Sumer

Sumerian gods of welfare

Worshiping the ancient gods of Sumer has been promoted by the New York Times where they praise the "the welfare city-state" claiming that in that civil society "Work was a duty, but social security was an entitlement. It was personified by the Goddess Nanshe, the first real welfare queen immortalized in hymn as a benefactor who "brings the refugee to her lap, finds shelter for the weak.""

The Sumerian cuneiform system of writing as early as 3000 B.C. allowed for the direct outgrowth of the invention and development of a civil society. The earliest documents found in a Sumerian city of Erech recorded administrative accounting of a civil bureaucracy along with more and more civil laws required to regulate that growing bureaucracy and those citizens dependent upon it.

There was a rise in education evidenced by school books unearthed in Shuruppak dated around 2500 B.C.. Early on there was evidence of a wide variety of topics taught including architecture, medicine, metallurgy, mathematics, botanical, zoological, geographical, and mineralogical, as well as literature. This literary output in the Mesopotamian civilization was not the first attempt of a human to express life, its values, and its meaning using fiction and art but it was simply one of the earliest written records that has survived and we have found. They were often just recording the culture and sense of virtuous social bonds of their predecessors which they praised and the clay tablets were more survivable than other media.

Individual rights were born with the Natural Law which is why Genesis starts with a Creator and the creation of mankind. Civil law is the law that men make for themselves and has often presented a conflict between those civil laws and Freedom of Religion. This is where and often where we see a "bitter struggle for power between the temple and the palace---the “church” and the “state”--- with the citizens ... taking the side of the temple" because of their dependence upon the civil tables and dainties of rulers through their systems of legal charity.

During the reign of Urukagina there was opposition to "the wealth and criminality of the tamkarum [merchant-moneylenders]" who had enslaved the people. It is in the historical cuneiform "document that we find the word “freedom” used for the first time in man's recorded history; the word is amargi..." which may literally be translated "return to the mother" or her womb an idea that suggest the born again comments of Jesus.

The term ama-argi or ama-gi in the cuneiform writing produced the idea of "freedom", as well as "manumission", "exemption from debts or obligations", "reversion to a previous state" Akk. anduraāru. That liberty was only found in the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Reading Sumerian literature found in these cuneiform tablets, we find that the people were seeking someone to save them from their "animal nature". Since that animal nature often manifested with a lack of one or more socially desirable of virtues, their stories often included characters or heroes who had an abundance of those virtues. These Sumerians gods identified in these clay tablets were humans who ate, drank, sleep, marry, and have children but they often excelled in one of these virtues which the Sumerians prized and praised.

The Sumerians, Akkadians, and Babylonians in Mesopotamia had "gods many" described in their epics as humans, as wise kings who live lives, are mourned on passing and sometimes immortalized like Ishtar's lament of the people who perished in the great flood of Utnapishtim.

King or no King

Gilgamesh, king of Uruk and Sumerian hero, is mentioned in a version of The Book of Giants found at Qumran. As a heroic epic it is not merely literature is a story about the struggle of everyman with his virtuous desires and his animal nature for Gilgamesh did great things for the nation but also to its people as his power made him a despot to the masses.

The citizens “cried out to heaven” to the god of the sky, Anu, who supposedly suggested a division or balance of power by sending Enkidu to keep Gilgamesh but eventually they become allies which we see with every two party system. The real problem goes much deeper into the heart and soul of the people.

There was also an attempt to subdue or shackle the Leviathan of a bureaucracy that has developed a life and tyranny of its own. In the American colonies it was not the old King George the III who' ate out the substance of the people' but the "swarms of offices", who like locust are their own plague. Like Justice William O. Douglas said the new King George that makes a government despotic by its vast bureaucracy.

As we examine the true story of Moses and certainly Jesus Christ and The Way there are elements of their world we do not find in what has come down as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Covenants and constitutions

Of course the Bible of Moses tells us in Deuteronomy 17: what we should put in a constitution to keep any king in check. But before that he gave you 12 Rules for Life.

In 1 Samuel 8 we are warned what manner of king any man will become any man will become with such power from the people. What would happen if the people even desired a king who offer protection which is what we see with King Saul who immediately foolishly chooses to force a sacrifice and certainly see with King Gilgamesh.

But if we also sit the tables of plenty the dainties these rulers serve will become a "snare and a trap" and a stumblingblock of recompence according to Paul and David.

Moses was setting up a different system of social welfare through living altars of stone without the civil law regulations of the social welfare states of Ur or Sumer but more in the traditions of Abraham and Able. This system included a division of power for all the social welfare was provided by freewill offerings, or the charity and love as commanded by Jesus Christ. This was contrary to the covetous practices seen in the Corban of the Pharisees set up by the civil government of Herod.

Abraham, Moses, and the prophets, as well as John the Baptist, Jesus and the warnings of the Apostles all agree and are contrary to the way of Cain, Nimrod, Sodom, Pharaoh, Caesar, and socialists like FDR and and opportunists seeking power like LBJ, or even communists like Cloward and Piven or Marx and Mao.

This same conflict is at play within every society in the reliance on individual or personal welfare versus communal welfare, trusting friendship versus cultural isolation. personal welfare versus communal welfare and about the kind of social actors that American citizens should become. Seen in this way, Social Security reform is probably intractable pending a political consensus about about fundamental moral principles. Hardy and Hazelrigg have written this book, they say, because they want a better debate about Social Security.

The Goddess of welfare

Sumer did establish a welfare to provide for their city-states where the right to social welfare was an an entitlement in a civil system symbolized by the Goddess Nanshe (see also Nanse, Nassi, Nazi) who was immortalized in their literature and in an ancient hymn as a benefactor.

Praise of the god Nanshe Who knows the orphan, who knows the widow,
Knows the oppression of man over man, is the orphan's mother,
Nanshe, who cares for the widow,
Who seeks out ... justice ... for the poorest
The queen brings the refugee to her lap,
Finds shelter for the weak

Nanshe was considered a "tutelary deity" of social justice and social welfare. Nanshe was one of the oldest known tutelary goddesses of Mesopotamian cities, along with Nisaba, Ezina, Inanna of Uruk and Inanna or Ishtar. An essential civil power to operate those social welfare systems came from her father, Enki who granted her tutelary powers under his civil authority.

As a protector and benefactor of various disadvantaged groups, such as orphans, widows or people belonging to indebted households these goddesses provided welfare through what could only be identified as civil bureaucracy in the Mesopotamian city. An administrative text lists grain rations for a widow alongside that grain meant for Nanshe's clergy who administered to these needy.

Gods of socialism

The Mesopotamian systems of government were systems of "theocratic socialism that expanded their authority and reduce the ability of the people to resist that power. The center of these systems were seen in the function of their government temples which provided a wide range of services including public works like dikes and irrigation canals which were financed by contributions of the people in the form of investments or taxation.

Like the temples of Pharaoh's Egypt they also provided and distributed food supplies which were divided among the needy which was all managed by a powerful class of bureaucratic priests.

The model of these proto-states and the modern welfare state is this legal charity through forms of of public religion or civil religion providing a social safety net through compelled offerings. This results in the bands of the bondage of Egypt where a portion of your labor is no longer yours and binds the people in the error of Balaam and the Nicolaitan.

Pure Religion created similar social bonds but only through freewill offerings. These systems were rejected and even condemned by men like Moses of Exodus and Jesus and His followers of The Way. These systems of social welfare were a snare and a trap according to David and Paul. Because those tables of social welfare through the State were considered to be covetous practices run by men who exercise authority one over the other, we were told to not be that way and that any such system of legal charity was therefore idolatry.

Many modern governments where power is increased or centralized because the masses who become accustomed to the welfare of state and its forms of civil religion funded by compelled contributions of its registered members with the promise of entitlements providing some form of free bread or social welfare or what has been called the dainties of these rulers.

The alternative was a network of fervent charity which was promoted by Moses and Jesus the Christ which sets the captive free rather than the Legal charity of the state which degenerates the masses and subjecting them in a snare of bondage while empowering rulers and tyrants.

Julius Caesar had a funded gifts gratuities and benefits of free bread to the people in Rome at the expense of their neighbor through its government temples which would lead to its decline and fall. We are warned about those practices in both Old and New Testaments, by all the prophets and by historians and poets by the Modern Church does not have eyes to see for their conscience is seared and are often under a strong delusion.

In more modern times FDR set up his New Deal and LBJ his Great Society which is presently leading to the same degeneration of the people and a corresponding decline of social bonds and fall of "Pure Religion" and loss of liberty.

The Religion of Secularism

Secularism seized the mind of the people when we changed the definition of religion and the masses sat down to eat at a table of legal charity.

The "theocratic socialism" of the modern socialist state is a form of public religion people get when they have no religion which begin with covetous practices and a departure from pure Religions with unsound doctrines and an apostacy of sophistry. The center of the temples of government is a vast bureaucracy which is managed by a powerful class of bureaucrats who provide the services of many ancient priests with little or no governing morality.

The model of these proto-states are seen in modern governments where power is increased or centralized by the people becoming dependent upon the state and its forms of civil religion which compelled contributions of its registered members with the promise of entitlements providing some form of free bread or social welfare or what has been called the dainties of these rulers.

The alternative was a network of fervent charity which was promoted by Moses and the Christ which sets the captive free rather than the Legal charity of the state which degenerates the masses while empowering rulers and tyrants.

Augustus Caesar and many of the emperors expanded that system of free bread in Rome through its government temples which led to its decline and fall.

Again, the legal charity of FDR set up his New Deal and expanded by LBJ and his Great Society promoted by Cloward and Piven would set large sections of society on a path that created an appetite for benefits and dainties of men who exercise authority. This of course did and does presently degenerate the people into perfect savages, but also merchandise, and will curse children with debt. But it will not only increase the bands of captivity but also causes a decline of social bonds and fall from "Pure Religion" and loss of liberty.