Blog Post #6 - 'Beelzebub, Lord of The Flies'

Beelzebub, Lord of The Flies

It is Halloween, and for this reason I chose to write about Beelzebub (lord of the Flies). 

The name ‘Ba’al Zebub’ literarily means ‘Lord of the Flies’ and he was a Semitic deity worshipped by the Philistines in the city of Ekron, which is about twenty-five miles west of Jerusalem. Later in the Bible he is identified as one of the ‘Seven Princes of Hell’. The prophet Elijah condemned King Ahaziah of Israel to die by Yahweh’s words, because the king sent a messenger to Beelzebub to see if he would recover from injuries caused by a fall. The Pharisees accused Jesus of driving out demons by the power of ‘Beelzebub’, Prince of Demons. In the testament of Solomon, Beelzebub is a former leading angel of cherubim associated with Venus, the evening star, who is identified with Satan or Lucifer. In medieval times he becomes the chief lieutenant of Lucifer. Some place him as one of the three most prominent fallen angels, the others being Lucifer and Leviathan, and associate him with the sons of pride and gluttony.

Beelzebub was often accused of being the object of supplication in trials of witches, for example in the terrible Loudon ‘possessions’ of 1634 and the Salem Witch Trials. Lucifer, meaning ‘Light-Bearer, was a name originally applied to Jesus as well as Venus, but St. Jerome and others began identifying Lucifer with the fallen angel Satan, driven out of Haven for his pride. Thus Lucifer over time has been regarded both as Jesus and Satan. Satan, in Aramaic, which means adversary or enemy.         

Blog post #5, RELS 32

Lucky ‘Number 7’

Across many cultures, this is a ‘lucky’ number. The New Testament Book of the Apocalypse, or Revelation, refers frequently to the mystic sacredness of the number seven. In the book St. John addresses himself to seven churches in Asia, greeting them from the Lord and from the seven spirits, which are before his throne.  

John describes his vision on the island of Patmos, when he saw one like the son of Man, in the midst of seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven stars. The golden candlesticks are explained as being the seven churches, and the seven stars as the angels of those churches. In following visions a throne is set in heaven, and in the right hand of Him that sat on it is a book sealed with seven seals.

Then a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the Earth, takes the book and opens the seven seals one after another. When the seventh seal is open, seven angels with seven trumpets appear, which they blow one after another.

Before the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, there are seven bursts of thunder. Afterwards there appears a dragon with seven heads and ten horns, but with ten crowns upon his horns. The seven angels, pour out one after another the seven vials of God’s wrath upon the Earth. Then there is seen a woman seated on a scarlet coloured beast which has seven heads, these being seven mountains on which the woman sits. It is added that there are seven kings, of whom five are fallen, and one is reigning, and one is yet to come. In the last vision, that of the heavenly Jerusalem, the prevailing number is not seven but 12, derived probably from 12 tribes of Israel.

However, with this exception seven is the prevailing number of the Book. Von Hammer-Purgstall, (an Austrian orientalist) observed that, there are two sevens in the Book’s greeting; seven churches and seven spirits. In the body of the Book there are found besides two seven candlesticks, stars, seals, horns, eyes, trumpets, and thunders; and second, seven angels, heads, crowns, plagues, vials, mountains and kings.        

RELS 32, Blog post #4 "The Lost Tribes of Israel"

The Lost Tribes of Israel

In the late 15^th century the voyages of Columbus brought news of humans not accounted for in the Bible. Europeans were puzzled where they had come from. The solution was that they were tribes of Israel, which had disappeared with the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the middle of the 1^st millennium BCE.

A Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, become a champion of the Native American cause protesting against the carnage carried out by the conquistadores in the West Indies, Peru and Guatemala. Las Casas believed that the Native Americans should be converted to Christianity, as he was convinced that they had originated in Ancient Israel.  He believed that the Bible contained the proof that they were members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Eventually Pope Paul III declared that the Native Americans were ‘fully human’ in 1537.

A 1644 report (unfortunately fictional) by the Portuguese traveller, Antonio Montezinos, claimed that there was a Jewish tribe living beyond the mountain passes of the Andes, and that he saw them practicing Jews rituals. Thomas Thorowgood’s Jews in America of 1650 argued for the need to convert these lost tribes. Certain Christian traditions claimed that when the Ten Tribes of Israel were found and restored to the Holy Land, the return of Christ to reign suprime would be imminent. The ‘Ten Lost Tribes of Israel’ disappeared from the Biblical account after the kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed, its people enslaved and exiled by the Assyrians empire. There are various ethnic claimants to be these tribes, ex; The British/Welsh and the Pashtun. The Bene Ephriam (southern India) claim descent from the Tribe of Manasseh. Beta Israel is an ancient group of Ethiopian Jews who believe they are those who descended from the lost Tribe of Dan.  Persian Jews, especially the Bukharan Jews claim descent from the Tribe of Ephriam and Igbo Jews in Nigeria claim descent variously from the Tribes of Ephriam, Menasseh, Levi, Zebulun and Gad. The Lemba tribes (south Africa) claim to be descendants from a lost tribe of Jews, which fled from modern Yemen and journeyed south.