Great post, lil gremlin.

The word Seraphim is only mentioned once in the original Hebrew Bible. As it is translated into a fiery flying serpent,
when God sent fiery flying serpents to bite the israelites. But, it does say Seraphim have six wings, forewhich two
covered the face and two covered the feet. (They have feet.) One has to question that right there! Do serpents have
feet? We have a metaphor right there. According to texts used in th bible they very well knew what a serpent was.



Regards,
Tom

Very true, there does appear to be some 'shift' in conception of what a seraph was....blame Isiah.
He was politely called a 'visionary'.

ie. he made it up....It is filled with allegory and allusion.
I think if taken superficially his work marked a change in metaphysical inquiry....and perception of the metaphysical.

There are a few different ways to approach Isiah...there are lots of studies on him, his times, and his 'visions'.
I tend to see him as a departure from the mainstream, at least superficially.
It may still be untrue to say that he didnt regard these 'entities' as incorporeal.

So yes, filled with metaphor and allegory, and symbolism-the significance of which may in some cases be lost on us.

Those less generous to Isiah might regard him as a bit of a nutter.
I dont care enough to form a concrete opinion.

No metaphor. The word serpent is freely exchanged with dragon in literature, even when it is clear the beast is a winged and limbed dragon.

Even the Serpent in the eden story appears to have wings and feet, that were taken away by God as a punishment. Thus, the Hebrew Eden story is similar to Kipling's "elephant child" to explain why snakes have no feet like other reptiles.

Do serpents have feet?? Ofcourse they do (in DC mode) Dragon was and still is interchangeable with Serpent....and since dragons are quadrapedal....etc"

Of slight interest to me is the story from Genesis that the serpent in eden was made to crawl on its belly for the rest of time....suggesting that it did have feet before this.

google ETSCL

browse by category then deity....look for Dumuzi.

read how he was captive in the underworld, held by demons....he begged his mum to turn his legs into snake's legs, and his feet into snake's feet. so that he could escape.

We all know that a snake has neither legs nor feet....so was he saying take away my legs and feet, and turn me into a snake?
That would be my interpretation.....he slithered to his escape.


These texts were copied out ad nauseum by school kids from persia to the levant, and the Med. As were the Epics of Gilgamesh and other early written texts....the world had found a new technology....writing.

*picture a small child, familiar with the fauna of his/her vacinity....has seen lizards, has seen snakes.....daddy, why did the snake's legs fall off?*

Mythical stories are usually full of these little rationalizations which enrich the symbolic and historical ingredients to them.


Edit: LOL looks like DC got in there while i was busy typing.

Now you are being silly Grem. It was COMMON knowledge that the seraphim were winged serpents or dragons for centuries, both in Jewish and Christian theology. One obsure reference my foot. In Enoch the seraphim are always reptilian. The dragons described in heaven in Baruch are in all probability seraphim, but this is a greek text so the word drakon is used. Literal dragons are sent by God to punish or devour people in other Jewish and Christian works, and a common Christian motif was the Judgement scene in which dragons surround the throne of God as described in Isaiah, swallowing sinners who do not pass judgement.

Just becasue modern Christians have turned the seraphim into christmas card angels only reveals their ignorance of their own theology. Aquinas probably used an ivory dyptich covered Bible featuring seraphim dragons devouring sinners before the throne of god. Everyone high in the church knew the role of dragons in the theology. The contemporary literature, art and artifacts prove this to be so. All the evidence supports what I am saying, nothing supports what you are saying.

Sorry i thought we were talking scripture here....the bible....not Enoch.
At least the bible has some redeemable features.

And im not going to get into a barney about why Enoch is a steaming pile of horse production....it just is.


Baruch, similarly is relatively late and derivative....heavily influenced by other cultures including Hellenism.

these 2 are irrelevant to the discussion about the bible.


your theory is ok for circa 2nd AD, but thats because of outside influence. By then the Metaphysics of the christians was closer to Baruch than earlier mainstream judaism.

It has no reliable bearing on the Hebrew OT.


Edit: for clarification.

You know DC, I could say the ancient sumerians were tripping out on mushrooms, that helped them shape
the foundations of their beliefs.

The question is, can you refute that.

Fungi in the ancient world

Anybody else want to hop on this dream boat? LOL

You say that in jest....but....
Id say the same for just about every religion....all have had their methods of achieving altered states.
During these visions come.....

Its actually a very good argument.

since all religions developed from cults and early worship practice...and all of these involve some 'substance'....or way of 'tripping' out....even if that means spinning around till your'e dizzy.

Yea they just liked to puff the magic dragon, and that's how it all started

Take a trip.....and never leave the farm!

You know that if you visit the Alien section of this Forum that there are people who use the exact same examples that you do but say that instead of dragons, they are scaled reptilian aliens? And, they are every bit as sincere as you DC. They see aliens and spaceships everywhere n the Bible. They say that alien ships destroyed Sodom and Gammora and that alien ships lead Moses to the Red Sea and parted it for them.

Anyone can manipulate the passages to put whatever spin on them they see fit. It is a failing in human communication that no language lasts forever and few can be directly translated exactly.

You really don't get it. The POINT is that these later texts prove that almost 1000 years later the Seraphim are STILL winged reptiles. And 1000 years after that, christians still portrayed dragons around the throne of God, based on Isaiah's seraphim, in religious art.

Are you saying that the esteemed scholars of the Jewish Encyclopedia are wrong? Do you think the seraphim are cartoon angels in contradiciton of two thousand years of correct interpretation by both Jewish and Christian authorities?

But there is a big difference.

Virtually EVERY human culture acknowledges the dragons, for thousands of years, WITHOUT the spaceships.

And nearly every ancient culture has unidentified flying objects as well. Nazca Lines have a man in a spacesuit, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics show helicopters and airplanes, the Mayans said their ancestors came from the stars, etc, etc. Virtually EVERY human culture acknowledges unidentified flying objects, for thousands of years, WITHOUT dragons.

No they dont. perhaps you dont understand.

In the Bible they are only described by Isaiah,

Isaiah 6:2-4 records, "Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke."

These are not dragons.
But then Isaiah was a 'visionary'.

Thomas Aquinas read and quoted Baruch extensively, yet he believes that Seraphim are incorporeal....(it means they have no physical body). The same goes for Cherubim and Angels in general....Angels can manifest in the likeness of mankind, he believes....but are not men.

If it were 2000 years of 'correct interpretation' wouldnt christians and jews still believe the same?

The point is it is open to interpretation...and these evolved. There is no 'reliable authority' who claims to know the truth, the most reliable authority will say it is not as simple.

after many years in Babylon with exposure to their culture it is rational to expect them to either reject mesopotamian culture, art, stylistics etc totally, or embrace it to some extent. Add to this the real likelyhood that they were exposed to mesopotamian culture much earlier. Add to this the similar cultural influence from Egypt, the rest of the levant and arabia, and the Med basin, and you have a hotpot of cultural influences to compliment, enhance, expand on and to evolve any distinctly Israeli culture (if there ever was such a thing).
There is evidence that these things moved with the political times....(but that's part of the thing im working on so ill keep that for PM's for now, not post it yet)....

Besides which there was rarely, if any, time when there was one exclusive perspective in Jewish thought....there still isnt today about many issues.

If there really were dragons, and the God of the Israelites was one, then we'd know, there would be no dispute.

At what point in time would you say that God, the dragon, abandoned/left the Israelites?

What the esteemed jewish scholars, including those that write the Jewish Encyclopedia, realise is that concepts evolve.
I have shown in the past how your interpretation of their article on seraphim isnt what they intended.
...as with the story of the Brazen serpent, they believe that the term has its origin in snakes.....but evolved under the influence of mesopotamia and egypt etc. They may not have been called Seraphim at the time of their 'conception' by man....but this is not important right now.
If they were real, and people saw them then they would not have evolved, and would remain serpents (as in snakes).

The Jewish Encyclopedia guys certainly would not accept the argument that YHWH is a dragon.


Perhaps if you refuse to post any references or citations, in blatant disregard for the requests of UM members, and the rules of the forum; you wouldnt mind posting a coherent timeline which outlays 'your history' (yourstory).
You dont have to start with Adam etc, pick a point and go from there.....lead it upto Thomas Aquinas...where the modern ideas (fudging i think you called it) turned christianity from the true path. It'd be good....better if you could on this timeline, include all info from all of the cultures you touch on in your theory...any critical events/dates etc.
It doesnt have to be epic in size, keep it brief and to the point.

...didnt think so.

Now im not denying that Seraphim were depicted as dragons (as we think of them) in early medieval texts etc. But I realise that this doesnt make them true, or that this is how they were always seen. And they are not proof of actual sightings/interaction. Seeing how in Greek mythology and stories the concept evolved....like in the BS story about Alexander The Great's conception from late antiquity, Im pretty sure that the same process occurred in religion.

lol its true, you could also argue that nearly EVERY culture saw saucers but believed them to be dragons.....I havent actually got any reliable evidence, but that doesnt seem to be a problem around here.

In most cases no. You are wrong. The Egyptian helicopters are only eroded hieroglyphics. The socalled Nazca spacemen could simply be a god depicted with an aura around its head. The Mayans, like the Sumerians had dragon gods that supposedly "came from the sky", because dragons fly.

Some believe the dragon gods around the world were aliens. Maybe it is possible, but odd they never seemed to have lost a single screw, or ever crashed.

You of all people should know I am not "withholding sources". You know the sources have been posted here time and time again. This is just a cheap shot that I once thought beneath your dignity.

In a nutshell, the dragons were taken out of the theology as it became more and more apparent dragons may not be real, as fewer and fewer reports of them occured.

As fewer were seen it seemed less and less likely they would destroy the world in the Apocolypse, so churches ceased depicting such scenes, and popular bestsellers like Dante essentially changed Christian doctrine because their concepts were like better than the old theology and the chruch didn't mind as long as the money kept coming in.

So... dragons go unoticed, with no physical evidence for millions of years through the various methods you describe, but intelligent beings from another world couldn't possibly hide evidence of themselves?

I have a new theory, the 'dragon' Yahew or whatever his name was in the bible, was an alien machine. It was powered on alcohol and belched fire occasionally. The aliens within it were very interested in finding a cure to a disease ravaging their species, and they believed they could find it in the human genome, through crossbreeding with humans. Thus they needed virgins to 'eat'

Through the ages christianity became ashamed of presenting such a surreal idea, and changed it to a dragon. This triggered the begining of the dragon idea, which became associated with all alien sightings, and eventually most large animal sightings too. Afterwards, as no proof of such creatures could be found, science rejected the entire notion.

Interesting, but by the time Christianity appeared, dragon gods in Europe and the near east were largely exchanged for humanoid gods (that might change into dragons for a little fun, like Zeus). The pagan converts imagined Yahweh much as they did Zeus, but both gods could, and did have dragons to do their bidding, and the bidding of other gods in the Greek panalopy. Athena had a great guardian serpent for example, and Poseiden sends sea dragons to swallow people just as Yahweh does (jonah).

More than one cartoon or comic book has certainly depicted aliens in spaceships that look like dragons. Even Stichin suggested someting like this, to explain why the Sumerians called their gods, "great serpent dragons from heaven", when he wanted to portray them as pointy ear humanoid aliens so he could sell his books to Trekkies.

my hairy bottom they have...your sources have been mostly posted by me time and time again. Recently you were good enough to provide one citation, and it was a hassle to wring it from you. Predominantly you make vague allusions to sources nothing more, and i have found them myself.

Whilst your 'in a nutshell' thing is interesting in itself, it does not answer the question of 'when did YHWH abandon his people?'

So your'e talking about a staged withdrawal, like the troops in Iraq?
Ive never known 'the Church' to be so forward thinking as to abandon 'religious truth' like the existence of Seraphim dragons for cash at the door.
Why then did they give Galileo such a hard time? Why not also make such a shift in thought without the denials and torture etc?

If it was real, and undeniable then the church would have stuck to its guns....without question. They wouldnt worry that fewer shepherds were being 'disappeared'. The Apocalypse was 'called off' because the Instruments Of Destruction were less frequently sighted? That does not make sense.....Jesus had not been 'sighted' for ages, was his return less likely because of that?

look i really dont see your point because no where in the bible does it mention dragons....i could draw apic and clame some one else did it then add dragons and you would think its real

Are you kidding me? Somebody just a few posts ago posted numerous scriptures mentioning dragons in the Bible. Modern chrstianity, in their rewriting of the Bible changed the dragons to whales, jackals or snakes as they seen fit, but that doesn't make much sense in the context that the word is used. Plus, the illuminated Bibles pictured them as dragons, to remove all doubt.

The main question is still pending. If indeed people did worship such intelligent beasts, then why did they
later on recant these supposed godly beasts from scriptures, as well as change the meaning of them all
together??????????????????

well actually no you see the origanal bible is in hebrew and the translations of such beasts wouldnt be dragons it would be great lizerd not flying lizard nor dragon and yes the catholic bible did change it up but still i dont by it im very studies in religon (even tho im satanic) because of things like this noone can have the origanal bible anyways most of them have been altered or deystroyed.

When ancient civilizations reached a certain point the dragon gods seem to have been commanded to leave by the Creator and more humanoid gods develop in their absense. Marduk for example, is the humanoid son of a dragon called Ea, and formerly Enki. Of course, the dragons were still seen for centuries but no longre considered Gods in most cultures.

The church found it easier to lump all dragons as evil, becasue of the references to the satan dragon, than try to explain the highest heavenly creatures (seraphim) are dragons as well. In those days only the church had access to bibles, and despite the anti dragon rhetoric dished out to the peasants, the Bibles they used still depicted dragons as heavenly creatures.

Wrong, the ancient jews themselves translated the seraphim to Drakons. And we know these were fairly classic dragons becasue they are physically described in acnient Jewish texts has having arms legs and wings. Drakons even appear on the holiest of all Jewish object in the later temple, the base of the seven branched menorah. In fact in one text, to remove all doubt, the word Pterodrakon is used. It is clear you know very little about ancient Jewish and Christian beliefs. The modern Christian mythology has no bearing on the disucssion of dragons in ancient Jewish and Christian theology.

Keoshin, I'm interested in hearing about your beliefs. Do tell. :-)

Wow, saying there is dragonic "deities" is kind of blowing this whole belief out of proportion. For a second, lets assume that dragons actually did live. If they did, they were very large, dinosaur-like reptiles with wings...not some sort of gods

OR

We are correct, there are dragons (or were) and Dragonic Deities now im not exactly shure what i encounterd but im shure it was a Dragonic Deity DC makes good points as does WEREGIRL and a few skeptics...

the point is if we believe who is to say that we are wrong in our belief? shure you may think its wrong but thats your oppion and DC has numerous times posted things that COULD realate to dragonic deities

as have a few others

also Keoshin, i too am interseted in what you believe and if you wish not to post it public please PM me to let me know about it, i am always looking for more information

Haha.

There was a board somewhere about Moses being high on Mount Whatever when he went to get the Ten Commandments. =P

Understand that when I say 'dragon gods or deities" I am NOT saying they are literal gods. A literal god should not have to eat, and there are constant references, even when worshipped as gods, that they are fed animals and sometimes even humans.

So what I am saying is that they are physical creatures either used as surrogate Gods by a creator entity, or (less likely), intelligent creatures 'posing' as gods to eliminate the need for hunting.

For the first time in a while i agree with you DC

for what you said in your last statement makes sense, but

why have we still found no proof of them eh?

We still see them occasionally, on land on sea and in the air. There are many accounts, thogh they are usally called nessies, sauropods, pterosaurs etc, but they are obviously dragons.

The legends say they are quite intelligent, so they can easily learn to avoid us. Plus they have a great advantage in that most people don't believe they exist , so we are really not trying that hard to find them.

A 21 foot crocodile in africa has eluded attempts to kill him by literally thousands of armed humand for several decades. He has eaten over 300 people and is still at large. This is only a crocodile. Now imagine the stealth of a far more intelligent reptile.

Still, those points can be explained by my theory. In Europe and the East the Aliens chose to reveal themselves, assuming that they resmble 'Greys' or Humaniod aliens, and explained what they were doing. They chose Europe as the place to do this for no particular reason; it was merely an experiment to see how humans would react to seeing their 'gods' and understanding their purpose. This helped the line between dragons and gods of human-shape blur.

Cartoons and comics have nothing to do with a serious conversation.

I don't understand what you are getting at. Greys can hardly be confused with giant, flying, calve and virgin eating dragons. Nobody worshipped piddling little grey humanoids. They worshipped large scaled covered, long necked, toothy, clawed, and winged creatures.

Note that it was not the aliens being confused with dragons, it was their machines.

Maybe thats what these little humanoid creatures, "Greys" wanted the people to think they were worshipping at the time. They very well could have been highly intelligent beings, illusionists, possibly shape-shifters.

This theory holds about as much weight as yours DC, I actually like this theory.

i see the Et connection.
angels=angles=shapes=ufos?

i can also see how a ufo could be mistaken for a great turtle that transported and created land for man. [NA native lore]

fire snakes in the sky could be comets or meteors

if a child cannot explain what he sees he'll use the closest description.

Hey Undeadskeptic! Have you thought about starting another thread on this theory? I would really enjoy piecing
information together on this looking through texts, etc. then posting the similarities.

Sorry, Undead, but how is a serious discussion about the nature of what beliefs people held over a thousand years ago involve cartoons and comics?

You do know that the most likely answer is in fact more mundane.

I agree with you there

DC, dude, if they were all dragons they dont you think that the people who get photos of them would be dead? if they didnt want to be found

and again i have not seen you answer my question, simply avoid it

If Dragons still exsisted today do you not think that we would have found them by now?

and this time i want an answer DC, you can't keep running from the truth forever, they did exsist but are dead and gone

as to what could have killed them i do not know but if they did exsist today then we would have seen them by now.

Well can't agree that they ever existed. But most people are not good at identifying and distinguishing wildlife and I seriously doubt it was much different historically.

and there i disagree, i think it is possilbe that they did exsist at one point in time, and am still searching EVERY search engine i find, if i find a lagit one (or if it seems lagit) i'll post it and then tell me what you think ok?

I will happily look at it.

Ok then, but i still have not found anything that in my oppion proves it beyond a reasonable dout

It still doesn't make sense. Why are you trying to turn this supposed animal into something else. What do you mean you were "visited" by the "father of dragons"? What is that? And why would this so called father come to you? I just think you're taking this belief way out of proper context. Can't we be satisfied with the possibility this mythical creature lived as a regular animal instead some sort of supernatural being?

Dude, stop kicking at things long dead, that's allready been discused



Reason for Edit: it double posted what i said... wierd

Hey!
I didn't consider that until you bought it up, and yes I would love to start a thread based on this, but at the moment I am finishing my book on dragons and writing up a new crypto thread, so I don't have time at the moment. If you would like to help this theor grow, by all means please do. I've been looking through some sources and have found more than remarkable similarities...




DC was the one who bought up Cartoons and Comics, not me.