A Letter to Victor Alexander: Are Allaha and YHWH Singular Words with Plural Endings, Like Elohim, and Which Movie are You Making?

I spent years at seminaries and collected shelves of study bibles, lexicons and commentaries so that I could eke out the meanings of ancient languages through much study and contemplation. Now I e-mail Victor Alexander, an expert in THE ancient language, Aramaic, and just ask him. No, this is NOT a free service he provides; I have reason to ask, and he has reason to respond.

I had a deep and serious theological question about some names (natures) of God and noticed Mr. Alexander's crowdfunding campaign for The Story of Eashoa Msheekha was not doing well. Well, how could it? He and I are the only ones who know what Eashoa Msheekha means. And who here has ever gone to Indiegogo.com to see if you could fund a movie? Raise your hands.

Precious few. Okay, none. But I am asking you, if you are wealthy enough to make a movie and are interested in making one of the most important and influential religious movies ever to shine on the screen and in people's hearts, please contact Mr. Alexander at v-a.com (vic@v-a.com). Victor is asking for small contributions. I am asking for someone who wants to change the world.

"A silly, religious costume rehashing of the same old Bible stories that have been done hundreds of times (and seldom well)?"

No, the true teachings of the Apostles from ancient Aramaic language as preserved by the Church of the East. You can count those movies on . . . well, no, you can't count those movies at all, because there hasn't ever been any in English. Imagine--a movie that doesn't just present what the Bible says, but what it MEANS by what it says. I hear thousands, millions of people over the years sighing a collective, "Oh. So THAT'S what it means. The world is not as I thought, and neither am I," and immediately evolving upward inside. They will never be the same.

Brother (or sister), can you spare a hundred thousand or two?

This could even be used to change Islamic extremism. How? Extremists are driven to bring all mankind into submission to Allah. They view Christian worship of Christ as idolatry. The movie would clarify that Eashoa (Jesus) is the MANIFESTATION of Allaha--the "Allah" that Mohammad served. "Oh," they would have to say, "Eashoa wasn't a prophet who came before Mohammad: He is the One Who sent Mohammad!" Muslims, Christians and Jews could all be on the same page. Hindus and others, too.

Maybe a major organization would like to change the whole Middle East. Bring world peace. This little film could be a big hammer in forging a new world. Fund a movie. Call Victor. Okay, e-mail him. vic@v-a.com
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So anyway, I wrote to Mr. Alexander. I'll put comments in parentheses between the paragraphs:

Mr. Alexander,

If it would help, the next time you start an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign let me (and everyone else) know, and I'll scream about it on my blog and ask my few visitors to post the link on their blogs, too.


I do have a serious question about ancient language. As you know, I lean even a little more toward the esoteric than you. For example, I read Genesis 1: 1 "The Beginning (i.e., the Milta of the Ineffable) created God, the Heavens and the Earth." I read this as God is thus the entirety of all dimensions of the universe, the heavens being the innumerable myriads of consciousness imagining (the flames of the e'had) and the earth, their facilitating matter. Elohim is "Over the Flames."

(Vic: -- To me He is above the whole thing, and the thing that we call the ‘universe’ is just another dimension for Him. But I could be wrong. In my heart, I want to think that we are special too.)

Also, I read all the people in the Bible as being reference to ourselves: Adam---the life of God in every man--becomes Cain and Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and Paul; because all of us are the Lamb, the Christ of God who became us. Yeah, that it pretty "esoteric." But it IS the Gospel of Moses.

For me it is all a package deal: there is no separation or division between the Ineffable, Its Manifestation, and the Milta's manifestation in us, AS us: the transcendence of the Ineffable includes everything within it. Ref. Deuteronomy 6: 4. We are all one thing: the Ineffable.

My question refers to the Aramaic words Allaha and YHWH. If I understand you correctly, Allaha is the same as Elohim in that it is one being with a plural ending: "(Eil) Over the flames."

(Vic: -- Yes, Allaha and Elohim are the same – in the same way we say ‘God’ – these are generic titles (names) for the ‘creator of the universe.’)

Does this framework extend to YHWH? If you have watched The Bible's Buried Secrets (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpX2JQYZnHs), at 39 to 43 minutes they explain the God of YHW, a region in Midian where escaped slaves from Egypt discovered Eil, the Almighty. I equate this discovery with Moses' meditation on jethro and his subsequent burning bush revelation: "Ahiyeh Asher Hiyeh." The slaves proceeded to the Palestinian hills and explained that the God they had discovered in YHW includes all of us--YHWH, a singular word with a plural ending. Hence, Israel = "God ruling AS man."

So my question is: are the endings of Allaha and YHWH plural?

(Vic: -- No, they are singular. Elohim is plural. YHWH refers to the Son [literally, ‘He Becomes’]. He Becomes the Son of Man and the Messiah prophesied by the Scriptures ‘in our sense of time’ or in our ‘space-time continuum.’)

I also take the Christian Lindtner Theory (http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/CLT.html) with both a grain of salt and some serious consideration. Says Lindtner:

"As you all are aware, there is a so-called synoptic problem. Matthew, Mark and Luke have a lot in common. But there are some differences. The synoptic problem has to do with the mutual relationship between the three Gospels. It is discussed in any modern introduction to the NT. Augustine held that Mark depended on Matthew, and Luke on Matthew and Mark. A modern theory saying that Mark was the first evangelist, and that Matthew and Luke depended not only on Mark but also on a source, now termed Q(uelle), but no longer available, has found fairly general (but not universal) acceptance. The hypothesis of Q, however, cannot account for what Q actually looked like, who made it, its language, what ever became of Q etc., and it fails to explain the origin of Mark.

"The CLT has a simple answer to the Q problem. Q, understood as the source not only of Matthew, Mark and Luke, but even of John and the other writings of the NT, can, according to CLT, be defined in terms of the Buddhist sources in Sanskrit. These texts are, fortunately, still available to scholars 
"Unfortunately, not all of them have been translated into modern languages. The main Buddhist sources are Mûlasarvâstivâdavinaya (MSV) and the Saddharmapundarîka (SDP). The Sukhâvatîvyûha is the source of Luke 10:17. The first words of Jesus are from the Prajnâpâramitâ. There are a few other Buddhist sources, and of course the numerous quotations from the Old Testament, but the main sources are, without any shadow of doubt, the MSV (parts of which, again, prove more important than others), and the SDP. The SDP is available in modern translations.
"It is in this general sense that the CLT claims that Q = MSV+SDP."

(Vic: -- It really sounds intriguing. I’ll definitely give it a good review.) (Dan: -- Lindtner goes overboard in some areas. But that Ashoka sent missionaries to the West is history. I think it is not that Jesus went to India, but that it was an Indian who wrote the story of Jesus. And, ironically, to the people he had learned the story from.)

Like I said, this is taken with the proverbial grain of salt, but perhaps there is something here, even something MOVIE WORTHY. In New Testament times Israel was full of both literal-historical dualists and Gnostic-leaning nondualists. They famously did not get along. Still don't. I suppose an Indian missionary of Emperor Ashoka's movement of the Buddhist Gospel traveled to Israel and on to Alexandria in Egypt, where he encountered the ancient Aramaic texts of Judaism and all the Western and Egyptian myths and philosophies. He understood what the texts actually say and perceived that the Jewish priests and Pharisees had their own religion all wrong. "Hey, you guys, that isn't what Moses meant. You have misread your own Law. It is about you, not history."

You can imagine the violent reactions the Pharisees and scribes had to his arguments. The Indian sage had to take a lot of in-your-face vitriol and threat (if not actual harm). Knowing a literal, well known Gnostic-leaning Jacob (James) or Jesus who had suffered death from these defenders of the faith, the Indian wrote the Gospel of Jesus and put the wisdom he had learned from all the philosophies and the Old Testament into the dead man's mouth. The inner man's mouth. We call that book the Gospel of Mark.

I mention this scenario as a framework you might be able to hang your script on. It sounds like The Story of Eashoa Msheekha to me, and it could easily be transposed to a modern context (like you mean to do for your movie The Apostles)--because Eashoa Msheekha truly is "the same yesterday, today and forever." All the Gospel affects the inner man. Were I doing the movie, I would even have a modern, young Indian come to learn the truth of the Gospel of Moses and then try to explain it to modern, Western Christians and Jews. Talk about fireworks!

Too wild?

(Vic: -- Not at all. Can you find me $100,000 in funding? We’ll shoot it in Ojai --Vic)

Dan
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Anyone want to fund a movie? Its rewards could be greater than any academy award could offer. vic@v-a.com