Other Writings

Something I've found that is not generally recognized while doing research for Redeeming Asimov is the clear genetic connection between the culture found in the Pentateuch and the early Sumerians. Consequently, I have used the electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary 2nd edition (ePSD2) quite a bit. It is the most comprehensive dictionary available and extensively linked to cuneiform texts and scholarship. Without a natural affinity for languages and lacking any formal education in the Sumerian language, the learning curve has been very steep. Interpreting the dictionary entries requires consulting tables spread out on several pages and often in unpredictable places. I've compiled many of the tables into one PDF and edited it into an easily printable format. 

This deck will always be incomplete and a work in progress, but is intended to contain all the slides used on different pages. I also find making slides a useful way of taking notes and filtering information for what is important, so many of these slides will not be referenced on other pages.

Major Changes and Retractions

Learning is often an exercise in sweeping out the old to bring in the new. However, to sweep away without memory is a form of blind faith. To actually learn requires comparing the old to the new. 

Metaphysical Recompression Model

A.  Biblehub.com helpfully summarizes tsaba' often translated as “host” (bold added):

1. a mass of persons

2. (figuratively) a mass of things

3. (especially) regularly organized for war (an army)

4. (by implication, literally or figuratively) a campaign

5. (specifically) hardship, worship

The first use of “hosts” ṣə·ḇā·’ām from tsaba' in the Bible is Genesis 2:1 (KJV, ESV):

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

B. This, and the continued use throughout the Bible in the context of God, matches the Sumerian/Akkadian divine assembly, brought together at the dawn (i.e., in the East) of each day-age to declare the fate across all of the Earth. 

C. The individual Sumerian/Akkadian gods are given life by the paired gods An and Enlil, speaking divine words called me (plural: me-esh, mesh). Their assignment to different functions, duties, things, and people is fated primarily by Enki, who is the uniquely self-destined one, en-me-en “Lord I Am”. 

D. When the gods are in divine assembly, the king and counselor of that assembly is Enlil, “lord spirit/wind/breath” who creates at the behest of An, with Enki, and whatever other gods are relevant to the creative act. Enlil is then a direct functional match to the use of “LORD of Hosts” in the Bible. 

In Sumerian literature, standing way at the top of the polytheistic Sumerian pantheon are the triad of gods An, Enlil, and Enki. It is noted in many texts that their pronouncements are immutable, that they could only be contradicted by each other if that were even possible. The Sumerian Flood Story, along with its younger Semitic counterparts, has the nearest thing to this kind of contradiction. While Enlil is done with the disruption and discordance of Sumer’s mankind (ie. kalam-ma, the familiar land, that is Sumer, ETCSL 1.7.4 Segment D, line 4), Enki saves civilization by talking to a wall, knowing full well that the Zi-ud-sura can’t help but listen on the other side. But Enki is also the established mediator for man and god, with gods above and below, and he is the uniquely self-destined one who has the choice to save mankind. 

The army at war connotation of tsaba' becomes more relevant as gods who are imagined as usurpers of Enlil arise, such as Inanna/Ishtar, Ninurta (ie. biblical Nimrod), and well after Sumerian times, Marduk.

E. In the validating discussion below, ChatGPT brings up on its own part of the bones of a model I have been considering for many years and calls it the “Metaphysical Compression” model. The idea is that the polytheism of Sumer and Akkad, later considered Babylonia, is compressed in the monotheistic trinity, and the rest of the gods are (demoted to?) malak messengers/angels. I show ChatGPT that an imagined difference between Hebrew malak and Sumerian designations of the lesser gods is just uninformed prejudice, primarily by bringing up the case of the sukkal. The correspondences in the trinity are:

An = El or El Elyon (God most high)

Enlil = rū-aḥ ’ĕ-lō-hîm (Spirit of God), El Shaddai (God almighty, God of the Mountain, connotations of God the destroyer), LORD of Hosts

Enki/Ea/Haya/Haia = malak YHWH (Angel of the LORD), Word of the LORD, Memra, Logos

I bring up what I believe to be the breadth of the model, which started my interest in Sumerian literature and language, by introducing the term “Metaphysical Recompression”:

[Y]ou described the Hebrew difference with Sumerian as "metaphysical compression." May I suggest this as "metaphysical recompression"? Except for the Great Flood, often referenced as Enlil's Flood, An, Enlil, and Enki are in unity according to Sumerian mythology. Before they created the other gods, they were a trinity creating on and with the earth. Before that, it was just An and Ki

In other words, the polytheistic Sumerian literature of its own accord takes us back to monotheism.

F. Writing and much of the Sumerian content found in the Bible were already present in the Levant, as demonstrated in the archives of Ebla. Abraham would have also brought in Sumerian content. There are also possible sources from Jerusalem, Egypt, and people such as Melchizedek. 

The source of the earliest known library, the finds of Ebla in the northern Levant, is earlier than the Abraham story and therefore contains clues on the spread of the Sumerian gods and the likelihood of the Recompression Model. That ChatGPT is not forthcoming about the Enki/Ea/Haya correlation speaks to the hold of prejudice and political influence on the interpretation of Ebla materials. I call this prejudice the "Archi Consensus" and take it up in other chats. 

LORD of Hosts origin and the Metaphysical Recompression model. Chat GPT 11-11-25 PDF

ANE Numerology and Cuneiform Scribal Culture

As of November of 2025, my non-expert summary of numerological meaning in the Bible looked like the following:

A. Can you make a table summarizing numerology used during the Sumerian, Akkadian, and Old Babylonian periods? The idea here is that the most significant of these numbers (in bold) in biblical and ANE literature should be taken in their symbolic and/or metaphorical meaning unless the text specifically designates the number as a measurement. Of course, there are exceptional specialty genres of ANE literature where the accounting and mathematical functions are always assumed, and others that are mixed, such as astrology. For instance, the number 40 used throughout the Bible should be considered as gestation or the time of trial preceding some birth-like event. The few exceptions only seem to prove the rule, such as the 40 days of embalming to mummify Jacob, where the writer confirms twice that this was the accounted time of fulfillment, Genesis 50:2-3: 

and Joseph commandeth his servants, the physicians, to embalm his father, and the physicians embalm Israel;

and they fulfil for him forty days, for so they fulfil the days of the embalmed, and the Egyptians weep for him seventy days.

The other numbers I deemed less definite as to their constructed versus accounted use, but contain a polysemous symbolic or metaphorical attribute. 

This chart was made after ruminating on Leonard Timmons (2012) From Adam to Noah-The Numbers Game, where he explores a symbolic and constructive source for patriarchal ages and other numbers in Genesis. Some of the numbers on the chart are not in the Bible, but notably show up in his construction. Much of the numerical approach I found is strongly supported by Sumerian literature. ChatGPT confirmed this for the most part. 

B. Was the number six ever especially attested, such as with mankind? One concern I've had is that apart from the 6th day of creation, the number 6 may only have some special significance to Christians, and that significance may only have been slight, amplified over time by the "Number of the Beast" 666 in Revelation 13:18. ChatGPT seems to confirm this, so I will be updating my table. The number 60, however, carries an immense numerological footprint.

C. The Sumerian cuneiform sign a2 𒀉 for "arm", used in the Sumerian word adam , has six U's added to the sign da 𒁕 for "line, edge, side."      What is the etymology of a2, and is there any numerological significance to this? ChatGPT categorically said no at first, but it was treating the symbol merely as a syllable rather than a logogram and not taking into account the bilingual cuneiform scribal culture that existed for over 2500 years before Christ and more than a thousand years before Moses.

Sitting in Genesis is the visual pun that can only be understood in the bilingual associations of rib, life, side, red, clay, and spouse in the Sumerian logograms TI, TIL, A₂, dam, damu, dumu, etc. This visual pun is only complete in the Sumerian Enki and Ninhursag, giving us evidence that directly implicates cuneiform scribal culture in the Genesis narrative.

D. Add a line-by-line table mapping Genesis 2:7–25 verses to specific Sumerian/Akkadian passages. Now that ChatGPT has the template, make it go in depth and see if it produces something I don't already know. ChatGPT is still having problems with hallucinations and Sumerian transliterations, making the Genesis 2:21–23 ↔ EN (Enki & Ninhursag) Comparison Table unusable. Most of the rest of the content was validating and accurate.

ChatGPT is still holding on to Documentary Hypothesis prejudices about when Genesis was written despite the fact that the parsimony of late sources is destroyed by the bilingual cuneiform scribal culture and early Sumerian literature connections. 

E. Looking back on our previous discussion of the Hebrew Adam coming from the Sumerian adam, it has occurred to me that you did use the syllabic construction a2-da-am instead of the logographic version a2-dam as the Sumerians would use. 

In Sumerian, adam means "habitation" and is typically translated as "settlement." Two cuneiform logograms are compounded to make up the concept - a₂-dam - 𒀉𒁮. The first is "arm" with associations such as plow handle, work, side, wing, horn, strength, and power. The second is "spouse," either husband or wife, depending on the context. Not only does Genesis 2-3 unpack the word as if it meant "habitation" or "settlement," it also unpacks Adam as if it meant husband. 

Furthermore, two similar-sounding words in Sumerian are 

• a2-dah-mu 𒀉𒈭𒈬, meaning "my helper" (Veldhuis 2003, v12), and 

• dumu 𒌉, which commonly means child, son, daughter, member, citizen, and dependent. 

The pun with ha adamah also has Sumerian word play: 

• ha-adamah, adamah - ground, dust, alludes to red clay when used with adam or edom. 

• Akkadian adamatu means variously dark red earth, dark red-colored body fluid, and a plant featuring a dark red color. 

• Adamah is a barely coded reference to the Sumerian and Akkadian mother earth goddess Damgalnuna/Damkina - considered the spouse of Enki/Ea. With Enki/Ea, she helps form people with clay from the abzu.

Having pressed the side/rib/life Sumerian visual pun, I return to see how ChatGPT deals with the logogram a2-dam. Ultimately, I believe the evidence points to several Old Babylonian tablets containing a mixture of both Sumerograms and Akkadian syllabic cuneiform making up the sources for the first 10 chapters of Genesis. These sources would have been either older or contemporary with Abraham and Moses. 

Quite a bit of information is built into the logograms and syllabic cuneiform that is completely lost if attempting a word-for-word translation into the Hebrew abjad script. Translators would need to add parenthetical comments to elucidate visual puns, associations, and pronunciation. The so-called "folk etymologies," for instance, are actually telling Hebrew/Phoenician readers what vowels they need to add to words to pronounce them correctly. The parenthetical discussion of ha'adam's animal husbandry is a specific reference unpacking the compound a2-dam logogram that was used in the original tablet. Not needing all these parenthetical additions because the puns, pronunciations, and associations are built in, it is possible the source tablet was much shorter.

Although a strong hypothesis, that is a tough ask for the skeptical scholar still licking their wounds from the fall of the Documentary Hypothesis. I would be satisfied with an acceptance that the writers of Genesis were qualified members of the bilingual cuneiform scribal culture. That is what ChatGPT validated.

F. So, if I find a Semitic link through Damuzi/Dumuzi/Tammuz or Adamu back to the settlement story, then that would be an etymological link? 

As pointed out by ChatGPT and noted above, there are several reasons why asking for the etymology of a word in cuneiform scribal culture is problematic. Ultimately, the etymological tree is very fuzzy for cuneiform-influenced words, with bilingual visual and sound puns and associations abounding. However, a secure etymology is the strongest possible link available in the field of philology. If ha'adam is clearly tied to or parallel with a Sumerian-Akkadian mythos functionally or in name, then most of the fuzzy tree problems fall away.

The Damuzi/Dumuzi/Tammuz "the shepherd" and Inanna story arc is very ancient, with the original story taking place in a time before the Great Flood (before ~3000 BC). It has most of the elements of the Adam and Eve story referenced directly or indirectly across much of Sumerian literature. Even the other characters in the story are easy to reference, such as Ningishzida ("servant/lord of the good tree") as the serpent and the god of destiny, Enki/Ea as "the voice" walking in the garden.

Numerology and the Adam-Rib-Life Associations - ChatGPT 11-30-2025 PDF