Reading Genesis 28:
10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran.
11 He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place.
12 And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. (...)
16 Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it!" 17 And he was afraid, and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."
The progenitor of some stories in the Bible definitely came from the Mesopotamian mythology. The aim of the Bible stories was seemingly not to deal with historical accuracy, which achievement was completely impossible, because the scientific historic data recording just did not begin for long millennia.
Whatever was known, it was known from oral tradition or even such kind of written material like the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian Epic of Creation or the Epic of Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, which literature from that time contained major mythological elements in order to emphasize the role of the gods in the fate of the mortals and of the kingdoms of the Earth, where kingship was granted by the gods.
From the Bible or even from non-biblical tradition we may learn that the ancestors of Abraham were possibly connected to the land of Sumer which means the ancient Sumerian Empire with its ancient city states Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Lagash, Larsa, Kish etc., However Sumerians were not ethnic Semites, their antic language is most similar today to the Turkish and to the Hungarian agglitunative grammar structure.
The Akkadian name of Babylon is Bab-Ili, which means the Gate of God. We do not want to give credit to some science-fiction theorist that the very Tower of Babel in the land of Sumer might have been a “star gate”, which could have served as an interstellar terminal for ancient alien spaceships.
Nonetheless, the abrupt start of the Sumerian prosperity approximately in 3760 BCE was just incredibly unbelievable, because it appeared completely out of the blue. The area, we could say almost in a matter of mere weeks, like a returning Atlantis, from the Stone Age, ascended to such a level of cultural and industrial sophistication that is beyond human imagination even today. Researchers say this development is comparable only to the industrial revolution of the late XIXth century.
Marvellous palaces, zikkurat pyramids, huge field-layered, temple-centered cities, mass-produced pottery, the first writing system, the first accounting system, hydraulic engineering, the invention of the wheel, the chariot, the plow, the establishing of textile mills, the invention of mass-produced bricks, metallurgy, mathematics, astronomy, organized workforce, canalization, artificial watering system, sail-boats, systematical distance trading and so much more. That was all Sumer, and it all came into the world almost overnight. If it happened without alien technology, it is an unprecedented miracle level world event.
The ancient Sumerians wrote it down that gods and the children of the father god Anu, who arrived from the sky and were called sky-people, taught Sumer practical knowledge and wisdom. Of course it is a Science-Fiction level mythology.
By the time Abraham was born, Sumer was not even a political entity anymore, and the Sumerian population had been already absorbed by several foreign conquerors.
It is clear from the 5th Book of Moses that the ancestors of Abraham were not Sumerians, but Semitic Arameans, a population possibly originated from North-West Syria. This area, called Ebla, a semi-nomadic trading culture, like any others, they had prosperity and depression waves. Many of them settled in the land of Sumer, when it came under Semite control, first by the Akkad Empire.
A couple of centuries later with a second invasion wave the Amorites came from the northern mountains, whose campaign against Akkad, eventually evolved into the establishment of the famous Babylon, with his infamous emperor, Hammurabbi.
These Babylonian Amorites were the contemporary world power with whom Abraham, not only as a semi-nomadic ethnarch but as a warlord too, had a profound struggle, an elongated line of armed conflicts.
The Bible says that Abraham’s father Terah, with his whole family moved from Babylonian territory, to Haran, in North Syria, today.
When Abraham left Haran for Canaan, and even for a while he roamed around in Egypt as well, most of his relatives stayed in Haran. That was the place where Isaac, the son of Abraham went back to take a bride from among his cousins, the grandchildren of Tareh.
Also this was the place where Isaac sent his son Jacob to take a bride from among his contemporary cousins. That is why Jacob, from his place in Canaan, called Beer-Sheva, was on the route to Haran, the land of his relatives. On his way, very early, around 30 km north from Jerusalem, at the place he named Bethel, he received a vision in his dream, that a ladder was connecting Earth to Heaven, and the angels were descending and ascending on the ladder, from Heaven to Earth and back.
That the Heaven and Earth is ultimately and directly connected, it was known to the wise of old, as the Upper Worlds and the Lower Worlds were classified in a view of a tiered structure, often called as a giant world tree or sometimes even a ladder.
Regarding the connection of these different universes, the ancient Egyptian knowledge said with Hermes Trismegistos that “as above, so below. ”
It should mean also that if there is any channel of traffic and communication between the upper and lower worlds, then it must happen in two ways, as ascending and descending opportunities must appear together.
There are a couple of ways to receive a vision, either somebody is on a vision quest or it is just happening to somebody like a surprise from Heaven.
One of the ways to have a vision is that it can come in a night dream.
As it is written: “ Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place--and I did not know it!’ And he was afraid, and said, ‘ How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ ”
Jacob was deeply shaken by the experience of his vision, that is why he took an oath of becoming fully observant in the case if he will be able to return in peace from Haran to Beer-Sheva, by saying, that :
“If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God’s house; and of all that you give me I will surely give one-tenth to you.”
The ancient Israelites built a couple of altars in early ages in the Land of Israel, one of them was exactly in Bethel, but there were others as well, like in Shiloh or Shechem, they even built a full temple in Samaria on the Mount Gerizim.
Altars are mentioned often in the Bible, mostly built for sacrifices, or just as memorials like the twelve stones in Gilgal, set up by Joshua .
In the ancient world an altar served mostly as a commemoration of a divine occurrence. The altar marked the location of the divine presence, like Gideon’s altar in Ophrah or the altar Samuel the Prophet built in Ramah. The rituals on the altars attempted to invoke again the divine presence or at least commemorate it.
The sages also believed that there are places with negative vibrations, inhabited by wicked spirits. Nonetheless the understanding was general in the ancient world, that there are some holy places on Earth marked by divine spirit, where the benevolent supernatural presence is obvious. Even today we call the Land of Israel, the Holy Land.
Although the Israelites had other places than Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant had stayed for example, before it disappeared from historical account, an important notion developed gradually that the sole place for right rituals must be the Jerusalem Temple.
Through the experience of losing the Jerusalem Temple two times to the destruction by enemy hands, an other notion evolved too, that prayers can substitute the sacrifices.
This thought emerged quite early as it is written in the book of prophet Hosea in chapter six that thus says the Lord that “For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings.”
Regarding visions, descending and ascending Angels, Jesus said that “"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Matthew 5:8).
Ultimately the ladder to Heaven is not in Bethel, nor in Babel, not even in Jerusalem, but in our hearts. The real connection to Heaven is what Jesus told to the disciples in the Gospel of Matthew chapter six that:
“When you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. ”
Our inner room is the inside of our hearts.
We have to pray every day, where the content of the prayer is simple. We have to constantly express our gratitude to God for life and the opportunity to do good deeds.
The other very important part of our prayers that we should become quiet inside and try to listen to God from our all heart, from our all mind, from our all soul and with all of our spiritual strength in order to hear what God wants from us to do by keeping his commandments in person, in family, in the society and in the wider world. May the Lord empower our prayers and our listening to God by the Holy Spirit in hour hearts to be rewarded by his presence among us. AMEN
