Author: nivtric

The only known photograph of Chief Seattle

Thus spoke Chief Seattle

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The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him since we know he has little need for our friendship in return. We will consider your offer. For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land.

But how can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them from us?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing, and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people.

Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers.

This shining water that moves in our streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people.

The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

The red man has always retreated before the advancing white man, as the mist of the mountain runs before the morning sun. But the ashes of our fathers are sacred. The graves are holy ground, and so these hills, these trees, this portion of the earth is consecrated to us.

We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs.

The earth is not his brother but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his father’s graves behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. He does not care. His fathers’ graves and his children’s birthright are forgotten.

He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, or sold like sheep or bright beads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. What is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around the pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath―the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a many dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.

I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever, happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth.

This we know. The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know.

All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

We may be brothers after all; we shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover―our God is the same God. You may think now that you own Him as you wish to own our land, but you cannot.

This earth is precious to Him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The whites too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

God gave you dominion over the beasts, the woods, and the red man, and for some special purpose, but that destiny is a mystery to the red man. We might understand if we knew what it was that the white man dreams―what hopes he describes to his children on long winter nights―what visions he burns onto their minds so that they will wish for tomorrow.

God loves us all. One thing we know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to Him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.

Latest update: 18 May 2023

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Sepphoris Mosaic

Sarah, Mother of the Jews

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Weaving one tale inside another

The Jewish Bible is a good read, apart from the sections that lay out the Jewish religious laws in excruciating detail. It features tales about the Jewish patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised Land under the guidance of a wrathful cloud. It is nearly all made up. Writing and editing the Jewish Bible took centuries. The authors wrote it to promote their religion rather than to provide an accurate account of history. That is how historians look at the Jewish Bible. If you believed it all, don’t blame the Jews for writing good stories, but yourself for your gullibility. You could have known if you had put some effort into educating yourself. And you don’t think reptiles live among us because scriptwriters in Hollywood made a film in which they do? Some do. That is how imagination becomes religion.

But what does the almighty owner of quadrillions of galaxies have to do with the Jewish Bible, a product of the fantasies of a petty nation dwelling in a small area on a tiny planet near an insignificant star inside one of those countless galaxies? To answer that question, imagine you are John Ronald Reuel Tolkien writing about Hobbits living in The Shire. The Shire might be an insignificant spot on a tiny planet in an infinitely large universe, but Tolkien hardly cares about the rest. Only the Shire and the Hobbits have his interest. Tolkien could write a story about a Hobbit who makes up stories about his maker.

If Tolkien can do that, God can do it too. After all, that is one of the perks of being all-powerful. If God is a woman and has been among us as Mary Magdalene, what roles did God play among the Jews? In other words, which women in the Jewish Bible were God in disguise? Inquiring minds want to know because many of these stories are fantasy. At best, these are local tales that may or may not have some connection to actual events and have become integrated into the biblical narrative. Hence, the first question you should ask is: Can God have played a role in stories that never happened in the story?

Tolkien can write a story in which a Hobbit writes a story in which Tolkien enters the Shire disguised as a Hobbit. But that story never happened in the story Tolkien wrote. It is a tale that a Hobbit wrote in Tolkien’s story. The Hobbit might not even realise that the Hobbit in the tale is Tolkien in disguise, but he thinks it is just a Hobbit with a special role in the story, because that is the plot Tolkien created. I hope you haven’t lost track. That is the level of deception we are talking about here. And what about the Hobbits starting a religion with an imagined creator? Then the truth comes out. Tolkien reveals himself, and the Hobbits all laugh. And then it turns out that, even though the story that this Hobbit wrote never happened, it featured Tolkien disguised as a Hobbit. So it is possible. And indeed, strong women, who could have been God in disguise, appear in the Jewish Bible.

Hiding it behind human motivations

Powerful women also appeared in the Jewish Bible for a mundane reason. The Israelites were too small a people and thus too weak to defend a territory. They had to survive as a minority in the lands of others. Military adventurism would be fatal for them. To facilitate the right attitude among Jewish men, the authors of the Jewish Bible invented a new type of hero. Rather than fearless warriors, their heroes were virtuous individuals who helped others, such as Boaz,1 people with weaknesses like David, and risk-averse, shrewd individuals. Abraham was not a courageous warrior, nor was his son, Isaac. Resourcefulness had to compensate for that. Jacob cheated on his brother Esau and took his birthright. Meet the Jewish hero. He is a family man, but lacks the courage to defend his wife’s honour. Yet he is shrewd and defrauds his brother. And he has God on his side.

Heroes die, but the cunning and timid remain, even more so if God is on their side. That is why there are still Jews, while other nations made a one-way trip to the dustbin of history due to their excess testosterone and stupidity. And, of course, they lacked divine support. That is why the authors of the Jewish Bible refashioned the role of men and women in family life. The stories of Jewish patriarchs focused on family life and domestic affairs, in which women played a central role. And women played a crucial part in Israel’s victories.1

That undermined male authority in war. In several cases, women achieved triumph on the battlefield or determined the fate of men. Jacob defrauded Esau of his birthright and deceived his father, Isaac, with the help of his mother, Rebecca. Esther saved the Jewish people from a plot in the Persian court. The Jewish Bible doesn’t depict events suggesting Rebecca or Esther could have been God in disguise. There are, however, a few stories that catch the imagination and qualify. According to the Bible, Jewish history begins with Sarah and Abraham. There was something special about Sarah, the matriarch of the Jews.

Sarah and Abraham

The Lord allegedly promised Abraham that one day, his offspring would be as countless as the stars and own the land between Egypt and the Euphrates River. His wife, Sarah, was barren. She asked Abraham to sleep with her slave, Hagar, so Hagar would bear a child in her name. Those were the days when slavery was not forbidden, and you could get away with that. Once Hagar was pregnant, she began to look down on Sarah. Sarah then mistreated Hagar, and Hagar fled. But God sent an angel, the famous Angel of the Lord, who ordered Hagar to return and submit herself to Sarah. Hagar bore Abraham a son, Ishmael.

That could have been good enough, but the Lord chose differently and presented Abraham with a covenant. It required the circumcision of all males, and Sarah was to become the matriarch of the Jewish nation. At the time, Abraham was one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety. Abraham and Sarah laughed when they learned this. Remember, 4,000 years ago, there were no erection enhancement pills or fertility treatments. Sarah became pregnant and bore Isaac.

Like in most traditional agricultural societies, Jewish religious law prescribes that men precede women in inheritance. Daughters can only inherit if there are no sons. Nevertheless, being a matriarch of the Jewish people is crucial because you are a Jew if your mother is one. Your father is irrelevant to your Jewishness. God was particularly picky as to who was to become the matriarch of the Jews. In this sense, the Jews are not primarily children of Abraham, as the Jewish Bible says, but children of Sarah in the same way Christians are children of God.

Abraham feared for his life because of Sarah’s beauty. When the Egyptians asked if Sarah was his wife, he said she was his sister. The Pharaoh’s servants took notice and informed the Pharaoh, who took her as his wife. God then inflicted severe diseases on Pharaoh and his household. That is divine justice. God punished the Pharaoh because Abraham had deceived him. With a God like that, you don’t need Satan. Not surprisingly, that horned fellow was nowhere to be found in this tale. Perhaps he enjoyed a sabbatical. The Bible doesn’t tell. Abraham did the same in Abimelech’s kingdom, thus knowingly bringing Abimelech into mortal danger. King Abimelech then received threats from God after he planned to take Sarah as his wife. Luckily for him, God didn’t have a bad mood that day.

To us mere mortals, an intriguing question might be, what made Abraham worthy in the eyes of God? Is it that he intended to sacrifice his son when a voice asked him? If it had happened today, we would have locked up Abraham in a mental ward. If Abraham was God’s husband, it makes more sense. In any case, God works in mysterious ways, and a ram presented itself, and that same voice then asked Abraham to sacrifice the animal instead. That was a narrow escape. If that ram had not been there, there would have been no Jewish people, and world history would have been entirely different. That is chaos theory at work here, or is it God’s plan?

In family matters, God sided with Sarah. The Angel of the Lord summoned Hagar to return to her mistress, Sarah. Later, God told Abraham to send Hagar away. Sarah wanted this. Sarah became the matriarch of the Jews because the Lord commanded. The Lord thus represented her well. Had this been a scrap of history, Sarah might have been God in disguise and done an excellent job of hiding that. However, God can also play an undercover role in events that never took place. That is a perk of writing the story yourself. And why does God desire bits of male reproductive organs in exchange for making a covenant? That is indeed most peculiar unless the Lord is a Lady. Another, and probably better, explanation is that it is a hygiene measure. The Jewish Bible describes the rules for ritual hygiene that Jews are required to follow in great detail.

Joseph and Asenath

Jacob had twelve sons, but Joseph was his favourite and the best-looking one. His brothers were jealous and conspired against him. They sold him as a slave. Joseph ended up in the household of Potiphar, an Egyptian and a high-ranking official in Pharaoh’s court. Joseph did well there and became Potiphar’s favourite. Joseph was handsome, so he caught the eye of Potiphar’s wife, who wanted to sleep with him. When he refused, she accused Joseph of trying to seduce her, and Potiphar put him in prison. There, Joseph became the prison warden’s favourite. Joseph was adept at explaining dreams. That eventually brought him to the Pharaoh, who also made Joseph his favourite. The Pharaoh made him a Viceroy and put him in charge of the granaries.

Scholars believe that the biblical story of Joseph was once a separate story that originated in the Jewish community living in Egypt at the time when many other Jews were in Babylonian captivity. The story resembles several Egyptian tales about a seven-year famine, divine dreams, and a wise vizier who helped the pharaoh and priests to restore the land. One of these stories, in fact, is inscribed on a large monument called the Famine Stele near Elephantine, an Egyptian colony on the Nile River where many Jews also lived.

Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of an Egyptian high priest. The Jewish Bible tells us nothing about her. That raised questions as marrying pagans became a controversial matter for Jews. A later story about their marriage explains how Joseph, after he escaped Potiphar’s wife, ended up in the arms of a pagan priestess. How could God have let this happen? An explanation was needed and invented, and they named the story Joseph and Asenath, which was quite to the point. According to this tale, Asenath was proud and despised men, but became impressed by Joseph’s looks.

Joseph first didn’t want to marry a pagan priestess who bowed before idols and didn’t worship the God of the Jews. But lo and behold, Asenath showed repentance and changed her faith. And then an angel from heaven hurried to her chamber to bless the marriage. When Asenath told Joseph, he changed his mind and married her. It thus must have been convincing. Asenath’s change of faith appears insincere and may have been motivated by her desire to marry Joseph. Nevertheless, God blessed the marriage, which is remarkable considering the high standards that usually apply. Asenath might have been God in disguise if only this had actually happened.

Zipporah and Moses

A fellow named Moses allegedly led the Israelites out of Egypt. A burning bush claiming to be God commanded Moses to return to Egypt to free the Israelites. Moses then took his wife, Zipporah, and their sons and started his journey to Egypt. On the road, they stayed at an inn, where that same burning bush supposedly came to kill Moses, which is a reason why you should not believe it happened. Zipporah saved Moses’ life by circumcising their son and touching Moses’ feet with the foreskin, saying he was her bridegroom of blood (Exodus 4:24-26). Later, the burning bush allegedly transformed itself into an irate cloud of fire, which helped Moses lead the Israelites into the Promised Land.

Zipporah saving Moses’ life fits the agenda of the authors of the Jewish Bible, which is to undermine male authority so Jewish men wouldn’t strive to posthumously win the prestigious Darwin award for their military adventures and terminate the Jewish people in the process. After all, the success of Moses’ mission depended on Zipporah having rescued him from the consequences of his daring attempt to let his son remain uncircumcised. God somehow was particularly keen on that foreskin. Zipporah knew what God was about to do and the reason why. But Zipporah reading God’s mind? No mere mortal could accomplish such a feat, not even Jesus. Hence, Zipporah might have been God in disguise if only this had happened.

Bathsheba and David

Bathsheba, who was the wife of Uriah, brought ruin to David and his kingdom. While Uriah served in the army to fight one of David’s wars, Bathsheba conspicuously bathed on a rooftop near the royal palace, where David could see her naked. She intended to seduce him. The alternative explanation that there was no room inside the house to bathe isn’t persuasive. David ordered Bathsheba to come to his place. And so She did, apparently without even saying it might be a bad idea. She became pregnant after sleeping with him. David then commanded Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to go home, hoping he would sleep with his wife so the scandal would go unnoticed. But Uriah didn’t out of solidarity with his comrades on the battlefield. David then asked his commander to place Uriah on the frontline of the battle so he would die. After Uriah died, David married Bathsheba. Bathsheba turned out to be a true fate changer. She also bore the future king Solomon.

You might have learned that the Lord loved David, but the subsequent events don’t demonstrate that. From then on, everything went downhill. In hindsight, this sequence of incidents led to the son of Bathsheba ascending to the throne. The prophet Nathan foretold David that his act would bring a curse upon his house. David’s eldest son, Amnon, was murdered by his half-brother Absalom after he had raped Absalom’s sister Tamar. Later, Absalom declared himself king and started a revolt against David, and David’s troops killed him. That eliminated two potential heirs to the throne. In David’s old age, Bathsheba secured the succession to the throne of Solomon. The marriage was a grave sin, but God nevertheless loved Bathsheba’s son, who was to become king. Bathsheba could have been God in disguise.

That might shed some light as to why the Lord loved David so much, as it cannot be due to his moral virtue. And it presents us with a reason why he couldn’t resist Bathsheba. David is a historical figure, so there could be truth to the story. It, however, also fits the agenda of the authors of the Jewish Bible. Even Israel’s greatest king, David, had faults and crumbled in the hands of a woman. But who would have thought Bathsheba had something to do with the angry cloud dwelling in that tent? Remarkably, the name Bathsheba is composed of two parts: Bath and Sheba. Bathsheba seduced David by bathing naked on a rooftop near the palace. The Queen of Sheba later visited Solomon. That is a bit odd. Hence, the Queen of Sheba may also have been an avatar of God.

Deborah, the founder of the Jewish nation

Sarah is the matriarch of the Jews, but she never lived in that capacity as a historical figure. Still, the Jews have a real matriarch insofar as anything is real in this world. She is also in the Jewish Bible. The Jewish nation gradually emerged after Egypt retreated from Canaan around 1150 BC. That left a power vacuum in which states gradually developed from tribal leadership. It corresponds with the tribal era of the judges in the Bible. One of the oldest texts of the Jewish Bible is the Song of Deborah (Judges 5), dating back to the era before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.2 Deborah was a tribal leader during this age.

Deborah was the fourth judge in the Book of Judges. Only Deborah may have lived in that era in that role. The Song of Deborah, not Genesis, is the actual starting point of the Jewish Bible. The song likely didn’t pop up out of nowhere. Jewish tribespeople composed it to celebrate the victory brought by their heroine, Deborah. She is the earliest historical person in the Bible. She attributed the triumph to Yahweh rather than El, so the history of the Jews as Yahweh’s people began with Deborah.

She took part in a battle (Judges 4:8-9). As the story goes, Deborah sent for Barak, the commander of the troops, and said to him, “The Lord, the God of Israel, commands you: ‘Go, take with you ten thousand men of Naphtali and Zebulun and lead them up to Mount Tabor. I will lead Sisera, the commander of Jabin’s army, with his chariots and his troops to the Kishon River and give him into your hands.'” (Judges 4:6-7) But it was Deborah who commanded Barak. And so, She might have been the God of Israel in disguise and founded the Jewish nation and religion in person.

Latest revision: 5 December 2025

Featured image: Sepphoris Mosaic. Pbs.org. [copyright info]

1. Wright, Jacob L. (2014). The Bible’s Prehistory, Purpose, and Political Future. Coursera.
2. Why is the Song of Deborah considered to be the oldest text in the Hebrew Bible? r/AcademicBiblical (2025). https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/comments/1mhfw3z

Khadijah, Mother of the Believers

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Bride of Muhammad

Mother of the Believers is a title Muslims give to the wives of Muhammad. It best suits his first wife, Khadijah bint Khuwaylid. According to Islamic sources, Khadijah was a wealthy widow and Muhammad’s employer. She had been married twice and had children from those marriages. Khadijah was a very successful merchant. Khadijah’s trade caravan equalled the caravans of all other traders of the Quraysh put together. Khadijah neither believed in nor worshipped idols, which was uncommon. Khadijah didn’t travel with Her trade caravans but employed others to trade on her behalf. Muhammad was one of them.

Muhammad attracted Her interest. He was twenty-five, and Khadijah was forty when She proposed to him. The woman proposing a marriage to the man was indeed unusual, most notably given the time and place where it occurred. She was wealthy and way out of Muhammad’s league, so that he wouldn’t have considered it. The marriage between Khadijah and Muhammad was both happy and monogamous. When he was without Her on one of his journeys, Muhammad never had any desire for other women. They had six children, of whom four daughters survived.

Muhammad returned home, shocked after the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him for the first time. He told Khadijah what had happened, trembling, no doubt. She comforted him like a mother and supported him thereafter. Khadijah’s moral support made Muhammad believe in his mission, and Her financial support was indispensable. Apart from a wife, Khadijah was thus like a mother to Muhammad, in the likeness of Eve and Adam. She was Muhammad’s boss in more ways than one. Like Jesus, Muhammad married God. However, unlike the Bride of Christ, the Bride of Muhammad is still well-known. Only after Khadijah’s death did Muhammad marry several other women.

Quran origins


Muslims believe that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad by God, with the Archangel Gabriel serving as the intermediary. The Quran lacks chronological order and repeats itself. Scholars believe its historical accuracy is inferior to that of the Bible in describing the same events. And so, you might find it hard to believe that this scratchy collection of sayings, which Muslims claim has unparalleled artistic value and is so brilliantly composed that it is beyond the capabilities of even the brightest minds to reproduce, is the word of God and meant to correct corruptions in previous Jewish and Christian scriptures, as Muslims claim. But if you don’t know Arabic and rely on a foreign translation, you cannot assess the Quran’s artistic value. And God works in mysterious ways. The first Muslims memorised the verses and didn’t write them down.

Memorising such a lengthy text for decades is prone to errors. And the Muslims fought several battles that took the lives of some of those who knew these verses. To reduce the risk of verses going lost in this manner, the early Muslims divided the task of memorising the Quran and assigned multiple men to recall the same verses. How well they did that is anyone’s guess. It explains a great deal about why the Quran is the way it is. Those who later wrote down the Quran didn’t edit the verses or present them chronologically because humans shouldn’t distort God’s words. If only early Christians had shown that kind of reverence for their scriptures, Christianity would have been an entirely different religion.

Historical analysis suggests that much of the Quran originated from previously extant Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian sources. The Arab desert was far from Rome, so local Christians could hold deviant views that the Church considered heretical, such as that Jesus didn’t die for our sins, that Jesus was human and not the Son of God and that Jesus didn’t die on the cross but that there had been some ploy to make people believe that. The Quran mentions that Jesus created birds from clay and breathed life into them (3:48-49, 5:109-110). The Gospel of Thomas mentions this. Speaking from the cradle, Jesus defended his mother against accusations of sexual immorality (Quran: 19:27-30).

Parts of the Quran have no previously known sources. They could have been part of God’s message that the Archangel Gabriel supposedly dispatched to Muhammad. The Quran also adds a few juicy details to existing stories that the Jews have failed to mention in their Bible. These might have been local tales circulating in the area. An example is King Solomon gathering an army of ghosts, men and birds, entering the valley of the ants, and ants talking to each other (Quran 27:15-18),

Indeed, We granted knowledge to David and Solomon. And they said in acknowledgement, ‘All praise is for God Who has privileged us over many of His faithful servants.’

And David was succeeded by Solomon, who said, ‘O people! We have been taught the language of birds, and been given everything we need. This is indeed a great privilege.’

Solomon’s forces of ghosts, humans, and birds were rallied for him, perfectly organised.

And when they came across a valley of ants, an ant warned, ‘O ants! Go quickly into your homes so Solomon and his armies do not crush you, unknowingly.’

In virtual reality, these things can happen. We have no evidence, but some things are more plausible than others. Talking ants are as believable as a serpent talking to Eve. Still, Muslims claim Muhammad was the last prophet before the End Times and that the Quran corrects mistakes and omissions in the Jewish and Christian scriptures. At first glance, this is not particularly convincing, but the Quran contains a few discrepancies that seem more meaningful in hindsight:

  • The Quran discusses Adam’s creation extensively but says little about how Eve came to be. The story of the rib is absent. The Quran claims that humans originate from one soul (Quran 39:6), like the creation in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
  • The Quran doesn’t blame Eve for the Fall. Eve and Adam transgressed together. One passage explicitly blames Adam (Quran 20:120-121).
  • There is no original sin in Islam. The Quran states that Eve and Adam repented, and God forgave them (Quran 2:37, 7:23). The Quran doesn’t claim that Jesus was a redeemer for the sins of humankind.
  • The Quran names Jesus the Son of Mary and confirms the virgin birth, thereby implying that Jesus had no father, and because Christians call him the Son of God, it opens up the possibility that God’s name was Mary.
  • In the Quran, God orders the angels to prostrate before Adam, while the New Testament says that the angels must bow before Jesus, implying that Jesus could be Adam. The repeated mention could signal importance.
  • Finally, the Quran stresses the return to Paradise 147 times. Although the Jewish and Christian scriptures pay little attention to our return to Eden, the Quran mentions it so often that it could be of the utmost importance.

God ordering the angels to bow before Adam and Satan refusing to do so was a Jewish theme that some Christians, and later the Muslims, took over. One of the earliest accounts of Satan’s fall as a result of the conflict with Adam comes from the Life of Adam and Eve, a retelling of their lives from around 200 AD. God first formed, animated, and endowed Adam with the image and likeness of his creator. The archangel Michael brought him to bow before God. God then confirmed the creation of Adam in His image and likeness. Then, Michael summoned the rest of the angels and ordered them to bow before Adam, but Satan refused. The sevenfold repetition of this theme in the Quran suggests that there may be more to it than some obscure story entering the Quran by accident.

The Hidden Secret

The Quran claims that God is the greatest schemer (Quran 3:54, 7:99, 8:30, 10:21, 13:42) and capable of deception (Quran 4:88, 5:41, 11:34, 14:4). The existence of different religions and theological disputes is part of God’s plan. Otherwise, the message of Islam would have been more convincing. After 1400 years, that message has yet to convince 80% of the world’s population. The Quran is said to contain a hidden secret. Chapter 74 of the Quran is named The Cloaked One or The Hidden Secret. The former name is the translation of its title, while the latter refers to its content. The cloaked one is Muhammad. The chapter further mentions that 19 angels guard hell. The conflating of cloak and hidden secret suggests a disguise. About the number 19, the Quran says (Quran 74:31),

“We have made their number [that of the angels] only as a test for the disbelievers so that the People of the Book [Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians] will be certain, and the believers [Muslims] will increase in faith, and neither the People of the Book nor the believers will have any doubts, and so that those hypocrites with sickness in their hearts and the disbelievers will argue, ‘What does God mean by such a number?’ In this way, God leaves whoever He wills to stray and guides whoever He wills. And none knows the forces of your Lord except He. And this description of hell is only a reminder to humanity.”

Muslims insist it contains a clue proving the divine origin of the Quran. The verse suggests that the number 19 holds significance beyond the number of angels mentioned. In 1974, a fellow named Rashad Khalifa claimed to have discovered a mathematical code hidden in the Quran based on the number 19. It gave rise to a numerological cult and countless films on YouTube made by beard-wearing men that can bore you to death.

Numbers are meaningless, but the Quran implies there is more to that number and that it contains a proof of some kind, a hidden secret. So, what could the hidden secret be? Chapter 19 is titled ‘Mary’ and is about the Virgin Mary, the stand-in for God, the Mother Goddess. The hidden secret may be that God’s name was Mary, something only God could know. The cloak may refer to God appearing as a man while being a woman, or to the Virgin Mary, as the veil that conceals God’s identity.

Virgin birth

The Quran corroborates the virgin birth of Jesus (Quran 4:171) and claims that Jesus is not the Son of God, thereby implying that Jesus had no father. The virgin birth is a miracle of the Mother Goddess. Christians invented that tale because, if God is Jesus’ Father, then he can’t have a human father. Jesus was Adam, the Son of Eve, so it also replaced Adam’s birth from the Virgin Eve. The Quran consistently names Jesus the Son of Mary (Quran 2:87, 4:171, 61:6), while Christians call him the Son of God. Perhaps there was a Christian tradition in the Middle East that did so. Archaeologists excavated near the location commonly known as Armageddon, a 5th-century AD Greek inscription stating ‘Christ, born of Mary.’1 The odd thing is that it doesn’t say Son of God.

The Quran claims God has no children and that Jesus was not God’s son (Quran 6:100-102, 17:111, 18:4-5, 19:88-92). The reason is that the Meccan supreme deity, Allah, had a wife and children before God claimed this title. And the Virgin Mary wasn’t God either. The repetition of the phrase Son of Mary suggests importance. It stresses that God is not Jesus’ father, and it may imply that God’s name is Mary.

The star and crescent became the symbol of Islam. This symbol has a long history predating Islam, as it was associated with a Moon goddess. The moon represents the woman, and the star the child (Genesis 37:9). Hence, the Islamic symbol is akin to the Madonna and Child, or to the relationship between Khadijah bint Khuwaylid and Muhammad. She was fifteen years older and could have been his mother. The Son of God thus means Son of Mary, as Mary Magdalene was God. The appropriate picture is the Madonna and Child, along with the crescent-and-star symbol of Islam. And so, the same symbolism sneaked into Islam in the same sneaky fashion as it did with the Madonna and Child in Christianity, which is very sneaky indeed, and adds substance to the saying, ‘God works in mysterious ways.’

Return to Eden

Like Christians, Muslims believe Jesus will return (Quran 4:159, 43:61). Even more crucial, however, is our return to Eden, only sparsely mentioned in the Jewish Bible (Ezekiel 36:22-38) and the New Testament (Revelation 22:1-5). The Quran refers to Eden using terms like Gardens and Paradise 147 times, or 3 * 7 * 7. If you’re into numbers with religious significance, that is most remarkable. It is even more significant because humans wrote and edited the Bible, so if there are magic numbers in it, some scribe probably did that during a lifetime of boredom and number crunching. The Quran, however, is the result of decades of oral recitation, during which parts were changed or lost. And none of the reciters knew the entire Quran by heart. After several decades, they wrote down the verses as the reciters remembered them, without a significant redaction process.

God ordering the angels to prostrate before Adam seven times in the Quran is more miraculous than Jesus saying seven times ‘I am’ in the Gospel of John. The latter is not even a miracle, because someone could have done that intentionally, and probably did. In that sense, the Quran is uncorrupted by humans. The numerological signs, such as verse 36:36, which says that God created everything in pairs, and the fact that 36 is six times six, are God’s jokes. In all likelihood, no human ever decided to arrange the verses to create such a pair within a pair in a verse that says God created everything in pairs. Paradise is supposedly the final destination of the righteous. The Quran refers to the Garden of Eden with phrases such as ‘fruits from that garden’ and ‘spouses.’ For instance (Quran 2:25),

And give good tidings to those who believe and do righteous deeds that they will have gardens [in Paradise] beneath which rivers flow. Whenever they are provided with a provision of fruit from there, they will say, ‘This is what we were provided with before.’ And it is given to them in likeness. And they will have therein purified spouses, and they will abide therein eternally.

The promise of spouses in Paradise was a ploy to make horny young men fight for Islam without fear of death. And it worked well as the initial blitz of Islam was nearly as spectacular as Hitler’s. The New Eden is a central theme in the Quran, while the Jewish Bible and the Gospel hardly mention it. The repetition implies that it is of the utmost significance. Here, the Quran corrects Judaism and Christianity. Jews and Christians view God’s plan as a journey from the depraved city of Babylon to God’s city of Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem. Instead, we might go to the New Eden, as it is the core of the final revelation given to Muhammad, at least if we take repetition as a sign of importance. God’s plan, thus, is to bring us to the Final Gardens of Paradise, modelled after Eden.

The idea of a New Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity has a historical origin. The Jews compiled most of their scriptures during their exile in Babylon and shortly after. Babylon was a centre of empire and civilisation. After the Jews had returned to Israel, they interpreted their journey as a move from the depraved city of Babylon to God’s city of Jerusalem. They received assistance from the Persian leader Cyrus the Great, who conquered the Babylonian Empire and permitted the Jews to return to their homeland. Christians took over this theme. If we go from Babylon to Eden, we get a new theme. Babylon represented advanced civilisation. In Eden, life was simple. That is where this seems to be heading.

Latest revision: 16 October 2025

1. 1,500-year-old ‘Christ, born of Mary’ inscription found in Israel. Mark Milligan (2024). Heritage Daily.

Featured image: top small written Arab phrase “Umm ul Muminin”(Mother of the believers), then in centre Big written “Khadijah”, and bottom small written Arab honour phrase ‘Radhi allahu anha.’

Rational debates and progress

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Knowledge or wisdom?

Ancient cultures had religious traditions and wisdom. Chief Seattle’s speech reflects the beliefs of traditional peoples who live in nature as hunter-gatherers. It is an idealised version as traditional peoples like the Native Americans also drove species into extinction. They didn’t have the means to destroy nature as much as we do. Modern people may think these so-called primitives and their ways of knowing are irrational. Knowledge and rationality aren’t wisdom. It is the theme of the biblical story of The Fall. Instead of listening to God, who knew better, Eve and Adam wanted to learn the truth themselves. We would not have been in this mess today if they followed God’s command.

The Chinese have their own tradition and wisdom. Confucius was their best-known philosopher. He lived 2,500 years ago and is still influential today. His teachings comprise moral rules, correct social relationships, justice, kindness, and sincerity. Chinese tradition and beliefs like loyalty to the family, ancestor veneration, and respect for elders were the basis of Confucius’ teachings. Confucius argued that family should also be central to government policies. The Chinese Tao is the natural order of the universe. You can only grasp it intuitively. You can’t understand it with reason, let alone quantify it. The Tao path to wisdom is understanding the whole by experiencing it. One of the greatest poems ever written is the Tao Te Ching, attributed to the sage Laozi. It begins like this,

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

When you try to express the natural order in words or give it a name, you are astray already, or so says the Tao. It disconnects you from the whole of Creation. The Buddha is another source of ancient wisdom. Our desires trap us in this world of suffering, he taught. Once you have what you desire, you desire something else, so you will never be happy. You can escape that and achieve enlightenment with the help of meditation, physical labour and good behaviour. The end of craving is the end of suffering. The capitalist consumerist system aims at the opposite, which is creating new desires, and if needed for that, making us unhappy.

The Western tradition is one of expressing things in words and quantifying them. Wisdom in Greek refers to knowledge and insight and its practical application in life. In Greek philosophy, wisdom was the highest good a human could aspire to. We can develop this virtue through study, reflection and experience. The Greeks believed wisdom comes from knowledge. In hindsight, that was a mistake.

Socrates was a Greek philosopher who lived around 400 BC. He is a founder of the practice of rational debate. Socratic debates are discussions between people with different viewpoints who wish to establish the truth using reasoned arguments. In his dialogues, Socrates acted as if he was ignorant. Admitting your ignorance is the first step in acquiring knowledge. The Greek philosophers began a quest for knowledge. European philosophers and scientists continued it nearly 2,000 later.

Is there progress, or can there be?

When we think of progress, we think of things getting better. But are they getting better? One invention can cure a disease, but another can kill us. Undoubtedly, our knowledge has increased. But is that progress? And can there be progress if we are less happy than our grandparents were? So, is there such a thing as progress? And if so, can we achieve progress through rational debates and persuasion? Or does it come by force because of the competition between groups of people?

We see progress as moving towards a goal, for instance, well-being. According to science, we do not have a purpose. Some religions, like Christianity, see history moving towards God’s aim. We enter Paradise one day, and all that occurs is necessary to get there. That is a peculiar view, but it implies progress and a type of progress that eludes the understanding of mere mortals like us. Did Jesus have to die? Was the Holocaust necessary? Was there no other way?

If we have a purpose, and you can get your hands on a time machine, there is a fellow you might want to meet, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He believed that spirit drives history through ideas and that history progresses towards a goal. Hegel lived before Charles Darwin published On The Origin Of Species, and it shows. The evolution theory completely upset our thinking about the purpose of humanity. Most intellectuals eventually considered it silly to think we exist for a reason.

Around 1800 AD, when Hegel was alive, scientific discoveries began to affect the lives of ordinary people, and the Industrial Revolution took off. At the same time, enlightenment ideas started to affect societies. The American Revolution followed the Glorious Revolution in England. Then came the French Revolution, which ended the old aristocratic regime and mobilised the masses for the first time. A few years later, the armies of Napoleon spread enlightenment ideas over Europe.

Hegel was there to witness it, and he was impressed. He learned to see history as a struggle towards progress where more powerful ideas replace weaker ones. He made a daring attempt to explain history, and as a result, his thinking greatly affected history. Marxism and the Soviet Union would not have existed without him. The conflict between capitalism and socialism dominated global politics for most of the twentieth century. His thinking inspired others, for instance, the Neoconservatives.

Hegel’s dialectic


Hegel was a philosopher of progress. He believed things would get better and we would, one day, live in a utopia. We increase our knowledge over time. By reflecting on our thoughts, we can challenge them. Or something might happen that changes your mind. You might believe all swans are white until a black one comes along. From then on, you think most swans are white while some are black. Hegel came up with a three-stage scheme for progress in thought:

  1. You believe all swans are white. That is your thesis.
  2. There comes a shocker. You see a black swan, the antithesis.
  3. Then you think most swans are white, and some are black. It is the synthesis.

And that is progress. Hegelian dialectic is this elegant three-stage scheme with thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. You can see why people liked it so much. It is wonderfully simplistic, and it explains so much, or so it appears. The synthesis is incorrect if there are red swans, but it is better than the thesis. The prediction that the next swan I see will be black or white is more often correct than that the next swan will be white. And even though the synthesis may still be incorrect, it better predicts future events. You can also apply it to Socratic dialogues, where people with different viewpoints wish to establish the truth using reasoned arguments. Our viewpoints are imperfect, and exchanging ideas can bring progress, which we can discover using Hegel’s dialectic.

Suppose we have a time machine and fetch Adam Smith from 1770 and Karl Marx from 1870 and bring them to the present so they can meet. They first study each other’s books, and then we let them start an argument. Smith sets out the thesis. He says capitalism and free markets work best at raising the general living standard because self-interest makes people do a good job, and increases in scale improve efficiency. Then, Marx comes up with the antithesis. He argues that the living conditions for workers are miserable, and capitalism distributes its benefits unfairly as factory owners and traders are wealthy. They agree on minimum wages, as they have good intentions.


Ideas may look great in theory but usually work out differently in practice. Experiments can help to find out. There was a capitalist experiment in the United States and a communist one in the Soviet Union. Perhaps Marx would be disappointed when the time machine brought him to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The workers in Western capitalist societies were better off. And maybe Smith will be disappointed when he sees the United States today. And both may say, ‘This is not how it is supposed to be.’ They may not blame the plan but the execution. It is always someone else’s fault. That is the standard excuse of planners who have seen their plans fail.

We play a small part in a greater whole of humanity. Hegel says our consciousnesses are part of a general consciousness called spirit. Spirit reflects the ideas in society and how they change. Our ideas about slavery are an example. Today, most people believe slavery is wrong, but in the past, most people didn’t think so. The spirit requires individual freedom of thought and the ability to be part of society with a spirit containing these ideas. In dialectic terms, the individual is the thesis, our society the antithesis, and to take part in that society is the synthesis. We have our individual thoughts and desires. But we live in a society. By engaging ourselves, we become part of that spirit.

We aren’t free and subject to outside forces, but we can cut ourselves off from the outside world, turn inward, and experience freedom of thought. That makes us unhappy because we desire unity with the eternal absolute truth, God or the universe, Hegel claims. We express this desire in religion. We feel insignificant towards that absolute and want to be part of it. Our reason is the alternative absolute. We can imagine a relationship between the particular, which are objects like cows and the universal ideas. So, a cow participates in the universal concept of cowness that all cows share. We exist in unity with the universal, and with reason, we can conquer the world. Thus, knowledge is power.

Hegel claims reason conquers the world. And now we get back at Napoleon. Hegel saw Napoleon as the embodiment of Enlightenment ideas conquering the world. Napoleon did so by military force. He was impressed by the French successes. He learned to see history as a struggle towards progress where more powerful ideas replace weaker ones. It is good to know that Hegel believed there is an absolute truth, so reasonable people might, or should, not compromise with unreasonable people and overcome them by force. And that belief has had a significant impact on history. It became the model for ideological conflict. Leaders may fight for power, but ideological conflicts are about ideas.

Hegel and history

The most well-known is the conflict between communism and capitalism. Hegel’s dialectic affected Marx’s thinking and that of the communist revolutionaries. Hegel believed the direction of human history is progress towards greater rationality. Hegel was an idealist, which means his philosophy was concerned with ideas. Marx, on the other hand, was a materialist who believed historical changes have material causes. Change doesn’t come from ideas but from circumstances in the world around us. Often, these are economic. So, Hegel might argue that slavery would end because people consider it wrong, while Marx might say slavery will stop when other forms of labour are economically more efficient.

Marx claimed we work in relations like master-slave or employer-employee, not because we want to, but because it is the most appropriate way of production in a given stage of our economic development. These relations form the structure of a society, the foundation on which a legal and political system arises, and that shapes our social consciousness. So, in a capitalist society, the legal system might centre around property rights, and labour rights might be non-existent. And it was like so in the 19th century. Not our consciousness directs our social existence, but our social existence determines our consciousness. So, serfdom in Europe didn’t end because serfs wanted to be free; it was because new forms of labour organisation had become more efficient.

Change comes from contradictions between the underlying material reality and the social superstructure. You can see that in Hegelian terms. There was serfdom in Western Europe because it suited economic conditions (thesis). It ended because serfs flocked to cities to earn more as craftspeople. It undermined the social superstructure of serfdom (antithesis). Lords of manors had to provide an attractive alternative to keep their peasants. Serfs became free (synthesis), which best suited the new conditions. Marx believed humans were free at first and lived as communists (thesis). As the economic reality changed (antithesis), societies became slave states (synthesis). In the following sequence of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, slave states developed into feudal societies. Those societies became capitalist states because of economies of scale and capital requirements. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis may seem contrived, but the status quo changes due to forces that undermine it, creating a new status quo.

Marx prophesied that in the next round of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, the working class would overthrow the capitalist states and start socialism. Marx believed it was a historical necessity. After all, the Hegelian dialectic works behind it, so communists were more advanced, reasonable people who sought to overthrow the backward capitalist order. Marx was a prophet as he prophesied what would happen and had a vision of paradise. Humans first lived in a state of nature, the simple communism of the group, Marx’s Eden and we will return to communism, Marx’s paradise. Marx called religion opium for the masses, but Marxism resembles a religion. Like Christianity, Marxists think history has a purpose and an end times in which we enter the worker’s paradise. Ideologies come with prophets and holy books. The Capital of Karl Marx was the sacred book of Marxism.

Ideas require power to change the world. Marx claimed the exploited masses, the employees, should rise against their employers because their profits come from paying workers less than they are worth. All the workers across the world had to unite in a revolution. Capitalists disagreed. They argued that wages are the market price of labour, and the capitalist sells his products at the market price. The profits and the losses are for him. An entrepreneur seeks to employ the means of production, including labour, in the most efficient way, so the market value of an employee might increase due to the capitalist production organisation. Workers in socialist countries often had lower wages than workers in Western market economies. The communists and the capitalists believed they were reasonable, that their ideas were better, and that you shouldn’t compromise with unreasonable people, causing a stand-off between two ideological blocks, the Cold War.

In a Hegelian sense, capitalism seems better because it won out. However, capitalist societies introduced reforms like minimum wages and welfare. Agreeable societies have mixed economies, a mixture of capitalist and socialist elements, thus a market economy and an active government that intervenes in markets with regulations or money transfers like welfare. That could be the synthesis of capitalism and socialism. Capitalism is now the thesis of a new Hegelian question. The antithesis is that our production and consumption are about to cause an ecological or technological catastrophe. We need a different political economy. Hegelian thinking has limitations. It stylises questions as choices between two opposites. So, it is either capitalism or socialism or a mixture of both. Experts often use models to deal with complex problems. The use of models requires expertise or even wisdom. We have to learn how the parts interact and contribute to the whole.

Featured image: Portrait of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Jakob Schlesinger (1831). Public Domain.

Book: God is a Woman

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Who is God? This question has remained unanswered until now. We live in a virtual reality created by an advanced humanoid civilisation to entertain one of its members, whom we call God. God can play a role as an ordinary human in this world. Several people who changed history have been God in disguise.

The worship of the Jewish deity Yahweh spread through Christianity and Islam. Half the world now believes that Yahweh, also known as the Father or Allah, is the all-powerful owner of this universe. In a simulation, this is not a mere accident. This deity is the veil behind which the owner of the universe hides.

Mary Magdalene was an avatar of God. She led Jesus to believe that She was Eve reincarnated, while he was Adam reincarnated, and that Eve did not come from Adam’s rib, but was her son, so Adam and, therefore, Jesus were the Sons of God. God also married Muhammad, but he didn’t know.

The Jewish Bible is a collection of myths and historical events. The stories about Creation, the Fall, Noah, Abraham, and Moses are mostly fictional. The history of the Jews began in the era of the Judges. Deborah was the first historical person in the Bible. She founded the Jewish nation and was God in disguise.

This book addresses the following topics:

  • Why are humans religious, and how did their religions develop?
  • Why could this universe be virtual?
  • Why are our faiths incorrect, while God could exist?
  • How did the Jewish religion emerge and evolve?
  • Who was the historical Jesus?
  • What was the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus?
  • Was Eve the mother of Adam?
  • Why is the Virgin Mary such a powerful figure?
  • Why is Jesus the Last Adam?
  • Did Jewish patriarchs, prophets, and kings marry God?
  • Did Muhammad marry God?
  • What could be the hidden message in the Quran regarding the number 19?
  • Why are Christians born of God?
  • What is the meaning of God’s love?
  • How did Paul shape Christianity?
  • How did Christians turn Jesus into God?
  • Why is the Gospel of John so different from the other Gospels?
  • What other avatars did God have in this world?
  • Looking at history, what might a Messiah be like?
  • Why can’t prophecies be accurate predictions?
  • Are there signs indicating we are living in the End Times?

By reading this book, you will discover that God is a woman from an advanced humanoid civilisation who uses this world to entertain Herself and can participate in this story as an ordinary woman.

The book is freely available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

You can download your free EPUB here:

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Latest revision: 6 September 2025