The Seven-Headed Dragon, the Fall from Eden, the Beginning of Money

nasha means both 'deceive' and 'lend on interest,' or 'be creditor'.      *[In Strong's Lexicon, 'deceive' is נשא (nasha'), {Srong's # 5377}, which also means 'lend on interest' {Strong's 5378} which is found in 1Sam 22:2, Neh 5:7, Psa 89:22, Isa 24:2, all of which, like the Koran, strongly denounce lending at interest}.]

Now look at the Hebrew word for snakebite, nashak [Strong's 5391], which also happens to mean both 'lend' and 'borrow on interest' (Num 21:6-9, Deut. 23:19, Prov. 23:32, Jer. 8:17, Amos 5:19, etc).

'The serpent bit me,' Eve says.

'The creditor charged me interest,' Eve says.

Lifting Up the Serpent in the Wilderness

Yes, we see that the word for 'serpent,' nahash, is also a wordplay with the word for 'deceive,' nasha.  Nahash also means 'divination,' and also 'copper' or 'bronze,' the basic currency *[Strong's 5174 & 5175], just like our English word 'cobra' is related to 'copper'. You can see this play on words taken into the story of Moses lifting up the Bronze Serpent in the wilderness:

Ancient Canaan is the location of present-day Israel.  Leviathan is the Serpent of Canaan. We see how Canaan means "trade" or "commerce" in the Hebrew Torah. We have seen the play on the words for 'Cain' & 'purchase' in Genesis 4:1. The Hamitic land of Canaan, called Palestine and Israel today, was wedged between two great Hamitic superpowers, Babylon and Egypt, and two great continents. Land trade routes had no choice but to go through Canaan, and even Sea trade was controlled by coastal Canaan (Phoenicia). This made Canaan the land of Trade - the land of war, oppression, and deceit - the products of Trade. And it was out of this land that the rage of the Bible is born.

Now you can see, more and more, studying both the Bible and history, that the Canaanites were not a literal race of people but were the Spirit of Commerce that possessed the people.  Indeed, scholars & archaeologists have generally been confused as to what culture "Canaan" actually refers to.   Now we begin to understand one of the very themes of the Torah which has been so troubling for thousands of years: to invade Canaan and wipe out every vestige of Canaanite from the land! The Canaanites were a tribe of seven clans descended from Canaan, a nation of seven heads (Deuteronomy 7:1, Genesis 10:15) , the Dragon of Seven Heads.

When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, 

and has cast out many nations before you:

the Hittites 

and the Girgashites 

and the Amorites 

and the Canaanites 

and the Perizzites 

and the Hivites 

and the Jebusites, 

seven nations greater and mightier than you 

(Deuteronomy 7:1)

The later Jewish prophets confirm that Canaan refers to a mentality, a spirit, the System of Commerce, not to a physical race of humans:

Wail, you inhabitants of the market district!For all the merchant people [canaanites] are cut down;

All those who handle money are cut off.

(Zephaniah 1:11) 

And there is no merchant [canaanite] any more in the temple of Yahweh of Hosts in that day!

(Zechariah 14:21)

The Canaanite: the Merchant: the Zealot  

And Jesus' clearing the merchants from the temple  is a direct act-out of the above Zechariah scripture. Wiping out the Canaanites!  Jesus' driving out the merchants from the temple, apparently on two different occasions, is so important it is mentioned in all four Gospels (Matthew 21:12, Mark 11:15, Luke 19:45, John 2:15) .

Indeed, we even see a play on words, referring to the Canaanite, in the above John passage (2:17), in which John quotes Psalm 69:9: 

"For zeal [qanat (קִנְאַת)] for your house has consumed me." 

[John 2:17 (quoting Psalm 69:9)]

Yes, the Hebrew word for zeal is qanat (קִנְאַת). The word meaning zealot is translated into Greek in other Gospel passages as kananaios, and translated into English as Canaanite in many English Bibles, as in Simon the Canaanite in the King James Version of Matthew 10:4.

Zeal is motivation is passion.  There are two types of zeal that motivate humans.  One is the zeal of self-credit (including money), and one is the zeal of love.  Because we humans want motivation, want life, the zeal of fanatical religion often fools us, because it is most often not the zeal of love but the zeal of self-credit.  The proof is quite obvious: zealous religion almost always goes hand-in-hand with big-money politics and corporations.  People are unhappy with "conservative" religion because its zeal is for money.  People are unhappy with "liberal" religion because it has no zeal at all, no life!  So people swing from one to another until they are sick of all religion.  Neither the conservative nor the liberal religion have the zeal of love, which is what all living things crave, because such zeal is the very Essence of Life.  Once in a while, somebody like George Fox, Mohandas Gandhi, or Martin Luther King arise, with the true Zeal of religion, a zeal that breaks out of sectarianism and appeals to people of all faiths and non-faiths: "having favor with both God and people."

Thus, Jesus' mission was to wipe out the false zeal (Canaanite) and replace it with the True Zeal.  Wipe out artificial life and replace it with Authentic Life.

Canaanite zeal persecutes anyone who questions it

According to the Markan account (Mark 11:18), this event of clearing out the money zealots from the Temple was what began the conspiracy to kill Jesus.   

Hasn't this threat of conscience against commerce been the true cause of most, if not all, persecutions, assassinations and wars, from ancient times right up to the present?

The Jewish prophets Ezekiel and Hosea both  declare that their very own people, with their corrupt religion, given over to greed and world commerce, are actually Canaanites and the children of Canaan (the Amorites and the Hittites):

and say, 'Thus says the Lord GOD to Jerusalem:

"Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan;

your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

(Ezekiel 16:3) 

The Lord also brings a charge against Judah,

and will punish Jacob according to his ways;

according to his deeds he will recompense him.  

He took his brother by the heel in the womb,

and in his strength he struggled with God. . .  .

A cunning Canaanite!

Deceitful scales are in his hand;

he loves to oppress. 

And Ephraim said,

"Surely I have become rich,

I have found wealth for myself"

(Hosea 12:2-8)

Our Fight Is Not Against Flesh And Blood!

 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, 

but against principalities, 

against powers, 

against the rulers of the darkness of this age, 

against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 

(Ephesians 6:12)

This contradicts the usual conventional Christian and Jewish interpretation that the Canaanites are some other race or ethnicity of people.  Those who think they are fighting Canaanites are fighting themselves.  Is the fight is against flesh and blood (like Palestinians or Arabs or Islam, or, conversely, against Europeans or Judaism or Christianity) or is the fight against principalities and powers (greed and world commerce, which hijack religion and culture)? 

This commercial mentality, this banker's mentality, found its highest development in the middle-eastern land of Canaan, and continues strong, more powerful than ever, to this day, spread over the entire world.  It has, so far, found its strongest power by masquerading itself as "Judaism" and "Christianity," and loves to boast about "God and country" in its nationalism as it conquers and sells out the world, destroying cultures and the environment.  Look around: who, indeed, are the great bankers and corporate CEOs of the world?  Who are the ones who give greatest support to bankers and corporations? 

But please, beware: Again, I'm not talking about race or even religion, but I'm talking about a mentality, a spirit, that hijacks religion and culture, that hijacks our very own minds.  Never be a Fascist Nazi, never forget, Our fight is not against flesh and blood .  

I Am Who I Am, Come to Fulfill the Law    

The great religious mystery is that the Levitical law is to become fulfilled, to become obsolete, at the End of Time.  And how can the End of Time be anything but the Eternal Now, the Day

The Seven-Headed Leviathan metamorphoses into the Seven-Headed scarlet Beast of the book of Revelation (Starting in Chapter 17).  He is being ridden by the Prostitute of Babylon.  Reading about her, we clearly see that she represents Religion prostituting itself.  The Prostitute does not love for the sake of love, but "loves" for the sake of money: reward, converts, the praise of people.  She is organized religion.  Organized Religion is driven by lust for money (credit & praise)  not by ethics, not by love.  Like the prostitute, she makes a good act at love, but she is not real (see Love and Possession - Sex and Money).  She is nice & squeaky clean on the outside and conniving and violent and dirty on the inside.  She sits upon the Seven-headed Beast, the Money System, the Leviathan described above, beginning with the serpent in the garden.  She thinks she controls it, possesses it, but it controls her, possesses here.  There is great enmity between her and the Serpent (Genesis 3:15, Revelation 7:16).  She is the World's Oldest Profession, the Mother of all Professions.  This Prostitute is also spoken of in the Book of Mormon (1Nephi 14) .   

Beast from the Sea,

Luther Bible (1534_edition)

Now, check this out:

The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. And those who dwell on the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come. 

(Rev. 17:8) 

Notice that this seven-headed beast exists everywhere but now!

Money, like all symbol, exists everywhere but now.  Money was (debt), and is not, and will come (credit).  There is no credit and no debt in the present.  Money does not exist, except in imagination!  The beast does not exist, except in imagination!  Imagination itself cannot dwell in the present moment.  Human thought is future and past, never present.  Human thought can never enter into now, into the Kingdom of God.  Forgiveness is Reality, and is the Present Moment.  All Credit and all debt and all time vanish into the Present Moment, the End of Time. 

Jah (the Hebrew word meaning the Eternal Present) does not and cannot exist in human imagination, in human thought.  Yahweh (the Eternal Present) can only be believed in the mind, but never known by the mind.  God can only be known when the mind gives itself up and dies, is completely annihilated on the cross of where the branches of opposites join into the Center, the Eternal Present.