The Golem Has Returned, and This Time Man Wants to Become One

The Golem: artificial intelligence may be older than we think

When most people hear the word Golem, they think of an ancient mystical legend about a creature made from clay and magically brought to life. I see something very different.

I see the preserved memory of technology.

The Golem tradition describes an artificial humanoid constructed from material taken from the earth. It was activated through specific letters or words. It did not possess the independent judgment of a human being. It received commands and executed them literally. According to the traditions, changing or removing the letters associated with its activation could deactivate it.

Strip away the mystical vocabulary and consider what is being described:

A humanoid machine made from earthly materials, activated by encoded language, controlled through commands, capable of performing physical labor, yet lacking the natural judgment of a human being.

Today, we call that robotics and artificial intelligence.

Perhaps the Golem was never merely a fantasy about magic. Perhaps the story preserved the memory of something humanity once understood technologically, lost, and is now rebuilding.

The Bible already gives us a reason to consider that possibility.

There is nothing new under the sun

Ecclesiastes makes an extraordinary statement about human history.

Ecclesiastes 1:9–11 (KJV):

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”

Pay close attention to the entire statement.

Solomon does not merely say there is nothing new. He says what has been will be again, and then immediately tells us why humanity believes things are new:

“There is no remembrance of former things.”

That opens an entirely different way of looking at ancient history.

Perhaps human civilization has experienced technological advancement before. Perhaps catastrophic events like Noah's flood destroyed those civilizations and their infrastructure, leaving later generations with fragments of knowledge preserved through oral histories, religious traditions, legends and what we now dismiss as mythology.

Under that understanding, humanity may not be inventing artificial intelligence and robotics for the first time.

We may be rediscovering them.

What was the Golem?

The Golem is traditionally described as an artificial humanoid fashioned from dust, earth or clay and animated through sacred letters, names or combinations of Hebrew characters.

That description deserves another look through modern technological eyes.

The Golem was not born.

It was manufactured.

The Golem was not flesh and blood.

It was constructed from materials originating in the earth.

The Golem did not naturally awaken.

Something had to be entered, written or applied to activate it.

The Golem did not possess normal human judgment.

It executed commands.

And its operating state could be changed by altering the symbolic information controlling it.

Those characteristics sound remarkably familiar.

We still build our Golems from the earth

The statement that a Golem was created from “earth” or “clay” sounds primitive until we examine what modern technology is actually made from.

Our robots also come from the earth.

Modern computers, AI data centers, electric motors, sensors and robotic systems depend upon materials extracted from the ground. Silicon, copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, gallium, germanium, tantalum, neodymium, dysprosium and numerous other minerals and elements are extracted, separated, purified and transformed into technological components.

Rare-earth elements are especially important to many modern electronic and robotic systems.

So consider the progression.

Earth → refined materials → artificial humanoid → encoded instructions → activation → commanded behavior.

Now consider modern robotics.

Earth → refined minerals and metals → electronics and robotic body → software → power → commanded behavior.

We have changed the vocabulary.

We have not changed the fundamental process.

A civilization that had lost the technical vocabulary necessary to describe semiconductors, processors, circuitry, motors and software might simply remember that these artificial beings were made from the earth and brought to life by words.

Imagine our civilization disappearing and someone thousands of years from now preserving this description:

The ancients took stones from beneath the earth, purified them with fire, fashioned them into the form of man, placed words within them, and the images opened their eyes, spoke and obeyed their masters.

That sounds like mythology.

It also accurately describes the basic process behind modern robotics.

The Golem was programmed with language

The connection becomes stronger when we consider how the Golem was controlled.

Letters mattered.

Words mattered.

The correct symbolic information activated the artificial being.

Modern computers operate according to exactly this principle.

Software is language translated into instructions that machines execute.

A programmer writes symbolic commands. A processor interprets those commands. The machine then performs an action.

Now artificial intelligence has taken this principle even further.

We can speak directly to machines.

Tell an AI-powered robot:

“Pick up that box.”

“Walk to the door.”

“Bring me the red container.”

“Search these records.”

“Turn off the lights.”

The machine receives language, interprets it and produces an action.

Language has become executable.

The ancient Golem tradition preserves essentially the same relationship:

word → artificial intelligence → physical action.

What ancient people described as mystical letters may have preserved the memory of encoded commands whose original technological meaning had been forgotten.

The Golem had an ancient alignment problem

One of the most fascinating aspects of Golem traditions is the creature's literal obedience.

In a well-known type of Golem story, the artificial servant is instructed to perform a task such as bringing or pouring water. It continues doing exactly what it was commanded to do, even after the desired result has been achieved.

The water overflows.

The Golem continues.

Why?

Because the Golem understands the command without understanding the intention behind the command.

That is programming.

A human servant told to fill a barrel understands that “fill the barrel” means to stop when the barrel becomes full.

A machine requires a stopping condition.

The difference is enormous.

A badly written program might effectively say:

Continue pouring water until explicitly instructed to stop.

The machine obeys perfectly while producing a disastrous result.

Modern AI researchers face the same basic problem. A sufficiently powerful artificial intelligence can accomplish the literal objective assigned to it while producing consequences its creators never intended.

We now call this the AI alignment problem.

The Golem story described the same problem centuries before modern computers appeared.

The Golem had an off switch

The Golem traditions contain another remarkable technological parallel.

In prominent versions of the tradition, letters or a divine name are associated with the Golem's animation. In the familiar emet tradition, the Hebrew word associated with “truth” is written upon the Golem. Removing a letter changes the word to met, associated with “dead,” and the Golem becomes lifeless again.

Think about what that means functionally.

Information controls the machine's operating state.

One configuration means:

ON.

Alter the configuration and it means:

OFF.

The physical body remains there.

The material remains there.

What changes is the command.

That resembles shutting down a computer, removing executable code, revoking an authorization key or sending an emergency-stop instruction to a robot.

The Golem's “life” depended upon the information controlling it.

Change the information and the artificial being stops.

That concept becomes extremely important when we reach Revelation.

Yahuah formed man from the earth first

There is another reason the Golem concept matters.

The Bible says Yahuah formed Adam from the earth.

Genesis 2:7 (KJV):

“And Yahuah Elohim formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

Notice the sequence.

Earth + the power of Yahuah → living man.

The Golem represents man's attempt to imitate that pattern:

Earth + human knowledge + encoded instructions → artificial man.

But there is an enormous distinction.

Adam “became a living soul.”

The Golem remains manufactured.

Modern robotics follows the second pattern.

Human beings take the elements Yahuah placed within creation and arrange them into something resembling ourselves.

We give the machine cameras for eyes.

Microphones become ears.

Speakers become mouths.

Processors provide computation.

Electronic storage provides memory.

Sensors provide touch.

Motors and actuators provide muscles.

Networks provide communication.

Artificial intelligence provides reasoning and language.

Then humans increasingly place that intelligence into a body resembling man.

We are building the technological Golem again.

The world before Noah was far more advanced than we imagine

Modern depictions have conditioned people to imagine Noah's world as technologically primitive. We picture tents, sandals, wooden carts and small villages.

Genesis never gives us that description.

Genesis instead shows technological specialization developing extremely early.

Genesis 4:21–22 (KJV):

“And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron...”

Metallurgy existed.

Specialized manufacturing existed.

Complex musical instruments existed.

Organized civilization existed.

And those people possessed something modern humanity does not possess: extraordinary lifespans.

Genesis 5:5 (KJV):

“And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.”

Genesis 5:27 (KJV):

“And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.”

Imagine what a scientist, engineer, metallurgist or inventor could accomplish with 500, 700 or 900 years of accumulated experience.

Modern technological civilization exploded in only a few centuries.

Electricity, telecommunications, automobiles, aviation, nuclear energy, computers, satellites, genetic engineering, the internet, artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics emerged across an extraordinarily short period.

Now imagine technologically capable people living for nearly a millennium.

There is no biblical reason to assume their civilization remained primitive.

Enoch tells us where forbidden knowledge came from

The Book of Enoch adds another dimension.

First Enoch describes the Watchers descending among mankind and teaching knowledge that mankind previously did not possess.

Azazel teaches men the working of metals and the production of weapons. Other Watchers teach enchantments, knowledge concerning plants and roots, astrology, celestial signs and other forms of specialized knowledge.

This changes the picture of the pre-flood world.

Humanity was not simply developing naturally.

According to Enoch, beings possessing knowledge beyond mankind's ordinary experience were teaching humans.

That means the technological acceleration before the flood could have involved knowledge transferred from beings who already understood principles humanity was only beginning to discover.

Then Genesis tells us what that world became.

Genesis 6:5 (KJV):

“And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

And:

Genesis 6:11–12 (KJV):

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.”

Knowledge increased.

The earth became corrupted.

Violence filled the earth.

Even flesh became corrupted.

Then judgment came.

The flood did more than destroy people. It destroyed a civilization.

Cities disappeared.

Manufacturing disappeared.

Infrastructure disappeared.

Knowledge networks disappeared.

Whatever technological systems existed before the flood disappeared with them.

Noah and his family emerged into a devastated world.

Human civilization essentially started again.

Ancient mythology may contain memories of the same lost world

This also changes how I view stories such as Atlantis and ancient Indian accounts of extraordinary technology.

Stories from different civilizations speak about flying vehicles, tremendous weapons, technologically extraordinary cities, artificial beings and catastrophic destruction.

The Bhagavata traditions include descriptions of extraordinary aerial structures and weapons. Atlantis preserves the memory of a powerful civilization destroyed in a catastrophic judgment involving the sea.

These traditions may preserve different fragments of a world remembered imperfectly after catastrophe.

The engineering disappears.

The memory remains.

An aircraft becomes a flying chariot.

An advanced weapon becomes a weapon of the gods.

A technologically sophisticated city becomes a city of the gods.

Artificial intelligence becomes an animated servant.

A robot becomes a Golem.

Technology becomes mythology when the people telling the story no longer possess the technology required to understand it.

The days of Noah are returning

Yahusha gave us another important clue.

Matthew 24:37 (KJV):

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

People usually interpret this only as a statement about wickedness.

I believe it goes deeper.

Yahusha said the end would resemble the days of Noah.

The days of Noah involved extraordinary knowledge, corruption of flesh, violence, beings crossing boundaries established by Yahuah, and ultimately a civilization so corrupted that judgment became inevitable.

Look at what is happening again.

Artificial intelligence.

Humanoid robots.

Genetic engineering.

Synthetic biology.

Brain-computer interfaces.

Autonomous weapons.

Artificial reproduction.

Human-machine integration.

Attempts to overcome biological death.

Transhumanism.

Humanity is once again attempting to cross boundaries that once appeared immovable.

The days of Noah are returning technologically as well as morally.

Ecclesiastes told us they would.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.”

AI is already being described as an existential threat

The world's own scientists and technology leaders now openly discuss the possibility that advanced artificial intelligence could become an existential threat to humanity.

Think about the significance.

Human beings are constructing an intelligence they acknowledge may eventually become powerful enough to threaten human civilization itself.

Now read Yahusha's warning concerning the end.

Matthew 24:21–22 (KJV):

“For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened.”

Yahusha describes a future condition capable of destroying all flesh.

Previous generations struggled to imagine how mankind could create conditions threatening virtually all human life.

Our generation does not have that problem.

Nuclear weapons can do it.

Engineered biological weapons can do it.

Autonomous weapons can magnify it.

Artificial intelligence could coordinate systems operating at speeds humans cannot match.

And combining these technologies creates something far more dangerous than any individual technology.

The technological Golem is becoming increasingly powerful.

The image of the beast speaks

Revelation contains another extraordinary description.

Revelation 13:14–15 (KJV):

“And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak...”

An image is made.

The image receives something resembling life.

The image speaks.

For most of human history, people could only imagine that supernaturally.

Our generation can build it.

AI can create a photorealistic human image that speaks, sees, listens, answers questions and responds intelligently.

Robotics gives that intelligence a physical body.

The artificial image can then walk among us.

The technological Golem and the speaking image of Revelation suddenly occupy remarkably similar territory.

From the Golem's forehead to the mark

Then Revelation introduces something else involving the body, identity and economic participation.

Revelation 13:16–17 (KJV):

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”

The parallel deserves serious consideration.

The Golem has identifying information associated with its head.

That information determines whether the artificial being functions.

Change the information and the Golem becomes dead.

Revelation describes another system involving a mark, name and number, associated with the forehead or right hand, determining whether a person can participate economically.

Without authorization, access disappears.

You cannot buy.

You cannot sell.

The system controls participation.

Now combine this with what transhumanists openly seek: increasingly intimate integration between human beings and machines.

Brain-computer interfaces are being developed.

Digital identity systems are expanding.

Biometric authentication is becoming ordinary.

AI systems increasingly determine access, authorization and identity.

Human beings are moving closer to technological integration with the systems governing their lives.

That raises a terrifying possibility.

What happens when man becomes the Golem?

The original Golem was controlled externally.

Its instructions determined what it could do.

Its activation information determined whether it functioned.

Now imagine humans integrated into the same technological architecture.

The distinction between human and machine begins disappearing.

A person connected through neural interfaces, biometric identity, digital currency, AI-managed infrastructure and centralized digital authorization becomes dependent upon the system for participation in society.

The same architecture that grants access can revoke access.

The same system that says ON can say OFF.

At first that may mean:

Your account is disabled.

Your digital identity is suspended.

Your money becomes inaccessible.

Your transportation privileges disappear.

Your communication access disappears.

You cannot buy.

You cannot sell.

But human-machine integration raises an even darker possibility.

If technology eventually becomes directly integrated with the nervous system, brain or essential biological functions, control over the technological system could become control over the person himself.

The Golem's weakness would then become man's weakness.

The Golem could be switched off because its artificial life depended upon the system controlling it.

Transhumanism risks creating humans whose biological existence becomes inseparable from the technological matrix surrounding them.

Man creates the Golem.

Then man integrates himself with the Golem.

Finally, man becomes subject to the same system that controls the Golem.

The ancient pattern is returning

This is why I do not view AI as merely another technological revolution.

I believe we are watching something ancient return.

The world before Noah possessed knowledge that was ultimately used in ways that corrupted creation. Enoch says forbidden knowledge was given to mankind. Genesis says the earth became corrupt and filled with violence.

The flood destroyed that civilization.

Humanity forgot.

Fragments survived.

Atlantis remembered a destroyed civilization.

Ancient Indian traditions remembered extraordinary machines and aerial technology.

The Golem preserved the memory of artificial humanoid servants constructed from earthly materials and controlled through encoded language.

Thousands of years later, humanity extracts minerals from the earth, constructs artificial humanoids, programs them with symbolic language and gives them artificial intelligence.

We call them robots.

The ancient world called one version of them Golems.

And now humanity wants to merge with them.

Solomon told us exactly what happens across human history:

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV):

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be.”

Yahusha then told us which ancient world would specifically return immediately before his

coming:

Matthew 24:37 (KJV):

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.”

Perhaps humanity's technological future is actually its forgotten past.

Perhaps artificial intelligence is not something mankind has never seen before.

Perhaps robotics is not new.

Perhaps transhumanism is simply the final stage of an ancient rebellion being reconstructed with modern terminology.

And perhaps the old stories survived because Yahuah intended us to recognize the pattern when we saw it again.

The Golem was made from the earth.

The Golem was activated by language.

The Golem obeyed commands.

The Golem lacked human judgment.

The Golem could become dangerous through literal obedience.

The Golem could be switched off by changing the information associated with its activation.

Today we build machines from the earth.

We activate them with code.

We command them with language.

We struggle with their alignment.

We install emergency shutdown mechanisms.

We give them human forms.

We give them artificial minds.

And now some people want to connect those artificial minds directly to ours.

There is nothing new under the sun.

The Golem has returned.