Barnaby Jack
Born	Barnaby Michael Douglas Jack 22 November 1977 Auckland, New Zealand
Died	25 July 2013 (aged 35) San Francisco
Nationality	New Zealand
Occupation	hacker, computer security professional and programmer
Known for	ATM jackpot hit at Black Hat

Barnaby Michael Douglas Jack (22 November 1977 – 25 July 2013) was a New Zealand hacker, programmer and computer security expert.^[1] He was known for his presentation at the Black Hat computer security conference in 2010, during which he exploited two ATMs and made them dispense fake paper currency on the stage.^[2] Among his other most notable works were the exploitation of various medical devices, including pacemakers and insulin pumps.^[3]
Jack was renowned among industry experts for his influence in the medical and financial security fields.^[4] In 2012 his testimony led the United States Food And Drug Administration to change regulations regarding wireless medical devices.^[4] At the time of his death, Jack was the Director of Embedded Device Security at IOActive, a computer security firm with headquarters in Seattle and London.^[5][6]

Contents

• 1 "Jackpotting" ATMs
• 2 Insulin pumps
• 3 Pacemakers
• 4 Heart implants
• 5 Death
• 6 References

"Jackpotting" ATMs

At a Black Hat conference in 2010, Jack gave a presentation on "jackpotting", or exploiting automated teller machines to make them dispense cash without withdrawing it from a bank account using a bank card.^[7][8] Jack gave demonstrations of different kinds of attacks involving both physical access to the machines and completely automated remote attacks. In both cases, malware was injected into the operating system of the machines, causing them to dispense currency fraudulently on the attacker's command. During the physical attack on an automated teller machine (ATM) as demonstrated by Jack, the attacker takes advantage of their physical access to the target machine and uses a flash drive loaded with malware to gain unauthorised remote administration access to the machines allowing control over their currency dispensing mechanism. During the remote attack, malware is installed onto the target system via exploited vulnerabilities in the remote management system, most notably the use of default passwords and remote management TCP ports. The attacker then executes the malware, causing the target ATM to dispense a given amount of currency.

Insulin pumps

At the McAfee FOCUS 11 conference in October 2011 in Las Vegas, while working for McAfee Security, Jack first demonstrated the wireless hacking of insulin pumps, one worn by a diabetic friend and another of the same model on a bench set up for demonstration. Interfacing with the pumps with a high-gain antenna, he obtained complete control of the pumps without any prior knowledge of their serial numbers, up to being able to cause the demonstration pump to repeatedly deliver its maximum dose of 25 units until its entire reservoir of 300 units was depleted, amounting to many times a lethal dose if delivered to a typical patient.^[9]
At the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco in February 2012, using a transparent mannequin he demonstrated that he could wirelessly hack the insulin pump from a distance of up to 90 metres using the high-gain antenna.^[10]

Pacemakers

In 2012 Jack demonstrated the ability to assassinate a victim by hacking his pacemaker, a scenario first explored in fiction, and meeting with some disbelief, on the TV series Homeland. In his blog post "Broken Hearts", Jack wrote that the hack was even easier than portrayed: "TV is so ridiculous! You don't need a serial number!"^[11] Jack demonstrated delivering such a deadly electric shock live at the 2012 BreakPoint security conference in Melbourne.^[4]
In the game Watch_Dogs, a similar hack is shown by black hat Aiden Pearce in killing one of the main antagonists.

Heart implants

Jack died a week before he was to give a presentation on hacking heart implants at the Black Hat 2013 conference scheduled to be held in Las Vegas. In a June 2013 interview with Vice, Jack outlined his presentation:^[3]

Barnaby Jack, the director of embedded device security for computer security firm IOActive, developed software that allowed him to remotely send an electric shock to anyone wearing a pacemaker within a 50-foot radius. He also came up with a system that scans for any insulin pumps that communicate wirelessly within 300 feet, allows you to hack into them without needing to know the identification numbers and then sets them to dish out more or less insulin than necessary, sending patients into hypoglycemic shock or ketoacidosis.^[3]

In his presentation, Jack was set to outline vulnerabilities in various medical devices, as well as give safe demonstrations of attacks with which there is "certainly a potential health risk".^[3]

Death

Jack was found dead in a San Francisco apartment on 25 July 2013 by his girlfriend. He was aged 35.^[12][13][14] At the time of his death, he was due to attend a Black Hat Briefings hacking conference in Las Vegas.^[15][16] Black Hat general manager Trey Ford, said "Everyone would agree that the life and work of Barnaby Jack are legendary and irreplaceable", and announced his spot would not be replaced at the conference.^[13] According to the coroner, Jack died of a cocktail of prescription drugs and cocaine.[17]

Wisdom from Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions

Posted on 24 Jun | 0 comments

The revelation of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program reminded me of my earlier presentation at the sixth annual Society for Humanistic Psychology conference. I presented on Lame Deer, a Lakota Sioux medicine man, whose critiques of western culture (circa 1971) and his antidotes that are very similar to those of humanistic psychology.

I want to share his critiques here because it is not inconceivable that the fate of the American Indian might be a fate that all Americans might face with our shrinking civil liberties. In particular, he warns us against the loss of the sacred and the un-sustainability of our environmental actions—something that is apparently just coming to our attention. Lame Deer distinguishes the Indian from the “white man,” but I think it fair to substitute the term “Western Culture,” although we could certainly also use the term “corporate culture.”

Lame Deer sees Western Culture as a soul-sickness

1. Western Culture sees everything as money and is constantly stealing/hoarding.

“You have raped and violated these lands, always saying, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme,’ and never giving anything back. You have despoiled the earth, called things dead that are alive (rocks and minerals) but also ‘domesticated’ animals to the point they have no power, bred animals into ‘toy dogs’ and caged chickens to grow breasts so big they can stand.“ (p 120)

2. The symbols of Western Culture is the cage.

“Square is white man’s symbol: Everything is square your house, office, door, dollar bill, and jail. Your gadgets—TV, radios, washing machine, computers, cars. Everything has sharp corners and edges, blocks of time, even terms for people are ‘straight’ and ‘square’.... You become a prisoner inside all of these boxes.” (p. 111)

“So, you hardly see an eagle these days. The bald eagle is your symbol. You see him on your money, but your money is killing him. When people start killing off their own symbols, they are in a bad way.”

3. Western Culture has domesticated men and women into workers and housewives-who live in neighborhoods but have no community.

“You have not only altered, declawed and malformed your winged and four-legged cousins; you have done it to yourselves. You have changed men into chairmen of the board, into office workers, into time-clock punchers. You have changed women into housewives, a truly fearful creature.” (p. 120) Don’t smoke, don’t leave drink there, don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t….

“To the Indian kid the white boarding school comes as a terrific shock. He is taken from his warm womb to a strange, cold place. It is like being pushed out of a cozy kitchen into a howling blizzard” (p.27).

4. Western Culture hides death and is afraid of death and the world it created.

Americans want to have everything sanitized. No smells! No B.O. or bad breath or feminine odor! “I think white people are so afraid of the world they created they don’t want to see, feel, smell or hear it….You are spreading death, buying and selling death. With all your deodorants, you smell of it, but you are afraid of its reality; you don’t want to face up to it. You have sanitized death…” (p. 121).

5. Western Culture made man into a “consumer” not a human being.

Sioux call white man the “fat-takers” because “[Y]ou have taken the fat of the land. But it does not seem to have agreed with you. Right now you don’t look so healthy—overweight, yes, but not healthy. Americans are bred like stuffed geese—to be consumers, not human beings” (p. 37).

Similarities between Lame Deer’s philosophy and Humanistic Psychology

1. Human life needs meaning, aliveness, and connectivity.

“Why do Indians drink? To forget when the land used to be ours: no highways, factories or fences. Because we are not men we are minors. We can’t own money, paint our houses the color we want. The reservations (instant slums) made us beggars living on handouts, life with no possibility of honor” (p. 74). “If you get a job you have to obey others, never talk back so you drink to forget the person you’ve become…. You drink because you don’t live; you just exist. That might be enough for some people; it is not enough for us” (p. 75). Man needs a pathway to honor (p. 87). “[We need] to gain confidence to run our affairs, to direct our own destiny, to be your own man—that’s what we are striving for” (p. 100).

2. Humans need community=sharing, cooperation, non-ownership, being-with.

“In their own homes Indian children are surrounded with relatives as with a warm blanket. Parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, older brothers and cousins are always fussing over them, playing with them or listening to what they have to say…. Indian children are never alone. If the grown-ups go someplace, the little ones are taken along. Children have their rights just as the adults” (p. 27).

3. Creativity—Visions are the pathway to the creative well. Dreams and making art are sacred paths—not valued in the West.

“Artists are the Indians of the white world. They are called dreamers who live in the clouds, improvident people who can’t hold onto their money, people who don’t want to face ‘reality’” (p. 37). The realm of the imagination is the “world from which I get my visions. I tell you this is the real world, not the Green Frog Skin World. That’s only a bad dream, a streamlined, smog-filled nightmare” (p. 37).

4. Holism—Humans are responsible for their environment, for the animals, and others.

“When we killed a buffalo, we know what we were doing. We apologized to his spirit, tried to make him understand why we did it, honoring with a prayer the bones of those who gave their flesh to keep us alive; praying for their return, praying for the life of our brothers, the buffalo nation…. To us life, all life, is sacred” (p. 121).

“[T]he great spirit pours a great, unimaginable amount of force into all things—pebbles, ants, leaves, whirlwinds—whatever you will. Still there is so much force left over that’s not used up, that is in his gift to bestow, that has to be used wisely and in moderation if we are given some of it” (p. 114).

“We Sioux spend a lot of time thinking about everyday things which in our mind are mixed up with the spiritual. We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life” (p. 107).

“You have love for all that has been placed on this earth, not unlike the love of a mother for her son, or of a son for his mother, but a bigger love which encompasses the whole earth. You are just a human being, afraid, weeping under that blanket, but there is a great space within you to be filled with that love. All of nature can fit in there” (p. 139).

5. Therapy as Freedom seeking—Freedom is finding a path to honor and self-directedness. A person is going to go down a lot of wrong paths. Seeking is an active process. Humans must be multi-dimensional.

“There were still many things I had to be—an outlaw, a prisoner and a roamer, a sheepherder and a bootlegger, a rodeo rider and a medicine man. Still wanted to lead many lives, finding out who I was” (p. 34).

“I was slowly forming an idea of where I wanted to go. I could dimly see my place, but I could also see a number of different roads leading up to it and I did not yet know which one to take. So I tried them all, coming to many dead ends” (p. 34).

“You have to be God and devil, both of them. Being a good medicine man means being right in the midst of the turmoil, not shielding yourself from it. It means experience life in all its phases. It means not being afraid of cutting up and playing the fool now and then. That’s sacred too…. Sometimes the bad side gives me more knowledge than the good side (p. 76).

6. Therapy as Healing—not one method. Healer learns the basics from teachers/tradition but must find own path to help others.

“You are sacrificing yourself here to be a medicine man. In time you will be one. You will teach other medicine men. We are the fowl people….You will learn about herbs and roots, and you will heal people. You will ask them for nothing in return. A man’s life is short. Make yours a worthy one” (p. 6).

The final quote is from another Medicine Man, Peter Catches. Here, he talks about becoming who you are:

“We live off nature, my wife and I; we hardly need anything. We will somehow live. The Great Spirit … takes care of me, waters me, feeds me and makes me live with the plants and animals as one of them. This is how I wish to remain, an Indian, all the days of my life. This does not mean that I want to shut myself off. Somehow many people find their way to my cabin. I like this. I want to be in communication, reach out to people everywhere, impart a little of our Indian way….

“At the same time, I want to withdraw further and further away from everything, to live like the ancient ones…. Someday I’ll still move my cabin farther into the hills, maybe do without a cabin altogether become part of the woods. There the spirit still has something for us to discover—an herb, a sprig, a flower… and you can spend a long time in its contemplation thinking about it….

“So as I get older, I burrow more and more into the hills. The Great Spirit made them for us, for me. I want to blend with them, shrink into them and finally, disappear in them” (p. 140-1).

References
Lame Deer & Erodes, R. (1994). Lame Deer, seeker of visions. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

-- Richard Bargdill

Dialogues

Colonialism in North America did not stop with the Revolution of 1776. It had new names: "Westward expansion", "Manifest Destiny"; but those who were called pioneers still did the same things based on the same values that caused colonialism in the first place. The text, Lame Deer Seeker of Visions was originally published in 1972 and is the story of both Lame Deer and the Lakota nation as they were affected by our expansion. It gives us the history and brings us up to date on the continued oppression of America's native population. The Authors John (Fire) Lame Deer was born around the turn of the last century on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. He is a full-blooded Sioux and has been many things in his life including a rodeo clown, a painter, a sheep herd, and a thief. Above all, though, he was a Lakota holy man. Richard Erdoes was born in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. He would read books that, though not historically accurate, cast American Indians in the role of hero. After he grew up, he moved to the United States to escape Nazi rule. He met Lame Deer during Martin Luther King Jr.'s peace march in New York city in 1967. This was the beginning of the collaboration that would last the next four years. Richard has since written several more books. In Lame Deer, we are seeing the result of five hundred years of colonization and expansion on one person. It relates directly toMorning Girl because of the ending when Columbus lands on the island. The epilogue which is an excerpt from Columbus' journal reflects the same ideals which the Lakota people have to deal with even in the twentieth century: "a people who would better be freed [from error] and be converted to our Holy Faith by love than by force" (Dorris, 95). Although we are no longer converting to the 'Holy Faith', there are still attempts to civilize the native people. The idea conversion of ideals is prevalent in Lame Deer, as he spent much of his youth in schools sponsored by the BIA (Bureau of Indian Affairs) being forced to learn American language and ways. This relates to themes in Robinson Crusoe, and The Life of Olaudah Equiano. Robinson Crusoe tries to convert Friday, the native he saves, by teaching him the bible. The Equiano relates his conversion and learning civilized behavior. Both books seem to put conversion in a good light, but one must consider the audience they were meant for: Robinson Crusoe was meant for white Europeans that believed in the same things, and Equiano was meant for English parliament. One other book that relates the attempted civilization of a savage is Tarzan of the Apes. Although in this case it is a white noble, Lord Greystoke, that is raised by apes. Conversion and civilization relates to religious ideals of both the colonizers and those colonized. Lame Deer states that the "religion" of his people is more an inherent thing. It is even shown in their symbolism: "What appears commonplace to you seems wondrous to us through symbolism. This is funny because we don't even have a word for symbolism, yet we are all wrapped up in it" (Lame Deer, 108). Christian ideals supported conversion as a reason for colonization.

Top   Notes

Lame Deer begins by recounting his vision quest and naming. He uses this story to move into his own childhood and family history. He says, "I am a medicine man and I want to talk about visions, spirits, and sacred things. But you must know something about the man Lame Deer before you can understand the medicine man Lame Deer" (Lame Deer, 8). Lame Deer's childhood was spent on the reservations growing up with his grandparents in a traditional manner. He did not even have contact with a white man until he was five. As he got older and tales of a bogeyman did not scare him anymore, his grandparents would say, "go to sleep or the Wasicun will get you." Unfortunately, eventually they did. Sometime between six and seven (the book is not specific as to when) Lame Deer was sent to white man's school for the first time. He describes it as being very militaristic. At fourteen he was sent to boarding school which was a real horror for him as he had never been away from his family. In the book, he also talks about the "Green Frog Skin" or money. He explains that in his native culture there is no concept of money, that's why so many of his people have trouble with it. He talks a lot about how we cling to it and how much better things would be without it, stating many specific troubles it has caused. After a bit about his adult life, the book takes a turn to the present (late 1960's). It weaves it's way in between Lame Deer's talks with Richard Erdoes and bits about his life. There are many bits that help to learn about his culture and people. The book ends with a brief autobiography of Richard Erdoes, telling how he came to meet Lame Deer. Richard has an equally colorful background with his history and bouncing from relative to relative with different religious denominations in Europe.

Top   Links

***Pineridge This is a very well put together site that used a linked timeline to detail the history of the Lakota nation. It's use of the Internet medium and graphics in the new version would be very useful for teaching younger groups. It also includes the old version for less advanced systems which is equally well made. ***White Buffalo Calf Woman Online version of the story of how White Buffalo Calf Woman brings the first pipe as told by Lame Deer. This is a very important story as the pipe is central to Lakota sacred tradition. It also includes links to other sites and stories. **Trophies of Honor Online gallery of indigenous art. Most of our exposure to native art today is tourist crafts like blankets, and dreamcatchers. This site shows that native arts are alive and accessible. **Tribute Oglala Lakota Sioux history This site tells about some important points of Oglala Lakota Sioux History. It is well written and includes links to other pertinent sites. *New Advent History of the Sioux

Top   Teaching

Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions is a good way to help students understand the history of the Lakota people. It can also be taught as a way to understand the plight of Native Americans in a modern context. It should be understood that the book is also a potent personal narrative. It can be used to help take away the "stoic Indian" stereotype because Lame Deer is very human and his sense of humor shows through in the book. Students may even be asked if they can identify with him or different parts of the narrative.

Top   Citations

Lame Deer, John; Erdoes, Richard . Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions. Washington Square Press, 1994. Dorris, Michael. Morning Girl. New York, United States: Hyperion, 1999.

Ancient Confession Found: "We invented Jesus Christ"

Posted on October 9, 2013 by John Oakes

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Ancient Confession Found:  ‘We Invented Jesus Christ.’

A new “theory” to explain the genesis of Christianity is making the rounds of skeptic websites and will soon appear at a college or university near you. It is found in a recent documentary by Joseph Altwill “The Roman Conspiracy to Invent Jesus”  I would like to present some of the claims of Joseph Altwill and his colleagues as well as a refutation of this theory.  See below.

Here is a quote used as a come-on for a conference to be held in London October 19, 2013:

American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. His presentation will be part of a one-day symposium entitled “Covert Messiah” at Conway Hall in Holborn.

Altwill and friends such as “fellow scholar” Kenneth Humphreys, author of the book “Jesus Never Existed” have devised a new theory to explain the genesis of Christianity.  According to Altwill, the Christian movement was the product of a conspiracy of the Flavian monarchs, looking for a means to produce a morepassive and manipulatable populace.  They propose that there never was a Jewish man named Jesus Christ, that he, obviously, never performed miracles, never taught the ethic attributed to him in the New Testament, that he did not fulfill biblical prophecies and that he did not die by crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.  Is this a believable proposal?   Is it even a scholarly proposal at all?  Here is another statement of Altwill’s

The latest in Biblical scholarship has now uncovered new evidence that provides a disturbing explanation: Christianity never strayed; Jesus Christ is a fabricated cover story for an Imperial psychological warfare operation born out of the First Jewish-Roman War in the first century.

Let’s stop here.  What Altwill and friends like the enigmatic Acharya S. are proposing is that Jesus never lived.  Not only that, but the apostles Peter, James and John also never lived.  Neither did Paul for that matter, because according to Altwill, the New Testament was written by Roman aristocrats some time after the Jewish wars—presumably after AD 80, and therefor after Peter James and Peter died.  This would mean that the Christian Church itself also did not exist until perhaps AD 100 at the very earliest.  We can see immediately that this theory is absolute, utter nonsense.  No responsible scholar is prepared to propose that Paul never lived.  We have reports about Christians in the first century.  Nero was reported by Tacitus to have killed Christians for starting the fire in Rome in AD 63.  Tacitus, an otherwise reliable historian tells us that the Christians followed a man named Chrestus and that they were making a stir all over the Roman Empire in the first century.  This theory does not even deserve serious consideration.  In fact it is a blatant lie and to hold to this theory requires that one either be ignorant of history and suspend any shred of common sense.   It is a fact that Domitian outlawed Christianity in AD 95.  According to this theory there was nothing to outlaw in AD 95.  According to this theory Domitian was part of the clique which created Christianity, yet the fact is that he did everything in his power to destroy Christianity.  Here is a fact.  By the early second century there were thousands of followers of Jesus who willingly offered their lives because of a belief in a person who they knew, from eyewitness accounts, had died in Jerusalem and had fulfilled many of the messianic prophecies.

According to this viewpoint, the New Testament was the product of Roman, pagan writers.  I challenge anyone to read Hebrews or Matthew or John or Revelation and to propose with a straight face that a non-Jew wrote these books.  Papias, in AD 125, tells us that he knew John personally, and that he died in Ephesus.  Irenaeus tells us that he knew Polycarp who knew John personally.   Our friend Joseph Altwill says that the very existence of John is a myth.   Also, the person that John gave his life for was a myth as well.   Thousands of people sacrificed their life because of persecution for following Jesus Christ in the first century, as evidenced by those who experienced this persecution, such as Polycarp, but Joseph Altwill says that, not only were they nor persecuted, they did not even exist.  Remember, this theory posits that the very existence of Jesus was not even proposed until at least AD 80.   Does any kind of logic at all have thousands giving up everything, abandoning life and livelihood for an idea fabricated by a vague set of unidentified authors?  Who did they read their scriptures to?  Where did they do this?  This is absolute nonsense and it is ludicrous to even propose that we ought to accept this junk “scholarship.”  Yet, these people have the audacity to propose that this is a scholarly theory.

Let us look at some of the details, again using quotes from their website.

In their greatest victory, the messianic Jews finally succeeded in burning Rome and driving the Romans out of Judea.

So the Jews burned Rome?  Do we have evidence for this?  Of course not.  This is sheer fabrication, invented to support a theory which is based, literally, on not a single fact.

Why was the religion headquartered in Rome?

Joseph Altwill and his friends are trying to claim that Rome created Christianity and that it was founded in Rome.  Never mind that the heartland of Christian population was in Egypt, Palestine, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.  They want us to believe that it was headquartered in Rome.  Is that true?  Rome was a relatively minor church in the first century.  By the middle of the second century it had grown and become prominent, but it was not even close to being the most prominent church.  The churches in Ephesus, Antioch and Alexandria were far larger and more prominent.  Even in the fourth century, when Rome became a prominent church, Christianity was not headquartered in Rome.  Even at this time, Carthage, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Antioch and Ephesus were of equal power and authority in the church.  Even in the Middle Ages, when Rome clearly became the dominant church in the West, the churches in Constantinople and Antioch did not acknowledge leadership of Rome. 

Here is the essence of this “theory:”

In order to pacify the Jewish rebellion, they [the Flavian rulers such as Vespasian, Titus and Domitian] captured and burned all the Jews’ scriptures. It is around this time that a new literature emerged with the story of a very different Jewish Messiah – one who preached “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, “turn the other cheek”, and “love your enemy”. The Bible scholars deconstruct the Gospels and the character Jesus, showing that they are based on archetypes found in the ancient pagan mystery schools and in earlier Jewish literature. Much of the teachings of Christianity are traced back to the writings of Philo of Alexandria — who was combining Jewish scripture with Greek pagan beliefs — and Stoicism, a philosophy promoted by the Flavians. When the Flavians seized control of the Roman Empire, they needed to legitimise their rule, so they had their Jewish court historian Josephus (originally Yosef ben Matityahu who adopted the name Titus Flavius Josephus) create a large body of work which became the only official history we have of the Jewish-Roman War.

Really?  All the Jewish scriptures were burned?  Is there some evidence for this?  Is there even a tiny scrap of evidence for this totally unfounded claim?  This is sheer utter nonsense, invented for a purpose and that purpose certainly is not so as to discover truth!  The claim is that the Flavian aristocracy secretly wrote a very convincingly Jewish set of writings and leaked them out to Roman people.  Josephus wrote the gospel of John? He also wrote Matthew and Mark and Luke?  Why did he write four gospels?   So that he could cover up for the fact that there was just one author of the Bible?  Forgive me, folks, but one will have to be extremely gullible to accept this ridiculous proposal!  According to Altwill, for some unknown reason, tens and even hundreds of thousands of people accepted these writings, of unknown source, and committed their very lives to a person who never even existed.  They committed to apostolic traditions handed down by apostles who never even existed.  Are we really expected to believe this laughable proposal?  The claim is that they created this pretend religion in order to create a more manipulatable populace.   Then, Domitian did his very best to destroy the group he had just created by persecuting it (at least according to these Altwill and friends).  

One would hope that Altwill would have some evidence to support his massive conspiracy theory.  One would be sadly mistaken.  Altwill has literally not a single piece of evidence that the New Testament was written by a Roman conspiratorial plagiarist.  His only supposed “evidence” is parallels he finds between the events of Josephus’ book  “The Jewish Wars” and the gospel stories.  In other words, he purports to have found striking parallels between the gospel story and the story of the Jewish wars.  This proves that the gospel stories are pure fabrications.

Bible scholar Joseph Atwill noticed many parallels between this historic account of the war and the events in the life of Jesus in the Gospels. Through his study of the ancient Greek texts and his discovery of an antiquated Hebrew literary genre, he found dozens of parallels between the Jesus story and the war history that occurred in the exact same sequence. This shows that the events of Jesus’ life which supposedly took place forty years earlier, were actually all dependent on the events in the military campaign of the Roman Caesar Titus Flavius. Ancient texts were much more allegorical, multi-layered and complex than today’s writing, and when you read the Gospels and the histories of Josephus side by side, a new meaning arises which reveals the authors of the Gospels to be the Roman Flavian Caesars, their co-conspirators, and their literary team.

This is not a brand new approach.  It is a logical fallacy sometimes called argument by scenario.  In this approach to supporting a theory one creates a scenario and then proceeds, having assumed the answer, to find “parallels” in the writings of others which support the scenario.  This is called eisegesis (reading into a text) as opposed to exegesis (taking facts from a text).   If one has a totally speculative theory of history, literally without a single shred of actual physical or even historical evidence, one creates a scenario and says, “If I am right, then I will find such and such.”  Then one proceeds to find such parallels.  History tells us that the search for such parallels will bear fruit if one selectively searches long enough.  The search for parallels between the book of Revelation and present-day events has led to similar bogus theories that Revelation is about events of the day.  This has been applied by every generation since at least the Middle Ages, but such argument by scenario is based on a false kind of reasoning and should be rejected out of hand.  What is the name of the members of this “literary team”? 

Joseph Altwill’s theory is based on the thinnest of possible ice, even for a highly speculative scenario-based theory.  Add to that, it requires us to believe things which are, historically, utter nonsense and completely nonsensical.

Altwill actually does have one other piece of “evidence” that Romans conspirators wrote the New Testament:

Along the way, the Bible scholars show how the Roman Imperial Cult — set up to worship Caesar as a god — formed the basis for the Roman Catholic Church, and that some of the Church’s first saints were members of the Flavian court.

We can concede that the later Roman Catholic Church did incorporate some of the trappings of the Imperial court.  However, history tells us that this incorporation began in the fourth century, not the first century.  A brief glance at the New Testament, for example at the book of 1 or 2 Timothy will prove beyond doubt that the New Testament proposal for the organization of the church did not follow the Roman model at all. Quite the contrary!  The historical fact is that the church later incorporates some of the trappings of Roman government and this “evidence” actually disproves rather than supports the claims of Altwill et al.

Why would anyone create this kind of junk scholarship?  It is always tricky to induce motives of others, especially when we have not met them personally, but Joseph Altwill exposes his motives for creating this bogus theory so that we do not have to guess at his motives.  The motives of these enemies of Christianity is made clear from the quotes from Altwill below:

Is this the beginning of the end of Christianity? “Probably not,” grants Atwill, “but what my work has done is give permission to many of those ready to leave the religion to make a clean break. We’ve got the evidence now to show exactly where the story of Jesus came from. Although Christianity can be a comfort to some, it can also be very damaging and repressive, an insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history. To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East.”

It is our hope that audiences will open up to the possibility that the history written in official books is not always actual fact, and that religion is often used as a political tool to control the populace, even to this day.

No doubt, Christianity has done a lot of good for the world, but a lot of bad has come from its most dogmatic believers, who create wars, hatred, and other harm under the disguise of religion. In studying how Christianity emerged, the seven

From these quotes it is clear that Altwill is philosophically opposed to Christianity (or perhaps to some of the things done in the name of Christianity which would not be supported by the teachings of Jesus Christ).  Altwill believes that Christians are “dogmatic believers who create wars hatred and other harm under the disguise of religion.”  We can concede that some of this behavior has been done in the name of Jesus, but that the Jesus of the Bible would not support such actions for a secone.  What we see here is the REAL reason Altwill came up with this ludicrous scenario/theory.  It is because he hates Christianity as it is practiced today.  He has political and philosophical, not historical reasons for inventing this outrageous unsupportable theory.

Altwill sophmorically says:  “I present my work with some ambivalence, as I do not want to directly cause Christians any harm,”  Are we expected to believe this “spin?”  Let us not be fooled by such deceptive statements.  Altwill absolutely intends to do whatever harm to faith in Jesus Christ that he possibly can.  Let us do the world a favor and expose the lies and deceptions being presented as “scholarship” to an uninformed public.

John Oakes

10/9/2013

The Ancient Mysteries and Secret Societies

Which Have Influenced Modern Masonic Symbolism

p. 21
WHEN confronted with a problem involving the use of the reasoning faculties, individuals of strong intellect keep their poise, and seek to reach a solution by obtaining facts bearing upon the question. Those of immature mentality, on the other hand, when similarly confronted, are overwhelmed. While the former may be qualified to solve the riddle of their own destiny, the latter must be led like a flock of sheep and taught in simple language. They depend almost entirely upon the ministrations of the shepherd. The Apostle Paul said that these little ones must be fed with milk, but that meat is the food of strong men. Thoughtlessness is almost synonymous with childishness, while thoughtfulness is symbolic of maturity.
There are, however, but few mature minds in the world; and thus it was that the philosophic-religious doctrines of the pagans were divided to meet the needs of these two fundamental groups of human intellect--one philosophic, the other incapable of appreciating the deeper mysteries of life. To the discerning few were revealed theesoteric, or spiritual, teachings, while the unqualified many received only the literal, or exoteric, interpretations. In order to make simple the great truths of Nature and the abstract principles of natural law, the vital forces of the universe were personified, becoming the gods and goddesses of the ancient mythologies. While the ignorant multitudes brought their offerings to the altars of Priapus and Pan (deities representing the procreative energies), the wise recognized in these marble statues only symbolic concretions of great abstract truths.
In all cities of the ancient world were temples for public worship and offering. In every community also were philosophers and mystics, deeply versed in Nature's lore. These individuals were usually banded together, forming seclusive philosophic and religious schools. The more important of these groups were known as the Mysteries. Many of the great minds of antiquity were initiated into these secret fraternities by strange and mysterious rites, some of which were extremely cruel. Alexander Wilder defines the Mysteries as "Sacred dramas performed at stated periods. The most celebrated were those of Isis, Sabazius, Cybele, and Eleusis." After being admitted, the initiates were instructed in the secret wisdom which had been preserved for ages. Plato, an initiate of one of these sacred orders, was severely criticized because in his writings he revealed to the public many of the secret philosophic principles of the Mysteries.
Every pagan nation had (and has) not only its state religion, but another into which the philosophic elect alone have gained entrance. Many of these ancient cults vanished from the earth without revealing their secrets, but a few have survived the test of ages and their mysterious symbols are still preserved. Much of the ritualism of Freemasonry is based on the trials to which candidates were subjected by the ancient hierophants before the keys of wisdom were entrusted to them.
Few realize the extent to which the ancient secret schools influenced contemporary intellects and, through those minds, posterity. Robert Macoy, 33°, in his General History of Freemasonry, pays a magnificent tribute to the part played by the ancient Mysteries in the rearing of the edifice of human culture. He says, in part: "It appears that all the perfection of civilization, and all the advancement made in philosophy, science, and art among the ancients are due to those institutions which, under the veil of mystery, sought to illustrate the sublimest truths of religion, morality, and virtue, and impress them on the hearts of their disciples.* * * Their chief object was to teach the doctrine of one God, the resurrection of man to eternal life, the dignity of the human soul, and to lead the people to see the shadow of the deity, in the beauty, magnificence, and splendor of the universe."
With the decline of virtue, which has preceded the destruction of every nation of history, the Mysteries became perverted. Sorcery took the place of the divine magic. Indescribable practices (such as the Bacchanalia) were introduced, and perversion ruled supreme; for no institution can be any better than the members of which it is composed. In despair, the few who were true sought to preserve the secret doctrines from oblivion. In some cases they succeeded, but more often the arcanum was lost and only the empty shell of the Mysteries remained.
Thomas Taylor has written, "Man is naturally a religious animal." From the earliest dawning of his consciousness, man has worshiped and revered things as symbolic of the invisible, omnipresent, indescribable Thing, concerning which he could discover practically nothing. The pagan Mysteries opposed the Christians during the early centuries of their church, declaring that the new faith (Christianity) did not demand virtue and integrity as requisites for salvation. Celsus expressed himself on the subject in the following caustic terms:
"That I do not, however, accuse the Christians more bitterly than truth compels, may be conjectured from hence, that the cryers who call men to other mysteries proclaim as follows: 'Let him approach whose hands are pure, and whose words are wise.' And again, others proclaim: 'Let him approach who is pure from all wickedness, whose soul is not conscious of any evil, and who leads a just and upright life.' And these things are proclaimed by those who promise a purification from error. Let us now hear who those are that are called to the Christian mysteries: Whoever is a sinner, whoever is unwise, whoever is a fool, and whoever, in short, is miserable, him the kingdom of God will receive. Do you not, therefore, call a sinner, an unjust man, a thief, a housebreaker, a wizard, one who is sacrilegious, and a robber of sepulchres? What other persons would the cryer nominate, who should call robbers together?"
It was not the true faith of the early Christian mystics that Celsus attacked, but the false forms that were creeping in even during his day. The ideals of early Christianity were based upon the high moral standards of the pagan Mysteries, and the first Christians who met under the city of Rome used as their places of worship the subterranean temples of Mithras, from whose cult has been borrowed much of the sacerdotalism of the modem church.
The ancient philosophers believed that no man could live intelligently who did not have a fundamental knowledge of Nature and her laws. Before man can obey, he must understand, and the Mysteries were devoted to instructing man concerning the operation of divine law in the terrestrial sphere. Few of the early cults actually worshiped anthropomorphic deities, although their symbolism might lead one to believe they did. They were moralistic rather than religionistic; philosophic rather than theologic. They taught man to use his faculties more intelligently, to be patient in the face of adversity, to be courageous when confronted by danger, to be true in the midst of temptation, and, most of all, to view a worthy life as the most acceptable sacrifice to God, and his body as an altar sacred to the Deity.
Sun worship played an important part in nearly all the early pagan Mysteries. This indicates the probability of their Atlantean origin, for the people of Atlantis were sun worshipers. The Solar Deity was usually personified as a beautiful youth, with long golden hair to symbolize the rays of the sun. This golden Sun God was slain by wicked ruffians, who personified the evil principle of the universe. By means of certain rituals and ceremonies, symbolic of purification and regeneration, this wonderful God of Good was brought back to life and became the Savior of His people. The secret processes whereby He was resurrected symbolized those cultures by means of which man is able to overcome his lower nature, master his appetites, and give expression to the higher side of himself. The Mysteries were organized for the purpose of assisting the struggling human creature to reawaken the spiritual powers which, surrounded by the flaming

Click to enlarge
A FEMALE HIEROPHANT OF THE MYSTERIES.

From Montfaucon's Antiquities.

This illustration shows Cybele, here called the Syrian Goddess, in the robes of a hierophant. Montfaucon describes the figure as follows: "Upon her head is an episcopal mitre, adorned on the lower part with towers and pinnacles; over the gate of the city is a crescent, and beneath the circuit of the walls a crown of rays. The Goddess wears a sort of surplice, exactly like the surplice of a priest or bishop; and upon the surplice a tunic, which falls down to the legs; and over all an episcopal cope, with the twelve signs of the Zodiac wrought on the borders. The figure hath a lion on each side, and holds in its left hand a Tympanum, a Sistrum, a Distaff, a Caduceus, and another instrument. In her right hand she holds with her middle finger a thunderbolt, and upon the same am animals, insects, and, as far as we may guess, flowers, fruit, a bow, a quiver, a torch, and a scythe." The whereabouts of the statue is unknown, the copy reproduced by Montfaucon being from drawings by Pirro Ligorio.
p. 22
ring of lust and degeneracy, lay asleep within his soul. In other words, man was offered a way by which he could regain his lost estate. (See Wagner's Siegfried.)
In the ancient world, nearly all the secret societies were philosophic and religious. During the mediæval centuries, they were chiefly religious and political, although a few philosophic schools remained. In modern times, secret societies, in the Occidental countries, are largely political or fraternal, although in a few of them, as in Masonry, the ancient religious and philosophic principles still survive.
Space prohibits a detailed discussion of the secret schools. There were literally scores of these ancient cults, with branches in all parts of the Eastern and Western worlds. Some, such as those of Pythagoras and the Hermetists, show a decided Oriental influence, while the Rosicrucians, according to their own proclamations, gained much of their wisdom from Arabian mystics. Although the Mystery schools are usually associated with civilization, there is evidence that the most uncivilized peoples of prehistoric times had a knowledge of them. Natives of distant islands, many in the lowest forms of savagery, have mystic rituals and secret practices which, although primitive, are of a decided Masonic tinge.

THE DRUIDIC MYSTERIES OF BRITAIN AND GAUL

GODFREY HIGGINS AND HIS ANACALYPSIS
In 1813, a Yorkshire magistrate found the defendant in an assault case to be insane, and ordered
that he should be sent to the public lunatic asylum in York. Sometime afterwards, the magistrate
found that the man had been badly treated while he was in the asylum, and decided to investigate
conditions there. He was appalled by what he found: ‘When the door was opened, I went into the
passage and found four cells, I think, of about eight feet square, in a very horrid and filthy
situation. The straw appeared to be almost saturated with urine and excrement. There was some
bedding laid upon the straw in one cell, in the others only loose straw … The walls were daubed
with excrement … I then went upstairs and [the keeper] showed me a room which I caused him
to measure, and the size of which he told me was twelve feet by seven feet and ten inches, and in
there were thirteen women…’
The magistrate also found evidence of massive embezzlement of funds by the asylum’s staff, the
excessive use of chains and other forms of restraint, and the rape and even murder of some of the
inmates. He wrote to the press exposing the conditions within the asylum. This prompted a
campaign to reform the asylum and led to a parliamentary commission to investigate the
conditions in local lunatic asylums. The campaign to expose the abuses at York is considered a
turning point in the modern history of the treatment of mental illness.
The kind­hearted Yorkshire magistrate who became the champion of the inmates of the York
asylum was Godfrey Higgins (1773­1833), one of the most remarkable English freemasons, now
largely forgotten. Higgins was a member of the Yorkshire gentry whose family owned the house of
Skellow Grange in Doncaster. Higgins studied at Cambridge and was admitted to the Inner Temple
in 1794, but not called to the bar. When Napoleon threatened invasion, he joined the 3rd West
Yorkshire Militia, and served as a major from 1803­11. Eventually, ill­health forced him to resign
his commission. He took an interest in radical politics, campaigning for the abolition of the Corn
Laws and the laws protecting game. He was also active in promoting the cause of parliamentary
reform. In 1831, Higgins was asked by some of the radical political unions in Yorkshire to stand for
parliament, but he refused.
The reason for Higgins’s reluctance to stand for parliament was that he was immersed in some
demanding studies. As a result of his illness, he determined to devote himself to the study of
philosophy. He decided to investigate the evidence for Christianity. This developed into a study of
all religions, and eventually became an investigation of the origins of language and nations. Higgins
ruefully recollected that ‘Ultimately I came to a resolution to devote six hours a day to this pursuit
for ten years. Instead of six hours daily for ten years, I believe I have, upon the average, applied
myself to it for nearly ten hours daily for almost twenty years. In the first ten years of my search I
may fairly say, I found nothing which I sought for; in the later part of the twenty, the quantity of
matter has so crowded upon me, that I scarcely know how to dispose of it’.

Higgins’s publications on the history of religion nowadays appear extremely eccentric, but they are
important in understanding many aspects of British radical thought and have had a profound
influence on esoteric and new age movements right up to the present day. Higgins’s books
fascinated many masonic writers during the nineteenth century. Higgins himself became a
Freemason to further his researches, reporting his findings to the Duke of Sussex.
The Library and Museum of Freemasonry has recently purchased a remarkable copy of Higgins’s
magnum opus, Anacalypsis, which sheds new light on the means by which Higgins’s work was
circulated and received in British radical circles in the first part of the nineteenth century.
Moreover, this copy of Anacalypsis contains extraordinary new evidence showing how Higgins
formed a link between the highest echelons of English Freemasonry, including the Duke of Sussex
himself, and radical writers such as the notorious atheist Richard Carlile (1790­1843) who were at
that time publishing copies of masonic rituals and claiming that Freemasonry was a remnant of
true religion and Christianity was a blasphemous confidence trick.
In 1819, Carlile had been imprisoned in Dorchester gaol for publishing Thomas Paine’s Age of
Reason. Far from languishing in prison, Carlile used his imprisonment to continue his campaign for
freedom of speech, and published from his prison room his pioneering working­class journal, The
Republican. In 1825, he devoted most of the twelfth volume of The Republican to an exposure of
masonic rituals. In its original form, Carlile’s attack on Freemasonry simply mocked a leisure
pursuit favoured by the aristocracy and middle classes. However, some years later, rereading
Thomas Paine’s essay on the origin of Freemasonry, Carlile realised that his initial dismissal of
Freemasonry had been overhasty. He wondered whether, as Paine suggested, Freemasonry might
contain elements of the ancient religion of which Christianity was a perversion. Reprinting his
original collection of masonic ritual as A Manual of Freemasonry, he argued that Freemasonry held
the key to recovering the ancient science of the zodiac which lay at the root of all religion. Carlile
was joined in his campaign to use Freemasonry to overthrow Christianity by Robert Taylor (1784­
1844), a renegade clergyman known as the Devil’s Chaplain. Taylor preached sermons on the true
nature of Freemasonry, and with Carlile planned public performances of masonic rituals.
In the introduction to his Manual of Freemasonry, Carlile states that in 1830 Godfrey Higgins
‘observed to me, without explanation, that there were but two masons in England – himself and
the Duke of Sussex’. Carlile replied to Higgins that there were also two other masons, namely
Carlile and Taylor. Higgins ‘asked me to explain, on condition that he was not to commit himself by
any observation. I did so, as here set forth. He smiled and withdrew’. Carlile’s account of this
conversation is slightly mysterious. What did Higgins mean by his claim? What exactly were the
nature of Carlile’s links with Higgins, and how far was he influenced by Higgins’s work? Some
answers to these questions are provided by the Library and Museum of Freemasonry’s newlyacquired
copy of Anacalypsis.

The RIG VEDA translated by Ralph T.H. Griffith, 1889.
Peter Myers, January 15, 2002; update April 10, 2012.
My comments are shown {thus}.
Write to me at contact.html.
You are at http://mailstar.net/rig-veda.html.
The Greeks acquired civilization from Egypt, the Phoenicians, Babylon etc., i.e. the "Aryan myth" that Civilization is Aryan is wrong.
The Aryans were nomadic tribal peoples, barbarian invaders. They learned civilization from the people they conquered, in India, Iran and the Mediterranean.
But there was an Aryan invasion. The name for Persia, "Iran", is derived from the word "aryan", as is the word "Eire", the name of Ireland. The Brahmins of India still call themselves "aryan".
The Aryans invaded Western Europe, but they formed a ruling class, an aristocracy, not the whole body of the people. They imposed their languages, as Hungary and Turkey received non-Indo-European languages by invasion (Finland perhaps too).
Spencer Wells is a Geneticist, Director of the Genographic Project. In his book The Journey of Man, he shows that Europe's ancestry derives mainly from people in that continent around 30,000 years ago; not from early agriculturalists in the Middle East. He discovered a genetic marker, M17, which is the signature of the Aryan invaders from the steppe into east & central Europe and northern India: wells-genetics.html.
(1) Background to the Rig Veda
(2) The Rig Veda & the Aryan invasion of India
(3) Selections from the Rig Veda
(4) Qualification
(5) A reader's comment: do legends of the Centaurs refer to the Aryan invaders? (6) Evidence from Elman R. Service, A. L. Basham, Bridget and Raymond Allchin, and William H. McNeill
(7) Views from Below: Studies on the Aryan Invasion, and Hinduism, by Sudras, Tamils & Dravidians
(8) The Dravidian-Tamil-Sudra-Dalit movement aiming to secede from India
(9) Martin Bernal on the Aryan Invasion
(10) A. L. Basham on the Aryan Invasion
(11) Jawaharlal Nehru on the Aryan Invasion
(12) ADDED April 9, 2012: Aryans displaced Dravidians in north India, but Dravidians displaced Tribals in south India
(1) Background to the Rig Veda
"The Rig Veda is a collection of more than a thousand hymns written between 1200 and 900 B.C. by people known as Aryans, who came to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India from the Eurasian steppes to the north. The Rig Veda is one of the earliest known writings written in any Indo-European language.
"Chariots were developed before 3000 B.C. and offered a warrior a stable platform from which to shoot arrows and cast spears at his enemies. The horse, which was domesticated probably a 1000 years earlier in the western steppes was also of great importance to the people who wrote the Rig Veda because the horse-riding warrior was able to easily maneuver around his foot-soldier enemy."
From the Hartwick College site, David Anthony and the Institute for Ancient Equestrian Studies: http://users.hartwick.edu/~hartleyc/surya.htm.
More from this source, at http://users.hartwick.edu/~iaes/Russia.htm:
In the Late Bronze Age (LBA), " ... between 2000 and 1700 BCE, a complex of broadly shared cultural traits spread across the Eurasian steppes. These traits included similar agro/pastoral economies, pottery and weapon styles, house and settlement types, and mortuary rituals. For the first time in history, broadly similar cultures occupied the steppes from the borders of China to the edges of Europe, creating a transcontinental interaction zone.
"The western aspect of this zone is known as the Timber-Grave (or Srubnaya) culture. The Srubnaya people were horse-riding cattle and sheep herders who occupied the steppes from the Ural Mts. westward to the Dnieper River in Ukraine between about 1900/1800-1300/1200 BCE (calibrated) ... most of the Srubnaya people lived most of the time in wagon and tent camps. The mobile way of life that created this archaeological pattern in the southern steppes was not new - it continued from the Early Bronze Age (EBA) and Middle Bronze Age (MBA). ... The earlier EBA and MBA cultures of this region are known only from their burial sites.
"Large-scale mining and metal production might have provided trade commodities that brought steppe populations into complex relations with each other and with settled societies beyond the steppe, creating a more stable pattern of regional LBA power centers and more permanent settlements within them."
Joseph Needham and David Anthony on Cultural Diffusion across the steppes ofter 2000 BC: needham-anthony.html.
One branch of the Indo-Europeans, the Tocharians, lived in Xinjiang; their "mummies" have been excavated. Through them, the chariot reached China. Later, ideas & techniques flowed the other way too (on the Silk Road).
See Victor H Mair (ed), The Bronze Age & Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia, volume 1 (1998). This book comprises the papers given by various experts at a recent symposium, which included Chinese scholars.
(2) The Rig Veda & the Aryan invasion of India
The Harappan civilization was bigger in extent than either Egypt's or Sumeria's. It was a literate civilization in communication with Sumeria. After the Aryan invasion, literacy was wiped out, and did not reappear for another 1,000 years or so, when a new script was borrowed from outside.
Thor Heyerdahl believed that Harappa had been in contact with both Sumeria and Egypt, the three consiituting a civilizational triangle. To show that it was possible, he sailed a reed boat from the Tigris River (Sumeria) to the Indus River (Harappa) and thence to Djibouti, where he stopped because of the war raging in the horn of Africa.
The story is the subject of his book The Tigris Expedition, and it's also part of his TV series. The marsh Arabs of Iraq helped to build the boat, but Heyerdahl also brought in four Aymara Indians from Lake Titicaca in South America, who retain the skills to build such a craft.
Heyerdahl points out in his book The Ra Expeditions (tr. Patricia Crampton, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972, p. 263) that Pliny in his Natural History records the use of reed boats (Book VI, XXIV, 82). Pliny was quoting Eratosthenes, chief librarian of Alexandria. Pliny's book is available in English in the Loeb series:
Pliny, Natural History, tr. H. Rackham, Volume 2, Libri III-VII, William Heinemann Ltd, London, 1947, pp. 399 & 401:
{p. 399} XXIV. Ceylon, under the name of the Land of the Counterlanders, was long considered to be another world; but the epoch and the achievements of Alexander the Great supplied clear proof of its being an island. Onesicritus, a commander of Alexander's navy, writes that elephants are bred there of larger size and more warlike spirit than in India; and Megasthenes says that it is cut in two by a river, that the inhabitants have the name of Aborigines, and that they produce more gold and large pearls than the Indians. Eratosthenes further gives the dimensions of the island as 875 miles in length and 625 miles in breadth, and says that it contains no cities, but 700 villages. Beginning at the eastern sea it stretches along the side of India from east to west; and it was formerly believed to be a distance of 20 days' sail from the nation of the Prasii, {footnote: an Indian race on the Ganges} but at later times, inasmuch as the voyage to it used to be made with vessels contructed of
{p. 401} reeds and with the rigging used on the Nile, its distance was fixed with reference to the speeds made by our ships as seven days' sail. The sea between the island and the mainland is shallow, not more than 18 feet deep, but in certain channels so deep that no anchors hold the bottom: for this reason ships are used that have bows at each end, as to avoid the necessity of coming about while negotiating the narrows of the channel; the tonnage of these vessels is as much as three thousand barrels. The Cingalese take no observations of the stars in navigation Ñ indeed, the Great Bear is not visible; but they carry birds on board with them and at fairly frequent intervals set them free, and follow the course they take as they make for the land. They only use four months in the year for voyages, and they particularly avoid the hundred days following midsummer, when those seas are stormy. {end}
See Pliny's text at pliny-reed-boats.jpg.
The Rig Veda comprises Hymns organised into 10 Books. I have selected verses which attest to the Aryan conquest of the Dasyu - the inhabitants of Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro and the civilization of the Indus Valley, speakers of Dravidian languages, ancestors of the Tamils of South India.
The Brahmans of India (allied to the BJP Government) deny that there was an Aryan invasion of India: it would undermine their legitimacy. Although many Western experts admit there was, there is a shortage of archaeological evidence that the Aryans destroyed the Harappa Civilization.
Stuart Piggott, some decades ago, wrote about the Rig Veda & the destruction of the Harappa Civilization. Since Piggott, the specialists have rejected the view that Mohenjo-Daro was destroyed by the Aryans, preferring an "Ecological" explanation. They say that the Aryans came in AFTER the end of the Harappa civilization.
I, however, argue Piggott was right. In his book Prehistoric Roots of Ancient India (Penguin, Harmondsworth 1950), Piggott wrote
"{p. 257} ... the Aryan advent in India was, in fact, the arrival of barbarians into a region already highly organized into an empire based on a long-
"{p. 258} established tradition of literate urban culture. ... the conquerors are seen to be less civilized than the conquered. In the Rigveda we see ... this conquest from the Aryan point of view alone: they are the heroes, and scant tribute is paid to their contemptible opponents, more skilled in the arts of peace than those of warfare".
"{p. 261} These opponents of the Aryan onslaught, the despicable enemy who dares deny Indra's supremacy in heaven and on earth, are referred to as the dasyus or dasas. They have black complexions, no noses to speak of (anasa), they are 'of unintelligible speech' and above all they are infidels. They have no 'rites', they are 'indifferent to the gods', they 'follow strange ordinances', they do not perform the Aryan sacrifices, and they probably worship the phallus. But they are wealthy, with great stores of gold, they are formed into groups or states, and they live in fortified strongholds."
For more of Piggott see eth-civ.html.
The Rig Veda itself repeatedly boasts of the destruction of the Dasyus. The Harappan economy was based on irrigation from the Indus river, like the Tigris-Euphrates economies of Mesopotamia, and the Rig Veda records the Aryans' destruction of the dams which were the basis of the economy.
It calls the inhabitants "black", "noseless", and "lewd", the latter probably a reference to the phallic god Shiva.
Here are some images of pages from the 1896 translation by T. H. Griffith:
6.27.5 (Book 6, Hymn 27, Verse 5) names the city of Harappa (calling it Hariyupiya). The site of the ruined city was not discovered until the 1920s, near a village bearing that name still. Yet in this 1896 translation of the Rig Veda, a major battle is described there, a devastating Aryan victory: rig-veda6.27.jpg.
This proves that "metaphorical" interpretations of the Rig Veda are false, and that "natural causes" i.e. "ecological change" is not the reason for the fall of the civilization.
1.100 and 1.101 (Book 1, Hymns 100 & 101) are hymns describing the Aryans as "fair-complexioned" and the Harappans as "the dusky brood": rig-veda1.100-101.jpg.
9. 41 (Book 9, Hymn 41) describes the defeated as people of "black skin": rig-veda9.41.jpg.
1.32 (Book 1, Hymn 32) boasts of the cruelty of the Aryan attackers: rig-veda1.32.jpg.
Most of the Rig Veda, like the Jewish Bible, has a mentality of "Religious Tribalism". Towards the end, there are a few poems which reflect a universal theme, obviously composed late, around 1000 BC. It was that change of thinking which paved the way for the rise of the Jains, the Buddhists etc. The same is also found in the Bible.
The Aryans of the Rig Veda had migrated from the steppes between the Black Sea & the Caspian Sea, passing through Bactria & Margiana. Prior to settling in India, during their nomadic life in Central Asia, they probably lived in tents, and wagons pulled by cattle; they used horses for riding and for chariots.
Their invasion of India 4000 to 3000 years ago must have been very like the "white" settlers' invasion of the American West in the Nineteenth Century. The American settlers used wagons pulled by horses. They had the US cavalry to back them up; the Aryans had the military caste to do the same.
The settlers had the Protestant religion, the Aryans had the Indo-European Gods. In both cases, the Divinity sided (in the religion) with the conquerors, against those deemed irreligious. The supposed universalism of Christanity made no difference. Whether the gods were One or Many made no difference.
In both cases, other cultures were destroyed, yet the invaders were insensible to the loss. Universalism arose later in both cases. King Asoka imposed Buddhism; Americans rejected slavery.
The Aryans of the steppe must have been like Vikings of the land; the Rig Veda probably presents a similar outlook to the tribes which ended the Roman Empire. Those Aryans had no sense of wrongdoing; on the contrary, they thought the Gods on their side.
Although Christians consider the Aryan religion "pagan", there are surprising similarities between the two: the notion of a Father in Heaven, God(s) as lawgivers, sin as breaking those laws, piety as devotion to the God(s), outsiders as fit for being conquered and incorporation within the religion at a lower level. The similarities are not surprising, since early Christianity was influenced by both Zoroastrianism, which repudiated yet developed from the Aryan religion of Persia, and Platonism, which rejected yet drew upon the Aryan religion of Greece.
One difference is that there is no "Devil" in the Aryan religion; mainstream Judaism and Platonism also lack this feature, which Christianity, via Jewish sects, acquired from Zoroastrianism.
(3) Selections from the Rig Veda (1896 translation by T. H. Griffith)
References to the Rig Veda comprise Book number, Hymn number, and verse number.
For example, the following verse shows that the Dasyus - the people the Aryans conquered - were of different appearance and language:
"10 One car-wheel of the Sun thou rolledst forward, and one thou settest free to move for Kutsa. Thou slewest noseless Dasyus with thy weapon, and in their home o'erthrewest hostile speakers." (5.29.10, i.e. book 5, hymn 29, verse 10).
The "car" of the Rig-Veda is the chariot.