2 books that really changed the world are Aegyptiaca & Babyloniaca, and these books make up most of what we still use today to map the Dynasty changes that happened in Egypt and Babylon.
And strangely, "Aegyptiaca" was written in the same city that Jesus' family was said to visit (which was the Cult center of Serapis, the city is Sebennytos), so if his family read that book, it makes a lot more sense why people decided to write about him later in a weird Godly way. The man who wrote it is the man who made the word "Dynasty".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manetho
And the man who wrote "Babyloniaca" (which we don't actually have an original copy of) started some of the first Astrological centers, while causing revolutions in what already existed at the time by giving the world Zoroastrian Astrology. The inventor of Zoroastrian Astrology was Zoroaster who existed around or a little before this time. Literature puts him around 600 BC, but evidence puts him around 300 BC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berossus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroaster
Babylonian Fish Cult
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Zoroaster
Zoroastrianism was the first Monotheistic Religion in the world, it was Monotheistic when the Jewish religion was still Polytheistic. There are people in modern times who practice a form of Semetic Reconstructionism where they practice Polytheistic Judaism, but that is another topic. Zoroastrianism was not only the first Monotheistic religion, but it was the first religion to mention Angels. It is also thought that the story of the "3 wise men" was probably talking about Zoroastrian Magi, and the modern Zoroasrian Yazidi are thought by Christians to be the remnants of early Christianity.
Zoroastrianism was created by a character much like Jesus, but in a different region of the middle east and around 500 years before Jesus. Zoroaster took the Babylonian system of Gods and Goddesses and gave all of their powers to 1 God, making the first Monotheistic religion and the other Gods became Angels. He also created some of the first Astrology that we still use today, and since he created it directly before Babylon and Greece jumped into the Hellenistic Era, Zoroastrianism was the religion that the Greeks spread the literature of, for example the book "Babyloniaca" by Berossus. I do not think we actually have this book anymore, but Greek authors mention it by name a lot.
One of the Babylonian Symbols was the Symbol of Pisces which is strange because that later because the Symbol for Christianity. You probably still see Christians using a symbol we now call "The Christian Fish" which is the simply fish shape that is just like an oval that criss crosses in the back to look like a fish tail.
Zoroastrianism is still practiced all over the world in places such as the Fire Temples, which exist in various countries. Bull fights are an example of Mithraic tradition, as well as Marriages, both are Mithraic ceremonies.
A lot of Christians like to think "Buddha was just a copy cat of Jesus" to explain away Buddhism, whenever someone mentions that Buddhism is more Peaceful than even the new testament, and Siddhartha (the first Buddha) never mentions God. Most people don't understand the teachings of Buddhism, but if you want a quick picture of it, Buddhism explains that a person who says "You did X to me" or "You took X from me" will be angry, but the person who lets go of these thoughts will not be angry. If you let people treat you the way they do, and do not worry about it, they will eventually realize that they are doing what they are doing. For example, a lot of people will automatically assume that someone who drinks alcohol is not responsible, or that someone who goes to a Psychiatrist is crazy, or that someone who has long hair is a Liberal, or that someone from Texas is Conservative. People like to get angry at people for no reason, but if you come at things more open, you will not be so angry.
But back to the point, Jesus came after Buddha. But exist around 500 YEARS before Jesus, and his religion was spread quickly, via Hellenization.
Then there is Zoroaster. Zoroaster also existed 500 years before Jesus, and possibly even 1,000 years before Jesus. This religion is known for a fact to have influenced Christianity, Judaism, Gnosticism and Islam. For example, this is where the idea of an Angel comes from, they started in Sumer and moved West via Hellenization.
An example of something we get from Hellenization is the statues in India. Before Egypt and Greek ideas came to India, they had no statues. Then once they got the idea, they started making Statues, and now we see all kinds of Statues. This idea was originally Egyptian, and it was considered to be similar to a Shadow, which contains part of the "Soul". Another example is the "Academy", Plato founded it, and now we use the word "Academy" for all schooling type places. It started with Hellenization. This is also where Museums come from, the first Museum was Alexander the Great's "Musaeum" in Egypt. I have a book called "The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization" and it is basically a dictionary of all these things. And while reading it I was lead to a bunch of other texts that I have been reading. sacred-texts.com has a lot of stuff free online if anyone is interested.
And not only did these people and their texts ALL exist before Jesus by hundreds of years, and get spread to Jesus' region by Hellenization. Jesus' family (known as the Holy Family) had to leave when the King said he wanted to kill all babies under 2 years of age, and they went to Egypt and other places.
People like to pretend Jesus was the first one to do all this stuff, or that he existed in a vacuum with no other religions forming around him, but not only were all of these Hellenistic things going on that we definitely know about, there were also tons of people claiming to be divine at that time, as well as claiming to do things like raise the dead and heal the sick.
You probably know that Jewish people do not accept the divinity or words of Jesus, which is what makes them Jewish and Christians Christian. And they have good reason not to believe him, the prophecies said the Messiah was going to reclaim Israel for the Israelites, so he didn't fulfill it. But if you look up people like Judas Maccabeus, he actually fulfilled multiple prophecies in the old testament, as well as starting a revolution in Israel.
Jesus probably existed to an extent (not a God), but, so did all these other people.
The Greek Diffusion into Africa and Asia, as well as it's Infusion with these cultures is known as "Hellenization". And this era is called "The Hellenistic Era". The most well known Character in this era is Alexander the Great. He took his fathers army and Conquered everyone becoming king of Everywhere. When he went to Egypt he threatened the Viziers to say he should be crowned king, and the Pharaohess adopted him so that he would take the throne when she died. He went to what is now know as Turkey, and there was a rope that was tied into a knot with no end (The Gordian Knot), and whoever untied it was supposed to become King. So Alexander the Great Chopped it in half with his sword. His peers actually distrusted him because he adopted Eastern traditions in his court (like ring kissing) but eventually he gave it up and then died young anyways. I forget what killed him, but he could not talk at the end of his life, and his last major action was to wave at his army as they walked by one by one to wave bye. Alexander is part of black history, because his conquest began the gentrification (whitening) of Africa and the Middle East. Notably, he also conquered Afghanistan around 330 BC and brought Opium use to India and Persia.
Ptolemy, who was a proxy for Alexander, instituted the Library of Alexandria (in Egypt on the continent of Africa). This library was basically the driving force behind scholarly historical research for the next thousand years, and it was burned down over and over in take overs and accidents. And we would have a lot more information about history if it was not burned down. Ptolemy also instituted the Musaeum, which was the first Museum. And had the Septuagint written, 70 (which is what Septuagint means) Jewish Egyptian citizens were hired to live in a scholarly building and be fed and taken care of while they wrote their oral tradition. All of them wrote the same thing, so the writing was declared to be "The Words of God". Later this would evolve in to the Pentateuch which is where the Torah and the Bible come from.
These structures were built in Libya by Romans
one of the Carthaginians major Gods was "Ba'al Hamon" who was celebrated December 25th. As Rome clashed with Carthage for over 15 years, they adopted their festival. Later this would be chosen to be the day that Christians (which didn't exist yet) would celebrate Christmas. And obviously, it was mixed with the Traditions of Mithras. Mithras had a Mithras (pine) tree, Contracts between people (Marriage), the red and white man that appears, and a celebration feast. Saturnalia had the gift giving as well as a celebration feast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal-hamon
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturnalia
225 BC the Chain was invented.
In 196 BC, the Rosetta stone was made, and without it, Egypt would be a complete mystery.
http://www.blueletterbible.org/
Also, here is where to find free Sacred Texts
http://finshaggy.blogspot.com/2014/12/tons-of-free-sacred-texts-online.html
The Bible is not "Translated" it is "Transliterated". Transliteration is where you take the "Meaning" or "Essence" of a word and translate that instead of directly translating the word. For example, in the original Hebrew there is "Sheol" and "Abaddon" and "the Abyss", but they translated all of those to "Hell" for the modern Bible, even though those 3 things are different.
The next step in researching the Bible is to read the Original Version, even if you can't read Hebrew or Greek, you should get a "Translation" instead of a Transliteration, and the Oldest Bible in the world is the "Dead Sea Scrolls". The Dead Sea Scrolls actually contains more books than the Bible, and there is another text that was found around the same time and relating to the same culture called "The Nag Hamadi Scriptures". And last but not least, the Septuagint, it was created in Egypt during the time of Alexander the great, and it was the first translation of the Bible that was ever officially made. They got 77 Hebrew Egyptians and gave them residence and had them write their Oral tradition, when all 77 of them wrote the same thing, Alexander the Great's General declared it the "Word of God". If you read these you will see the Context that Christianity would have started in, all of these books were written just a few hundred years before Jesus came.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi_library
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint
Then, to learn about early early Christianity, it would be good to look in to the Coptic Church. This church popped up abut 30 years after Jesus proposed death. So this church popped up before any of the New Testament was written.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copts
Now, this gets you the Context of a lot of Christianity, from here if you REALLY want to learn about what really happened. At this point you would want to study the religions on the outside. For example Gnosticism, the Roman Empire, Celtics and later Muslims. Because there are texts about these cultures interacting (Muslim Assassins & Christian Templars) as well as Sacred sites that have changed hands, and you can read up on what the buildings used to look like or have carved in them.
A good example of a "Cross Culture" important point is Christian Nuns and Muslim women who wear Hijabs. This started with Christian Nestorianism, but it turned in to Nuns and Muslim Hijabs. Nestorianism was also the first religion to say that Jesus was all man and all God.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestorianism
I understand the Bible can trick people into thinking it explains everything. There was a time when hardly anyone could even read, let alone most people and that book was put together 2,000 years ago by people who spoke Multiple languages and lived in a Hellenistic world. Then the New Testament was added and even smarter people (for example King James) put the book together with each Chapter, Page and Verse labeled. And these people were translating 2 and 3 languages at a time, so they were definitely smarter than most Americans.
But the people who wrote that book could have never imagined what they were causing or where the world was headed. They could not have even imagined America (the New World) let alone what America has become.
Many people don't even realize this but the "Alphabet" comes from the first two letters of the Latin Alphabet, Alpha and Beta. In most ancient Languages the Alphabet was also the Number system, it was not until Roman Numerals that the Number systems and the spelling systems became distinct. When people say "The Alpha and the Omega" they are saying A-Z and 1-800
This combination of Alphanumerical values created a lot of "Magical" thought, which eventually became Math. For example, Algebra is Al-Jebr, and it is a Mathematical System that was invented in Islamic Mosques. But far before Algebra was invented, Algebra was being done using Geometry, for example the Pythagorean theorem.
During the time of Jesus the Pythagorean theorum was becoming popular (A squared + B squared = C squared) and Pythagreas was the first person to say "Drink but do not get drunk" and he invented a cup that would spill if you drank too much.
And even before the Pythagorean theorem came Isopseophy and Gematria. Isopsephy is in the first image above where the Greek Letters have Numerical Values. But then they would take the numerical values of each letter to create a numerical value for each word. This helped them create the Mathematical systems we use today.
Then there was the Jewish form of Isopsephy which is called Gematria. They took a step further than Isopsephy, what Gematria does is take the value of each letter to create a word value the same as Isopsephy, but then if 2 words have the same value then they are considered the same. The Hebrew word for "alive" has a value of 18 if I remember correctly, so 18 is considered a lucky number and any other word with a value of 18 was considered lucky as well. This was also correlated with the Kabbalistic Tree of Life to create a bunch of Numerical systems.
The 72 names of God
Then there is Zairja. This was invented after Algebra by the Mulsims. It is the same as Isopsephy and Gematria except that it goes even another step further and instead of just adding up Numerical values of words and matching them up, you then do Algebra with your sentences and Paragraphs to see if the Paragraph contains the answer to the question. This was/is used as kind of a Random idea generator.
The word "Cretan" means like a person that is evil or deceitful, and this comes from ancient Greek tradition. There were a people called "Cretans" who lived on "Crete" and the Greeks did not like them very much, hence the modern animosity associated with the word.
Knossos was the centerpiece of Crete (and it was built on top of a Neolithic aka Cave Man Settlement, meaning the people learned or were taken over) but Crete is most well remembered for the Labyrinth (Stone Maze) and the Minotaur (Bull-man) AKA Pan's Labyrinth in the most modern interpretation. They did not actually worship a Bull man on Crete the Greeks just said that, but they have found a Labyrinth.
Due to the Bull Worshiping nature of Crete, the people that settled in Crete (At the time of the palace and Labyrinth and Bull worship starting) were probably the Maykop culture (which may be Anatolian aka Punt-ish in origin, but at some point merged with the Georgia Mountain Culture, or maybe even WAS the Georgia Mountain culture) or even the Egyptian Culture, who worshiped Bulls and were practicing Breeding. They were able to make many new variants by mixing domestic animals with now extinct versions of the Bull.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maykop_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apis_(god)
Then around 2000 BC (4000 years ago) came the Phaistos Disk, which no one really understands yet. But I personally think that it has to do with people traveling between Turkey and Crete or somewhere else.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phaistos_Disc
Then there are Linear A and Linear B, which are also not completely understood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_B
Evidence of contact with Egypt early on is the "Minoan Genius", which seems to be modeled after a Hippo or a Crocodile which are not in Crete but are in Egypt. This is where the word "Genius" comes from, and they were involved in various ceremonies. The ceremony below is one involving the tree of life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_Genius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_%28mythology%29
Then, around 1300 BC there was a shipwreck that gives us a glimpse in to the trade of the time, the Uluburun Shipwreck, where they found a mixture of Mycean (Early Greeks), Cretan, Syria-Palestinian (Early Israelis), Egyptian and a few other cultures things. Meaning these people were well in to trading with each other by this time (Before Greece even emerged as a super power).
Random thing. The word "Clue" comes from Crete. A King in Greece had to send 8 virgins to Crete (to be eaten by the Minotaur according to the Greeks) every year because he had lost a war, and his son decided that he wanted to go to end the Tribute payments. When he got their the Cretan princess saw him and decided to help him. So while he was in his cell at night she snuck a ball of yarn to him, and back then they called a ball of yarn a "Clue". She told him to use the "Clue" to find his way out of the Maze, and in the Myth after he kills the Minotaur he follows the unwound ball of yarn or "Clue" to find his way out.
Early Greeks were known as "Mycenaean"s, and they were already trading with Crete and others before they ever became what we know as the "Greeks".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenaean_Greece
You have probably heard of the bird called "The Phoenix", this Bird was the Symbol of the "Phoenicians" and Resurrection and Rebirth, etc. You have probably heard the story in the Bible about the Tower of Babel that says people tried to build a Tower that would reach heaven, and supposedly God invented all the Languages at this time by splitting everyone up. But we know for a fact that the Phoenicians invented most languages. They also invented clear glass, colorful dyes (blue, red and purple) and boats that could sail into the Ocean.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenicia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_%28mythology%29#Etymology
There is an out of print book called "Hebrew is Greek" and you can get it on Amazon for $2000, or you can search for it online. And in the book Joseph Yahuda explains how the Phoenicians are the parents of all language and shows how Hebrew and Greek are basically the same language.
In Ancient Egypt they did a test to figure out if the Kemetic (Egyptian) language was older, or if the Phrygian (Turkish) language was older. In this "test" they raised 2 children in Isolation to find out what language they would speak if they never talked to another person, and the first word they said was "Bekos" which means "Bread" in Phrygian. this language is closely related to Hebrew and Greek.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrygian_language
The Roman Empire didn't have a lot of enemies, but one formidable enemy came out of a small group in Africa called the Punic who at the time were part of the Carthaginian empire. The Roman Empire saw these people as the Phoenix, which can be seen in the way they treated them after winning the Second Punic War. They Burned the Carthage to the Ground for Weeks, over and over. Because it was the Phoenix and they did not want it to rise again. Then they enslaved the Carthaginian people, which is where a lot of Hebraic slaves in Rome would have come from, since those groups were Hebraic. Carthage was not just African, the Italian Island called Sicily was even part of the nation and the name "Sicily" comes from the "Sicel" people. And the Phoenicians/Carthaginians were known for their trading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Carthage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punic_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sicels
According to Myth, the Mother of Europe is a Phoenician Woman named "Europa" which is where the name "Europe" comes from. The Phoenicians are at the center of many Myths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_%28mythology%29
If anyone has not read the ancient books by Homer you should, it is the model for pretty much all Western Literature. And the Hero is a great character not because he is always the most moral, but because he is the most aware. Even when he is doing wrong he is very aware of it, which makes it something like moral. And this is why now in the West we have Politicians on the Right and Left who are "Trying to be human, but can't just go against their role" it's all part of the Narrative we subconsciously love to pretend is essential.
An example of Homer's cultural Narrative for the West being played out today is the Soldier who leaves his family to go to war. In Homer's books this was seen as a bad decision, but it was moral because he is fulfilling his duty. In today's world, if a guy had a wife and kid and decided to sign up for war, people might actually think his wife is a bad person if she gets mad. Because we now see becoming a Soldier as a glorious duty to be fulfilled. It's been the Western Cultural Narrative for thousands of years.
In many Ancient Cultures, the "Churches" were the places that women ruled over. If you look in to the History of Oracles and Cats and the Moon, these things were usually all religious themes that were kept by the women. Male Temples were things like the Temple of Mars, which is where we get "Martial Arts" or "the Art of Mars". Venus was considered the Mother, and in Egypt Isis was the Throne while Ra was the Crown. Most early religions recognized these 2 forces in Nature, that is why there is the Yin Yang and things like that. The Crown and the Throne are still important in Monarchies, and in Britain they coronate their Kings and Queens on an Ancient Throne stone known as the Stone of Scone (no, that is not a rhyming joke. lol). Not all the Temples were distinctly male or female, but Venus and Mars usually were. And the throne is usually seen as feminine in nature while the crown is seen as masculine in nature. And even today Crowns are made to look like the Sun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Scone
In Ancient Egypt things were a little different than we picture it. We all think of it as one guy with a bunch of slaves, but there is actually little to no evidence of slavery in Ancient Egypt. And at different point there were female Pharaohs, there was even one (named Hatshepsut) even wore a false beard like the male pharaohs and she was well known for re-establishing trade with the Land of Punt. There were also multiple other cultures nearby where women were in charge at different times, an example is the Elam culture, where women were the most wealthy at some times of their history. They are also one of the earliest cultures to mention mermaids.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam
But if you look even further back in to Egyptian history, you find something interesting. Ra is the king (Ra is the Crown aka the Sun), he is atomic energy (Ra worship was kind of like modern calorie counting). but "The Eye of Ra" which carries out his actions for him, and therefor containing all of his actual power, is a female. His daughter Wadjet, which is sometimes depicted in her cat form "Wadjet-Bast".
In a pack of Lions the females are the hunters, so this probably showed a strange aspect of society to the Ancient Egyptians that other cultures would not have been able to realize.
The world's oldest throne was held by a woman, in what is now Turkey. This is from 6,000 BC, which is 4,000 years before stonehenge. And in early Greek history there is the city of Troy (from the poems of Homer, but they have actually found the city in real life) which was said to be founded by the mother "Cybele". And there is something interesting about Cybele, (depicted 6,000 BCE) she sits in a throne that has two female lions heads as arm rests. And something that most people don't know about lions, the men are lazy and fight amongst each other, while the women use strategy and team work to hunt and raise generation after generation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%87atalh%C3%B6y%C3%BCk
Then there is Cybele, the mountain Goddess, whose people wore veils as women do in modern weddings or Islamic women of certain sects. Veils were seen as a symbol of divinity in Western culture because veils allow only a glimpse of a person, as if they are a spirit or angel. In early Christian churches the Chorus was behind a veil or mesh for the the same reason.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele
In Ancient Greece the Mother Goddess was related to a lot of the Oracles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythia
There was a group known as the Cult of Men, this group started in Turkey. Most people don't realize this, but Turkey is basically the (very influential) Bridge between Europe and the Middle East, meaning it was a key part of the Roman, Ottoman and Byzantine empires. Turkey borders Greece on one side and Syria, Iraq, etc. on the other. Most Ancient Cultures considered the Moon to be a Goddess, but the Cult of Men was a group that decided that the Moon was not a Goddess and they said any man who believes the Moon is a Goddess will be ruled by his wife.Turkey is also where Roses and Cherries come from. Not all of Phrygian culture was like this, but this cults ideal is what forced the modern idea that God is a Man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_%28god%29
In 451 Nestorianism begins, where Jesus is divided into 2 distinct parts. Divine and Human.
And early Christian nuns start being seen in Armenia, and Islam followed short after.
And Diamond Rings did not become a popular engagement gift until around 1940. Marriage started as a Mithraic ceremony, as Mithras was the main God of promises and contracts in the ancient world, so many of the marriage traditions in churches come from Mithraic tradition.
One of the most popular of magical devices was the amulet, worn upon the person or attached to objects and animals (the Hebrew word for amulet, kame‘a, has the root meaning "to bind") . Even in our supposedly non-superstitious age the good-luck charm is still quite familiar, apologetically displayed on watch-chain, or carried furtively in the recesses of pockets and purses—the rabbit's foot, the horseshoe, lucky coins, rings engraved with Chinese or Hebrew letters, animal molars. How much more common, then, are such objects in societies which unashamedly and openly accept them for what they are, whether in the less sophisticated regions of our contemporary world, or in the medieval and ancient worlds, which did not for a moment doubt their efficacy! As a matter of fact, it has been suggested that all ornaments worn on the person were originally amulets.
A familiar characteristic of magic is the injunction to do things in reverse, to walk backward, to put one's clothing on backward, to throw things behind one's back. The same principle applies in incantations, and Talmudic and medieval Jewish charms amply illustrate its operation. Biblical quotations were often recited both forward and backward, mystical names were reversed; sometimes the words were actually written backward as they were to be uttered, so that it requires considerable mental agility not to be taken in by the unnatural rendering. Phrases that are capable of being read alike in either direction were especially highly prized. The purpose was to capitalize the mystery of the bizarre and unfamiliar, and the power that is associated with the ability to reverse the natural order of things.4
One type of incantation whose power derived from its form rather than its content was especially suited to dispel demons. Its Jewish archetype is found in the Talmudic spell against the demon Shabriri, which runs:
Shabriri
briri
riri
iri
ri.
As Rashi explained its effect, "The demon shrinks and finally vanishes as he hears his name decreasing letter by letter.
The greatest feat to which the magician aspired was that of creation. Discussing this subject in the pages of the Talmud, R. Papa observed that the creative power of magic covered only gross and massive objects and creatures, such as the camel, but not fine and delicate things, and R. Eliezer maintained that the demons, to whom the magician owes this power, can create nothing smaller than a barley-corn. This was the standard limitation imposed on sorcerers by medieval writers, though, as the Gemara explained: "The demons cannot actually create even large beings, but merely assemble already created but unused primeval matter."11 Thus the ultimate act of genesis was reserved for God alone. It was nowhere suggested that human life could be created by ordinary magical means.
But the Talmud recognized also a second method of creation, which required the application of the "Laws of Creation," probably an oral collection of mystical traditions relating to the original creation of the universe. The kind of magic comprised in these "Laws of Creation" was the only one that was "permitted ab initio." By means of it, "if the righteous so desired they could create a universe. Raba created a man and sent him to R. Zeira, who conversed with him but he could not answer; so he exclaimed, 'You are created by magic, return to your dust!' Rabbis Ḥanina and Oshaya used to sit every Friday and occupy themselves with the Book [read: Laws] of Creation and create a three-year-old calf which they ate." For a description of this method we must rely on the tradition preserved by the commentators; Rashi wrote, "They used to combine the letters of the Name by which the universe was created; this is not to be considered forbidden magic, for the works of God were brought into being through His holy Name." The Talmudic Laws of Creation (unrelated to the later mystical Book of Creation) appear, then, to have been an exposition of the familiar name-magic, the foremost constituent of medieval Jewish practice, but in consonance with the difficulty and the prodigiousness of its object, a very exalted and esoteric department. Medieval Jews, like their Christian contemporaries, were avid of the power to create human life, and believed implicitly in man's ability to do so. William of Auvergne (thirteenth century) wrote, "Men have tried to produce, and thought that they succeeded in producing human life in other ways than by the usual generative process," but the methods pursued by non-Jews were less subtle than the one proposed by the Talmud. For example, a fourteenth-century Christian writer cited the Arab Rasis (tenth century) on generating a human being by putting an unnamed substance in a vase filled with horse manure, for three days.
The thirteenth-century German Ḥasidim (Pietists and Mystics) were especially intrigued by this problem. From them comes the use of the word golem (literally, shapeless or lifeless matter) to designate a homunculus created by the magical invocation of names.
The image was to be made of "virgin soil, from a mountainous place where no man has ever dug before," and the incantation, which comprised "the alphabets of the 221 gates," must be recited over every single organ individually. A further detail, often noted, was the incision upon the forehead of the name of God, or of the word emet ("truth"). The destruction of this creature was effected by removing that name, by erasing the initial letter of emet, leaving met ("dead"), or by reversing the creative combinations, for, as R. Jacob b. Shalom, who came to Barcelona from Germany in 1325, remarked, the law of destruction is nothing more than a reversal of the law of creation.