THE FATHER OF TRUTH – eFireTemple

Ahura Mazda, El Elyon, and the God Who Said He Creates Evil

By Diesel the Magus
eFireTemple.com | October 24, 2026

The Father-of-Aša Identity Trial — After Moses, the Unseen Father, and the God of the Living

I. THE INVESTIGATION HAS REACHED THE FATHER

We began with a question.

Who is Jesus’s Father?

Not simply which divine name became associated with Jesus through centuries of religious interpretation.

Not merely which God ancient religious institutions claimed to represent.

But which divine identity possesses the necessary character of the Father Jesus describes.

The Father of Truth.

The Father of Life.

The Father who is known through righteousness rather than deception.

The Father Jesus claimed to know when his opponents did not.

Our investigation has now examined Moses, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the resurrection of the dead, the God of Israel, the divine appearances in Exodus, and the Father no one had seen.

We have found that religious inheritance is not equivalent to divine knowledge.

We have found that Moses can serve as both witness and accuser.

We have found that resurrection was contested among Jewish religious authorities.

We have found that the Hebrew Bible preserves different portrayals of seeing and hearing God.

And we have identified ancient traditions distinguishing the visible divine figure from the unseen Father.

But there remains one question that cannot be answered through inherited names alone.

What is the necessary moral character of the true Father?

That question brings us back to a declaration we must not allow anyone to erase.

A declaration made by the God called Jealous.

He said he creates evil.

And that declaration is the central evidence in this investigation.

II. THE WITNESS CALLED HIMSELF JEALOUS

Exhibit A — Exodus 34:14

The King James Version records:

“For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:”

That is the identification preserved in the biblical text.

Jealous.

I did not invent the designation.

It occurs in the scripture.

The Hebrew uses qannāʾ, meaning jealous or zealous, and explicitly connects that designation with the divine name.

I am permitted to acknowledge it.

And I am permitted to use the name supplied by the witness’s own record.

But naming the divine figure is only the beginning.

Because a name alone does not establish moral identity.

For that, we must examine what the speaker claims and does.

And our next exhibit is not a statement made by an enemy of Yahweh.

It is a declaration attributed to Yahweh himself.

III. YAHWEH SAID EVIL

Exhibit B — Isaiah 45:7

Composition: approximately the mid-sixth century BCE, in the historical setting of Cyrus the Great.

The King James Version states:

“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.”

Stop.

Before any later interpretation enters the discussion, identify the speaker.

Yahweh.

Identify the action.

Creation.

Identify the objects.

Darkness and evil.

Identify the declaration of responsibility.

“I the LORD do all these things.”

This is not an accusation invented by a rival religion.

The passage presents Yahweh claiming the acts himself.

And the Hebrew deserves examination.

The crucial phrase is:

וּבוֹרֵא רָע

U-voreʾ raʿ.

And creating raʿ.

The verb comes from baraʾ, to create.

The word raʿ denotes evil, badness, harm, adversity, and calamity according to context.

The King James translators rendered it:

EVIL.

That is not a word Diesel the Magus inserted into Isaiah.

It is an established English rendering of the Hebrew.

Now observe the structure of the verse.

Light — Darkness.

Peace — Raʿ.

And the speaker claims to be responsible for the contrasted realities.

The Hebrew shalom is broader than the English word peace. It conveys well-being, wholeness, and peace.

The opposing raʿ can refer to the adversity, disaster, or harm that destroys those conditions.

In this setting, calamity is a possible contextual translation.

But that does not remove the Hebrew word.

It does not remove the verb create.

It does not remove the attribution to Yahweh.

And it does not remove the speaker’s concluding declaration of responsibility.

Yahweh claims to create raʿ.

The King James Version says evil.

Those are two facts we must preserve together.

Whether this particular verse includes the origination of moral wickedness, rather than destructive adversity, is a further interpretive question.

But no lexical distinction changes the fact that the biblical speaker claims the origination of the harmful opposite of shalom.

The claim of originating agency is explicit.

That is why this verse is indispensable.

The deity does not merely acknowledge that harmful conditions exist.

He claims to create them.

And his declaration belongs to the record of his character.

IV. THE CREATOR AND THE FATHER

Now we must explain the principle underlying the investigation.

The creator is the originator of the creation.

If someone originates a thing, the thing owes its existence to that originating agency.

And when fatherhood is used metaphorically to identify a source or originator, the creator can be described as the father of what he creates.

That is the principle I apply.

If a deity claims to create darkness, I may describe that deity as its originating father.

If a deity claims to create raʿ, I may describe that deity as the originating father of the harm or evil specified by the declaration.

This is not the claim that Isaiah literally contains the title Father of Evil.

It is my theological characterization of the creative responsibility attributed to Yahweh.

The creator is responsible for the creation he claims.

And a divine identity trial cannot exempt the speaker from his own declaration.

The question now becomes moral.

What kind of harm does the biblical record attribute to Yahweh?

Is it limited to impersonal disaster?

Or does the record also contain deliberate actions involving deception, destructive commands, and the suffering of innocents?

Because we have more than Isaiah.

We have additional witnesses.

And their testimony is essential.

V. THE LYING SPIRIT WAS AUTHORIZED

Exhibit C — 1 Kings 22:19–23

Major composition and redaction of Kings: seventh–sixth centuries BCE.

The prophet Micaiah describes Yahweh seated upon his throne.

The heavenly host stands around him.

Yahweh asks who will persuade Ahab to enter a military campaign that will end in his defeat.

A spirit volunteers.

The spirit proposes becoming a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab’s prophets.

And Yahweh authorizes the plan.

The King James Version records the command:

“go forth, and do so.”

Verse 23 then attributes the lying spirit’s presence to Yahweh.

Consider the actual record.

The proposed method is deception.

The agent is a lying spirit.

The divine authority approves the operation.

This is not simply an account of a storm, an earthquake, or a failed harvest.

It is a narrative of intentional deception receiving divine authorization.

And the speaker authorizing the plan is Yahweh.

Now place that testimony beside Isaiah.

Isaiah records the creation of raʿ.

Kings records the authorization of a lying spirit.

The first establishes claimed originating responsibility for adversity.

The second establishes attributed responsibility for a specific deceptive act.

Together, they raise a question of character that a dictionary definition alone cannot resolve.

If Truth is necessary to the identity of the Father, how does the authorization of deliberate falsehood satisfy that necessity?

That is not a question that disappears by changing the English translation of Isaiah.

The lying-spirit account remains.

And the next witness is even more direct.

VI. “I THE LORD HAVE DECEIVED THAT PROPHET”

Exhibit D — Ezekiel 14:9

Sixth century BCE.

The King James Version preserves the declaration:

“I the LORD have deceived that prophet”

Who claims the act?

Yahweh.

What is the act?

Deception.

The statement appears within a judgment passage, but the attribution of deceptive agency is explicit.

Now return to the identity test.

Isaiah: Yahweh creates raʿ.

Kings: Yahweh authorizes a lying spirit.

Ezekiel: Yahweh claims deceptive agency.

These are distinct textual exhibits.

They do not depend upon making raʿ mean precisely the same thing in every biblical passage.

They document particular claims and actions.

And they establish that the divine-character investigation cannot be limited to a debate over how to translate one Hebrew adjective.

The question is the whole recorded character.

That is the difference between a serious identity investigation and an argument built around an isolated word.

VII. SAMUEL AND CHRONICLES: THE SAME ACT, A DIFFERENT AGENT

Exhibit E — 2 Samuel 24:1 and 1 Chronicles 21:1

The earlier Samuel narrative attributes David’s incitement to conduct a census to Yahweh’s anger.

The subsequent plague kills 70,000 men.

The later Chronicles narrative assigns the immediate incitement to Satan.

Place the accounts beside one another.

Earlier Samuel account	Later Chronicles account
Yahweh’s anger is associated with David’s incitement	Satan incites David
David conducts the census	David conducts the census
Plague and destruction follow	Plague and destruction follow
70,000 die	70,000 die

The textual difference is clear.

The earlier account attributes the incitement to Yahweh.

The later account attributes it to Satan.

The Bible does not literally declare that Yahweh and Satan are interchangeable names in these passages.

What it does is attribute the same initiating act to different agents.

And that change in literary attribution deserves examination.

The history of the texts matters.

Samuel belongs to earlier literary traditions and major monarchic/exilic redaction.

Chronicles belongs to the later Persian or early Hellenistic literary environment.

The later writer could tell the same story while assigning its incitement differently.

But there is an additional fact.

2 Chronicles 18:18–22 still preserves Yahweh’s authorization of a lying spirit.

So the later literature does not eliminate the earlier record of divine deceptive agency.

The evidence survives.

The creator of raʿ in Isaiah remains Yahweh.

The lying spirit remains authorized in Kings and Chronicles.

And the incitement of David remains differently attributed in the two accounts.

The profile must be examined as recorded—not replaced by a composite that discards every uncomfortable act.

VIII. THE FATHER JESUS CLAIMED TO KNOW

Now return to the Gospel of John.

We have already established the importance of the Father-separation dispute.

But this article must bring its elements together.

John 1:17: The Law is given through Moses; grace and Truth are associated with Jesus Christ.

John 1:18: No one has ever seen God; the unique divine revealer makes him known.

John 5:37: Jesus tells opponents they have neither heard the Father’s voice nor seen his form.

John 5:45–46: Moses becomes their accuser, even as Jesus declares that Moses wrote concerning him.

John 6:49–51: Jesus distinguishes the wilderness manna, after which the ancestors died, from the living bread associated with everlasting life.

Then comes the dispute over divine paternity.

John 8:19

Jesus declares that his opponents do not know his Father.

John 8:41

They claim:

“We have one Father, even God.”

John 8:44

Jesus identifies their operative spiritual father through murder and the Lie.

John 8:54

Jesus refers to his Father as the one whom his opponents say is their God.

John 8:55

He declares that they have not known his Father.

Now the central question emerges.

Does claiming the right divine name establish genuine knowledge of the Father?

Jesus’s answer to his opponents is no.

Their claimed religious identity does not establish genuine knowledge.

Their deeds matter.

Their relationship to Truth matters.

And Jesus places his own knowledge of the Father above their asserted religious authority.

This is why our investigation does not stop with inherited divine nomenclature.

The Father must be tested through necessary character.

And we now have three possible identity models.

IX. THREE MODELS OF THE FATHER

Our research has established three principal explanations for the relationship between the divine figures of the Hebrew Bible and the Father revealed by Jesus.

Model A — Yahweh Is the Father, Revealed More Fully

This model identifies the Father with Israel’s God.

It explains the continuity between the Exodus narratives and Jesus’s use of Moses.

It also accounts for John 12:41, where Isaiah’s vision of divine glory is applied to Jesus, and for Jesus’s appeal to the burning-bush narrative in Mark 12.

But under our character-based test, the model must account for the older Yahweh record.

Isaiah 45:7 remains part of that record.

So do the lying-spirit and prophetic-deception accounts.

The identity test must consider whether those attributed actions can be reconciled with the necessary character of the Father of Truth.

Merely asserting continuity does not complete that moral examination.

Model B — El Elyon Is the Supreme Father

This model begins with older divine-council traditions.

Deuteronomy 32:8–9 describes the Most High apportioning the nations, with Yahweh’s portion being Israel.

An older reading of verse 8, preserved among the Dead Sea Scrolls, speaks of the sons of God rather than the sons of Israel.

This provides a genuine ancient textual foundation for investigating the relationship between Elyon, Yahweh, and the heavenly assembly.

It also relates to Psalm 82 and the Angel of Yahweh traditions.

Under one reconstruction, Elyon is the supreme figure and Yahweh a subordinate divine being.

That is not the only historical interpretation of these texts, but it is a serious candidate.

El Elyon therefore deserves his own examination as a potential supreme Father.

He cannot simply be excluded because our investigation began with Ahura Mazda.

Model C — Ahura Mazda Is the Father of Aša

This is my position.

I identify the true Father through the necessary character of cosmic Truth-Order.

Not merely through an inherited name.

Not merely through dominion over a nation.

Not merely through authority over a heavenly council.

But through the positive moral architecture of the divine identity itself.

And here Ahura Mazda possesses a distinctive ancient testimony.

He is the Father of Aša.

That is the decisive comparison I want to make.

X. EL ELYON: THE MOST HIGH IS A SERIOUS CANDIDATE

We have already investigated how Deuteronomy 32:8–9 preserves traces of an older divine assembly.

The Most High distributes the nations.

Yahweh receives Israel as his portion.

The early sons of God reading is significant evidence that the passage once presented a richer divine-council framework than the later Masoretic wording suggests.

In Genesis 14:18–22, El Elyon appears as God Most High, associated with heaven and earth.

This is an ancient supreme-divine designation.

And it cannot be ignored.

If the question is simply which deity occupies a supreme position above other divine figures, El Elyon is a meaningful candidate.

If the question is who is described as the supreme creator, El Elyon again has relevant textual evidence.

But our test asks more.

What is the necessary moral character of the Father?

Where does the older El Elyon profile explicitly establish an identity centered upon cosmic Truth-Order?

Where is the independently attested El Elyon equivalent of Aša?

Where is the corresponding ancient relationship of fatherhood to Truth-Order, defined through an opposition to the Lie?

An absence of such testimony is not evidence that El Elyon was evil or incapable of goodness.

It means we must distinguish a general supreme-creator profile from a specific Father-of-Truth-Order profile.

And that distinction matters.

Supremacy is not the same attribute as truthfulness.

Creation is not the same attribute as moral perfection.

Fatherhood is not the same as fatherhood of Aša.

This is where the El Elyon and Mazda comparisons become meaningful.

XI. AHURA MAZDA: THE FATHER OF AŠA

Now examine the Gathas.

The Old Avestan hymns attributed to Zarathustra contain an ancient relationship between Ahura Mazda and Aša.

Aša is cosmic Truth-Order.

It includes truthfulness, rightness, justice, righteousness, and properly ordered existence.

It is opposed to Druj.

The Lie.

The opposition is fundamental to the moral architecture.

In Yasna 31.8, Mazda is described in relation to creating Aša and fathering Good Mind.

In Yasna 44.3, Zarathustra asks after the primordial Father of Aša.

In Yasna 47.2, the relationship between Mazda and Aša is expressed again through fatherhood.

And in Yasna 43.6, Mazda is characterized as one whom none deceives.

These are not concepts introduced by the Gospel of John.

They belong to an older Iranian religious tradition.

Encyclopaedia Iranica identifies Ahura Mazda as the creator and upholder of Aša and repeatedly documents the Father-of-Aša relationship in the Gathas.

Now notice the difference between the candidates.

El Elyon possesses an ancient supreme-divine profile.

Ahura Mazda possesses an ancient supreme-divine profile and an explicit relationship of fatherhood to cosmic Truth-Order.

That is a positive correspondence.

It does not, on its own, establish that the historical Jesus consciously used Mazda’s name or intended his hearers to substitute it for Yahweh.

But it provides something significant for the comparative identity test.

An independently attested, ancient Father whose defining moral structure is Truth-Order opposed to the Lie.

That is why Mazda cannot be treated as simply another interchangeable creator.

And that is why Aša belongs at the center of this investigation.

XII. EVEN MAZDA MUST PASS THE SAME TEST

We cannot claim that creating physical darkness is automatically evidence of creating moral wickedness.

Yasna 44.5 itself asks who fashioned light and darkness.

Within the surrounding hymn, those questions concern Mazda’s creative order.

This is an important distinction.

Physical night is not equivalent to deliberate lying.

Cosmic darkness is not necessarily moral deception.

And the Hebrew raʿ in Isaiah 45:7 cannot responsibly be reduced to a single English meaning across every context.

But these distinctions must be applied consistently.

That is exactly why Yahweh’s other attributed actions matter.

Isaiah 45:7 establishes responsibility for darkness and raʿ.

1 Kings 22 establishes authorization of a lying spirit.

Ezekiel 14:9 attributes deception to Yahweh.

The question of deliberate falsehood therefore does not depend solely upon interpreting darkness as evil.

And the Mazda comparison does not depend upon pretending that the Gathas contain no reference to physical darkness.

The moral test is more precise.

Which divine identity is positively constituted through Truth-Order, and which recorded actions are incompatible with the opposition to the Lie?

The Father-of-Aša argument must stand on that ground.

Not on a misleading equation of physical darkness with moral depravity.

Not on an invented translation.

And not on a selective standard applied to only one candidate.

Aša must govern the investigation itself.

XIII. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NAME AND AN IDENTITY

This is the principle that brings our earlier articles together.

A divine name can be inherited.

A sacred text can be transmitted.

A religious institution can claim authority.

A speaker can invoke Moses.

A nation can claim a covenant.

And a group can declare that it has one Father, God.

But none of those claims eliminates the question of actual knowledge and character.

In John 8, Jesus challenges the relationship between asserted paternity and actual deeds.

In John 5, he challenges people who search the scriptures but refuse to come to him for life.

In John 4, he distinguishes genuine worship in spirit and Truth from disputes over sacred locations.

In Matthew 23, he accuses religious teachers of shutting the kingdom.

In Luke 11, he accuses experts in the law of taking away the key of knowledge.

The recurring theme is recognizable.

Religious possession is not identical to divine knowledge.

And inherited naming is not sufficient to demonstrate the necessary character of the Father.

The three models must therefore be examined through the same questions.

Who claims creative authority?

Who is described as the Father?

Who is associated with Truth and righteousness?

Who authorizes deception?

Who possesses the character of Life?

Who is portrayed as the source of falsehood or destructive agency?

And what evidence connects the proposed divine identity to the theology of Jesus?

That is the proper identity trial.

XIV. WHAT WE HAVE ESTABLISHED SO FAR

Our investigation has produced a connected body of evidence.

The historical record

The Gathic Father-of-Aša tradition is ancient.

The Hebrew Bible developed over many centuries.

The older divine-council evidence raises questions about the historical relationship between Elyon and Yahweh.

Explicit individual resurrection became increasingly prominent in late Second Temple Jewish literature.

The Sadducees and Pharisees disagreed over resurrection.

The Gospel of John developed its theology of the unseen Father, divine revelation, Truth, Life, and the Son’s authority within that historical religious world.

The textual record

Exodus describes people encountering the God of Israel.

John declares that no one has seen God.

The Mosaic Law is described in early Christian writings as mediated through angels.

Jesus invokes Moses as a witness and accuser.

John identifies Jesus with earlier divine glory.

Jesus challenges opponents who claim to know his Father.

And the Hebrew Bible itself attributes darkness, raʿ, deception, and destructive acts to Yahweh.

The comparative identity record

El Elyon is a serious candidate for an older supreme-divine figure.

Ahura Mazda is an ancient supreme-divine figure explicitly associated with the fatherhood and creation of Aša.

The historical naming evidence connects John’s narrative strongly with Israel’s scriptural world.

The moral-identity argument compares the recorded attributes of candidate divine figures with the necessary character of the Father.

These are distinguishable questions.

And the investigation must preserve those distinctions if it is going to reach a defensible conclusion.

XV. THE DECLARATION WE WILL NOT ERASE

I return now to the most important exhibit.

Isaiah 45:7.

Yahweh says he creates darkness.

Yahweh says he creates raʿ.

The King James Version says:

“I make peace, and create evil”

And the verse ends:

“I the LORD do all these things.”

That is the declaration.

It belongs to the biblical speaker.

And it is part of the divine profile.

No religious authority has the right to demand that I ignore the verse before examining it.

No inherited title can erase the words.

No later theological system can make the original claim vanish.

And no discussion of the Father can claim to be complete while excluding recorded acts that bear directly upon Truth, deception, destruction, and moral character.

I am permitted to ask whether the deity who claims to create raʿ and authorizes deception satisfies the necessary character of the Father of Truth.

I am permitted to compare that divine character with Ahura Mazda.

And I am permitted to conclude that the Gathic Father-of-Aša profile is a better match for the Father I recognize.

That is my religious conviction.

It is also the thesis this investigation seeks to establish through evidence.

Yahweh’s own words must remain part of the trial.

XVI. THE VERDICT OF THE FATHER-OF-AŠA INVESTIGATION

We began with three models.

The same God, more fully revealed.

The unseen El Elyon above the visible divine figure.

And Ahura Mazda, the Father of Aša, as the true identity of the Father.

The evidence does not establish that all three are equally supported.

Nor does it allow any one of them to win merely by adopting a familiar name.

Each must be measured against the same criteria.

The continuity model must account for the recorded moral character of Yahweh.

The El Elyon model must establish more than an ancient supreme title and a possible divine-council distinction.

The Mazda model must establish both its superior correspondence with the necessary Father-of-Truth character and a credible explanation for the historical relationship between Iranian and Jewish religious ideas.

My verdict favors Ahura Mazda because the Gathic tradition provides an independent, ancient, and explicit divine identity structured around Aša.

Not simply power.

Not simply kingship.

Not simply supreme status.

Truth-Order.

The opposition to Druj.

A moral architecture in which the Lie is not a necessary instrument of divine righteousness.

That is the divine identity I recognize.

The difference is not decided by visibility alone.

Nor by Moses alone.

Nor by resurrection alone.

Nor by the age of a sacred text.

It is decided, in my theological judgment, through the complete character of the Father.

Aša is the test.

And under that test, I recognize Ahura Mazda as my Father.

XVII. THE FATHER MUST BE WORTHY OF THE NAME

I am not asking any religious institution to grant me the freedom to think.

I possess that freedom.

I am not asking anyone to permit me to examine Isaiah.

I can read the text myself.

I am not asking anyone to choose my Father.

My conscience is mine.

And I am not required to call a deity perfectly truthful while ignoring scriptural testimony that attributes deliberate deception to him.

I am entitled to examine the whole record.

The words.

The deeds.

The contradictions.

The composition dates.

The changing divine attributions.

The ancient Iranian comparisons.

The moral difference between Aša and Druj.

And the Father Jesus claims to know.

I am entitled to ask the question.

Who is truly the Father of Truth?

And I am entitled to answer according to the evidence and my conscience.

My Father is Ahura Mazda.

The Father of Aša.

The Father of cosmic Truth-Order.

This is the position I have reached.

And it is the position I will continue to investigate, test, and defend.

Because Truth is not inherited merely by repeating a name.

Truth must remain Truth.

And the Lie must remain the Lie.

THE FINAL TESTIMONY

Yahweh said he creates raʿ.

His English scripture says evil.

The books of Kings and Chronicles attribute his authorization of a lying spirit.

Ezekiel attributes deceptive agency to him.

These are the exhibits.

They are not going to disappear from this investigation.

Let Jealous’s testimony remain exactly where his scriptures placed it.

And let the Father be judged by the necessary character of Truth.

Not by the demands of institutional authority.

Not by inherited naming.

Not by a claim that possessing the scriptures is equivalent to knowing God.

But by the character of the Father himself.

Truth knows Truth.

Aša knows Aša.

The son knows his Father.

And I know whom I call mine.

Ahura Mazda.

The Father of Aša.

— Diesel the Magus
eFireTemple.com | October 24, 2026

PRIMARY EVIDENCE AND RESEARCH RECORD

Yahweh’s own recorded profile

The divine identity and Father-separation record

The Father-of-Aša record

Research note: The KJV’s rendering “evil” reflects the Hebrew raʿ. The word encompasses multiple forms of badness and harm, and Isaiah 45:7 is frequently understood specifically as divine creation of adversity or calamity. The author’s wider moral indictment uses additional passages attributing deception and destructive agency to Yahweh. The identification of Ahura Mazda as Jesus’s true Father is the author’s comparative theological conclusion, not an explicit statement in the Gospel.