Revelation -- Woman Giving Birth

This blog continues the series from Revelation. This time backing up to the woman who gives birth in pain. Before that, we visit Nebuchadnezzar's cut down tree.

Tent of Time Articles

I have been on an active hunt for the past several weeks looking for stories that seem to reference articles found in the Tent of Time. One of those I discussed last time, the Fig Tree. It is seen in the story of Philip and Nathanael. It is also seen in a story near Jerusalem.

There is a strange pattern around these objects. They are found in passages where the object does not seem to take center stage, while the story where they are used pulls the reader to some other thing.

The example from last time is Nathanael under the fig tree. Everyone wonders what is going on with Nathanael, and nobody wonders about which tree.

Another example museum artifact to think about is Moses' staff. He uses it to strike the sea when his generation is leaving Egypt. He uses it again when he strikes the rock and the waters gush forth.

These 2 uses of his staff are telling us a bunch about the function of his staff in terms of how it works in the language system. It can sort, say, sons of Jacob from Egypt. So it can sort inspired text from additions. The staff is also involved in causing waters to gush. These would be called living waters. Again, this is from the perspective of the language system where the staff is also used.

To get to the bottom of a symbol like the fig tree we need to find all the other stories related to that artifact. The set of stories helps develop the purpose of that museum artifact. We do that by looking for parallel stories that are hinting at the article.

I thought for awhile the story of Nebuchadnezzar's cut down tree might be a parallel reference to the fig tree. This is not so. His prophetic tree is different. Let me explain.

Neb's Tree Dream (Dan. 4, BRB)

The link here is to Daniel 4, where we read the account of one of Nebuchadnezzar's dreams. We also read how that dream fulfilled in his life. Let me briefly summarize. In the dream he sees a tree that reaches to the skies. In it is food for all. The tree gets cut down, then left in the ground as a stump until after '7 times' pass by.

Nebuchadnezzar wants help with the interpretation. When the dream is interpreted, it is said to apply to him personally. We are then told how it fulfilled when he himself looses his mind for 7 years. At the end of that time he is restored.

Remember, no passage of scripture is interpreted in its own book, so this apparent fulfillment is not the real fulfillment. Educated readers can see right through that. In this case the application to Nebuchadnezzar personally might still be inspired. In any case, we are not reading the complete fulfillment. Daniel is not including this story to tell us a tidbit about Nebuchadnezzar. He is including it because it has some other purpose.

This story is built upon the Leviticus 26 stories of 7 times of trouble for failing to follow Joshua. The same principle is taught annually in the First Fruits to Weeks holidays. Turns out the 7 times intervals from Nebuchadnezzar's century land in our era, especially the last 100 years or so.

Explain The Tree

The time components of this are all interesting by themselves. But, this is not my interest now. Why does the story use the symbol of a tree? Or a Stump? And what is the food for all?

Because this is a tree, we can start approximating the answer. The fig tree is related to the text, so this tree might be too. But the fig tree appears to be a part of a larger set of museum pieces that work together to explain the text.

This tree, in Nebuchadnezzar's day, provides food for all, that is different than the fig tree. At best this Nebuchadnezzar tree points at ALL of the articles in the Tent of Time, not just 1 item.

I have hunched for a long time that the text might contain additional volumes. A dream in North Carolina a few years ago suggested running text will come out of the main text in some letter-by-letter way. (I thought at the time this would be easy. Fat chance, but I digress.)

Nebuchadnezzar's tree, if food for all, would be a symbol of all additional volumes. This might be the pinnacle use of the complete set of museum pieces.

What if there is a library of additional volumes? Either encoded in the base text or in a vault, say the Human Genome? Would that be food for all? I think so.

Nebuchadnezzar's actions cut down that tree. So the base text is like the stump in the ground. The inspired texts were vaulted in the ground for most of history, so the stump is hinting at the inspired text. That stump is all that remained. After Joshua's NT era, there appears to be no tomb-like vault. Only the stump.

The passage in Daniel suggests it was 'bound with iron' in some way. It also suggests this is limited for the normal Leviticus 7 times period of 2550 years.

We recently convinced ourselves that Hebrew is a translation of Aramaic. Hebrew is one of Nebuchadnezzar's legacies. From within the Hebrew heritage there is no way to regrow the tree. Though both texts are full of additions, Hebrew does not spell words the same way as Aramaic. These are the bands of iron around the stump.

So Nebuchadnezzar really did a work on the text. His actions appear to have cut down the ability to find additional volumes. That would be the upper reaches of the tree. He himself was the man who cut it all down, thus the story in Daniel.

If it helps any, the existence of the Peshitta was unknown to the western world until missionaries reached what is now northern Iraq. Those missionaries found a previously unknown Christian sect who was carrying what they considered to be the inspired text. The scribal communities of the time were soon lost in war, but until that time they had existed for centuries.

Nobody under Nebuchadnezzar's future empires, including Rome and the post Rome European world, could ever recover inspired text since there was nothing available from which to do the work.

The stump itself was bound up, and could not regrow until after, say, the year 1800.

The picture of the tree in this story is thus a description of how additional volumes will actually work. The stump is the trunk document, alone. Some subset of the text we know from history.

It will somehow grow and branch out, covering whatever subjects Joshua might have chosen to include. This is not a story of the articles in the Tent of Time. This is a story of the text's ability to carry other documents. Those documents provide food for all.

Last time we were in Revelation we were at Revelation 10:11, where the writer was told to prophesy again about peoples, nations, languages, and kings. Sounds a lot like the stump regrowing and then providing food for all.

As we scan forward from that point in Revelation we don't find anything that both passes filter rules and continues backwards in time from the era of Noah until the start of Revelation 12. So we continue surveying Revelation by looking at that chapter.

Woman In Pain (Rev. 12, BRB)

The story begins with a statement about a woman who is clothed with the sun, who has the moon under her feet and who has a crown of 12 stars on her head. Being pregnant, she cried, travailing in birth and delivered in pain.

The first point to make here is that the woman who cries out in pain while giving birth is a direct reference to Genesis 3:16. Some woman, who is presumed to be Eve, is told she will bear children with great difficulty and in pain because she has listened to the Serpent/Hivite.

We recently changed BRB on this point. The word 'serpent' is now rendered as 'Hivite.' The spelling is the same as the later stories involving Hivites. This helps see the problem the same way as someone reading the original language text would see the problem. In all cases I am starting to think of the English word 'hive' as likely derived from this root. Though she listened to someone, he held a religion that is expressed as a 'hive' mentality. It wants to solve all problems using the hive. More on this point in some future blog.

This Genesis 3:16 cite is how we know the Revelation 12 passage has backed up to Eden. Revelation at this point is now all the way back to the beginning. Any further text in Revelation must be going forward, so this story is an inflection, a point of changing direction.

Starry Host

Years ago Ryan and I did a bunch of prayer driving around Seattle. We kept running into certain patterns of public art, of which there is a lot in the city. That art is there because a certain local law requires that a certain percentage of all money spent on public and private buildings must be spent on art. Something like 1 percent if memory serves.

Turns out there is a commission that approves that art. A builder cannot just put up any art they want. That commission only approves art that matches their taste in art. More precisely, all art in the city must match their particular brand of pagan religion.

All the famous artists who create these works of art are successful because they tell stories built from within that pagan religion. Almost all modern fiction, no matter where in the world it may originate, including essentially all popular movies, does the same.

The sun, moon, and starry host are the pantheon of that religion. So all art in the city is some restatement of worshiping the sun, moon and starry host. (No wonder the city has gone berserk, but I digress.)

The term 'starry host' is used many times in the NIV for this religion. This was the translation we were using at the time and I still remember it as 'starry host.' The BRB renders the idea the 'hosts of the skies.' See 2 Kings 17:16, 2 Kings 21:5, 2 Kings 23:4-5, or Jeremiah 19:13 if you want to read more.

Eve listened to the Hivite. His religion is the worship of the sun, moon and starry host. So in this Revelation passage we see her clothed with the symbols of that Hivite religion. This is another match to Eden. Revelation is giving commentary on why she has pain in child birth. Her ease in life depends on her religion. Just as it is for all of us in all other areas of life. She chose the wrong religion, and it messed up her life.

So far, nothing in this discussion causes us to link to the literary purpose of Revelation which is dealing with a sealed small scroll. Maybe we now know enough to make the link.

Tent of Time?

The same dictionary of symbols that we carried around while prayer driving explained how that pagan religion uses symbols. Everything you can imagine will normally map down into either the sun, the moon or the starry host. For example, father, mother and children maps back to sun, moon and starry host. Different sized stones are placed in flower beds to do the same. The tall stone is the sun, the next shorter is the moon, then all the others are the stars. I cannot stress enough how everything does this. This also includes the metals, like gold, silver and copper grid to the sun, moon and starry host. Silver, by the way, tarnishes, from bright to black, just as the moon does monthly.

Those metals are also the ancient materials that would have been used in the Tent of Time. Indeed, I am currently using yellow, gray, red and green plastics to map the gold, silver, copper and bronze items in that tent. These 4 sets form the 4 creatures, for example.

The story in Revelation about Eve is suggesting that by listening to the Hivite, she gave up the systems of verifying textual inspiration. In that shift she and Adam were turned over to the worship of these other things.

That consequence was a direct 1-to-1 replacement of the inspired systems that should have kept them out of trouble.

So this is the first step in moving Adam and Eve to a language related problem. But what does 'giving birth' mean when we think about the text? The context from Revelation 10 is prophesying again about 'peoples nations languages and kings.'

Does the text do this when it gives birth? When it generates more volumes? Yes, I think so. This seems to be the point of this part of Revelation.

So we can use the Garden of Eden origin stories as a parable. Those stories not only explain human origins, but textual origins.

Adam, Eve, Children

So the creation story, Adam from the dust, Eve from Adam, then children from them, looks to be a parable of how the text will multiply.

The first document is called 'Adam.' Created 'out of the dust.' Then there is an Eve document. That document is 'taken' from Adam. Then Eve gives birth to other documents.

I first saw the Eve from Adam link in a dream years ago. I thought at the time it would be like a weaving pattern across some sort of fixed panel size, like weaving a net.

My hunch, now that I am more into the museum articles, is that nets are idiomatic for what we today call a cipher. At the core of any manuscript transform is a cipher, though the actual steps are more complex.

So Eve is a cipher from Adam. Eve is not a simple rearrangement of the letters. Any additional children documents will come from Eve, as this Revelation passage suggests. Eve gives birth, not Adam.

This passage in Revelation sees 12 stars on her crown, and that may well be hinting at 12 more documents that are offspring of Eve. Jacob's 12 sons would be a prophetic parallel. David over the 12 tribes is another prophetic parallel.

Trees In Eden

The story of Eden says there are a bunch of 'trees.' Anything from most of the trees may be eaten. In this sense 'information' is like food for the soul. When we read inspired text we feed our souls.

At this point we have another set of trees. They might be like the fig tree. Are these Garden of Eden trees really fig trees? Or, are these Nebuchadnezzar's tree?

Let me suggest the collective set of trees in Eden is the giant tree in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. These trees, together, are the 'food for all' as referenced in his dream.

This is the story that Revelation 12 wants readers to see. The story in Eden is the story of the document structure. Eden is the introduction to the first document. But once we finish reading that document, then there are more. Revelation is the last section of the Adam document. It is preparing us for the works that follow. It looks like Eve is the next tree, or volume, then there are children.

The literary purpose of Revelation is to recover the text so as to be ready to read more volumes. It lands at the end in order to hint at the steps of recovery and then provide an outline. The remainder of Revelation, after chapter 12, appears to do this running forward and topically.

How Many?

So the Eden story itself suggests additional writings. Each tree that can be eaten is perhaps one of these crown stars, or child documents. Though not counted in the Genesis account, something like 12 trees suggests 12 documents. Normally, the 12 tribes are a like a baker's dozen, with a 13th tribe, Dan, hidden in the count.

So far, this would be 1) Adam, 2) Eve, 3-15) children.

Beyond that wold be 16) the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and 14) the tree of life. So there may be 16 additional documents after Adam itself.

I would not recommend eating from the good and evil document, but the world would be a much better place if there was a document that explained how the world's Hivite religion worked. It would be less tricky to understand, for those who want, it would be easier to stay away from.

Further Work

I am speculating here on the route to additional documents. The ciphers themselves come from part of the systems we know now, but will need much more careful 3d design work to understand how those ciphers are precisely specified.

We peaked ahead using a possible Eve cipher a few days ago. We think we get the steps, but we immediately saw the big problem. As I mentioned in the last blog, we need a relatively complete Paleo to English lexicon. We also need paleo search functions, including partial string searches.

To get there, we also need a carefully curated Paleo language bible. We see this as a parallel to the BRB we now have.

We need confidence in the cipher generation process. To get there we need time to generate the rest of the museum pieces so we have some comfort that we know the letter level steps that go into and out of those ciphers.

This is a depressing amount of work and will take much time to complete. But at least we know the way.

More Later,

Phil