Submitted by Stephen Yulish on Mon, 08/23/2010 - 12:17

Stephen Yulish suggested this article. He found it very interesting. It is posted for your interest.

Source: http://www.realbiblecodes.com/torah_codes/mayan/maya-2012-2.php

The biblical Enoch was the son of Yered who was the great great grandson of Seth, a son of
Adam. Enoch lived 365 years, from 622 to 987 on the Jewish calendar. The beginning of the
long count Mayan calendar is taken to be in August of the year 3114 BCE, (-3113). This
corresponds to the year 647 on the Jewish calendar. After the Rosh HaShanah holiday in the year
3114 BCE, the year on the Jewish calendar would be 646. From these dates, we can infer that the
beginning of the Mayan calendar occurs during the life of Enoch.

According to the Midrash in Seder Hadorot, (Vol 1, p. 89), Enoch

In the book Sefer Hayashar, ( see Ancient Tales, ASIN: B000QGVNQS ), we read about Enoch,

He gathered people around him and taught them about God. Word was sent around everywhere
announcing that whoever wanted to know the ways of God and the good life should come to
Enoch for instruction. Hungry for the truth, people eagerly gathered around him and he taught
them the wisdom of God. Thus the people served God all the lifetime of Enoch. Rulers, princes,
and judges, all came to hear him. He was loved and respected so much that three hundred rulers
proclaimed him king over them. With gentle persuasion he was able to establish peaceful
relations between all these rulers. He reigned for two hundred and forty-three years guiding all
people in the ways of God.
Seder Hadorot tells that Enoch was the first one to write a book on astronomy. In
the pseudepigraph Book of Enoch, a compilation of books detailing the experiences, the
prophecies, and teachings of Enoch, there is a book entitled The courses of the Heavenly
Luminaries. This is chapters 72 through 82 of the Book of Enoch, and they are devoted to
describing the changing times for the rising and the setting of the sun through the solar year, the
waxing and waning of the moon through the lunar month and year.

The ancient Greeks identified Enoch with Hermes Trismegistus. The Greeks wrote that Enoch
taught the sons of men the art of building cities, the knowledge of the Zodiac, and the course of
the Planets. We also find Enoch's association with astronomy and arithmetic in Sefer Yuhasin. In
the Book of Jubilees, Enoch was the inventor of the art of writing. This is also so according to
Masonic lore. The correlation of these accomplishments of Enoch and the meaning of the term
Maya in different cultures is immediately apparent and surely not a coincidence.

The Midrash explains how Enoch obtained his knowledge. In The Zohar, Rabbi Aba said,

A book was indeed sent down to Adam through which he discerned and comprehended the
supernal wisdom. [This is the book of The Generations Of Adam.] This book later came into the
hands of the sons of Elohim, the sages of their generation, who were priviledged to learn from it
and to glean the supernal wisdom. They grasped it and comprehended it. This book was brought
down by the guardian of the secrets who is the angel Raziel and was given to Adam in the
Garden of Eden. Three guardian angels went before him and guarded the book so that the
external forces would not have access to it.

When Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden, he still held on to the book. Yet as he
stepped out, the book flew away from him. He prayed and cried out to his Master, and the book
was returned to him again so that this wisdom would not be forgotten and the people would
endeavor to attain knowledge of their Master.

We have been told that Enoch had a book, which originated from the same place as that of the
Generations of Adam. And this book contains the inner secrets of wisdom. (The Zohar, Vol 1,
The Kabbalah Centre International Inc., New York, 2003, p455-456)

Shem, a son of Noah, was a fourth generation descendant of Enoch. Eber was a great grandchild
of Shem. Eber's first born son was Peleg and his second son was Yoktan (Genesis 10:25).
Peleg, ???, comes from the root meaning to divide. The Torah commentators tell us the Eber
prophetically named his first born son, meaning divide, because during the days of Peleg's life,
the earth was divided (Genesis 10:25). Yoktan's name is based on the Hebrew root ???? meaning
to make small or belittle oneself in the sense of making oneself humble. From this root arises the
adjective ??? , meaning small. The Torah commentators tell us that Eber named his second
son Yoktan because he prophetically knew that Yoktan would lead a humble life. Thereby he
was rewarded with 13 sons (Genesis 10:26-29).

The Torah does not give information to exactly place Yoktan's time of birth or death, but from
the genealogies and ages given in the Torah, his older brother Peleg was born in 1757 and died in
1996 on the Jewish calender. Sefer Hayahsar says that after the incident of the Tower of
Babel Peleg died. From this we infer that the building of the Tower of Babel begins just before
1996 on the Jewish calendar which is 1765 BCE on the proleptic Gregorian calendar. This
clearly implies that if Yoktan lived as long as Peleg, then Yoktan lived during the time of the
Tower of Babel.

Shem's brother was Ham. He had a son Cush. And among the son's of Cush was Nimrod, ????,
the mighty man and hunter. The root of Nimrod's name is Marad, ???, which means rebellion.
Nimrod was a rebel against God. Nimrod believed that man could survive without God. It was
under Nimrod's direction that the Tower of Babel was built so that the people could make a
name. It is written

Make no mention of the name of the gods of others. (Exodus 23:13)

The commentators tell us that name in this context means idol. For them to build an idol means
they wanted to replace God.

The Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, writes that it was at the time that Nimrod was the king
and was teaching that it was cowardice to submit to God, that the tower was built. It was built
under his organization and direction.

Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a
piece of cowardice to submit to God; and being in any degree negligent about the work. And, by
reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could
expect.

God saw that their purpose in building the Tower was not good. He divided and confused the
people by making them speak many different languages. This stopped the building of the city
and the development of the Tower. Then God scattered the people all over the world (Genesis
11:8-9).

The scattering of the people, each people speaking a different language led to the 70 nations,
each nation coming from one of the 70 descendants of Noah listed in Genesis chapter 10. The
division of the earth (Genesis 10:25) which happened during the life of Peleg, is sometimes
explained as this division of the people into 70 nations. But the Hebrew root ??? also can mean
division by water. Putting the two meanings together, we get a picture of people being divided by
language and then the land being divided by water, physically separating at least some of the
groups of the peoples. This is one way that we can understand how all the continents of the
world were populated with speaking people. We say speaking people here because Jewish
tradition teaches that the distinguishing characteristic of man is that man is a speaking person.
Other levels of life may communicate, even with sound, but not with all the linguistic
capabilities that man has.

The beginning ancient Mayan civilization occupied the eastern third of Mesoamerica, primarily
the Yucatan Peninsula. The earliest archeological evidence associated with the Mayan
civilization was discovered in Belize and is currently dated about 1200 BCE. There are some
who think that the beginning of the ancient Mayan civilization was about 2000 BCE, but there is
no hard evidence for this. According to the Torah, the scattering of the people after the Tower of
Babel must have occurred around 1765 BCE. So it is possible that one of the Yoktan's 13 sons
and his clan was scattered, wandered around, eventually settling in the eastern third of
Mesomerica, and named the area Yucatan in honor of his father Yoktan. Particularly interesting
is that there is a Mayan word babel and its meaning is confusion, exactly the meaning of Babel in
Hebrew. This is surely not a coincidence.

 
    Tower of Babel by Flemish painter
      Lucas Van Valckenborch (1594)

And the earth was of one tongue, and of common purpose. And it came to pass, when they
migrated from the east, they found a valley in the land of Shinar, and settled there. And each one
said to his neighbour: Come, let us make brick, and bake them with fire. And the brick served
them as stone, and the bitumen served them as morter. And they said: Come, let us build a city
and a tower, (????) with its top in the heavens: and let us make a name for ourselves lest we be
dispersed across the whole earth.

And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of Man were building.
And He said: Behold, they are one people, with one language for all: and they have begun to do
this! Neither will they leave off from their designs, till they accomplish them in deed. Come let us
descend, and there confound their language, that they should not understand one another's
language.

And so the Lord scattered them from there over the face of the whole earth; and they ceased to
build the city. And therefore the name thereof was called Babel, because there the language of
the whole earth was confounded: and from thence the Lord scattered them over the face of the
whole earth. (Genesis 11:1-9)
The Torah speaks of the city and the tower, the tower presumably to be in the center of the city.
When God scattered the people, the building of the city stopped. But what happened to the
tower? In the pseudepigrapha, The Book of the Jubilees, we read,

And the Lord sent a mighty wind against the tower and overthrew it upon the earth, and behold it
was between Asshur and Babylon in the land of Shinar, and they called its name Overthrow.

It is explained that the name Overthrow is a play on the preceding verb overthrew. But the real
name of the tower was Babel.

Flavius Josephus quotes from the Sybil, the name given to pagan oracular seeresses.

The gods sent storms of wind and overthrew the tower and gave every one his peculiar language.

The Talmud tells us differently.

A third of the tower was burnt, a third sunk [into the earth] and a third is still standing.
(Sanhedran 109a)

 
           Mayan Central Temple Palenque

It is interesting that what the Torah calls ????, translated as tower, is not the kind of structure in
our day that we call tower. A building or structure that is much higher than it is in cross-section
and high relative to its surroundings is named tower. In our times, this includes narrow steel
towers such as those used for antennas and electrical tower transmission lines. But the biblical
meaning of tower is not that. It really corresponds to the first generic meaning of tower: a
building or structure that is much higher than it is in cross-section. The renaissance painters often
portrayed the Tower of Babel as a structure with circular cross-section, such as that shown here
by the Flemish painter Lucas Van Valckenborch. But their portrayal may not be historically
accurate. Indeed the stepped pyramid structure, called ziggarats, may be more accurate, similar
to the Mayan pyramids.
As mentioned earlier, Yoktan himself had 13 children. Among them are Ophir and Chavilah. The
Torah commentators associate these children with the Americas. In the book Seder Hadorot, The
Order of The Generations, and in the book Maor Einayim, Illumination of the Eyes, it says that
the new world (the Americas) that Columbus discovered is really the land of Ophir. And it is to
this land that King Solomon sent his boats once in three years (I Kings 10:11-12) to bring back
precious corals from the sea which he used for the temple. If indeed the Land of Ophir
corresponds to the Americas, then King Solomon sent his boats to the Belize Barrier coral reefs.
The Belize Barrier Reef is a 300 kilometers (186 mi) long section of the 900 kilometers (560 mi)
long Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which is continuous from Cancun on the northeast tip
of the Yucatan Peninsula through the Riviera Maya up to offshore Guatemala, making it the
second largest coral reef system in the world. From this perspective, it is no surprise that one of
the 31 states of Mexico is named Yucatan, and is located just north of the Yucatan Peninsula.
The Yucatan Peninsula is one of the areas populated by the ancient preclassic Mayan people and
as well populated by the later Mayan people of the classic period. The Yucatan is known to have
been named from the Nahuatl (Aztec) word Yokatlan, meaning place of richness. The Yucatan
itself does not have any precious metal deposits. However, the mountains of Veracruz, where the
early Olmec people lived and the area north of Yucatan where the later Aztecs lived do have
gold deposits.

As a side note, America in Hebrew is spelled  ?????? and thus has gematria 356.

The land of the Chavilah, in Hebrew is spelled ??? ?????? . This has gematria 355 and
one more for the kolel make also 356. The land of the Chavilah and America have the same
gematria. But there is something yet more interesting. The land of the Chavilah first appears in
Genesis.

A river issues forth from Eden to water the garden, and from there it is divided and becomes four
headwaters. The name of the first is Pishon, the one that encircles the whole land of Chavilah,
where the gold is. The gold of that land is good. (Genesis 2:10-12)

Recall that one of the early motivations for the Spanish conquest of Central America and Mexico
was that the conquistadors were interested in pillaging all the gold that could be found. That is
why they were particularly interested in conquering the Aztecs, who lived north of the Mayans
once they determined that the Aztecs had more gold.

One wonders, therefore, whether there is any evidence from the Mayan culture of an historical
connection of them to the Biblical ancestors of the Jews. Indeed, there are at least two such
connections. One is found in a manuscript written 1554 in the Quiche language of Guatemala.
The Quiche people are descendants of the Mayans. The manuscript contains a brief history of
their origin to their greatest king who ruled in the second half of the fifteenth century. This
manuscript was translated into Spanish by Dionisio Jose Chonay and into English by Delia
Goetz. The title of the manuscript is Title of the Lords of Totonicapan. Here is what it says about
the connection:
These then were the three nations of the Quiches and they came from where the sun rises,
descendants of Israel, of the same language and customs. ... When they arrived at the edge of the
sea,  Balam-Qitze touched it with his staff and at once a path opened which then closed up again
for thus the great God wished it to be done, because they were the sons of Abraham and Jacob.
(Delia Goetz, The Annals of the Cakchiquels; Title of the Lords of Totonicapan University of
Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1953, p170.)

The name Balam-Qitze, a leader in the description given in Title of the Lords of Totonicapan, has

a Hebrew cognate. Baal, ??? , is a Hebrew word meaning Lord, Master, owner, possessor.
The Torah discusses idol worship of the principal Canaanite idol called Baal. There is also a
biblical character Balaam (Numbers 22:5). There is an adjective in Hebrew Qatzar, ???, which
has a form Qitzar which is cognate to Qitze. This leader's name is then Short Master. The
Mayans are genetically short measuring about 4 foot 8 inches from archaeological skeletal
remains. They were the pygmies of Central America.

To put some perspective on the dates. The Tower of Babel is around 1996 on the Jewish calendar
which is 1765 BCE on the Gregorian calendar. Abraham is born in 1948 on the Jewish calendar
which is 1822 BCE on the Gregorian calendar, some 48 years before the Tower of Babel. Jacob
dies in 2255 on the Jewish calendar which is 1515 BCE on the Gregorian calendar, some 259
years after the Tower of Babel.

The history transmitted in Title of the Lords of Totonicapan mentions Jacob. So this history
must take place not much earlier than 1515 BCE.

There is another reference linking the Mayans to the biblical ancestors of the Jews. It is in a book
manuscript dating from 1566 by the priest Friar Diego de Landa. This is the priest who is
infamous for what is known as the Auto de fe event of July 1562 at Mani, at which in addition to
burning some 5000 Mayan idols, he burned 27 Mayan hieroglyphic scrolls. Friar de Landa wrote
a book whose title in English translation is Yucatan Before and After the Conquest. In the
beginning of the book he writes;

Some old men of Yucatan say that they have heard from their ancestors that this country was
peopled by a certain race who came from the East whom God delivered by opening for them
twelve roads through the sea. If this is true, all the inhabitants of the Indies must be of Jewish
descent because, the straits of Magellan having been passed, they must have spread over more
than 2000 leagues of territory now governed by Spain. (Friar Deigo De Landa, Relacion
de las  cosas de Yucatan, Yucatan Before and After the Conquest, English translation by William
Gates, Dover, New York 1978, p8.)

All this hints that it was the some of the descendants of Yoktan, particularly descendants of his
children Ophir and Chavilah, who eventually settled in the America's carrying with them some of
the knowledge of their great ancestor Enoch. It was they who were the biblical forbearers of the
Mayans.