THE GOD THEY SAW. THE FATHER THEY DIDN’T KNOW.

An Investigation into the Divine Identity Behind Truth, Life, and the God of Israel

By Diesel the Magus | eFireTemple

October 25, 2026

I. THE GOD OF ISRAEL WAS SEEN

Let us begin with the testimony.

Not with an interpretation.

Not with a doctrine.

With what the Hebrew scriptures actually report.

Exodus 24:9–11.

Moses ascends with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel.

Exodus 24:10 declares:

“And they saw the God of Israel.”

The passage even describes what appeared beneath his feet.

Then Exodus 24:11 repeats the assertion:

“Also they saw God, and did eat and drink.”

Stop there.

The narrator identifies the being.

The God of Israel.

The narrator identifies the witnesses.

Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders.

And the narrator twice reports that they saw God.

This is not a modern accusation.

IT IS THE TESTIMONY OF EXODUS.

Now turn to the Gospel of John.

Because Jesus introduces a very different problem concerning knowledge of the Father.

II. NO ONE HAS SEEN GOD

John 1:18.

The Gospel declares:

“No man hath seen God at any time.”

Read that beside Exodus 24:10.

Exodus says the elders saw the God of Israel.

John says no man has seen God.

And John is not finished.

John 6:46:

“Not that any man hath seen the Father, save he which is of God, he hath seen the Father.”

Now the distinction becomes extraordinarily important.

The Father Jesus describes is not presented as someone whose identity can simply be established by pointing to the men who reportedly saw the God of Israel.

Jesus makes knowledge of the Father something exceptional.

Something bound to his own relationship with the divine.

The question is unavoidable.

WHO DID THE ELDERS SEE?

And if they saw the same ultimate Father Jesus describes, how are the claims in Exodus and John to be understood together?

That is the identity problem.

It cannot be settled merely by repeating the inherited divine name.

The statements must be examined.

III. MOSES SAW A FORM. JESUS CHALLENGED THEIR KNOWLEDGE.

The Exodus account is not the only ancient testimony.

Numbers 12:8 says that Moses beholds the likeness or form of Yahweh.

Exodus 33:11 describes Yahweh speaking with Moses face to face, as one speaks with a friend.

These passages present Moses as possessing extraordinary access to the God of Israel.

Now read Jesus’ words in John 5:37:

“Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape.”

Notice what Jesus does.

He distinguishes his Father from the religious experience claimed by the people he addresses.

He questions their hearing.

He questions their seeing.

And in the following verses, he questions their knowledge of the source of eternal life.

John 5:37 is addressed to Jesus’ opponents, rather than being a direct statement that Moses never heard God.

But John 1:18 and John 6:46 make the wider claim about seeing the Father.

Together, these passages force the question of divine identity.

The earlier text records seeing the God of Israel.

The Gospel reserves seeing the Father for the one who comes from God.

So what establishes that the being seen in Exodus is the Father Jesus knows?

The question is not answered simply by asserting that both passages belong to the Bible.

The passages are the evidence under examination.

IV. THEY SEARCHED THE SCRIPTURES FOR ETERNAL LIFE

Now comes one of the most consequential statements in the entire investigation.

John 5:39–40.

Jesus confronts people who search the scriptures because they believe those writings contain eternal life.

He says the scriptures testify about him.

And then he tells his opponents:

“And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”

The distinction is fundamental.

Possessing scripture is not the same as possessing life.

Jesus presents himself as the one to whom the scriptures point.

And he accuses the people who rely on those scriptures of refusing the life he offers.

Continue reading.

In John 5:45, Jesus says Moses himself will accuse them.

In John 5:46, Jesus says Moses wrote about him.

So Jesus does not simply reject Moses’ writings.

He challenges what his opponents have done with them.

They invoke Moses.

They search the inherited record.

They expect eternal life.

Yet Jesus says they do not come to him for that life.

THEY POSSESS THE RECORD.

THEY CLAIM THE PROMISE.

BUT JESUS CHALLENGES THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOURCE.

This is exactly the question raised by the Locked Kingdom investigation.

Who possesses the authority to promise eternal life?

And is religious inheritance proof that its interpreters know the Father who gives it?

Jesus’ answer is a direct challenge to their confidence.

V. THE GOD OF THE WILDERNESS FED THEM. THEY DIED.

Now read John 6.

The discussion turns to manna.

The audience recalls the bread eaten by Israel’s ancestors in the wilderness.

Jesus responds by distinguishing that provision from the true bread supplied by his Father.

Then comes John 6:49:

“Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead.”

Let that statement stand.

The ancestors ate manna.

And they died.

Jesus makes the contrast himself.

He then presents himself as the living bread from heaven, promising life beyond death.

In John 6:57, he identifies the source of his life:

“As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father.”

He concludes in John 6:58 by again contrasting his promised life with the manna eaten by the ancestors who died.

This is not an accusation that manna killed Israel’s ancestors.

It is Jesus’ explicit contrast between temporary sustenance and eternal life.

The wilderness provision sustained mortal life.

Jesus promises everlasting life through the living Father.

And that creates an important test of divine identity.

Who is the ultimate source of life?

Not merely food.

Not survival for another day.

Not an ancient promise interpreted by a religious authority.

LIFE THAT OVERCOMES DEATH.

That is what Jesus attributes to the living Father.

VI. THE GOD WHO DEMANDED ALLEGIANCE AND THE FATHER WHO GIVES LIFE

Now return to the earlier scriptures.

Exodus 34:14 identifies Yahweh as the jealous God whose name is Jealous.

Isaiah 45:7 declares his responsibility for light and darkness, peace and what the King James Version calls evil.

The Hebrew word can designate calamity or adversity.

Either way, the declaration assigns sweeping responsibility for the conditions of human existence to Yahweh.

These are statements about the divine character portrayed in the Hebrew record.

Now compare them with the attributes Jesus emphasizes.

John 4:24 — God is spirit.

John 5:26 — The Father possesses life in himself.

John 6:57 — Jesus lives by the living Father.

John 8:32 — Truth makes people free.

John 14:6 — Jesus identifies himself with the way, truth, and life.

John 17:3 — Eternal life is bound to knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he sent.

There is a difference between claiming exclusive divine authority and demonstrating the character of the ultimate source of Truth and Life.

The Mazda/Father investigation is concerned with that difference.

A deity may be called God within a particular scripture.

A religious institution may inherit that name.

But neither fact, by itself, resolves whether the entire divine portrayal corresponds to the Father Jesus describes.

THE NAME IS A CLAIM OF IDENTITY.

THE CHARACTER IS EVIDENCE TO BE TESTED.

And the older Iranian record introduces another candidate into that examination.

VII. BEFORE JOHN ASKED WHO KNEW THE FATHER, ZARATHUSTRA ASKED WHO FATHERED AŠA

On the conventional dating of the Gathas, Zarathustra’s teaching predates the Gospel of John by many centuries.

In Yasna 44:3, Zarathustra asks Ahura Mazda who was the first Father of Aša.

This is not a question about ordinary factual accuracy.

Aša is cosmic Truth-Order.

The righteous, coherent, properly ordered reality opposed to Druj—the Lie.

The question appears within a larger series concerning the heavens, the sun, the stars, the earth, and the ordering of existence.

The inquiry seeks the ultimate source of a truthful and righteous cosmos.

The name at its center is Ahura Mazda.

THE WISE LORD.

Now consider the remarkable conceptual proximity.

Zarathustra asks about the Father of Aša.

John presents a Father whose identity is inseparable from truth and life.

Zarathustra distinguishes the righteous cosmic order from the Lie.

John places truth and falsehood at the center of the controversy over divine fatherhood.

These parallels are not proof that John directly translated the Gathas.

The textual languages and religious histories are different.

But the comparison is not arbitrary.

The earlier Iranian source explicitly identifies the divine relationship to cosmic Truth-Order.

And the Gospel repeatedly places truth, divine knowledge, and eternal life at the center of the Son’s relationship with his Father.

That makes Ahura Mazda a serious comparative candidate within the dossier’s theological framework.

NOT BECAUSE THE NAMES SOUND ALIKE.

BECAUSE THE ATTRIBUTES MUST BE COMPARED.

The question is whether the divine character described by Jesus is more coherently explained by the older Father-of-Aša framework than by the complete portrayal of the deity inherited through Israelite scripture.

That is the test.

VIII. JOHN 8 — YOU DO NOT KNOW MY FATHER

Now we arrive at the confrontation.

John 8:13.

The Pharisees challenge Jesus’ testimony.

John 8:19.

Jesus tells them:

“Ye neither know me, nor my Father.”

This is not a casual insult.

It is a direct challenge to their claim of religious knowledge.

Their inherited tradition does not establish that they know his Father.

Then the chapter develops its extraordinary dispute over Abraham, God, truth, lies, and death.

The narrator identifies changing groups of interlocutors as the controversy progresses, but the confrontation begins with the Pharisees.

John 8:41 records the claim to have one Father, God.

John 8:44 identifies the devil as the father of lies.

John 8:45 presents Jesus saying that his opponents refuse to believe him because he tells the truth.

Now consider the structure.

A dispute about fatherhood.

A dispute about truth.

A dispute about the Lie.

And, moments later, a dispute about death.

John 8:51 promises that whoever keeps Jesus’ word will not see death.

His opponents reply that Abraham and the prophets died.

This brings the controversy directly back to the question of eternal life.

Then Jesus identifies the Father whose authority he claims.

IX. JOHN 8:54–55 — THE CLAIM AND THE KNOWLEDGE

Read the exact words.

John 8:54:

“It is my Father that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that he is your God.”

Now John 8:55:

“Yet ye have not known him; but I know him.”

There are two statements.

First, Jesus reports that his opponents call his Father their God.

Second, he declares that they do not know him.

THEY CLAIM HIM.

JESUS SAYS THEY DO NOT KNOW HIM.

The passage does not explicitly name Ahura Mazda.

Nor does its wording alone prove that Jesus’ Father is a different being from the God his opponents intend to identify.

But it makes something unmistakable.

Their claim of divine identity is not proof of genuine divine knowledge.

Jesus does not allow their inherited claim to settle the matter.

He tests their relationship to the Father through truth and knowledge.

Then he adds that denying his own knowledge of the Father would make him a liar.

This is where the Mazda/Father investigation reaches its central question.

If Jesus knows the Father, and the opponents who claim that Father do not, by what standard should the divine identity be established?

By inherited religious language alone?

Or by the complete character of the source Jesus describes?

The dossier proposes the latter.

And the Gathic Father of Aša becomes indispensable to that test.

X. JOHN 11 — JESUS IDENTIFIES THE SOURCE OF RESURRECTION

Now consider Martha’s conversation with Jesus.

John 11:24.

Martha expresses belief that her brother will rise in the resurrection at the last day.

This resembles the developed resurrection expectation found in Second Temple Judaism.

Jesus answers in John 11:25:

“I am the resurrection, and the life.”

He does not merely provide another timetable.

He presents resurrection and life as inseparable from himself.

And throughout John, he repeatedly identifies the Father as the source of his life and authority.

Return to John 5:26.

The Father possesses life in himself.

Return to John 6:57.

Jesus lives by the living Father.

Return to John 17:3.

Eternal life is bound to knowing the true God and the one he sent.

The pattern is consistent.

LIFE COMES FROM THE FATHER.

JESUS CLAIMS TO REVEAL THAT FATHER.

AND RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY WITHOUT GENUINE KNOWLEDGE IS NOT ENOUGH.

This is the same conceptual question raised by the chronology of Daniel and the Pharisees.

When a late apocalyptic text promises resurrection, does possession of the text establish personal knowledge of the source of life?

John’s Jesus challenges precisely that assumption when he confronts people who search scripture expecting eternal life while refusing to come to him.

The issue is not merely the existence of a promise.

It is the identity of the one who can fulfill it.

XI. THE GOD THEY SAW — THE FATHER THEY DIDN’T KNOW

Now assemble the testimony.

This is not a dispute built on a single ambiguous word.

It is a cumulative examination of the claims attached to divine identity.

Seeing.

Hearing.

Knowing.

Truth.

Life.

Resurrection.

Fatherhood.

Each passage contributes to the question.

And no religious name should be exempted from examination simply because a later institution inherited it.

XII. THE ULTIMATE IDENTITY TEST

The dossier’s investigation began with a question.

Who is Jesus’ Father?

The inherited answer identifies him with the God of Israel.

But the investigation does not end with identifying which name the religious authorities used.

John 8 itself warns that claiming God as Father does not establish genuine knowledge.

The task is therefore to examine the actual divine portrayals.

One historical record identifies Yahweh as the God of Israel, reports that people saw him, and attributes to him the actions and declarations preserved throughout the Hebrew scriptures.

The Gospel of John insists that Jesus uniquely reveals his Father, identifies that Father with the source of life, and makes truth indispensable to authentic knowledge.

The Gathas identify Ahura Mazda with the ultimate source of Aša.

The question is whether these records describe a single coherent divine identity or reveal competing conceptions that later theology has treated as interchangeable.

THAT IS WHAT MUST BE TESTED.

Not merely the divine names.

The claimed identities.

Not merely the titles.

The character.

Not merely the promises.

The source capable of fulfilling them.

And not merely the age of a manuscript’s supposed speaker.

The actual history of its composition and transmission.

XIII. THE VERDICT: THE FATHER MUST BE KNOWN

Jesus never says that inheriting the correct religious vocabulary is enough.

He repeatedly challenges people who claim divine knowledge while rejecting the truth he says he brings.

He tells them they search the scriptures expecting life.

He tells them they do not know his Father.

He tells them he knows the Father.

He tells them that the Father is living.

He tells them that the Father possesses life in himself.

And he makes truth inseparable from the revelation he claims to deliver.

Now return to Exodus.

THE GOD OF ISRAEL WAS SEEN.

Return to John.

NO ONE HAS SEEN THE FATHER EXCEPT THE ONE FROM GOD.

Return to John 5.

THE SCRIPTURES WERE SEARCHED, BUT THE LIFE WAS MISSED.

Return to John 6.

THE ANCESTORS ATE THE MANNA, AND THEY DIED.

Return to John 8.

THEY CLAIMED THE FATHER, BUT JESUS SAID THEY DID NOT KNOW HIM.

And finally return to Zarathustra.

WHO WAS THE FIRST FATHER OF AŠA?

The Mazda/Father Dossier asks whether the oldest explicit Father-of-Aša framework supplies a more coherent account of the divine Truth and Life Jesus proclaims.

That identification remains an argument to be established by comparative evidence, not a name written into John.

But it is an argument that inherited religious authority cannot dismiss simply by asserting its own identification.

Because the Gospel itself makes an important distinction.

CLAIMING THE FATHER IS NOT THE SAME AS KNOWING THE FATHER.

That is the entire issue.

The elders saw the God of Israel.

Jesus proclaimed a Father uniquely known to him.

The religious authorities claimed God as their Father.

Jesus challenged their knowledge.

And centuries before these Johannine controversies were written, Zarathustra’s Gathas had already asked about the Father of cosmic Truth-Order, on the conventional chronology.

The final question therefore remains:

WHO IS THE ACTUAL SOURCE OF THE TRUTH AND LIFE JESUS ATTRIBUTES TO HIS FATHER?

A title cannot answer it.

An institution cannot answer it.

An inherited claim cannot answer it.

ONLY THE EVIDENCE CAN.

THE GOD THEY SAW.

THE FATHER THEY DIDN’T KNOW.

Aša knows Aša.

Truth knows Truth.

— Diesel the Magus

THE SOURCE DOSSIER

The Hebrew record

• Exodus 24:9–11 — The elders see the God of Israel.
• Exodus 33:11 — Yahweh speaks with Moses face to face.
• Exodus 34:14 — Yahweh’s identification as Jealous.
• Numbers 12:8 — Moses beholds Yahweh’s likeness.
• Isaiah 45:7 — Yahweh claims responsibility for light, darkness, peace, and adversity.

The Johannine testimony

• John 1:18 — No one has seen God.
• John 4:24 — God is spirit.
• John 5:26 — The Father possesses life in himself.
• John 5:37–47 — Seeing, hearing, Moses, scripture, and eternal life.
• John 6:31–58 — Manna, death, the living Father, and everlasting life.
• John 8:13–59 — Pharisaic opposition, Fatherhood, truth, falsehood, and death.
• John 11:24–26 — Resurrection and life.
• John 12:41 — Isaiah and the glory seen in the Johannine account.
• John 14:6 — The way, truth, and life.
• John 17:3 — Eternal life and knowledge of the true God.

The Gathic record

• Yasna 44:2–5 — Best Existence, the Father of Aša, and the cosmic creation questions.
• Yasna 31:8 — Ahura Mazda’s relationship to Aša and Good Mind.
• Yasna 46:10–11 — The fate of the righteous and the followers of the Lie.

Text references

• Exodus 24:9–11, KJV
• John 1:18; 5:37; 6:46, KJV
• John 8:54–55, KJV
• Yasna 44, D. J. Irani translation

Interpretive distinction: The passages and their wording are primary evidence. Their implications for divine identity are the theological argument advanced by the Mazda/Father Dossier. Textual tensions alone do not independently establish Ahura Mazda as the Johannine Father.