An Expedition That Takes Me Back to the Beginning of Revelation

How an investigation into spirits and Greek philosophy opens an unexpected perspective on Creation, Israel, and the history of Truth

I Set Out in Search of the Spirit and Encounter a Multitude of Spirits

I do not begin this journey because I am unfamiliar with what Christianity teaches about being born of the Spirit. I know the doctrine. I know the explanations about Adam and Eve, the Fall, sin, the old man and the new man, the flesh and the Spirit. I also know the biblical texts on which these doctrines rest. I have no need for another lesson in them. What interests me is something else entirely: where do all these concepts come from? Why must a human being receive the Spirit to become what God desires? Who introduces the idea that human nature requires spiritual transformation? Where does this world of spirits come from—spirits that enter people, fill them, guide them, possess them, or speak through them?

I already have my own understanding of Genesis 1, the Image of God, and the freedom of conscience. That is precisely why I want to investigate the history of the concepts that seem to contradict this understanding of humanity. My first stop is Greece. In Plato, I encounter the soul aspiring to a condition higher than bodily existence. In Phaedo, the separation of soul and body occupies a central place. In Timaeus, the entire world is explained through a philosophical construction that includes the soul of the cosmos. Aristotle offers a different understanding of the soul and the faculties of life, while the Stoics introduce pneuma, the subtle principle that organizes matter and life. These are not identical doctrines. Yet I begin to recognize a common concern: human existence is explained through something beyond what stands before my eyes—soul, intellect, spiritual principle, or superior power.

Then I come across a text that stops me in my tracks. In the dialogue Ion, Plato describes poetic inspiration as a magnetic chain. The divinity inspires the poet, the poet passes that inspiration to the performer, and the performer passes it to the audience. The inspired person does not necessarily speak from personal knowledge. He may become the instrument of a power greater than himself. What an extraordinary situation! If an ordinary person tells me something without understanding what he is talking about, I have serious reasons to question his authority. But if he claims that a divinity is speaking through him, that very absence of personal control can become proof of divine inspiration!

I immediately think of Moses. He speaks with God, asks questions, raises objections, and negotiates. He is not an instrument emptied of his own conscience. God speaks to him, and he responds. Here I encounter two completely different models: revelation as dialogue between God and man, or inspiration as the replacement of man by a supernatural power. I seem to have found an important lead. But the real surprise is only beginning.

Plato Arrives Too Late

I investigate the origins of ecstatic inspiration and discover that the Greeks did not invent the phenomenon. In Mesopotamia, many centuries before Plato, I find evidence of people delivering messages attributed to the gods. In archaic Greece, poets invoke the Muses long before philosophers begin explaining the mechanisms of inspiration. In other traditions, I encounter similar manifestations interpreted as interventions from the supernatural world. Plato, therefore, is not the father of these concepts. He is one of those who attempt to explain them.

I must travel further into the past. I arrive in Egypt and discover a world populated by gods, souls, invisible beings, and ceremonies. The dead stand before divine judgment, and their deeds matter. In Mesopotamia, I find gods who communicate with human beings, demand certain actions, and intervene in the lives of communities. The Greeks have their own oracles, rituals, and representations of the afterlife. As I extend my investigation, I discover that such concerns are not confined to the civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean.

Religions differ enormously. Gods have different names, spirits perform different functions, and rituals take different forms. Some communities develop elaborate systems, while others preserve much simpler traditions. Yet I notice something that begins to interest me more than the spirits themselves. Across different traditions, two fundamental ideas keep appearing: the existence of a supernatural authority capable of communicating with human beings, and human responsibility before such an authority.

Not every religion expresses these ideas in the same way. Some emphasize punishment during earthly life, others judgment after death. Some speak of a supreme god, others of multiple divinities or spirits. Yet the question remains: where does this association between supernatural communication and human accountability come from? I am no longer investigating merely the origins of spirits. I am facing a much greater problem.

The Question That Brings My Expedition to a Halt

I can accept that human beings invent mythologies. History is full of them. I can understand why people attempt to explain death, storms, dreams, and the unknown. I can understand why they imagine souls, gods, and spirits. But the possibility of independent invention does not adequately explain to me why the ideas of divine communication and moral accountability recur in such different traditions.

I could argue that all these ideas originate in one civilization and spread through cultural contact. But then I would have to identify the routes of transmission rather than invent them. I could argue that every community independently develops the same fundamental idea. But merely claiming that this is possible does not yet provide the explanation I am seeking.

I stop. This is the most difficult moment of the entire investigation. I set out to discover the origin of the Spirit and end up asking where the common elements of religions come from. And here an explanation presents itself that deserves examination before I reach any new conclusion—the explanation I have known since childhood.

Adam, Noah, and Babel: The Explanation That Seems to Solve Everything

A Christian familiar with Genesis might immediately respond: “What is so difficult about this? God reveals Himself to Adam and Eve. All human beings descend from them. Knowledge of God is passed down to their descendants, and after humanity spreads across the earth, each people preserves fragments of that original revelation.”

At first glance, the explanation seems simple and elegant. But it depends on an entire chain of events: Eden, Adam and Eve, the Flood, Noah, and finally Babel, where humanity supposedly disperses across the earth, carrying memories of its common origins.

And here I encounter a serious problem. Accounts of local floods found among different peoples are frequently forced into the biblical story of Noah and presented as evidence of a universal Flood. Yet even if I accepted that identification, where is the rest of the story? If humanity inherited a common history from Eden through Noah to Babel, why is an isolated account of flooding treated as evidence while the very narrative that supposedly explains its transmission is missing?

I look at humanity spread across different continents, with its extraordinary diversity of languages, appearances, and traditions. Yet everywhere I recognize the same fundamental human nature: people think, reason, choose, distinguish right from wrong, and bear responsibility. The diversity is real, but so is the common humanity.

And this brings me back to the question that started my expedition. If the story of Adam, Noah, and Babel cannot establish the origin and transmission of humanity’s shared religious inheritance, where did that inheritance come from?

Here, another detail becomes decisive: Genesis 1 does not say that God creates only one couple named Adam and Eve. It speaks of the creation of humanity, male and female, in the Image of God. There is no man formed from dust, no woman subsequently made from his body, and no garden from which all humanity must descend. Those elements belong to a different account.

I have no reason to force Genesis 1 to say what Genesis 2 says. And perhaps the very explanation I was looking for has been before my eyes all along: not in the story of a single family carrying fragments of revelation across the world, but in the creation of humanity itself, in the Image of God.

The Discovery: God’s Revelation Does Not Begin with Israel!

The answer begins to take shape when I stop looking for the origin of all humanity in a single family. God creates human beings. In my reading of Genesis 1, Creation is not limited to one ancestral couple. I understand it as a divine act through which human communities appear in different regions of the earth. People have different appearances, live in different environments, and go on to develop different histories.

But they all receive the same fundamental gift: the Image of God. Conscience. The capacity to understand, choose, and answer for their own actions.

And here I see something I had not noticed before. If God creates human beings free and responsible, their relationship with the Creator cannot begin in complete ignorance of His existence and authority. All receive the Initial Revelation.Not a fully organized religion. Not a canon. Not temples, priests, sacrifices, and ceremonies. Rather, the fundamental truth: there is a Creator, the human being is free, and human deeds are subject to divine judgment.

Suddenly I understand why my investigation of religions keeps bringing these recurring elements to light. Divine communication and moral accountability do not have to be invented independently, all over again, by every community. They belong to the Initial Revelation. And the diversity of religions does not contradict this conclusion. Within the logic of this reconstruction, it confirms it. Because human beings remain free.

The Egyptians construct one mythology. The Mesopotamians develop another. The Greeks arrive at different explanations. Communities in other regions of the earth form their own traditions. Yet amid these constructions, traces of the original relationship between the Creator and humanity continue to appear. The Initial Revelation explains the fundamental common elements. Human freedom explains the diversity of religions.

And this is the discovery I have been searching for without knowing that I am searching for it. For me, it is not a timid hypothesis placed on the table alongside other possibilities. It is the only explanation I find solid and coherent within my reconstruction of Creation and the history of revelation.

And its implications are enormous: God does not reveal Himself to humanity for the first time through Israel!

This is one of the most important conclusions of my entire investigation. The claim that only Israel receives divine revelation while the rest of humanity remains in darkness confuses Special Revelation with Initial Revelation. Israel receives a distinct mission and a Special Revelation. But it does not receive a monopoly on Truth.

The fundamental Truth about the Creator, freedom, and responsibility is made available to all human beings from the very beginning. And its traces are scattered throughout the religious history of humanity. I do not have to be an Israelite to bear the Image of God. I do not need a priest’s approval to possess a conscience. I do not have to belong to a chosen people to be accountable before the Creator.

No people have the right to confuse their own historical mission with exclusive ownership of God.

This conclusion does not diminish Israel’s Special Revelation. It establishes its proper place. And once I understand the difference, biblical history begins to connect with the history of humanity as a whole.

How Revelation Becomes Buried Beneath Spirits

I now return to the subject from which I began: spirits. But I see the phenomenon with different eyes. Human beings receive the Initial Revelation and remain free to explain the world around them. They encounter death, dreams, illness, storms, and unknown phenomena. They begin imagining souls leaving bodies, spirits of the dead, ancestors who continue to act, and supernatural powers controlling nature.

From a simple revelation about the Creator and responsibility, complicated religions grow, populated by all manner of invisible beings. I have no reason to suppose that God revealed all of them. And I notice something more disturbing: the idea of divine communication gradually becomes an instrument through which some human beings claim authority over others.

A king declares that a god has chosen him. A priest claims that the gods speak through his institution. A prophet comes to be regarded not merely as a messenger but as a superior human being through whom divinity manifests itself. And when inspiration is interpreted as possession, matters become even more dangerous. Someone who claims that God speaks through him can demand obedience not on the authority of his own judgment, but on the authority of a power that no one is permitted to question.

That is why the dialogue between God and Moses seems so important to me. Moses does not cease to be human. He does not lose his conscience. God speaks to him, and he responds. Revelation communicates Truth to the human being. Possession claims to replace the person. This is the distinction that runs through my entire investigation. In one case, God respects the human being He creates free. In the other, freedom becomes suspect, while submission to an invisible power is presented as the spiritual ideal.

And now I also understand the role of Greek philosophy. The Greeks do not invent all the spirits, but they provide sophisticated philosophical explanations of the soul, intellect, inspiration, and principles superior to bodily nature. These concepts are no longer merely popular mythology. They become philosophy. And when philosophy enters the religious corpus, it receives an authority it should never possess. This brings me back to Alexandria.

Alexandria: Not Merely the Contamination of a Text, but the Betrayal of a Mission

Now Daniel 8 acquires extraordinary force for me. The prophecy speaks of Truth being cast to the ground and of a host being given over in connection with transgression. In my interpretation, these expressions describe the corruption of revelation through Greek philosophy and the participation of the community to which God entrusts the Special Revelation.

Here I must distinguish two things. Humanity receives the Universal Initial Revelation. Israel subsequently receives the Special Revelation. This means that Israel does not start from nothing and is not the only people who know of the Creator’s existence. It does, however, bear responsibility for a distinct mission. And in Alexandria I see the moment when that mission is compromised.

In my reconstruction of the formation of the biblical corpus, the Alexandrian project consolidates traditions and texts in an environment dominated by Hellenistic culture. Religious and philosophical concepts developed over the centuries become integrated into a body of writings that will later be presented as divine revelation. I do not deny the existence of Hebrew texts before Alexandria. But their existence does not prove that the entire corpus transmitted later already existed in the same form and structure.

And here the subject of spirits is no longer secondary. It becomes one of the theological indications of the mixture.

In Genesis 1, God creates through His Word, and humanity appears in His Image. I find no doctrine of an immortal soul inserted into a body, nor a ceremony by which a human being must receive a spiritual substance in order to become human. In Genesis 2, another construction appears: man formed from dust, the breath of life, followed by Eden, the serpent, and the Fall. Further on, in various texts, the Spirit comes upon people, fills them, is transferred, or produces extraordinary manifestations.

I also encounter the account in Numbers 11, where the Spirit resting upon Moses is shared with the elders, and they prophesy without the text giving us the content of their prophecies. What striking contrasts! In one tradition, God speaks to a person who understands and responds. In another, the manifestation of a spiritual power becomes the sign of authority.

And when I place these texts alongside the history of ecstatic inspiration, possession, and philosophical concepts in the ancient world, the connection becomes impossible for me to ignore. God does not need spirits in order to communicate with humanity. Religion needs them to construct a particular explanation of authority and human nature.

Alexandria is the point at which I identify the integration of these concepts into the tradition of Special Revelation. That is why, in my reading, Daniel 8 no longer describes a mere theological accident. It describes the betrayal of the mission entrusted to Israel. Truth is not merely attacked from outside. It is cast to the ground within the very history of the community that was supposed to preserve it.

From Alexandria to the Rejection of Melek

And the drama does not end there. Special Revelation has a prophetic direction. It leads toward Melek, the King chosen by God. Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary, is anointed at the Jordan and receives the mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of the Father. He is not a god who descends into a human body. Anointing does not transform him into a being of another nature. He is an authentic human being, appointed by the Creator for a real mission.

But Israel’s religious leadership rejects him, and he is killed. In my reading, this act represents the final step in the rupture of the Special Covenant. Alexandria marks the corruption of the revelation entrusted to Israel. The rejection of Melek marks the rejection of the King toward whom that revelation points.

And here I notice something that changes the perspective of the entire history. Israel’s failure to preserve the Special Revelation does not mean God’s failure in His relationship with humanity. Divine revelation does not begin with Israel. Nor is the Image of God Israel’s property.

Other peoples do not become human only when they encounter Jewish or Christian religion. They already belong to the humanity created by God, bearing conscience and inheriting the Initial Revelation. Thus, the histories of Greeks, Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Israelites are not separate histories of different Gods. They are parts of the great history of humanity in its relationship with the Creator.

Israel has a special chapter. Not the entire book.

Paul and the Human Being Declared Insufficient

I then return to the literature of the New Testament. Suddenly, Paul’s contrasts no longer appear out of nowhere: the natural man and the spiritual man, the flesh and the Spirit, the earthly man and the heavenly man. Philo of Alexandria already interprets the Genesis accounts through distinctions between the intelligible man and the bodily man. Greek philosophy has long provided explanations involving soul, intellect, and higher existence.

Thus, when I encounter the doctrine of a human being who must be transformed by the Spirit, I am no longer facing an idea without precedents. I can trace its intellectual family. And the question from the beginning returns with renewed force: who decides that the human being created in God’s Image is not enough?

If God creates the human being free and responsible, why should a Spirit have to make decisions in his place? If a demon causes him to do evil, why should the human being be judged for someone else’s deed? And if the Spirit does good in his place, where does personal faithfulness enter the picture? A person can be influenced without losing responsibility. But possession, understood as the replacement of the will, destroys the very foundation of moral judgment.

There is another danger. When religion divides people into natural and spiritual categories, the inevitable question arises: who decides who is spiritual? Someone who claims to possess the Spirit can assert authority over someone considered to lack it. And the conscience of the ordinary person becomes suspect. Here the history of religious domination meets philosophy and theology once again.

The human being is told to stop trusting his own conscience precisely in order to draw closer to the God who gave it to him. I cannot imagine a more obvious contradiction.

What Remains After the Cleansing of Truth?

I now reach the end of the expedition and look again at the entire construction. I remove the mythology of Eden, the world of immortal souls, the mechanisms of possession, demons turned into the authors of evil, and the doctrine of a human nature that must be replaced by a spiritual power.

And I do not discover a void. I discover a clear theology.

God creates human beings in His Image. He gives them conscience, freedom, and responsibility. He communicates the Initial Revelation to them. Human communities independently develop their histories and traditions, preserving or distorting what they receive. Later, Israel receives a Special Revelation and a special mission. That mission is compromised through the Alexandrian process and comes to an end with the rejection of Melek.

But the Truth about the Creator and humanity does not disappear. God remains the Creator of all. Human beings remain responsible for their own actions. Revelation remains communication, not possession. Prophecy remains the transmission of a message, not the cancellation of human will. Sin remains a human choice, not guilt inherited from Adam or the deed of a demon. Forgiveness remains God’s free decision. Death remains the cessation of life, while resurrection is a new creative act.

And Melek remains the man chosen and anointed by the Father, faithful to his mission, killed and raised by God. Here I recognize the principle of ME’EK even more clearly. ME is the domain of human conscience, choice, and responsibility. EK is the domain of God’s will, revelation, and actions. God and man can communicate and cooperate without becoming confused with one another.

God does not have to become the author of human decisions in order to be God. And the human being does not have to become a spirit in order to remain faithful to Him.

The Discovery That Goes Beyond My Original Question

As I retrace my journey, I almost smile at the magnitude of the surprise. I set out to investigate where the concepts surrounding the Spirit come from. I arrive at Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics. I discover that ecstatic inspiration and spirits are older than Greek philosophy. I travel through Egypt and Mesopotamia. I encounter different mythologies, but also recurring ideas about supernatural communication and human responsibility.

I reach an impasse over their common origins. I examine the traditional Adam–Noah–Babel explanation and find that it depends on the entire mythological framework that my earlier research separates from Genesis 1. Then I discover the key that brings everything together: the Universal Initial Revelation.

And this discovery resolves two problems at once. The first concerns spirits. I understand more clearly how human beings construct mythologies and spiritualizing philosophies, how supernatural authority becomes an instrument of domination, and how these concepts are integrated into the biblical tradition through Alexandrian syncretism.

The second is far more important: I understand that divine revelation is not the exclusive privilege of Israel.

Humanity does not begin in darkness, waiting for God to choose a people to whom He will reveal Truth for the first time. Human beings are created in His Image and receive the fundamental revelation from the beginning. The fact that religious traditions become different does not erase this common beginning. On the contrary, their histories preserve traces of what people receive and of how they exercise the freedom given to them.

That is precisely why, in the light of Daniel 8, I understand the present period as the time of the cleansing of Truth. I do not need to invent another supernatural world or restore the authority of certain people over the consciences of others. I need to rediscover what stands at the beginning.

God creates human beings on different continents, with different appearances and in different circumstances. Yet He gives them all the same Image. He gives them all conscience. He gives them all freedom and responsibility. And He makes the fundamental Truth about their relationship with the Creator accessible to them all.

What each community does with this inheritance is visible in history. Some traditions preserve clearer traces. Others cover them beneath gods, spirits, rituals, and claims to authority. But none can claim exclusive ownership of Truth.

And here I arrive at the conclusion I do not foresee at the beginning of the expedition. Special Revelation can be betrayed. Initial Revelation cannot be retroactively turned into the privilege of a single people.

Before the Creator, human beings are not divided into owners of Truth and populations condemned to live in darkness. They are people created in the same Image, each responsible for what they know, choose, and do.

I set out in pursuit of the Spirit. I discover the history of spirits, of philosophy, and of religion that ultimately seeks to subordinate conscience. But the most important discovery concerns God and humanity.

God did not create some peoples with the privilege of being fully human and others condemned to learn from them how to become human.

He gave them all His Image. And the Truth that human beings have covered with mythologies and religious monopolies can now be seen again, simply and clearly:

God revealed the TRUTH and made it accessible to all humanity from the very moment of Creation.