world was destroyed, when for forty days and forty nights all was chaos, when neither sun nor moon nor twinkling star appeared, when sea and sky were mingled, and all was one wide universal "ocean," on the bosom of which the patriarch floated, when there was no human being to "approach" him but those who were with him in the ark, and "the mystery of his real essence is penetrated" at once, "the holy name of that person" is ascertained, and his "mysterious slumber" fully accounted for. Now, wherever Noah is celebrated, whether by the name of Saturn, "the hidden one,"--for that name was applied to him as well as to Nimrod, on account of his having been "hidden" in the ark, in the "day of the Lord's fierce anger,"--or, "Oannes," or "Janus," the "Man of the Sea," he is generally described

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in such a way as shows that he was looked upon as Diphues, "twice-born," or "regenerate." The "twice-born" Brahmins, who are all so many gods upon earth, by the very title they take to themselves, show that the god whom they represent, and to whose prerogatives they lay claim, had been known as the "twice-born" god. The connection of "regeneration" with the history of Noah, comes out with special evidence in the accounts handed down to us of the Mysteries as celebrated in Egypt. The most learned explorers of
Egyptian antiquities, including Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, admit that the story of Noah was mixed up with the story of Osiris. The ship of Isis, and the coffin of Osiris, floating on the
waters, point distinctly to that remarkable event. There were different periods, in different places in Egypt, when the fate of Osiris was lamented; and at one time there was more special reference to the personal history of "the mighty hunter before the Lord," and at another to the awful catastrophe through which Noah passed. In the great and solemn festival called "The Disappearance of Osiris," it is evident that it is Noah himself who was then supposed to have been lost.”

Why bring up the history baptismal regeneration and infant baptism at this point? Because these doctrines are the basis for the murder of millions of dissenters during the period of the Christian church. In fact, the entire concept of the power inherent in the act of baptism itself becomes an issue of history the neglect of which study renders so much of history, particularly wars of religion in Europe as undecipherable.

One of the most famous comparative mythologists of the present day and someone whose name you will undoubtedly see again if you pursue your study of history in an institution of higher learning is Joseph Campbell. His works include “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” where he discounts all religion as being connected to common mythology. He reaches different conclusions because he does not believe the Bible but he does touch, at times, upon the commonality of mankind’s religion and even though he would regard Satan himself as a mythic character and miss Satan’s grand conspiracy against God which mankind has so cheerfully gone along with, he would agree that much of it is simply the same religion with different names. Do not look for someone like Campbell to bolster your faith, he has nothing but contempt for it, as does Durant. But, when you read these men and women’s work discounting Jesus Christ as a mythic figure merely remember the admonition of 2 Corinthians 4:3, 4.

“But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”

Satan continues to counterfeit the word of God in every aspect and the religions of the world, the philosophy, and the political all reflect this continuing effort to deceive mankind.