The Origin
Of
Our Belief In God
by Erik Langkjer
Part I: El and Baal, the Shepherd and the Hunter
24. Song of Songs
Eros is originally a "specialised form of the Ker" (Jane Harrison [1]) the Greek parallel to the rephaim, "little spirits of life" (ibd.) "…his dwelling among flowers … in the place of fair flowers and fair scents there he sits". The symbolism around Psyche ("soul") and her heavenly bride, Amor/Eros ("love") is the Hellenistic parallel to the young couple, "the King" and Sulamit followed by the daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Songs). The beautiful tale about Amor and Psyche is found in the Hellenistic novel Methamorphoses by Apuleius: Psyche experienced the union with Amor. But due to some fatal act, she has lost him, and now she must seek the bridegroom who disappeared. A parallel situation is found Cant. 5,6-7; 6,1: "Where has your beloved gone? We will seek him together with you". "To this invisible bridegroom the soul must be faithful in all troubles and temptations. Then after the death of the body, she shall see him in reality and celebrate her heavenly wedlock" (R.Reitzenstein [2]). "Therefore it can be no mere coincidence that the picture of this young couple in love is so popular on memorials, and is seen again and again on both Christian and heathen sarcophagi and tombs" (ibd.).
In the Song of Songs we find the women seeking the same heavenly bridegroom, as already pointed out by Dr.James Bennet in Congregational Magazine 21,1838 [3]. That this is not a song of human loves is clear from the beginning to the end. It opens with the statement of a female: "Let him kiss me", it is full of her solitous seeking after him; it abounds with praises of his person, and dispraises of herself, of her person and conduct; it invites other females to love him, and it speaks of him as her brother and her as his sister..." Bennet also stresses the fact that a man, if he had to write poetry about his love, would probably not start by describing his girl as the active part and himself as rather unattainable.
"It would be… abhorrent from the secluded, submissive character of eastern brides to ask the gentlemen to come and kiss them… We are told by the first word, that a greater than Solomon is here, one who must be courted…"
But all this becomes understandable if the speaker here is the soul thirsting to be filled with the divine fullness. It is the all too human, rejected, scorned, bruised soul giving herself in ecstasy in senseless passion to the invisible bridegroom. 5,7: "They struck me, wounded me. Took my veil from me". Like Isis seeking the disappeared Osiris there is also zétesis & heúresis ("seeking and finding") in the Song of Songs cf. Hos 5,15: "And they shall seek me before my countenance, seek me in their tribulation" with heúresis in Hos 6,3: "Then he will come to us as rain, as the rain of spring who makes the earth moist".
Interesting is 3,4: "When I found the one I love, I grasped him and would not loose him till I brought him into my mother´s house, to the chamber of her who conceived me." This is purely erotic fantasy and has nothing to do with reality: the young girl will force him to have love with her in her mother's bed. The chamber spoken of is, acc to Pope (p.303), the inner private room reserved for the privacy of the mother. The passion is so strong that it goes beyond every limit of good sense and morals. Her own honour and reputation is nothing, if only she can have him. The language is coloured by the orgiastic atmosphere of the Phoenician spring festival. An annual festival in Tyre was dedicated to the two brothers Hypsuranios and Usoos living at an early stage in man´s history where "women mated indiscriminately with whomever they chanced to meet" (Philo I,10,9). But here sublimated to a purely spiritual love affair with "the King" of blossoming spring, described as a shepherd and as the stag on the paradise mountain. His epiphany is in the splendour of gold and sapphires, and surrounded by myrrh and balsam. The beloved lives in the gardens (cf "Aphrodite in the Gardens") 8,13. The woman, Shulamite, comes from "lions and leopards", she is "frightening as armies" like the typical Near Eastern goddess for war and love. She is the representative of the black earth. "I am black, yet graceful". (Pherecydes Syros tells us about the primeval wedlock between Zas (Sandan) and Xthonie (= "Earth"). The main gods of Ebla were Kura and Adamma, of ´adamah = earth). Her beloved has, like Adonis, some clear relations to the Myrrh-tree: "Thuraq oil is your name", 1,3. Thuraq is in Syrian translated by myrrh. This phrase means "You are the perfume". Like Adonis he is closely linked to the Myrrh-tree and the flowers: "I am the Crocus of the plain, the lotus of the valley". Ch 3 in Song of Songs shows the women seeking the "bridegroom taken away". His epiphany is described in 3,6ff:
"Who is this ascending from the steppe like columns of smoke, redolent with myrrh and incense... Behold Solomon´s bed, 60 heroes round it… each with a sword at his side against night terror. A litter he made for himself did king Solomon." G.Kuhn [4] has shown the parallels to the Exodus tradition: The desert, the Ark carried like a litter, the column of smoke. The Song of Songs pays no tribute to the hunter, but to the god of the Sinai desert. He is described as the sun warrior. Like the sun hero, Samson is surrounded by 30 "best men", he is surrounded by 60 heroes guarding his litter against "night terror". Himself the symbol of light, his female partner is often seen as the symbol of darkness, and even some immorality ("My own vineyard I did not guard"). In India the ideal partner of the tantric seeker of the light is the plain washerwoman.
In the Hellenistic Syrian religion Eros-Resheph comes from the underworld, and the meaning of Resheph is "flame". This gives some explanation to the strange verse: "Love is strong as the realm of death, its flames are Ya´s Resheph". "Mighty flooding can not drench it" (8,6f). Here we find the typical theory of cosmic balance as a balance between the flooding of winter-rain balanced by the burning heat of summer. But we should note that Resheph is no independent god, but a power in total submission to Ya.
The background to the Song of Songs is a spring festival celebrating the wedlock of Earth and Heaven. It is the song of the women to the Shepherd, the Lord of vegetation. "The Canticles is the spiritual joy of saintly souls at the nuptials of the King and Queen of the City".[5] The first well-known Christian mystic is Origen, and it is no coincidence that his mysticism is most obvious in his exegesis of the Song of Songs. G.Quispel has stressed the fact that mysticism is not a take-over from Hellenistic thinking:
"The mysticism of Macarios has flourished on a Syrian basis, a mysticism which has so strongly influenced the whole of Christianity, first Gregor of Nyssa, but mostly pietism".
[1] Prolegomena, pp.630-35.
[2] Das Märchen von Amor und Psyche bei Apuleius,1912, p.25.
[3] p.148f., here quoted after M.Pope, Song of Songs,p.135f.).
[4] "Erklärung des Hohenliedes", Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift 37,501-10,521.72.
[5] St. Augustine, de civ. dei XVII,20.
Disclaimer:
Some material presented will contain links, quotes, ideologies, etc., the contents of which should be understood to first, in their whole, reflect the views or opinions of their editors, and second, are used in my personal research as "fair use" sources only, and not espousement one way or the other. Researching for 'truth' leads one all over the place...a piece here, a piece there. As a researcher, I hunt, gather and disassemble resources, trying to put all the pieces into a coherent and logical whole. I encourage you to do the same. And please remember, these pages are only my effort to collect all the pieces I can find and see if they properly fit into the 'reality aggregate'.
Personal Position:
I've come to realize that 'truth' boils down to what we 'believe' the facts we've gathered point to. We only 'know' what we've 'experienced' firsthand. Everything else - what we read, what we watch, what we hear - is what someone else's gathered facts point to and 'they' 'believe' is 'truth', so that 'truth' seems to change in direct proportion to newly gathered facts divided by applied plausibility. Though I believe there is 'truth', until someone representing the celestial realm visibly appears and presents the heavenly records of Facts And Lies In The Order They Happened, I can't know for sure exactly what "the whole truth' on any given subject is, and what applies to me applies to everyone. Until then I'll continue to ask, "what does The Urantia Book say on the subject?"
~Gail Bird Allen
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Urantia Book, 44:0.11 - The Celestial Artisans
Never in your long ascendancy will you lose the power to recognize your associates of former existences. Always, as you ascend inward in the scale of life, will you retain the ability to recognize and fraternize with the fellow beings of your previous and lower levels of experience. Each new translation or resurrection will add one more group of spirit beings to your vision range without in the least depriving you of the ability to recognize your friends and fellows of former estates.
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Princess Bride 1987 Wallace Shawn (Vizzini) and Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya)
Vizzini: HE DIDN'T FALL? INCONCEIVABLE.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -
Urantia Book, 117:4.14 - The Finite God
And here is mystery: The more closely man approaches God through love, the greater the reality -- actuality -- of that man. The more man withdraws from God, the more nearly he approaches nonreality -- cessation of existence. When man consecrates his will to the doing of the Father's will, when man gives God all that he has, then does God make that man more than he is.
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Urantia Book, 167:7.4 - The Talk About Angels
"And do you not remember that I said to you once before that, if you had your spiritual eyes anointed, you would then see the heavens opened and behold the angels of God ascending and descending? It is by the ministry of the angels that one world may be kept in touch with other worlds, for have I not repeatedly told you that I have other sheep not of this fold?"
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Urantia Book, Foreword - 0:12.12 - The Trinities
But we know that there dwells within the human mind a fragment of God, and that there sojourns with the human soul the Spirit of Truth; and we further know that these spirit forces conspire to enable material man to grasp the reality of spiritual values and to comprehend the philosophy of universe meanings. But even more certainly we know that these spirits of the Divine Presence are able to assist man in the spiritual appropriation of all truth contributory to the enhancement of the ever-progressing reality of personal religious experience—God-consciousness.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.3 - The Mystery Of God
When you are through down here, when your course has been run in temporary form on earth, when your trial trip in the flesh is finished, when the dust that composes the mortal tabernacle "returns to the earth whence it came"; then, it is revealed, the indwelling "Spirit shall return to God who gave it." There sojourns within each moral being of this planet a fragment of God, a part and parcel of divinity. It is not yet yours by right of possession, but it is designedly intended to be one with you if you survive the mortal existence.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.1 - The Mystery Of God
And the greatest of all the unfathomable mysteries of God is the phenomenon of the divine indwelling of mortal minds. The manner in which the Universal Father sojourns with the creatures of time is the most profound of all universe mysteries; the divine presence in the mind of man is the mystery of mysteries.
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Urantia Book, 1:4.6 - The Mystery Of God
To every spirit being and to every mortal creature in every sphere and on every world of the universe of universes, the Universal Father reveals all of his gracious and divine self that can be discerned or comprehended by such spirit beings and by such mortal creatures. God is no respecter of persons, either spiritual or material. The divine presence which any child of the universe enjoys at any given moment is limited only by the capacity of such a creature to receive and to discern the spirit actualities of the supermaterial world.
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Urantia Book, 11:0.1 - The Eternal Isle Of Paradise
Paradise is the eternal center of the universe of universes and the abiding place of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and their divine co-ordinates and associates. This central Isle is the most gigantic organized body of cosmic reality in all the master universe. Paradise is a material sphere as well as a spiritual abode. All of the intelligent creation of the Universal Father is domiciled on material abodes; hence must the absolute controlling center also be material, literal. And again it should be reiterated that spirit things and spiritual beings are real.
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Urantia Book, 50:6.4 - Planetary Culture
Culture presupposes quality of mind; culture cannot be enhanced unless mind is elevated. Superior intellect will seek a noble culture and find some way to attain such a goal. Inferior minds will spurn the highest culture even when presented to them ready-made.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.6 - True And False Liberty
True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.9 - True And False Liberty
How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.
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Urantia Book, 54:1.8 - True And False Liberty
There is no error greater than that species of self-deception which leads intelligent beings to crave the exercise of power over other beings for the purpose of depriving these persons of their natural liberties. The golden rule of human fairness cries out against all such fraud, unfairness, selfishness, and unrighteousness.