Responses to Sitchin Worshippers
(Hey, at least they write)

PLEASE be patient - the images are essential and load slowly on a dial-up connection

I have a couple pretty simple rules for those who are sufficiently angered at my audacity to question the godlike presence of Zecharia Sitchin:  (1) I will post YOUR email in its entirety on my site along with my response (I do this because you may not believe the arguments used - they can be amazingly incoherent); (2) I will invite YOU to do the same on YOUR site (so far no takers).

Here we go...

Erik Parker, Sitchin's webmaster and disciple

William Henry, researcher and disciple (also a Laurence Gardner sycophant)

 

Sitchin's Disciple: Clueless but Courageous
Erik Parker's Response to My Posting Refuting 
Zecharia Sitchin's Mesopotamian Rocket Theory,
and My Rejoinder

Michael S. Heiser

As many visitors to Rense.com know by now, I have an academic bone to pick with Zecharia Sitchin.  In the wide field of research into the anomalous, I am something of an anomaly myself :  a credentialed scholar of Ancient Hebrew and Semitic Languages (see my CV) who takes these issues seriously (as opposed to just laughing at them).  I have publicly stated I think Sitchin's theories are hopelessly flawed, and have tried to put the evidence for this claim into the public forum of the internet, as well as through radio shows like Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell, and Jeff Rense's show.  Disagreement with me on the part of Sitchin followers was inevitable, and so here we are.  

In the past few days, Erik Parker, Zecharia Sitchin's webmaster, has tried to respond to my criticisms of Sitchin.  Aside from finding it curious as to why Erik would do this, given that he has absolutely no knowledge of Hebrew or any other ancient language, I have to admire his pluck.  He has more courage than his mentor for sure, since it has been 15 months since Art Bell asked if I would debate Sitchin on his show (I accepted the idea immediately).  The call for a debate went out again this past weekend on Coast to Coast, but instead of a response from Mr. Sitchin himself, we get this, a clueless (but courageous) attempt by a devoted disciple to fight his master's battles.  Oh well.  In view of Mr. Parker's complete lack of understanding of the languages and issues, I don't want to criticize him harshly in my critique below.  Like I said, he has guts.  Nevertheless, a response is in order.  Perhaps this has helped me explain my arguments more clearly for the lay audience.  I have to admit, though, that trying to convince fawning Sitchin followers to look at actual data and scholarship is like trying to convince the Argentine authorities that a long-snouted mouse really hasn't mutilated over 100 cattle there; or like convincing Philip Klass that there really are UFOs; or like telling a Cubs fan that he'll never see a World Series home game at Wrigley Field; or like telling the Russian people that the Olympics really was rigged.  In short, people want to believe things, facts be damned.

Below is Mr. Parker's posting - in the color gray.  My responses are in green.

 

Michael Heiser Is Incorrect With His Analysis Of Elohim & Nephilim:
Reply From Zechariah Sitchin's Webmaster

From Erik Parker - Los Angeles; Webmaster for Zecharia Sitchin

via Ted Susu-Mago; smago@ashlandhome.net; 8-19-2

Mr. Heiser claims that the word Elohim in Hebrew, meaning "gods" is not a plural word. 

Wrong already (we lasted one sentence).  To quote form my own website, I ask this question: "Does Elohim, since it is morphologically plural in Hebrew, always (or even most of the time) MEAN "gods" (plural)?"  Apparently Erick does not understand the question, and perhaps I assumed too much of a knowledge base.  Elohim is certainly morphologically plural.  Morphology refers to the "shape" or construction of a word - its form.  As anyone can see, I say that very clearly above.  My point in the question, though, is that while Elohim is plural in form, is it plural in meaning?  By itself, Elohim can be either singular or plural in meaning.  Again, quoting from my own website:  

The word "elohim" CAN mean either plural "gods" or singular "god" (or "God" as a proper name).  The meaning of any occurrence of Elohim must be discerned in three ways:

A.  Grammatical indications elsewhere in the text that help to determine if a singular or plural meaning is meant.

B.  Grammatical rules in Hebrew that are true in the language as a whole.

C.  Historical / Logical context

Please witness:  there is no denial that Elohim can mean "gods".  Mr. Parker either did not read my material, or (more probable) is so deficient in his understanding of grammar (even English grammar terms) that he hasn't gotten the point.  To continue - what I am saying is that, by itself, the word Elohim is ambiguous in meaning - as are all words, to some extent - it needs to be put into a sentence (I hope I don't have to define "sentence").  We have words like this in English, such as:

"deer", "sheep", "fish" - the point is you need other words to help you tell if one or more than one of these animals is meant.  Sometimes these other words are verbs that help you tell.  Compare the two examples::

1) "The sheep is lost" - the word "is" is a singular verb (It goes with a singular subject; one wouldn't say, for example, "I are lost" - you would use a verb that goes with the singular subject ("I am lost").

2) "The sheep are lost" - the word "are" is a plural verb (again, another word next to our noun "sheep" tells us in this case that plural sheep are meant.

All of this is just basic grammar - and every language has grammar.  Biblical Hebrew has its own ways of telling us if Elohim means ONE person or many gods.  It matches the noun Elohim to singular or plural verbs, or with singular or plural pronouns (to use "sheep" again as an example:  "Those sheep are white").  The word "those" is what's called a demonstrative pronoun - it automatically tells us that sheep in this sentence is meant to be understood as a plural.

Mr. Parker should at least get the argument right if he is going to criticize it.  On the other hand, Sitchin ignores grammar everywhere, so maybe "like master, like disciple".

Continuing . . .

His [Heiser's] main proof is that it says in Hebrew "The Elohim Said" in a singular  form not a plural form. This would indicate that the word Elohim was a name and not meaning plural gods. Of course this also could mean that the scribes of the Bible kept it in a singular form to show the monotheistic viewpoint. 

Wrong again.  If you look at what I have posted on the website, I point out that the Hebrew Bible contains just such evidence of plural elohim - in places like Psalm 82, Deuteronomy 32:8-9, Psalm 89:1-10; Psalm 29:1, etc., etc.  Maybe you don't get this point here, either, Erik.  How can you claim the scribes edited the text to cover plural gods, when such passages are in the Bible?  This makes little sense.  

Statistically, Elohim occurs roughly 2,500 times in the Hebrew Bible with singular verbs or other singular grammatical indicators.  Far more than the plurals, to be sure, but there are absolute affirmations of divine plurality in the Jewish Bible.  If you want to argue censorship of this, it occurred in late antiquity in rabbinical writings after the rise of Christianity (which used such pluralities to argue for Trinitarianism).  Professor Alan Segal's book, "Two Powers in Heaven" documents how divine plurality BECAME a heresy to the rabbis during this period.  My own view is that monotheism should be defined in context of this plurality - that monotheism means Yahweh is incomparable; no other gods can compare to him (as opposed to saying, as most Christians and Jews do, that other gods don't exist - which is a denial of their own Bibles).  Put another away, "Yahweh is an Elohim, but no other Elohim are Yahweh - he is NOT a "species equal".  Israelites had 4-5 criteria for determining how Yahweh was the "true god," but I won't launch into that here.

Continuing . . .

There are many uses of the plural term of the word Elohim in the Bible. 

Again, I haven't denied there are plural uses (see above, and the website).  "Many" is an overstatement, though - and most of what are there refer to the surrounding gods of other nations, not the God of Israel.

I have listed several plural forms below and it is in fact very hard to find any singular uses of the word.

That's because you don't read Hebrew and don't understand Hebrew grammar.  You don't understand what morphology is.

The word Elohim is definitely plural and does indeed mean "gods" and it actually contains two forms of the singular word for God inside of itself. 

This "inside itself" is something of a linguistic mis-statement, but oh well.

1. The word EL means God and it is the first part of the word Elohim. 

Correct  - El does mean "god" as in a single deity.


2. The word Eloah, also means God and it is the first part of the word Elohim.
Eloah in Hebrew is a three letter root which most Hebrew words contain. 

Correct again - you're on a roll, Erik.  Eloah is singular for "god" (used most often in Job), and has three radicals (consonants).  Eloah is considered the base for the plural form "elohim" (because of the "h"), but El is also pluralized as Elohim, which you don't seem to understand.

Here we already have two singular forms of the word God inside the plural word Elohim. Yet, Mr. Heiser has never mentioned these singular forms inside the plural word. He still insists Elohim is singular knowing well that is already contains two singular words for God. 

Here's where you are beginning to show how far out of your field you are, Erik.  I'm not going to reproduce the dictionary or all the Hebrew words / references to "god".  It's a matter of space.  Buy a dictionary. Your wording implies that since El and Eloah exist in the language, then Elohim can't be singular.  Again, you conclude this because you have no background in Hebrew.  Elohim is singular over 2500 times (and no, I'm not going to post all of them).  Here are a few easy ones from the website (keep in mind Hebrew is to be read right to left):


The Universal Creator God 

(note Erik sees this God as singular - one god; see a bit below for why this is noteworthy)

of the Bible known as Yahweh speaks and is quoted within the Bible. When he spoke to the ancient Hebrews while giving them the 10 commandments, he indeed used the plural word of Elohim meaning gods. 

Yes, the word is elohim - and the verbs are SINGULAR (but again, Erik - and Mr. Sitchin - it's about the grammar)

3. And God said "You shall not recognize the gods of others in my presence" also translated as "You shall not have other gods in my presence," (Exodus 20:3). Here Yahweh uses the term Elohim to refer to all other gods (plural) that Israel shall not worship or acknowledge. This also means that there were other false gods and they were forbidden to be acknowledged in Yahweh's presence. 

Right again - but guess what?  You just said above that "Yahweh" spoke this sentence (correct), but in Exodus 20:1, when the list of commands begins to be uttered, the word for the God who is speaking is ELOHIM (i.e., the God who is speaking the commands is identified in Exodus 20:1, prior to 20:3 which Erik quotes).  Since you don't know the languages, you have unwittingly given an example of Elohim used as a singular - and hence proven MY point.  Here's the passage, with your verse cited as well as the preceding 20:1:


Mr. Heiser is also incorrect when he refers to the translation of the Nephilim. The Nephilim mentioned in Chapter 6 of Genesis is spoken about right before the destruction of the flood and is implied they are the reason for the flood. It says that "the Nephilim were on the Earth in those days and also afterwards when the Children of the Gods saw the daughters of the Adam (humans) and took them as wives which ever they pleased." 

No kidding - they were (part) of the reason.  Where's the rebuttal?  I don't see one.  The nephilim (giants) survive, though (Gen. 6:4 - there were giants in those days and afterward").  The nephilim, the offspring of the sons of God, were to be wiped out.  The book of Enoch goes over this in great detail.  Here's a passage.

1 Enoch 6:1-7a

1 And it came to pass when the children of men had multiplied that in those days were born unto 2 them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: 'Come, let us choose us wives from among the children of men 3 and beget us children.' And Semjaza, who was their leader, said unto them: 'I fear ye will not 4 indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin.' And they all answered him and said: 'Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations 5 not to abandon this plan but to do this thing.' Then sware they all together and bound themselves 6 by mutual imprecations upon it. And they were in all two hundred; who descended in the days of Jared on the summit of Mount Hermon, and they called it Mount Hermon, because they had sworn 7 and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it . . .

Note that it is the angels who lust after the women, so as to have children (keep reading)

1 Enoch 7

1 And all the others together with them took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms 2 and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and made them acquainted with plants. And they 3 became pregnant, and they bare great giants, whose height was three thousand ells: Who consumed 4 all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against 5 them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and 6 fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones.

Note that it is the OFFSPRING of the sons of God, the ones from heaven, that are the giants - the Nephilim.  Sitchin constantly confuses the two (as do others, like Andrew Collins and Laurence Gardner).  Keep reading for the rest of the story - and how it relates to Erik's objection.

1 Enoch 9

Thou seest what Azazel hath done, who hath taught all unrighteousness on earth and revealed the eternal secrets which were (preserved) in heaven, which 7 men were striving to learn: And Semjaza, to whom Thou hast given authority to bear rule over his associates. And they have gone to the daughters of men upon the earth, and have slept with the 9 women, and have defiled themselves, and revealed to them all kinds of sins. And the women have 10 borne giants, and the whole earth has thereby been filled with blood and unrighteousness. And now, behold, the souls of those who have died are crying and making their suit to the gates of heaven, and their lamentations have ascended: and cannot cease because of the lawless deeds which are 11 wrought on the earth. And Thou knowest all things before they come to pass, and Thou seest these things and Thou dost suffer them, and Thou dost not say to us what we are to do to them in regard to these.'

1 Enoch 10:1-3

1 Then said the Most High, the Holy and Great One spake, and sent Uriel to the son of Lamech, 2 and said to him: 'Go to Noah and tell him in my name "Hide thyself!" and reveal to him the end that is approaching: that the whole earth will be destroyed, and a deluge is about to come 3 upon the whole earth, and will destroy all that is on it. 

[Note that the birth and terror of the giants is one of the reasons for the Flood]


4. The word children is used as plural not singular child,

I have no idea what the point of this one is - I never said anything to the contrary.

and the Elohim are mentioned again in plural as "The Gods" In Hebrew the "hey" letter put in front of the word Elohim means "The",

Erik is talking about the form "ha-elohim" ("h" letter in front of elohim), and he is correct; that letter is the definite article in Hebrew (the word "the")

If the letter was left out it would mean "Children of Elohim" meaning Elohim as a name. But with the letter there in front it clearly means "Children of the Gods". 

Once again, Erik, your ignorance of Hebrew grammar shows.  You are assuming that the presence of the article ("h"; Hebrew letter "he[h]") denotes plurality.  It can (grammar will tell us), but it also may not - try this one on for size:


Nephilim has the root from the Hebrew word for falling down or to fall, which yields the translations the "fallen ones" and in the context of the Bible they are mentioned as bad characters that have something to do with the Flood disaster. 

As my work on the website has shown, nephilim cannot mean "fallen ones" (as in humans fallen in battle).  If that were the case, then according to Hebrew GRAMMAR, you'd have to say nephilim was a masculine plural passive participle of the Qal stem.  If you consult any Hebrew grammar the masculine plural participle form would be spelled "nephulim" (try Seow, Kelley, Lambdin, Jouon-Muraoka, Weingreen, etc. - ANY biblical Hebrew grammar).  The form of the word (and hence the translation) for which you are arguing is spelled all wrong.  See the link to my PDF file on this for more detail.

5. Nephilim used to be translated as Giants for many hundreds of years and it
comes from a 12th Century commentary known as Rashi 

No, Erik; it comes from the morphology (the shape) of the word - the grammar.  Besides, it's Aramaic anyway.  Incidentally, the Aramaic root of nephilim (which is nephila') shows up in an Aramaic translation of the book of Job discovered at Qumran.  The word is used to translate "Orion" (the giant - what else?).  Check your chronology (among other things); the Dead Sea Scrolls are a lot older than Rashi.

that said the Nephilim were giants. But what nobody realized until Sitchin was that the word in Hebrew meaning giants is Anak, or Anakim for plural which is the same root and sounding as Anunnaki in Sumerian. 

Anakim is a people name; its etymology doesn't "mean" giants, but it is no doubt associated with giantism.  Sitchin shows ignorance of Sumerian here again.  Sumerian is not related to Hebrew (in fact - mysteriously - it isn't related to any other ancient language).

So the Hebrew word for Giant was picked up from a memory of the word used thousands of years before, by the lineage of Abraham to describe their gods which are usually depicted as larger humanoids than humans. And the translation of the word Annunaki means "those who from Heaven to Earth came," and Sitchin's use of the word Nephilim means "Those that have fallen down from above." 

This is linguistic poppycock.  Readers should at this point go to the link above for a complete refutation of all this.  I'm not going to type it again.  You know, Erik, readers will no doubt notice that you haven't interacted with any of the verses or arguments I present in my PDF file at the above link.  Didn't you think I'd direct them there?

So Anunnaki has the same sound as the word for Giant in Hebrew and the meaning is the same as the word Nephilim in Hebrew. 

Doesn't work again - look up Numbers 13:33.  The text point-blank says that the Anakim came from the nephilim.  Your argument just went down the tubes.  Have a look:


6. Before the burning bush Moses came to the mountain of the Gods. It says in
Hebrew once again "He arrived at the Mountain of the Gods." The Hebrew letter "hey" in front of the word Elohim means "The" as opposed to saying "Elohim mountain" meaning the name of the mountain, it says "the Mountain of the Gods." (Exodus 3:1) 

Wrong again - see the discussion above about ha-elohim, and the example for refutation.  

Not a single one of Erik's points are academically correct; not even close.  But hey, he doesn't know Hebrew.  Now for a personal note.

A Plea and A Challenge

Erik, I offer a plea to you at this point.  You are no doubt a very competent webmaster, and, in view of how much time you've put into reading Sitchin, a zealous and inquisitive student.  My plea is simple:  Don't let Zecharia Sitchin use you to take the brunt of his flawed scholarship.  You are way out of your field, and have no idea what what you're talking about.  Save yourself the trouble, and invite - indeed, demand - that your hero stand on his own.

Addendum 4/14/03:  Since my original response to Erik, he has posted a rejoinder on his website.  As expected, he does not address any of the actual textual data in this presentation or the others on my website.  He focuses instead on how I am trying to leech off Sitchin's greatness.  I'll get around to responding eventually.  I'd just like to see even one of my points in my open letter to Sitchin addressed coherently - with data from ancient texts (that's where all this knowledge is supposed to be coming from, isn't it?).  For a running list of what Sitchin and Erik are avoiding, click here and go down to the open letter.

That ought to cover it.

Michael S. Heiser
PhD candidate, Department of Hebrew and Semitic studies,
University of Wisconsin-Madison


William Henry's Response to my Sitchin
Papers on Nibiru and Cylinder Seal VA243
entitled "Show Him the Door"

and my response

This was a difficult piece to write.  When I received an email about William Henry’s response to my papers on Nibiru and Sitchin’s cylinder seal (VA 243), my first thought was, “How much time and I going to have to waste responding to this?”  Turns out I had to spend a good bit, as Henry’s response was quite lengthy. 

What made this so difficult, though, was not length.  It was the very nature of William Henry’s work and method.  In my eleven years in the classroom, I’ve easily graded over 1,000 papers.  I’ve also written quite a bit and am accustomed to the normal scholarly discourse.  Henry is about as far away from normal academic discourse as I can imagine.  Granted, I have heard him before on Coast to Coast and other talk shows, and knew in a nutshell what he does:  go off in tangential directions—mostly a-historical non-sequiturs—dizzying the reader with unrelated issues and barely coherent lines of thought.  What I didn’t realize was how condensed the show formats were.  When I got this I faced over 20 pages of the most staggering abuse of language I’ve frankly ever seen.  It was positively mind-numbing.

If the reader is not familiar with William Henry, he or she cannot appreciate this summation.  His circumlocutions are below for all to see, but I still think a little setup is necessary.  I will briefly try to describe Henry’s approach.  Please understand I am not making up what follows.

In a nutshell, Henry dispenses with all the methodological, literary, linguistic, and anthropological (as that field pertains to language) knowledge accumulated in the past few centuries.  He rejects facts we all know to be true—namely, in this case, the very idea that sounds that come from the human mouth (i.e., spoken language) DIFFER AS TO MEANING in different people groups.  Lest this sound unbelievable, or perhaps incomprehensible, what I mean here is that Henry actually operates on the assumption that words can be taken apart by syllable sounds and then spliced together with other syllables—even from different languages—and meanings supplied to the results.  To someone who has had my language experience (a dozen or so ancient languages learned from a deductive nuts and bolts grammatical perspective) this is positively maddening—and utter nonsense.  I know the uninitiated reader may think I am caricaturing Henry’s approach, but the proof is below.  You’ve got to see it to believe it.

Another assumption that guides Henry is that words in texts cannot be taken at face value.  Rather, words cloak deeper, mystical or symbolic meanings.  They are not signifiers of meaning – they are conduits for symbols.  In his own response to my work on Sitchin, you’ll see this over and over again.  This is little more than relativism applied to language study—there are no absolutes or objective meanings which provide ground rules for determining how a language is to be handled or used. Just think about how communication would work in real life if the words you use were not taken at face value be the hearer.  How could you communicate coherently?  Not surprisingly, Henry doesn’t expect his books (or his response to me) to be taken any other way than at face value, and that points to the inherent flaw in his linguistic relativism. It implodes on itself when you press him to communicate this way. To communicate in the real world, words need to be taken at face value.  When one has an intimate knowledge of a language, one becomes sensitive to nuances and double meanings – but even those only become coherent or clever given your knowledge of normal vocabulary. Henry dispenses with all this.  He apparently assumes that ancient people did not communicate with normal face value written communication as we do today to make our discourse throughout the day comprehensible.  No, the ancient person communicated in codes and symbols (or hacked up syllables spliced with syllables from other words or languages). As a result, one is guided by intuition (or an enlightened master like Henry) to decipher words, not things like grammar or syntax.  If this sounds confusing, you may want to turn back now.

Third, and perhaps most shocking, Henry’s major tool for determining the symbolic or root meanings (etymological meaning) to the syllables he chops ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Egyptian, and Hebrew words in to is—I’m not kidding—the English dictionary. That’s right, the English dictionary—whose word etymologies derive from Indo-European languages which were compiled before the decipherment of cuneiform.  How is this possible you ask? 

Good question. I honestly can’t even begin to describe the amazing extended non-sequitur rabbit trails William is about to take you on.  I was truly stunned into silence a number of times, barely able to even follow the lines of thought.  The matter turned from being laughable to disturbing, though, when Henry expressed his opinion that these ancient languages were a kind of bird language (I’m still hoping this doesn’t mean what it sounds like).  I am left with the impression that William may need some sort of help – but maybe I misunderstood that point. Well, here we go.

As is my practice, I have put the text of Henry’s response below in gray; my responses are in blue.  Unfortunately, I can’t reproduce the images he had in his PDF file, so you’d have to go there to view them.  Generally, they're unimportant.  It's no revelation that various aberrant sects across the Mediterranean would have associated Jesus with this or that.  Even in the Old testament era we have people making graven images of Yahweh, who was invisible.  This sort of thing is common, especially since ancient religions were so syncretistic. William wants to argue these depictions are "the truth" because they go against the historic church, pure and simple (the logic: "if historic Christianity didn't say it or was opposed to it, it must be true"). By the way, how do we even know if the person depicted in some of this artwork is Jesus without some inscription (taken at face value, I might add), or that it isn't much later (i.e., later and further removed from the actual life of Jesus than those pesky gospels)?  Another thing I wonder is how people who want to deny the image on the Turin Shroud is Jesus based on the idea that there is no historical portraiture lineage dating back to antiquity, thus bolstering the medieval forgery view, all of a sudden want to see Jesus in all this old work. (Note:  I could care less what the shroud is, and don't know William's position on this - just wondering). I guess if William insisted I say something more about the images I would at a future time, but I'd like to be able to reproduce them.  My responses now chiefly take the form of either showing the linguistic nonsense of William’s arguments, or asking him directly to provide proof for his word meanings and opinions.  I also try to illustrate the absurdity of his method with simple illustrations or examples of how the approach wouldn’t work in real life.  I’ll also track the ad hominem attacks for those at home keeping score. 

As I always promise, if William provides textual evidence—or some sort of intelligible defense in the future - something we can all read and understand at face value since we lack his divinatory powers - I will post them.  I'd like William to post my response to him on his site, but I doubt he'll do it.  I refer to William below often as WH.  (For my discussions of Sitchin's ideas on Nibiru and Cylinder seal VA243, click here and scroll down).

 SHOW HIM THE DOOR

 Ad Hominem attack #1

Short sighted

1. not able to see far.

2. not able to understand things deep.

3. defective or limited intellectual sight

 INTRODUCTION

In articles on his website and interviews on Coast to Coast AM ( 04/14/03 ) author

Michael Heiser has challenged to debate Zecharia Sitchin about Nibiru and the bible.

While some critics claim Sitchin is out of step with mainstream archaeological opinion, and that he takes liberties with his interpretations of Sumerian tablets in his claim that Nibiru is a missing 12th planet in our solar system from which extraterrestrial creator gods hailed, Heiser dismisses Sitchin’s work as erroneous, flawed, and in a nutshell, wrong. He accuses Sitchin of making up the whole idea of the 12th planet.

This is correct; we’ll see if WH produces any Sumero-Mesopotamian (hereafter, “SM”) material / texts to prove me wrong.

He seems to think Sitchin is depriving some village somewhere of an idiot. Friends of Sitchin’s say the old school curmudgeon would never stoop to a debate with the upstart Heiser.

True - because he knows that he doesn’t have the textual material.  Question WH:  Where in the SM lexical lists – the actual ancient dictionaries – are Sitchin’s word meanings found?  In which SM astronomical cuneiform text are his god-planet correlations verified?  If you are going to say the Sumerians believed something, you could at least reference what they wrote and take what they say at face value.

Ad Hominem Attack #2

Critics maintain his attempted demolition of Sitchin is merely a transparent ploy to jump-start his writing career and get his visa punched on the interview/lecture circuit.

Well William, I’ll tell you what.  I will post my tax returns for the last two years on my website (with names of spouse and children and SS#s blacked out) to show you and the world I’m not making money on this. I have nothing to hide.  I was told at the beginning that one never makes money telling people the truth. I’d challenge you to do the same, but I really don’t care how much money you make.  You have every right to earn your living and support your family as best you can.  You seem to be interested in how I’m doing, though.  Rest assured I am not a millionaire like Zecharia Sitchin, and earn less than you.  I get almost nothing per book I sell.  In fact, people who sell my book on their websites get it for cheaper than I do.  I also offer my subscription at a break-even rate, as well as my other files.  Here are my tax returns; we’ll see if your accusation holds (keep in mind the figure is for a family of six and my wife doesn’t work).  It’s NEVER been about money.  It’s about a commitment to telling people the truth and to stimulate readers (especially those in the Church, who need to start getting off their collective academically lazy rears and get back into the text of the Scriptures).  Ready? By the way, I don’t ask for an honorarium when I speak- ever.  And I don’t have the audacity to ask $250 a head like Sitchin for a “seminar” either. I hope you’re relieved.

 

With this kind of approach he should go far (hopefully toward coming up with original ideas of his own),

the issue isn’t originality; it’s about accuracy and meeting the standards for coherent scholarship.

and the sooner he starts, the better. People know what a Zach Sitchin book is. People don’t know what a Mike Heiser book is.

Again, notoriety isn’t the issue either; Being on Coast to Coast hasn’t made me Mr. popular.  My ambition is not to make a living at this (I’d be on welfare), but to have an academic career.  I only do this because of the bogus work being purveyed by Sitchin and his followers.  Again, check out my tax returns. 

Sitchin’s isn’t the only fountain of knowledge Mike gargled on. In addition, on his website he also spat a challenge at me. “I challenge Zecharia Sitchin; his webmaster, Erik Parker; Lloyd Pye; Alan Alford; William Henry; Jordan Maxwell; and anyone else who rapes the biblical text to say that it contains accounts of extraterrestrial spacecraft, aliens from other planets, and that humanity was created by alien intervention, to publicly debate me on these topics. Any time, any place.”

Now, I don’t know what Mike’s problem is when he accuses me of ‘raping the bible’.  

The kind of abuse you inflict on the text is self evident below.  But I agree, "rape" is a pretty inflammatory word.  Torture would have been better and likely less offensive, so I apologize.

I presume he’s referring to my inclination to interpret the numerous unexplained and enigmatic gateway episodes in the bible as examples of ancient stargates and wormholes, i.e. doorways into other realms.

 That would be it.  All this is BS.

Though his anger- filled words indicates that the bible is his own entitled province, he should realize I have the right to interpret and experience myth and scripture in any way I like. Period.

Nope.  I will acknowledge that a word like “rape” would give the impression I’m angry.  I’m not; irritated is more accurate. You, on the other hand, are the one who interprets things in self-styled ways. No other person I know does the things you do to words, William.  It is truly stunning.  Do any scholars of the ancient texts agree with you?  Stargates and portals?  (By scholar here I am referring to people who have the necessary language training – the Bible wasn’t written in English – to do exegesis according to known laws of linguistics and literary analysis.  Not necessary to have a PhD for this).  Funny, I can’t recall anyone credentialed in the relevant fields who would agree with WH.  You are the one whose work is completely unbounded by the entire body of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic knowledge accumulated since antiquity, not me.

I don’t understand why some people believe any objection to their belief

The issue isn’t my beliefs – it’s “are these things in the ancient texts or not?”  Are they?  Show me.

is an assault, which, in return, has to be viciously attacked and destroyed. He acts like the murderous Dark Age Church that, failing to convert the Cathars, ruthlessly exterminated hundreds of thousands of these Christian ‘heretics’, and their children, who claimed to possess the secret mystic teachings of Jesus.

Yes, William, I want you dead if you don’t agree with me . . . and your puppy.  Give me a break.  Can we say “hysterical”?

Investigations beyond mainstream curriculum (read fundamentalist “Christianity”), such as mine, have to be mocked and deconstructed by people such as this into hate crimes: ‘I raped the bible’. Therefore, I (and others) must be vilified?

Fundamentalist Christianity has longed since expunged me, William.  I lost one job because of it, and have suffered financially for nearly 20 years because of it.  You are clueless when you link me to it.  If you like, I can give you phone numbers and addresses of fundies who really dislike me.  I will agree, though, that they wouldn’t see spaceships and portals in the Bible.

Ad hominem attack #3

Pa-lease, Mike. Get a clue. Get help. Get it. Make love, not war. Everything is okay.

I don’t need help, William, but I will try and watch my words better (really).  I stand rebuked here.

Normally, I’d consider the source and let such an obvious agitated ego go.

Ad hominem attack #4 (ego)

Ad hominem #5 (paragraph below – so full of them I’d like to count more than one!)

A thought just hit me, William.  My attack on you was (thus far) over ONE word – one occurrence / misstep / careless remark.  You’re up to five ad hominem attacks now.  Just an observation.

Maybe he didn’t water his plants that week. 

I hate plants

Or he had a bad hair day. 

I'm bald (just kidding - and above too)

Or, maybe he’s just the type who’d argue with a signpost. However, as a person who believes in human rights and seeks to end religious oppression, it is my duty to speak out. To quote Val Kilmer’s Doc Holliday in the movie Tombstone when he showed up to duel hothead terrorist Johnny Ringo in place of Wyatt Earp, I say to Heiser, “if Sitchin won’t show, I’m your huckleberry*.” (*Any of a number of related bushes or shrubs of the woortle or Word tree, having dark-blue berries resembling blueberries, or blue apples.)

Ironically, the data Mike brings forth to savage Sitchin

I didn’t “savage” him – unless you call pelting him with actual tablets and their contents savaging him (that’s my assumption).  I asked (listed) him to provide refutations – to give me SOME indication that he is at all familiar with the Sumerian texts and ancient languages – yet he has offered nothing (ditto for you, to this point as well – just another observation).  I’ll continue to insist that Sitchin provide facts and evidence he isn’t clueless in the languages.  Your anger doesn’t change that. 

actually fuels my ‘Nibiru is a stargate called the fiery furnace in Babylon ’ premise.

This is classic WH – what possible link could Nibiru have – a star – with Daniel’s fiery furnace??! (Just wait!)  (Just wait!)  Where do the texts say anything about this?  Yes, William, this is how scholarship in ancient material works.  (1) When you make a reference to an item in a text (nibiru, fiery furnace); then (2) make a connection between them, you (3) need textual evidence to support that connection.  Why TEXTUAL evidence?  Because, that way, it isn’t YOU putting the connection into the mouths or minds of the ancients, THEY express the connection themselves. Otherwise, your interpretation is self-styled.  So where do the ancients make this connection?  Please produce the data.

It also lends support to my theory that Jesus updated the stargate religion of Nibiru.

Which text tells us about a stargate religion?  And Jesus’ connection to it?  Please produce these ideas you say the ancients had IN THEIR OWN WORDS – not yours, or Sitchin’s.

For this I am thankful to the gems presented by Mike, and have chosen to post this commentary in hopes of furthering a dialog and opening new avenues of research on the subject of Nibiru as a stargate with interested parties, rather than burning the book(s) on it.

You see, when Mike bellied up to the bar at college he got a full six pack alright, but he lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together. Like his Ph. D., his understanding is incomplete.

What I lack is your willingness to put words and ideas into the minds of ancient people without a scintilla of evidence for it. 

His information is strictly scholastic,

Read:  “Mike sticks to those nasty texts and that evil grammar”

offering little practical spiritual application.

Read for “spiritual” :  “Imaginative”

Mystics say the stars, planets and constellations are in the human body.

Who cares what mystics say when it doesn’t correspond to reality. This is basic logic (known in philosophy as the correspondence view of truth).

During his climb of the ivory tower Mike apparently was not told that the quest is to climb the inner tree of life and to seek the ‘inner Nibiru’.

The inner Nibiru ?. . . (I’m trying not to laugh here).  Again, classic Henry.  Obfuscate the fact that all of us – every human being alive today – only know what we know about the ancients because they WROTE something down.  Try interpreting material like WH does in real life.  How many of us have an inner tax return?  An inner mortgage?  Knowledge only transcends imagination and self-styled interpretation when we take the words of the ancients at their face value, using their own word meanings.  Communicating WH’s way is unlivable, but sounds so touching. I’m not interested in WH’s “inner Nibiru” (and if it’s inner, why would he care what I say about any text – oh, I forgot, because he will appeal to them as well – but you can’t just trust the words, you have to trust your inner feelings about the words).  Again, try enforcing a contract in real life like this or renting a video.  The examples of how we (and WH) depend on word “literalism” (as opposed to “spirit”) are innumerable.  William’s approach is completely inconsistent since he doesn’t live that way (and couldn’t) – unless he is writing about portals and inner nibirus.

I’m not on a pedestal saying I can offer Mike the plastic thing. Filling in the gaps,

Here we go – using this inner, divinatory approach, William will fill in the gaps for us.  What I am offering is what these people actually said.  So there’s your choice:  the tablets and their dictionaries, the manuscripts, etc., or intuitions and “spirit”.  This is really where WH becomes inconsistent as well.  While he seeks to cast his approach as a spiritual path to interpretation, he will make reference to written sources and cast aside the words.  In their place he will take syllables, sounds, etc. from word sand splice them together in preposterous combinations to make “connections”.  So, he is in fact at least partially dependent on them – but no one with any amount of linguistic training or foreign language expertise would agree with what he does with them.  They apparently have taken the “scholastic” path.

as the initiate must, is his job (besides I’m only a New York Times Bestselling Author candidate, like Mike I’ve haven’t actually earned my certificate yet).

Who’s watching the wallet now?  And "candidate" means all but dissertation - in my case, two masters degrees and 20 years worth of study. By the way, you seem to think the number of books sold is directly proportional to the amount of truth in the book, or its intellectual quality.  Mein Kampf has been a good seller for decades, and I recall some recent bestsellers by pro wrestlers.

I am saying his work presented some connections for me that he, and other researchers of Nibiru, ought to consider. They’ll leave you grappling with the 12th planet in a very different way.

Now that I can believe.

In his article posted for the Coast to Coast AM Sitchin smash-fest,

Yes, when the facts fly, people do get hit with them.  Thus far I haven’t been hit by a single one from WH.  His response has been twofold:  (1) ad hominem attacks; (2) mysticism.  But he’s gearing up for a stunning stream of amazing historical non-sequiturs (the coherence of which he is able to discern through his spiritual approach, leaving those of us who depend on literal words and contextualized meaning in real life – or ancient testimonies, like dictionaries, breathless and reeling).

Mike hammers out the law. ‘Nibiru’ is not a missing 12th planet roaming the far reaches of our solar system beyond Pluto as Z. Sitchin maintains. Nibiru is the name of a STAR, stupid, and means ‘CROSSING’ and ‘GATE’.

‘Narrow is the way to it’, he quotes the Sumerian poem ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’.

Strange, this is EXACTLY what the Nazorean pathfinder Jesus, the Cross-man who called himself ‘the Door’, said about the Gate to God (apparently ‘borrowing’ without attribution from the Sumerian text).

I pointed this out William.  And we all borrow without attribution from a body of common knowledge without any ethical violation (this is well within the bounds of both scholarship and common discourse – sorry for the scholast-ese).  Your insinuation about Jesus was indeed noticed.  Hard to believe you can put Jesus on a lower ethical plane than yourself. This shows your ignorance of the ancient world as well.  They had no concept of intellectual property as we do; everyone quoted freely from others.  There was no ethical shadiness.

The Sumerians would have been the ones that knew the facts about Nibiru.

No kidding – I laid out what they SAY.  Don’t recall any stargates in the tablets.

Their writings provide the raw materials out which all gateway religions, including “Christianity,” have grown. Mike never connects the two words star and gate to reveal the star- gate Nibiru.

So (and I may be reading this totally wrong) the ENGLISH  words “star” and “gate” somehow point to the Sumero-Akkadian “nibiru”?  If that’s not what you’re saying, disregard this.  If it is, you should know Sumerian and Akkadian were around before English, and have ZERO linguistic relationship to it.

As a consequence of his shortsightedness, he does not connect Nibiru, the star- gate, the ‘door to God’, with important star-gateway occurrences in the bible, including that of Jesus.

Well, I can agree that Jesus was the way to God (John 14:6).

The stargate is the plastic thing. The Code Duella states that the challenged gets to pick the grounds and time for the debate. The ground I choose is the gate of Gilga-mesh, which I believe appears in the bible as the Gilgatha or Gulgotha, ‘the place of the skull’, where the crucifixion of Jesus took place. Far from strapping a Jewish carpenter to an instrument of torture, I propose the crucifixion was a stargate event.

How could the apostles and witnesses at the crucifixion have missed this?  Maybe they weren’t very spiritual.  Maybe it’s because the Old testament predicted a suffering Messiah.  Just a thought.  The whole idea running through both testaments is redemption by blood.  Maybe WH will deny they had blood sacrifice in the OT.  I wonder what the “code meanings” are behind the Hebrew words for “guilt offering”, “atonement”, “sprinkling of blood” are?  And that silly apostle Paul – he thought in I Corinthians 10 that Jesus was our Passover lamb, slain for the sins of the world.  Maybe the Passover didn’t involve blood either, but a stargate!

Jesus assembled the teachings and technology of Sumeria and other ancient civilizations and opened a gateway. For more on this subject please see my books Cloak of the Illuminati, Blue Apples, Ark of the Christos, The Healing Sun Code, and The Crystal Halls of Christ’s Court. As to the actual debate, I’d like begin by showing Mike the Door, and Nibiru, as he has never seen it.

Because it isn’t there.  OK William, can you cite any language authority – Akkadian, Greek, or Aramaic – who would buy the above “Gilgamesh” – Golgotha correlation?  I’m not holding my breath.

I’ll begin with a commentary on his article on the meaning of the word Nibiru.

THE MEANING OF THE WORD NIBIRU

As Mike points out, the editors of the monumental Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (= CAD hereafter) have located and compiled all the places where the word “nibiru” and related forms of that word occur in extant tablets. A look at the CAD entry (volume “N - 2”, pp. 145-147), he notes, tells us immediately that the word has a variety of meanings, all related to the idea of “crossing” or being some sort of “crossing marker” or “crossing point”.

Mike also notes that ‘Nibiru’ is preceded by a “d”, the superscript for “deity” and

MUL the cuneiform sign for “star.” From this he deduces that Nibiru is a “star” and a “deity.” This makes sense. Taking a cue from Thomas Jefferson, who said he’d part with all his 6,000 or so books save for one book, the English Dictionary,

Hang on to your hats, folks.  Thomas Jefferson lived before the discovery / decipherment of Sumerian and Akkadian.  The English dictionary he used was also compiled, edited, and written before these languages were known.  By any connection to reality, Jefferson ’s English dictionary (or any English dictionary for that matter) has ZERO to do with Sumero-Akkadian tablets.  But this is WH’s consistent methodology – bewildering (to linguists and people who learn the ancient languages) etymological non-sequiturs and rabbitrails. 

I like to consult Webster’s Dictionary when researching ancient terms. I find that it reveals surprisingly clear insight in simple terms.

Even when those languages were unknown, undeciphered, and untranslated??  This says a lot about WH’s scholarship and ability to analyze what I’ve done. It’s completely imaginary and self-styled.  This approach is utterly absurd. It’s sort of like a King James only person – “forget that Greek and Hebrew, the English was good enough for the apostle Paul, so it’s good enough for me.”  Imagine (no pun there):  deciphering Sumero-Akkadian word meanings from the English dictionary.  I have a simpler solution to offer readers and people who really want the facts:  use the dictionaries the Mesopotamians compiled.  Seems like a no-brainer. You decide for yourself – all you need is common sense, not a PhD in ancient languages.

Here we go – off to the Henry etymological fantasy land!!

Consulting Webster’s we find the root NEB has carried over into neb-ula, the English word for a patch of stars. U-la, means ‘a light’.

In what language?

Before getting too excited, however,

I am trying to contain myself.

Mike notes that in only a minority of cases (those references in astronomical texts) does the word Nibiru or Nebiru relate to an astronomical body. Here is Mike’s brief overview of Nibiru’s meanings, followed by specific meanings and references in the astronomical texts. “Nibiru” (more technically and properly transliterated as “neberu,” notes Mike) can mean several things.

“place of crossing” or “crossing fee” – In the Gilgamesh epic, for example, we read the line (remarkably similar to one of the beatitudes in the sermon on the Mount): “Straight is the crossing point (nibiru; a gateway), and narrow is the way that leads to it.” A geographical name in one Sumero-Akkadian text, a village, is named “Ne-bar-ti-Ashshur” (“Crossing Point of Asshur”). Another text dealing with the fees for a boatman who ferries people across the water notes that the passenger paid “shiqil kaspum sha ne-bi-ri-tim” (“silver for the crossing fees”).

Mike also cites these meanings for Nibiru.

“ferry, ford”; “ferry boat”; “(act of) ferrying” – For example, one Akkadian text refers to a military enemy, the Arameans: “A-ra-mu nakirma bab ni-bi-ri sha GN itsbat” (“The Arameans were defiant and took up a position at the entrance to the ford [gate, crossing point]”). In another, the Elamites are said to “ina ID Abani ni-bi-ru u-cha-du-u” (“[to] have cut off the ford [bridge, crossing way] of the river Abani”). “Let Nibiru be the holder of the crossing place of heaven and earth,” says one of the texts cited by Mike.

In my book, Ark of the Christos, I connect the Sumerian god E.A. or Enki (who the Sumerians uphold as the maker of humanity), with MAKARA, the ‘Ford Maker’ or ‘Bridge Builder’ of Indian tradition.

On what basis – what is the linguistic relationship between these texts have with Sumerian or Akkadian?  (WH doesn’t say what language they are in – unless he wants to rely on the English, which is a distinct possibility). William, please cite a grammar or some authority (i.e., a person who knows these languages) to validate this approach.

Like E.A. (Oannes to the Babylonians), Makara (‘maker’) was portrayed as a sea monster that was an intermediary (‘crossing point’, ‘nibiru’, ‘christ’, ‘bridge’, ‘door’) between Earth and Heaven.

This is purely interpretive – and important for WH’s ideas forthcoming.  He want to link the sea monster with his “gate”.  Again, are there any texts that make this connection, or are we relying once again on WH’s enlightened divinatory powers (though now armed with the English dictionary)?

E.A. is the model for all serpent or fish gods, including Jesus who was symbolized by a fish-rope and was called ‘tekton’, meaning bridge builder.

Observations:

1)    Jesus was not a serpent god (or a fish god).  I am not familiar enough with WH’s writings to know if this is true, but the “Jesus is from the serpent / dragon line” mythology is Laurence Gardner’s approach, and is nothing more than recast Aryan racial mythology (part of which involves the serpent line from the garden incident being the “good” or “advanced” line; Aryan believers then go on to separate Jesus from the Jews.  I am not saying WH believes this, but this is part of anti-semitic mythology). However, judging from what William does below and the fact that he promotes Gardner on his website leads me to suspect that we have here another re-caster of anti-semitic Aryan racial mythology - except that this time the ascended masters are ETs.  William, tell your friend Laurence that I have been on to this for a long time; it at least applies to him. For readers who are skeptical of this, I'd ask you to read the book Arktos by Joscelyn Godwin (a scholar of this esoteric mystical stuff) and then read Gardner's books.  It's the Aryan mythology popularized all over again.  Wonder what the agenda is.

2)     Jesus is never called a fish god or a fish anything in the New Testament (or any other Greek text I know of – but maybe some Greek speaker in the last 2,000 years did that – any texts, William?)

3)     “Tekton” is Greek for “carpenter”, not “bridge builder” (there are two occurrences in the New Testament; there wasn’t a big need for bridges in Nazareth William).  Any archaeological evidence for them?  I looked up tekton in the classical Greek dictionaries of Liddell-Scott and it’s abbreviated version (available online)

The meanings in Liddell-Scott (online) for the various forms of tekton all relate to the hand, working with the hands – specifically, carpentry (or, figuratively to a poet – a “builder of verse”).  See here.  

 At this point, I can hear WH:  “Well, someone can make bridges with their hands!  Carpenters make bridges don’t they?!”  Yes, but that isn’t the meaning of the word – and again, there wasn’t a backlog of bridge orders in Nazareth.  The 29 Greek words that can have some association (in the actual texts) for bridges or bridge building are listed in Perseus’s online dictionary.

 As a side note to William, some of the words in this list do have a relationship to planets or stars – so have at it!  It’s just that there’s no “bridge-building” associated with Jesus.  Sorry – I know where you’re trying to go with this.  Better luck with the 18th century English dictionary than those nasty first century and classical Greek tools.

At this point I am unable to reference the pictures WH offers, but this is needless anyway.  What I want to see are references where the ancient peoples and the texts they wrote make these connections.  Even more specifically, I want to see connections to Jesus referenced in the New Testament, the most reliable (but not the only) source to the life and ministry of Jesus.  This is not (but can be if people want it to be) a theological argument, but a text-historical and text-critical one.  It is simply a fact that every New Testament book is referenced by the time of the early first century.  If WH wants to get into NT critical scholarship and textual criticism I am ready.  Leave your English dictionary at home for that one, William.

Lastly here, I should point out again that Jesus is never referenced as a fish.  The fish was an iconographic symbol used by the early church to communicate in the catacombs (this is well known).  “Fish” in Greek is spelled:

 

When Christians in the catacombs saw the fish sign scrawled, they knew Christians were near or used that place.  They didn’t think, “hey, the sign of the fish god, Jesus.”  They read “Jesus Christ, God’s son, the Savior.”

    

FILLING IN

Though Mike never connects the two concepts, it is clear that Nibiru is the holder of the gate, and that this gate has to do with the stars. It is the star-gate bridge of the deity. This is probably the gate featured in the Gilgamesh seal.

Clear?  Who’s nibiru – Jesus? Hardly – where are the texts?  Use something other than your imagination. 

 Another of Mike’s sources explicitly states that Nibiru inexplicably changes positions and it crosses the sky.

 Wrong – it’s not inexplicable if it’s precession. 

It’s identified as Jupiter, Mercury and Mars. U- la- la! This is odd. How is it that Mike can claim the Sumerians, who were accomplished astronomers, had precise astronomical knowledge that excludes the possibility of a 12th planet beyond Pluto, but they could not make up their mind about which PLANET is actually the STAR Nibiru (‘the gate’, ‘the crossing’)?

This is hardly a conundrum, William.  (1) We are dealing with observable stars / planets; (2) I said in the article that the Mesopotamians could have mistaken a planet or star depending on the point of observation or the precession issue.  I never claimed they had such “precise astronomical knowledge” in contradiction to my other statements. Please read the material more closely.

All he needs to do is bridge these two words STAR and GATE and he has the answer I derived from my mythological research. Nibiru is a star-gate. As he so pointed out, Nibiru (or perhaps the technology associated with it) moves from planet to planet (Jupiter, Mercury, Mars), leaving us to wonder if the present ‘Nibiru’ (star-gate) is Earth.

Wrong again.  I never said that nibiru “moves from planet to planet” – you supplied that.  I said the word was used in the cuneiform texts of all three planets.  Please read the material more closely.

But why not earth?  There are no controls to WH’s method of inquiry once you abandon the words of the text (i.e., I listed the objects to which the MESOPOTAMIANS link nibiru in the article –why is WH not telling you this? Guess what?  Earth isn’t one of them – straight from the tablets.  Maybe this is in the English dictionary though.

Mike wraps up this part of his argument with the statement that the “root idea” of the nibiru word group and its forms as meaning something with respect to “crossing” is clear. He elects to move on. Not so fast. Mike has omitted valuable information.

You can’t omit what isn’t there.

As Mike observes, it is context that gives a word meaning. He obviously is not familiar with the language of poetry,

about 30-40 pecent of the Hebrew Bible is poetry, William.  But I sense where you’re going – the spiritual, inner nibiru is about to decipher the plain text into something “deeper”.  Read:  Into something we (or the Mesopotamians) would never have imagined without your help.  And guess what – the references to Nibiru I listed in my article (remember those) do NOT come from poetic texts.  They come from star lists or astronomical compendiums like MUL.APIN.  If you were the least bit familiar with the Mesopotamian material, you’d know how silly you are about to sound.

and thus cannot fully define the gate of the gods (or the nibiru) as it appears in the narrative poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Can you cite a single line of cuneiform text that calls nibiru the “gate of the gods”  This is absolutely contrived.

By the way, the word nibiru in Gilgamesh is NOT an astronomical reference. The quotation is from Tablet X, ii:24 – I gave the reference in my paper.

He forgets that the word elements NIB or NEB and RU have symbolic counterparts that also define it.

In English?  Can you cite sources for breaking the word apart like this?  Are you referring to Akkadian?  Sumerian?  Cite sources, please – a dictionary or grammar (and not an English one – there is no such thing as cuneiform English). I wouldn’t forget something so ridiculous and unfounded – believe me, it’ll be hard to forget this response.

It is widely agreed by etymologists that language is fossil poetry and that the creation of every word was originally a poem embodying a bold metaphor or a bright conception of something real. Empires may disappear and nations may sink into myth under cataclysmic waves of nature and invasion, says the symbolist Harold Bayley, but place names and proper names, words, typically preserved by word of mouth, remain to some extent inviolate.

I’m going to say something here that I said to Erik Parker, Sitchin’s webmaster in an exchange.  Why are you talking about linguistics when you have ZERO knowledge background, especially in ancient texts?  If I am wrong, post your credentials or a transcript or something.  All you bring to the table in a discussion about cuneiform texts is an English dictionary.  Please cite some published linguist with real credentials in regard to language being “fossil poetry”.  This is nonsense.  All language is not poetry in any sense.  The Siloam inscription or some record of sheep bought at market isn’t “fossilized poetry.”  What you really mean is that it’s all symbolic – and this is all you have.  To prop up your ideas you MUST abandon what the texts say at face value, because they do not support you.

In addition to preserving proper names, the illumined ones of ancient cultures, including the Sumerians and the Egyptians, made profuse use of bird-brained symbol play, wordplay, puns and puzzles to express significant spiritual principles.

How would we know what the symbols meant unless they told us?  Is there any rational basis or objective foundation to your work at all?  Does it al rest in the “inner nibiru”, the spiritual realm?  I suspect so, since no one can then tell you you’re wrong when arguing on the same footing – it’s all in everyone’s head or heart.  The ancients wanted to communicate their heart – and they used WORDS – just like we do.  Again, try your inner method of interpreting words in real life and see how ridiculous and unlivable it makes life.  You go in for a haircut and tell the barber you want a little off the top.  He gives you a Mohawk, and when asked angrily by you why he would do such a thing, he replies, “Well, your words spoke to me deeply.  Through years of carefully cultivating the transcendent inner self, I know that the word ‘little’ can be broken down into ‘li’ which is part of the word ‘line’ – so I gave you a line on your head to follow.  ‘Top’ is part of the Greek word ‘topos’, which means ‘place’ so I chose the place on your head for your Mohawk.”  When you divide ENGLISH words into syllables and use them to argue what a 5,000 year old cuneiform text means, the possibilities are truly endless.  Just imagine what you could do here with the IRS, your spouse, your kids . . . or your readership.

Words and symbols are equations that have multiple levels of meaning.

See the above – the barber looked deeper.  My point in the absurd example is that when we reduce language to syllables and symbols and tinker with them and create absurd combinations and self-styled interpretations, language—indeed communication—becomes meaningless if you are the speaker or writer.  The reader becomes an interpretive god – exactly what WH accused me of at the beginning is true here – he becomes a mystical gatekeeper of meaning.  You can’t just read the words at face value; you must forget the words themselves and delve into the nebulous realm of symbology.  Try this with spoken communication – the barbershop illustration above – and see how impossible meaningful communication becomes. What I am asking readers is to look up sources and read them for themselves (and that brings up a good question – how do people read your books William?  How do they tap the symbols behind your own words?  Or, when it comes to modern communication, do you use the face value approach?  Does your statement above apply to your own books?  And if so, how can we ever hope to understand you correctly?  We would need you to decipher the symbols behind your own work.

Hopefully the reader is getting the picture by now.  I offer texts and ancient word meanings drawn from the Mesopotamians themselves (the lexical lists).  Sitchin offers made up ideas (in places); WH offers symbols and “multiple levels” for words that make checking up on his interpretations impossible.  Lay readers with no background in language study or philosophy of language may be impressed or taken in William; I have a background in this, and am on to your method.

Both are like round smoke rings when they leave the mouth . One can touch the ring of a word or symbol – especially a living symbol like Nibiru – and enter into a web of relationships. I’ll reconstruct examples of these word/symbol/puns cited in Mike’s article as we continue.

Need I say more?  Let William unlock the secrets behind the plain sense of the words.  Now nibiru is a living symbol.  Yeah – you’ll reconstruct it for us all right.  By no objective standard and without a single attempt to address the questions I raised on my website.  Just take apart the syllables. Again, should people read your books this way?

Let’s begin with the symbol/word/pun d.Nib-I-Ru. In symbology, the letter ‘d’ put before Nibiru is represented by the delta or cone symbol, , and means ‘door’.

The sign here is not a cone – oops; there I go appealing to Sumerian signs for Sumerian words – my apology. I almost overlooked another bungle – you say the Sumerian sign resembles a DELTA??  Delta is a GREEK LETTER – visually there is no resemblance at all. It’s absolute chicanery.  How can you do this with a clear conscience? The "d" stands for the DINGIR sign, the sign for divinity (which is the Akkadian cuneiform equivalent to the Sumerian AN sign).  Just so the reader doesn't take my word for it, here's a portion of John Heise's Akkadian language website (highly recommended for some intro. Akkadian and Sumerian):

About the cuneiform sign = AN

Sumerian. It developed in Sumerian times (3rd millenium BC) from the pictogram  indicating a star ä. In Sumerian the sign is used as a logogram and has the following meanings: 

Here's the question:  Where in the world does William get a cone from this sign (either one)?  Maybe it's a result of his inner dingir.  Again, utterly baseless material not worth taking seriously.

Put together, this renders Nibiru as a ‘deity, door star’ or ‘deity, star door’. Now, let’s add this

Thank you for slipping up here – at last you TELL us you’re adding to the face value of the word.

 to CAD’s definition of Nibiru (“door,” “star,” “deity”) as a “crossing point,” “ford” or “gate.” Isn’t this, once again, telling us exactly what the Sumerians said Nibiru was in their own words: a star- gate?

No, it isn’t.  It has nothing to do with a door. Please show me from cuneiform astronomical texts where nibiru was considered a door in the heavens.  In linguistic terms, this is a classic example of taking the meaning of a word in ONE context (places – non-astronomical texts, mind you) where a word may refer to a gate, and then importing that meaning into another text and ADDING the idea of moving from planet to planet (which NONE of the texts ever says), and now ADDING some idea about the “d” sign .  It’s amazing how you keep doing this. 

And that it moves from planet to planet? The word Nibiru gives instruction about the divine gate from various points of view, without order as to time. Further drilling into the meaning of NEB leads us into a fascinating matrix or web of connections.

Oh boy; he’s not done. I can feel my mind numbing.

For instance, the Old Testament prophets were called NEBI or NABI. Is this because they held the secrets of the Gate (Nibiru)? In Deuteronomy 32:49 Moses was told by God to ge t to Mount NEB or NE-BO, ‘the lofty place’. Moses ‘died’ there in c. 1400 B.C. Nob means ‘serpent’ and ‘sun’, rendering Nebo as the ‘sun-serpent mountain’.

This is all crap. Nob has no such meaning in any semitic derivation.  And to take a syllable from one word (i.e., PART of one word) and splice it to another to generate a meaning is just absolute linguistic deception.  Sitchin can’t approach this level of language quackery.  I’m beginning to get some respect for him (really).  Please see the entry below from Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Dictionary – a standard in the field for decades (notice how William NEVER quotes a language resource – you don’t need one when you make it up as you go).

 

Serpent is con or kan in numerous tongues. 

and so now we are going to analyze its meaning using the sounds as reflected in ENGLISH?

This is no ordinary reptile. The serpent is a symbol for a con-duit, defined by Webster’s as ‘a narrow passage, usually underground, for the purpose of secret communication… a canal, pipe, or passageway for the conveyance of fluids’. This is why a ring as in the con-centric circle symbolizes the serpent. For this reason Nebo is referred to a con-ical mountain, which is why the geometrical cone, a ring with a delta or door symbol symbolizes it.

I’m just stunned. It’s hard for me to grasp the level of linguistic incoherence that WH so freely engages in.  It’s utter babble.  It’s like a world where any syllable can mean anything – where language and communication function outside reality.  It’s like reading a dictionary compiled by someone on LSD.  What can I say?  It would take me dozens of hours and dozens of scans of pages of dictionaries and grammars to address this linguistic cesspool.  I can barely follow it. A veritable stream of incoherence. Words mean nothing because they are hacked apart, each syllable given a meaning from an altogether different language, then spliced back together again. I’m groping for an analogy of what must be going on in William’s mind, but I confess I cannot grasp the concept of total commitment to linguistic relativism. Everything can mean anything.  But an illustration comes to me . . . thank goodness.

What William is doing here is akin to taking auto parts piecemeal from 5 or 10 or 50 or 100 cars - all different makes and models - then putting them together to fashion his engine.  Hey, they all came from cars, didn't they?  Put them together and you've got a finely tuned machine!  Hey, they're all syllables aren't they? They're all from words, right? So put them together for meaning!  Or maybe it's like taking parts from every computer in a COMPUSA store, then putting them together to form one's own desktop computer.  Never mind some of the parts came from a MAC and others from PCs - they're all computers, aren't they?).  To pull this off, of course, we'd need an enlightened mechanic or computer tech.  To pull off what William is assembling from the disparate and unrelated parts, one needs William. 

I think the only thing I can do other than spend a dozen hours unraveling this bunk is to appeal to readers to look at what has been addressed above and sift through my abbreviated comments below. Henry's material speaks for itself.

 In 570 B.C. NEB-u-kad-nez-ar or Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon , who opened a ‘fiery furnace’ or ‘gate to God’ through which the ‘Son of God’ appeared, or has made visible. The followers of John the Baptist called this ‘Son of God’ NABU.

Where?  Where in the Greek New Testament do we have an Akkadian word (and a deity name at that)

This ‘fiery furnace’ appears to be the same as the ‘burning bush’ experienced by Moses. “Christians” claim the god, I Am, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush was a prefiguration of Christ. These appearances, in Babylon and atop Sinai, suggest that Jesus made regular appearances through the ‘fiery furnace’/’burning bush’. The burning and fiery descriptions of his gateway are alluded to in Jesus’ title, ‘the phoenix’ bird of resurrection that rises from its own ashes. Interestingly, Webster’s says NEB-NEB

Again, Webster’s English dictionary used to render Akkadian and Sumerian. How is this line of thought even possible?

 is the same as bablah, which is not only blahblah, but is also bab-el-uh, phonetically similar to bablahn or Babylon . Neb-neb is benben spelled backwards. The ben ben was the conical stone or egg of the phoenix or heron , whom the Egyptians regarded as a cosmic emissary, the embodiment of the Divine Word , that delivered to Heliopolis , , a teaching designed to transform humans into herons (or light beings). The Key of Life , a ring, vibration or frequency, symbolized this transformative teaching.

Come on, reader - admit it; you thought I was kidding in the intro, didn't you?

The heron delivers the ring or key of life.  
The sun-temple/ near Heliopolis featuring the ben-ben stone of the Phoenix/heron.

The Tower of Babel (meaning ‘the gate’ or NEBIRU)

Again, where is the text that associates the Tower of Babel with nibiru?  Texts please – and PLEASE, a modicum of coherence.

was modeled after the original tower to God called Meru, the root of Su-Meru or Sumer , and was symbolized by the ‘ring’ atop the ‘cone’ , . The word tower rings of tour, meaning circle or circuit. This neb answers to the Egyptian ben ben. The rod and ring is used in modern iconography for microphone, e.g. on telephone answering machines and other household appliances. As a military sign it is used to denote an outpost.  

like I said - you have to read it to believe it.

Nibiru is said to have been located “at the center of Heaven”. is used on maps to indicate different types of centers from which energy and/or communication emanate: central station, lighthouse, transformer station, post office, telegraph and telephone station and pushbutton (for on/off). In a moment, we will see that Mike cites Nibiru as MUL.APIN (“Plough Star”), seemingly without knowing that the Plough is another well-known name for Meru, the World-Mountain or Whirling Cone. In ancient Egypt , the stars of the Plough (Ursa Major) were called the “Car of Osiris,” shown on some planispheres by an Ark , situated near the polar point. When the Hebrew scribes of the binary god Yahweh or IAO (Input/Output)

Holy cow.  The binary god.  IAO = input and output. William, you need some sort of help.  I can’t imagine what you’ve been through. I’m beginning to see how useless it is to appeal to you on the basis of texts and the rules of language and logic. What was done to you?

Switched the meanings (and frequencies) of words after the Babel/Meru incident babel was transformed from ‘gate to god’ to ‘confusion’ and blah-blah to ‘nonsense’ A great literary black-op was performed. The Gate to God, ‘Nibiru’, was covered up like a giant black or blah-ck hole. Now, when one cites the true nature of the gate they are met with derision, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now to push the circumference of this circle. Webster’s says Bablah is a pod of the Acacia, the living wood out of which the Ark of God was made. This is why Neb or Ne-bo became Nabe, the prophets of the navel or navis (boat or Ark ). Failing to crosscheck the Sumerian and English dictionaries, Mike does not see the inner meaning of Nibiru as “the Ark of the Gods, the vehicle of crossing of the deity.” His shortsightedness extends to his interpretation of an important cylinder seal, VA 243, which he also uses to assail Sitchin.

The above (and below) is just more of the same.  I really don’t feel like critiquing it any more.  I am genuinely disturbed by what I have read.  It’s like the synapses in your brain are wired completely differently, where logic is cast aside.  I don’t mean that as any kind of comment on your intelligence, either. It’s evident you have a very active mind and are bright.  I’ve just never witnessed this kind of incoherent babbling before.  I’ve heard you on shows and that is but a taste.  This kind of sustained prattling is something I’ve never encountered. 

Before exploring this seal, and also Mike’s take on ZS’s 12th planet theory, indulge me for a moment in a brief exploration of another Babylonian tablet that explains the meaning of RU, the suffix attached to Nib to form Nibiru. RU. WHAT IS IT? In John Oates’s book Babylon is found an illustration

You surely didn’t find a text or a word list.  (I can’t help but keep appealing to real sources; it’s what I do).

that makes my point that ancient art carries an exoteric meaning for the uninitiated and an esoteric meaning for those of the light. This diagram is copied from one of the few Old Babylonian math texts that appear theoretical in content, meaning it is a problem to be solved. ‘Theoretical’ means ‘to look at’, ‘to view’, ‘to contemplate’. Oates found it in H.W.F. Saggs’ The Greatness That Was Babylon . The tablet was inscribed with a geometrical exercise in which the student had to calculate the areas of various shapes. ‘A square, the side is 1. Inside it are 4 quadrants and 16 boat-shapes. I have drawn 5 regular concave tetragons. This area, what is it?  What is it? is a double entendre. Readers of Laurence Gardner

Someone else who knows nothing about these ancient languages.

will immediately recognize this phrase. What is it? comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the oldest complete book in the world. At every stage of his journey to enlightenment and to the blessed star- field of the gods the pharaoh asks the repetitive question, “What is it?” “What is it?” refers to Manna, the holy substance, known as gold, symbolized by the Egyptians by a cone (or a Nebo). The gods of Nibiru, the Anunnaki, notes Gardner , manufactured the Manna.

Is there a single text that says this?  Sitchin is an amateur compared to WH.  He only makes up little snippets when he needs them.  This is almost wholly contrived.

 “Christianity,” which calls Manna the “body or host of Christ” (symbolized by the communion cakes), is a garbled knock-off of the religion of the Anunnaki Manna manufacturers. What did this religion concern? The word Mul, ‘star’, holds a key. When the people of Syracuse were sacrificing to goddesses, they offered cakes called Mulloi, shaped like the female organ. Mel-am was the Sumerian word for ‘Divine Power’. Yahweh, IAO, who traveled in a pillar of fire, taught the Israelites about Manna. They kept it in the Arch, (Bo), Argo, Arko or Ark of the Covenant, the Boat of God. This returns us to the Babylonian drawing. The ‘boat shapes’ (or mouth shapes) that comprise the Babylonian drawing, were also well known to the Egyptians. In Egypt, means ‘neter’ and has the value of ‘R’ in English.

No it doesn’t.  The “r” in Egyptian is the open mouth (look it up in a sign list). You have no idea what you’re talking about.  Please just ONCE – site a grammar or dictionary (of the appropriate language) to make your point.  

Here are the signs William is talking about (unless he's made up his own equivalents) from Jim Loy's cool Egyptian language website.  I have underlined the "r" (the open mouth).  The sign list is from Sir Alan Gardiner's well know grammar (which I do not recommend for first year Egyptian - a number of better places to start).  The lion sign shows up as "r" in later stages of the language:

 

Upright, this symbol forms the Egyptian hieroglyph Ru, meaning ‘birth passage’, ‘doorway’, ‘vagina’. When I attach my (logical) left brain to my (symbolic) right brain,

This about says it all.  There is no reasoning with William. I want to say I regret trying, but my hope is that readers of this exchange will see how hopeless a case this is.  

While the open mouth sign would look like a vagina when inverted, there are problems (what a surprise) with William's "reconstruction" of the sign's meaning:  (1) the Egyptians wrote it horizontally, which tells you it wasn't the vagina; (2) we know from the earliest semitic alphabet (Serabit el-Khadim), which borrowed Egyptian signs for its alphabet, that the sign was understood as an open mouth; (3)  The actual Egyptian WORD for mouth is the above sign (horizontal) with a vertical line under it - which proves definitively it wasn't a vagina

I find that Nib-Iru is a compound word/symbol/idea composed of Nib, ‘the projecting end of anything’, ‘a lofty place’, a ‘mountain’ or ‘cone’ I, meaning ‘pillar or column’, and, Ru, ‘doorway’. In other words, it is Meru. In addition to a boat, the neter, meaning ‘watcher’ symbol, , looks like an eye. The Chinese used the same symbol to represent ‘to visit’ and eye. It is the same as the almond-shaped doorway seen in the Neolithic tunnel – conduit – drawing presented here and the doorway of Jesus who called himself the Door.

A WORD ABOUT LANGUAGE

can you believe this heading?!

Of course, ‘scholars’ might argue that I’m making up meanings to give wings to my dotty bird-brained theory. All I’m doing is following the example of the Druidic bard (bird) or wise man Thomas Jefferson, i.e.a. looking up words in the English dictionary and connecting or fusing points that are already there.

Again, William, English has nothing to do with SUMERIAN or any semitic language.

The English dictionary is the code-key to the Language of the Birds,

Ooookaaaay. English is the key to the language of the birds.  I’m a little frightened now. How does anyone take you seriously? Skip way down to the cylinder seal VA 243; the rest of this is just more syllable splicing and punning. I could refute every line of William's language work, but don't have an extra week to give to it.  Hopefully the reader has seen enough already.

a phonetic cabala. This code poetically equates words that sound alike in different languages, connecting word concepts by sound in English. It is also called the Language of Angels. Christian O’Brien notes that the Sumerians called this language eme-an, the ‘language of heaven’; hence of the angels. In this language of poetry another linguistic variation of ‘bird’ is ‘bard’ (poet, wise Druid) and ‘bud’, a verb meaning ‘to cause to bud, germinate, sprout’. Allowing for the substitution of birds, bards, and buds renders the poetic Language of the Birds as the Language of the Buds (or flowers). The Buds are also the Budd-has. ‘Buddha’, the son of Tara , comes from the Sanskrit budh, meaning ‘to awaken’. In this way the definition of the Bird Language rolls into the Buddha’s ‘language that awakens’. As I wrote in The Language of the Birds, Jesus used the Bird or Budhha language. It is of great interest to me that the Egyptian hieroglyph of the phoenix/heron , the bird of akh (light, serpent), shows the ‘conduit or bond between heaven and earth’. It closely matches the stylized fish glyph of Jesus , which portrays Jesus’ ‘life- line’ or ‘serpent-rope’, though it predates him by millennia. Compare them with , and doorway. Few scholars have ever heard of, and almost none understand, this language, which was the gift of the gods. Hence, their interpretation of ancient myth is incomplete. It was called Babel , the language of the gate. The metaphor of the tower (or tour ) for the language of the gate was suggested by a pun on Hebrew balal (to confuse). ‘Therefore its name was called Babel , because the Lord confused the language of all the earth’. Poets used this language to conceal the secrets of the gate (nibiru). ‘Mainstream’ scholars throughout the ages have sought to destroy this language. We are indeed impoverished by this loss. It is our humble quest to recover this lost language of the angels (the cherubim who guard the gate) and climb the tower once again. Viewing Nibiru as a star-gate brings new light its winged-disk symbol. Like the human brain, and the winged disk symbol of Nibiru, the Bird Language has two wings: a left wing and a right wing. In between the two is a bridge of light. American politics is divided into these categories. So is our scholarship, where the left-wingers tend to be literal. Often, this results in their inability to see the right side. They complain, but do not offer an alternative. The wings of Nibiru are a symbol of spiritual aspiration and are indicative of the higher path of  consciousness.

Mero-dach (Meru-Dock, ‘Star Dock’) or MARDUK, another name for Nibiru, is a symbol of the Higher Self, the Hero(n) who personifies the triumph over the lower nature. In the Hymn to Merodach he is called ‘king of Heaven and Earth, the merciful one, who loves to raise the dead to life.” Sayse says Merodach has been identified with Asari, the son of E.A. Asari and Osiris were evidently the same. The character and attributes of both were the same. Osiris was Un-nefer or Un-nepheru, ‘the good being’ whose symbol was the hare, the bunny rabbit that leads the initiate into the inner realms Merodach was the divine man, God incarnate, freed from the limitations of mortal existence. Many of the symbols of Merodach and Os-Iris, the eye , were applied to Jesus. Nebo (Neboru or Nibiru and Marduk) says Rawlinson, “presided over Mercury,” the winged god who teaches and instructs (and who gave the apples from the holy plant named Moly to Ulysses). Nebo was credited, like E.A., with the invention of writing and language. He was also the ‘bond of the universe’ . . . (His temple was recently discovered at Borsippa in Iraq .) He answers to all the bookish wise gods Thoth, the Egyptian bird god, as well as Hermes, and Thor.

THE DISK

Let’s next explore the simple disk symbol of Nibiru. This is the universal symbol or ideogram for the sun. It is a circle or a ring (a key, tone, frequency or vibration). is also a quantity, zero or none. Phonetically, none and nun are the same. When most think of a nun they think of a woman who is a supporter of Christ (the ‘bridge’, ‘gate’, ‘door’ between Earth and Heaven). However, to the Egyptians, NUN is the Cosmic Ocean , called the Waters of Nun. The Hebrew word nun means fish. Literally interpreted Anunnaki means the ‘fish’ or ‘water’, Nun, of aki, ‘snake’, ‘sun’, ‘light’. These ‘living waters’ (delivered by the Fisher-man Christ in the Christian scheme) emanate from the central point in our disk-shaped Milky Way galaxy, symbolized by the the symbol for sun, gold and eye. (Remember, Jesus was called the Mari-Gold or the golden Days Eye.) In esoteric teaching represents the creative spark of divine consciousness that exists in every individual. These healing waters fanned out into four rivers from the celestial Eden , hence the enclosed sun-cross of the Sumerian sun god O’Samas. 

Fascinatingly, Oxford scholars Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, say the Akkadian names of the symbol were samsatu and niphu, which is nipoo or niboo and Nib-o. From this we gather that is the symbol for Nibiru (also suggested by Sitchin),

Source please – sorry, I can’t help myself.  Tell you what, William.  I’ll send this poppycock to Dr. Black, a well known Sumerologist, and get his response if you’ll post it in its entirety on your website.  You should be ashamed to link him with this.

The Star-Gate. Actually, it is composed of four gates fused in one . (Note the Templar Seal.) The at the core of is an astronomical sign for planetary nebula. It has been used in Buddhist art to indicate the emanation of spiritual power. The Hebrews called this spark I AM. The three wavy lines represent ‘water’ and ‘wisdom’ (especially spiritual). They are the substance of which Gilgamesh’s gate is composed. When looked at head-on these three wavy lines (serpents) look like this , the alchemical sign for oil and the Skull (Gulgotha) or Word of God, ‘the Life Force or Love energy upon which the World is built. is the symbol for Wood. It is a three-headed serpent. It is seen on the cheek of Makara in the illustration shown previously. In modern electrical engineering signifies three-phased alternating current. This sign  can also mean alternating current of a frequency that is above audible level. This is also the symbol for the exotic matter of which stargates are composed. Science is on the verge of bathing in the mist-eries of these waters. The point or eye within the circle is the Neb , the ‘cross-point’  Nibiru’s logo,the 8-rayed flower, , turns up repeatedly in esoteric symbolism. It is symbolically equivalent to the 8-rayed star symbolizing the Buddhist Kalachakra (“Wheel of Time”) Tradition , which was adopted as the symbol for the Holy Grail on William Sinclair’s tombstone in Scotland. When Iraq achieved its independence in 1921, this particular star was placed on their flag. After the revolution of 1958 that ushered in the regime of Saddam Hussein a new flag was created with three Venus stars on it. This is because the orbit of the planet Venus makes the figure of a pentagram every 8 years. This is the ideogram of Is-Tara, the queen of the Heavens who was also called Kore or Core. She is obviously the center of the galaxy. In the depiction below kingship is lowered from heaven. There were three divinities in the Iraq region. Their symbols can be seen in almost very ancient mythological representation. They are , the sun or Nib god; the moon god, Sin; and , Is-Tara, , the symbol for the planet Venus. It is very common as a Christmas star or the star of Bethelehem. I should mention that is the same as , the cube with eight angles.

VA 243

Heiser calls our attention to a famous cylinder seal known as VA 243 to defend his assertion that Sitchin is lost in his theory about the 12th planet. This seal is a keystone of Sitchin’s book The 12th Planet. He says it shows a solar system with 12 planets. As Heiser points out, the inscriptions on the seal have nothing to do with astronomy.

Cylinder Seal VA 243

Star system on seal VA 243.

In simplest terms, the alleged “six-rayed sun” in the upper left corner of the seal isn’t a sun, and so the artwork doesn’t depict the sun and our solar system. Tom Van Flandern, Mike notes, has also shown that the sizes of the planets in this solar system do not match our own. This clearly suggests Sitchin could be describing a star system other than our own, jeopardizing his 12th planet theory. But what about my stargate theory?

If not the sun, then what is the six-rayed symbol? It’s a STAR, says Mike. We know this, he says, because of the consistent sun iconography of Sumero-Mesopotamian art. And in case you’re thinking, “well the sun is a star”, adds Mike, the Sumerians and Mesopotamians distinguished these bodies in their artwork. For a scholarly commentary on this seal I recommend Cambridge and Oxford-affiliated scholars D.S. Allan & J.B. Delair’s book Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 B.C.

I’m starting to feel some relief here, as I noted on Coast that nibiru could have some reference to precession or pole shift (which would likely involve cataclysm).  The only problem, though, is that nothing on the seal links it to the star nibiru.

Here’s Mike’s English translation of the seal’s inscriptions:

Line 1 (left hand sid of the seal) = dub-si- ga “Dubsiga” [a personal name of an apparently powerful person]

Line 2 (right hand side, top) = ili- il- la-at “Ili- illat” [another personal name, this time of the seal’s owner]

Line 3 (right hand side bottom) = ir3-su “dein Knecht” [German for “your servant”]  

His full (and as he says rather boring) inscription of VA243 reads: “Dubsiga, Ili- illat, your/his servant.” Like he said, nothing in the inscription suggests anything remotely to do with astronomy or planets. I have a question. How can there be a star system sitting next to the priest, yet the seal says nothing about astronomy?

My point was that the text and the seal does not teach us about astronomy. If I found a picture in my attic that had the moon in it, would I conclude it is teaching me astronomical knowledge?  I guess I could have worded that better, but it seems clear enough - it's either decorative or it marks a god.  It may be a depiction of a constellation, but we don't know - it doesn't convey astronomical knowledge.

Mike will be interested to know that the word Ili, as in Ili- illat, means ‘light’, 

Yeah, I am interested, especially since this isn't true; see below

and is the root or ‘illumination, illuminati’. The Illi gods were stars, which is why the Illi priests worshipped light. It likely indicates that the subject, Dubsiga, was a servant or priest of Illi, the Light.

I’ve been waiting for this (this is a Gardner argument as well).  The “light” word you refer to is based on English phonetic equivalents in the Assyrian dictionary.  There are a number of words in Akkadian that have the “il” sound – but here’s the kicker – THOSE SOUNDS ARE REPRESENTED BY DIFFERENT SIGNS IN CUNEIFORM.  In short, just because words sound the same doesn’t mean they are written with the same signs – and so they are not related when written with different signs.  It’s sort of like how “f” and “ph” can make the same sound in English – yet words spelled with those “signs” need not (and nearly always do not) have any relationship in meaning.  Hence in Akkadian, “ilu” means god (note the single " L " ), but “illi” does not (note the difference in spelling - due to the fact that the word in cuneifor is made of different wedge signs – even though the sounds are the same.  I know William doesn’t care about this, but the reader might. Here's the entries from Brown Driver Briggs again to show the reader that the leading Hebrew dictionary's etymological information agrees with me:

ILU (the entry is for "el" - god in Hebrew); "As." = Assyrian = Akkadian cuneiform (Assyria was part of Mesopotamia, and a huge amount of cuneiform material comes from there)

illu (more properly, ellu) shows up here - for Hebrew halal, "to shine" (no relation to 'el, the wod for god):

 

The word illi was carried over to England where natives who contacted the Illi upon the hills (under the tutelage of the Druid bards or birds)

great – more bird language.

called them the Nob-Illi or the high or lofty Illi for “nob,” as in Moses’ Nebo, means high, sun and serpent. The Illi ‘light serpents’ or Anunnaki were the rulers of Su-Meru . In many languages the letters ‘r and ‘l’ are interchangeable. This allows us to write Nib-iru as Nibilu, or Nib-ili, which is the same as Nob-ili. This is Mike’s problem. While to the trained eye the seal’s cuneiform inscription says nothing about astronomy, to the “untrained eye” the seal’s symbolism and inscription is loaded with meaning.

Correction – meaning is inserted.

More astronomical information is encoded in the seated figure. This, says Mike, is a god as evidenced by his flounced cloak and the two rays or horns on his head. Black and Green note that the Babylonians used the horns to represent ‘forked lightning flash’. To me, they look like a tuning fork. This is valid as Black and Green say is connected with the ring-post or ringing-cone (MERU). These are likely the same ‘horns of God’ Michaelangelo depicted on Moses’ head in the statue in the Vatican Museum.

Again, a note to the reader.  The horns on Moses head in this statue are the result of a text-critical error in a manuscript.  It’s a famous text-critical mistake by a scribe.  You can read about it (but Hebrew is likely necessary) if you get a good textual commentary on the passage that talks about Moses face shining and needing a veil. (the manuscript mistake has Moses with horns, not radiance). Henry’s discussion here is nonsense.

This is because Moses ‘Sinai’, like Nebo, is a metaphor for Meru. The cloaked god in VA 243 sits before a plough. Though Mike doesn’t identify him this god is thought to be Dagan (Hebrew Dogon), the inventor of the plough.

There are other gods associated with agrarian fertility.  It could be Dagon, but we can’t know for sure.

Dagon’s name means ‘fish of light’.

There’s no “light” element in the semitic spelling Dagon.  This is bogus.

Interestingly, Mike cites Nibiru as MUL.APIN (“Plough Star”), seemingly without knowing that the Plough is well known as Meru, and is even more widely known as Ursa Major. Sitchin finds APIN (“an object that plows through”) at the temple mound of Anu at Uruk. He cites it as a multi-stage rocket. While I can’t say for certain that this is so, it does resemble a nib of a pen, and penetrator or a drill. The words Nib, Neb and Pen go together. Just look head-on at the nib of a pen. It resembles a The sacred and symbolic name for bread-makers (bread is Manna ) was Pan or Pen. From this we derive Penis and Penus, which has also the meaning of Sar (‘lofty’ ‘Nib’), Sir, Lord, Master and Bread Giver, or Preserver of Life, hence Savior. The Pan-Theists characterized man as a microcosm or world in miniature made in the image of God – the Macrocosm or Greater Universe. The heretics were charged with cherishing the arrogant and impious notion that man’s soul might be developed into a god, as the alchemist refined the baser metals into gold. They called themselves Cathars or Pure Ones. These Cat people emitted a purr or pure tone the called MR or AMOR, MERU.

The rest is Jesus the penis man, maker of ploughs or something; skip to the end.

Undoubtedly the most familiar star pattern in the entire sky is the seven stars that make up the shape popularly termed the Plough or Big Dipper, part of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. In ancient Greece, Babylon, India, China and in North America, Ursa Major has been seen as a she-bear, appearing in every extended reference to the heavens in the legends, parchments, tablets, and stones of remotest times - even though the arrangement of the seven stars of Ursa Major in no way resembles a bear! This is because the term is a pun for ‘bear’, as in ‘bear across’ or ‘plow through’, which is why it is called Ark-tos, the bear (cross). According to the early Christian commentator Iranaeus, Jesus was a maker of ploughs. He writes of the Word of God “turning the swords and spears of warfare into tools of peace, into ploughs that he himself has made.” The Acts of Peter includes the plough (Meru, Su-Meru) in the list of Jesus’ titles. He is a plough wright. Iranaeus’ inspiration, Justin, lists the plough as interchangeable with the cosmic cross. Justin in turn derived his interpretation from primitive Christian symbolism. The early Christians, in turn, derived their knowledge from Egypt, who got if from Su-Meru (the Plough, Arktos). Another pun is involved as well. Long ago, the constellations we know as the Great and Little Bears were together called Tula (‘balance’), held as the birthplace of humanity (in Hebrew ‘virgin’ is bethula, ‘house of Tula’). But then something happened. The name ‘Tula’ was transferred to the center (Meru) of our Milky Way galaxy. The name ‘the Seven Rishis’ or ‘Seven Sages’, applied to the Seven Stars of Ursa Major were no longer applied to the Great Bear, but to the Pleiades. Tiamat is the Mother Planet of the Pleiades. After a confrontation with Nibiru, from her body came the seeds of life that formed Earth. Tula is akin to the Greek word Tolas meaning confusion (Babel), black earth (Egypt was called the Black Land). The Greek word Gryphe also means confusion (babel). Jesus is called the Master-Griffon because as God and man he represents union of the divine and the human. In fairy tales the Griffin, the Bird of Gold, figures prominently as a transporter through the golden gate. Herodotus regarded the Griffin as the guardian of god’s treasures, and on a higher plane, the way or door of salvation.

In Gnostic emblems the Gryphon is sometimes represented with its paw or claw upon a wheel; sometimes the wheel , squeezes out of its chrysalis a tiny human soul, a nib . In the designs below from Egypt and Europe, the little souls is emerging jubilantly from the mouth of a Serpent (or worm hole). These express the passage “Osiris enters the tail of a great serpent, was drawn through its body and came out through its mouth, and was then born anew.” The story of Jesus/Jonah and the whale mirrors this story.

CONCLUSION: ‘Away’ We Go

In conclusion, Heiser’s attack on Sitchin doesn’t really pack the punch he intended, but it has successfully brought forward a few gems that ignited a new avenue of research into Nibiru as a gate. This commentary will be continued in a forthcoming book, The Secret Door to I Am.

Well, what can I say?  23 pages of blather later, what do we have?  

It’s hard for me to even express how his work would be viewed by people who actually do language work. How can you reason with someone who rejects the most basic features of language – that sounds made with one’s mouth are not the same among different people groups? We all know this from either experience or taking a language, yet William Henry casts this aside as though it wasn’t true in the ancient world, and as though the English dictionary somehow overturns this basic point of fact.  I’m at a loss; I’ve never seen anything quite like it.

I have repeatedly asked him and Zecharia Sitchin to produce texts we can all read at face value and just get information from the ancient sources.  It really is that simple.  I know it isn’t going to happen with William.  But that is only part of the picture.  William, I fear, is a disturbed man, and I honestly feel prayer should be offered for him. My gut tells me the Church is to blame somewhere in his life.

No, William, I’m not going away. Someone has to keep asking you to prove your language method is workable in the real world of communication.  If you are unwilling to apply your slice and dice approach to your own books and the language we encounter every day in our lives, your method is a hypocrisy.  This is the ultimate test of written communication – is it in fact communicable to real people, not an initiated elite who reduce it to the realm if the imagination. The Mesopotamian scribes gave us their texts and their vocabulary, and we know from bilingual texts that the words they used were ordinary words – words used every day by the common person.  Anyone who could read the language could understand them without the linguistic gymnastics you perform.  We know because we have them, and as Sitchin so ably pointed out in his intro to the 12th planet (!) their knowledge was transferable – precisely because it was transmitted in the normal vernacular of their day (don’t forget that Akkadian was the lingua franca of the late second millennium – as English is today).  There was no coding, no etymological transplants, no language grafting as we have seen from you.

I am still waiting for any treatment from the texts, the ancient dictionary sources, and some sort of coherent use of the body of linguistic knowledge that is at the foundation of intelligible communication.  When is a door not a door?  When William interprets it for us – it must have some higher meaning than the plain old correspondence to reality.  I pray you’ll continue to enjoy life, feel productive, and earn a good living.  I also pray you’ll get help and/ or forgive those whose actions have turned you to this path. I mean that sincerely as God is my witness.

Mike Heiser  
4/25/03