From the Write Hand

The Rabbi and The Emperor

2011-10-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

By Kahana

Although I probably could have written this article under the 'Why Karaism' banner I decided that it warranted to be placed separately under some other category that had as little association with Karaism as possible because it represents everything that is abhorred amongst Karaites. You see, the story I'm about to relate comes directly from the Talmud and commits so many sins that it actually casts Judaism in a bad light in its entirity. Of course as Karaite we would say, "what would you expect, after all it is the product of Rabbanites," but even Rabbanites have a 'modus decorum' by which they must operate and this is dictated by the Torah which still governs how Jews must behave. The fact that this story concerns Rabbi Judah ha Nasi should not be that great a surprise to Karaites. The presumption of his title, 'The Prince' considering he had no government or population to actually rule over I do not hold against him. As a descendant of Hillel, I have to believe his claim to be from the House of King David in the same way that I believe the lineage in my own family to be accurate as being from the House of Phiabi. These claims were passed down from father to son and were intended to be preserved, so I do not doubt his claim to be a Prince of Israel. What I do take exception to is possibly his warranting of the title based on the story to follow. A Prince must act with honour; a Prince must preserve the truth; a Prince must not commit murder; and a Prince must not be boastful when his own people are made to suffer. These would all appear to be lessons that Judah ha Nasi failed to learn, yet he is extolled above all other by the Rabbis through the Talmud. So perhaps the banner for this article rather than 'Why Karaism' would more correctly be 'Why not Rabbinic Judaism'.
From The Abodah Zerah

The Following Story is taken from the Talmud; Abodah Zerah. I have placed my comments and explanations in brackets so I do not alter the original verse.

[Emperor] Antoninus [Pius] once said to Rabbi [Judah ha Nasi], "It is my desire that my [adopted] son Asverus [Marcus Verus] should reign instead of me and that Tiberias should be declared a Colony [Self governing Sartrapy]. Were I to ask one of these things [from the Senate] it would be granted while both would not be granted. Rabbi thereupon brought a man, and having made him ride on the shoulders of another, handed him a dove bidding the one who carried him to order the one on his shoulders to liberate it. The Emperor perceived this to mean that he was advised to ask [of the Senate] to appoint his son Asverus to reign in his stead, and that subsequently he might get Asverus to make Tiberias a free Colony.

[On another occasion] Antoninus mentioned to him that some prominent Romans were annoying him. Rabbi thereupon took him into the garden and, in his presence, picked some radishes, one at a time. Said [the Emperor to himself] his advice to me is: Do away with them one at a time, but do not attack all of them at once. But why did he not speak explicitly? — He thought his words might reach the ears of those prominent Romans who would persecute him. Why then did he not say it in a whisper? — Because it is written: For a bird of the air shall carry the voice.

The Emperor had a daughter named Gilla [Anna Galina] who committed a sin, so he sent to Rabbi a rocket-herb, and Rabbi in return sent him coriander. The Emperor then sent some leeks and he sent lettuce in return.

Many a time Antoninus sent Rabbi gold-dust in a leather bag filled with wheat at the top, saying [to his servants]: 'Carry the wheat to Rabbi!' Rabbi sent word to say. 'I need it not, I have quite enough of my own', and Antoninus answered: 'Leave it then to those who will come after thee that they might give it to those who will come after me, for thy descendants and those who will follow them will hand it over to them.'

Antoninus had a cave which led from his house to the house of Rabbi. Every time [he visited Rabbi] he brought two slaves, one of whom he slew at the door of Rabbi's house and the other [who had been left behind] was killed at the door of his own house. Said Antoninus to Rabbi: When I call let none be found with thee. One day he found R. Haninah b. Hama sitting there, so he said: 'Did I not tell thee no man should be found with thee at the time when I call?' And Rabbi replied. 'This is not an [ordinary] human being.' 'Then', said Antoninus, 'let him tell that servant who is sleeping outside the door to rise and come in.' R. Haninah b. Hama thereupon went out but found that the man had been slain. Thought he, 'How shall I act now? Shall I call and say that the man is dead? — but one should not bring a sad report; shall I leave him and walk away? — that would be slighting the king.' So he prayed for mercy for the man and he was restored to life. He then sent him in. Said Antoninus: 'I am well aware that the least one among you can bring the dead to life, still when I call let no one be found with thee.' Every time [he called] he used to attend on Rabbi and wait on him with food or drink. When Rabbi wanted to get on his bed Antoninus crouched in front of it saying. 'Get on to your bed by stepping on me.' Rabbi, however, said, 'It is not the proper thing to treat a king so slightingly.' Whereupon Antoninus said: 'Would that I served as a mattress unto thee in the world to come!' Once he asked him: 'Shall I enter the world to come?' 'Yes!' said Rabbi. 'But,' said Antoninus, 'is it not written, There will be no remnant to the house of Esau?' 'That,' he replied. 'applies only to those whose evil deeds are like to those of Esau.' We have learnt likewise: There will be no remnant to the House of Esau, might have been taken to apply to all, therefore Scripture says distinctly — To the house of Esau, so as to make it apply only to those who act as Esau did. 'But', said Antonius, is it not also written: There [in the nether world] is Edom, her kings, and all her princes.' 'There, too,' Rabbi explained, '[it says:] 'her kings', it does not say all her kings; 'all her princes', but not all her officers!

True History

From the Talmudic tale we would be led to believe that there was a very close and personal relationship between the Emperor of Rome and the self-titled, Prince of the Jews. Furthermore, the Emperor would seek Judah ha Nasi's wise counsel repeatedly to the point that it even extended into how he should run his affairs and control the Senate. But what do we really know of the relationship between these two men? The answer is that they simply didn't have a relationship. In fact, Antoninus Pius, though not as intolerant as his predecessor Hadrian towards the Jews still had an axe to grind. It is stated that during Antoninus' reign that the Jews were deprived of the right to have their own courts, which prerogative was by the Pharisees considered essential to religion (Yer. Sanh. vii. § 2, 24b). This certainly doesn't sound like the Empror would come to the Nasi seeking legal advice. Furthermore, those that dared to criticize the measures of the emperor were banished or put to death (Shab. 33b). What we also know is that as a result of his harsh treatment of the Jews, the Jews attempted once again to overthrow the Roman domination ("Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ, Antoninus Pius," ch. v.) but there was so little fight left in them after the Bar Kochba revolt against Hadrian that this rebellion was put down quickly and barely rated a mention. The strained relations existing between the Parthians and the Romans may have led the Jews to believe as well as encouraged them to revolt with the expectation of assistance from the Parthians but such assistance was never realized. Whereas the biography of Antoninus Pius in Historia Augusta speaks of this revolt the Jewish sources in the Talmud do not even allude to it and instead provide this fairy tale relationship between the Rabbinic leader and the Emperor of Rome.

But it wasn't all bad news as Antoninus did repeal some of the edicts of Hadrian —such as the prohibition of circumcision which prevented the Jews from exercising their religion—on the condition that they should not receive proselytes (Meg. Ta'anit, xii.; "Digesta" of Modestinus, xlviii. 8, 11). Moreover, they were forbidden, on penalty of death, to enter Jerusalem which hardly sounds like the edict of a man whom according to the Rabbis had approached Judah ha Nasi on how he would be able to best grant the city of Tiberias independent status. Those Jews who had fled to foreign countries in order to escape the persecutions of Hadrian gradually returned to their homes but by then most of the land and homes had become the possessions of non-Jewish populations.

The actual edict of Antoninus Piusread as follows: ‘By a rescript of the divine Antoninus the Jews are allowed to circumcise only their own sons. If anyone performs the operation on a national of another race, he is liable to the same penalty as for castration’. The penalty being referred to was death so this is hardly the words of an Emperor that would let himself be a stepping stool for the Rabbi. Antoninus was still determined to restrict and control the spread of Judaism and thus would have no interest in God's preservation of a place in the world to come for him. In fact he would have had no interest in the Jewish God at all for it was well documented that he was faithful to the traditonal Roman pantheon of gods and no others.

History also records that Hadrian before Antoninus Pius visited Judea and Septimus Severus after Antoninus Pius visited Judea but Antoninus Pius himself did not visit the Roman province. That being the case then there was no house with an undergound passage that led to Rabbi Judah's house that the Emperor ever used. The story is a fabrication with no other purpose to portray the Emperor as a man with a compulsion to murder his slaves, an act which the Nasi obviously tolerated and to portray Rabbi Hanina ben Hama as having the ability to raise the dead even if he was inferior to Rabbi Judah ha Nasi. In their efforts to record themselves as being far greater than they really were, these sages of Rabbinic Judaism were obviously not adverse to lying.
So Why Lie?

I asked myself that question repeatedly. What was to be gained? What were the Rabbis seeking with this story? I could understand why Rabbi Judah was mute for much of the story, performing actions that the Emperor had to interpret rather than speaking to him directly. It provided the Rabbis with the ability to say that their Prince never actually spoke to the Emperor if they were ever challenged. Plausible denial I think we call it now.

Even when the story of his picking radishes would be challenged as his advising and approving that the Emperor eliminate his enemies which in that day and age meant killing them off one by one, an act which according to the Torah made Rabbi Judah as guilty of murder as the man that perpetrated it, the Rabbis could deny such a thing was ever suggest by saying, "he was only picking radishes. Why would you ever think he was condoning murder?"

The entire story is to express the superiority the rabbis held for themselves above their Roman masters. The fact that one of their own, Rabbi Akiba not only anointed a false messiah in Simon Bar Kochba, but spurred him on to fight a second war against Rome in which close to half a million Jews died should have taught them modesty, restraint and recognition that their beliefs were faulty. But they could not see the truth in that regard. Rome was still beneath them. A foot stool for their Prince to step upon when climbing into bed. A story of how Rome could kill them but they held the power to resurrect the dead so they had no fear of Rome's threats. Sadly the half million that died following their instruction they could not resurrect but they survived and that would appear to be all they cared about. After all, just as Judah ha Nasi replied when given the gift of gold by the Emperor, he had no need of it, he had plenty of his own. Only the Emperor was wise enought to suggest he hold on to it, not for his sake but for those less fortunate that might need it after he passed on. Perhaps the rabbis should have been thinking of the people all along!

Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 14

2011-10-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

By Kahana

“Whenever we are witness to the great assemblies of self appointed learned and great men we can expect the world to shake and quake in fear. “

One doesn’t have to dig deep into the history of mankind to see that the quotation is as valid today as it was sixteen hundred years ago. Whether it is an assembly for political change, religious institution, a war council or even a modern day assembly like the United Nations, the truth is that the outcome more than often results in the inevitable destruction and devastation that only mankind can unleash upon his own species. We are guilty of the most heinous crimes yet we appear doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past.

What is it that drives us to unequalled levels of cruelty against our fellow man in order to exercise our narrow minded pursuit to exercise our will over that of others, to both the detriment and neglect of others, as long as it satisfies our own selfish needs? How is it that we can cloak are misguided intents beneath a shroud of liberalism or humanitarianism even though from the outcome it is obvious that our imposition of our myopic view only causes greater suffering to the many while the few we have protested to protect are minor in significance and very often worth.

I have thought long about this dilemma following the outpouring of a fellow Karaite’s heart and soul this past week in which her own personal suffering and that of her family was tested against the rights and privileges of the individual in our society to perpetrate evil are safeguarded to the fullest extent of the law. It would appear in our efforts to appear humanitarian, we have forgotten the meaning of a word which implied the ‘taking care of the human race’ not the interests of an individual or a small group that are opposed to the good of society. To safeguard a minority bent on evil, destructive and anti-social programs is to be anything but humanitarian. From criminals to activists, they are still simply people that feel they have the right to exercise their rights illegally and often violently. We must reexamine the misguided concepts that have pervaded our legal, political and religious structures. We must protect the majority as long as that majority does not persecute or harass the minority. And most importantly we must act in the public good if we are to survive as a species. These last few points are easily forgotten when minorities obtain power and a voice well beyond their proportion and measure and a majority remains both passive and silent. Such was the case with Christianity as it moved towards being granted state recognition. But rather than learn from the mistake of Church development, the error has been perpetrated and perpetuated for countless centuries into modern times and these new minorities, vocal well beyond their numbers, have inherited the legacy of enforcing their will upon the majority simply because they have gained the support of high ranking officials, political pawns, acceptable violence and a legal system that has abandoned the Mosaic Laws with no sentence or sensibility behind its enforcement.

The Burning of Heretics
The Burning of Heretics
The Arian Church

This setting of an impossible goal led many to fall into the ever widening net of heresy. One of its victims that it ensnared was a questioning priest in Alexandria by the name of Arius. Arius could not understand how God, being so pure and good have any direct contact with the real world. To do so would mean that the Lord would willingly allow himself t be contaminated by impurity and imperfection and that was unacceptable. How could he or his followers believe in a God anything less than perfect? Therefore he concluded, Jesus could not be a version of the same being. He would have had to have been something completely different; an intermediary with a divine spark but not then or ever a manifestation of God himself. That being the case, Arius continued to teach his followers that Jesus was a being completely separate from the Father and therefore should not be worshipped as such. Immediately, the Bishop of Alexandria called for the excommunication of Arius before he could do irreparable harm.

Concerned that this Arian heresy would tear apart the Church that he had so neatly stitched together, the Emperor Constantine summoned the great council in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea. With close to two hundred bishops from all over the empire, Constantine insisted by the end of the assembly they must have a unified decision on the direction of Christianity, a document we have come to know as the Nicene Creed.

The Attainment of Power

Following Constantine’s Edict of Toleration written 311 AD, the power of religious authority was concentrated in the hands of one church and one church alone, that being the Catholics, then regarded as the official Church of Rome. The word ‘Toleration’ in the title was a misnomer since it was obvious the Catholic Church was proposed as the universal church and all others were discluded from the equation. With the balance of power to determine the future direction of Christianity, the Catholic Church immediately switch its policy from safeguarding the traditions from misinterpretation to that of eliminating deniers of the Truth. What this meant to the early adherents of Judeo-Christian traditions that they could no longer deny the divinity of Christ. To do so would be to refuse the Trinity and accept the Unity of God. Those churches that believed Yeshua was a man in whom the spirit of God dwelt had to adopt the belief that Jesus was a divine spirit that assumed human flesh. And in so doing the belief in Jesus as the Son of God had to be upheld otherwise you could not belong to this new Orthodox Church. The difficulty in accepting the ideology that the Father and Son were actually different designations of the same being was overcome in one of two ways. Either you accepted it at face value, never to question it again, or you were to be branded a heretic and either killed or banished. Doubt, disbelief, endless questioning were all silenced rapidly.

Enforcement of these beliefs to the elimination of all others could only be met by growing resistance. A Yeshua without humanity became an unattainable goal. Why worship a being that couldn’t possibly be a role model for other human beings, since as God he was incapable of performing or contemplating a sin. Perfection couldn’t be tainted and therefore any relevance as a role model was negated. The Jesus of this old-new church was out of touch with the common people.

The Final Solution

Homoousios was the word that became doctrine at the assembly in Nicaea. Translated it meant ‘of one substance.’ That was their final decision that the Father and Son were from one substance and Yeshua’s divinity was never to be questioned again. In reality, the decision failed to decide anything. Those that still believed as Arius taught refused to accept the final decision and publicly stated so. As for Arius, he was publicly humiliated, excommunicated and exiled but that resolved little. Even though the majority stood against Arius, he challenged them on their creation of a terminology ‘homoousios’ which was nowhere to be found in either the Old or New Testaments. Therefore, similar to Karaites like myself whom accuse the Rabbanites of constantly inventing religious doctrine to suit their own needs, Arius did likewise to his Catholic brethren. In their defense the Bishops passed a ruling that they too could be divinely inspired and therefore they were permitted to create new doctrine. Now legally backed by their newly established power they were confident they could mold Christianity any way they so desired and in feeling thus, they introduced the dogma of immaculate conception which had no religious foundation in any of the sacred books but they no longer required sacred writings to establish the rules.

Constantine found himself sitting in a quagmire. By initially agreeing with the Council’s doctrine he had given them powers far in excess of any they held previously. By instilling within them the ability to create religious doctrine and dogma based entirely on their own feelings at the time, he had turned them into rivals rather than subordinates. The Nicaean Creed was received well in the West but the Eastern Bishoprics struggled with its introduction since they had the greatest concentration of adherents from the early Judeo-Christian Churches and those members refused to accept the incorporation of absolute power into the hands of the clergy.

Fearing what he had done, Constantine in 328 AD recalled Arius from exile and supported the Arian policies or anti-Nicene party but it was too late.

Absolute Confusion

For the next four hundred years Arianism survived but wherever it raised its head it was hunted down, tortured and eradicated. The Catholic Church was determined to eliminate this threat no matter how long that might take fearing that the policies of Arius called into question their power and the divine nature of Yeshua. As soon as the populace began to question those doctrines then it would spell the end of the control over the minds and bodies of men. Arianism served a purpose; it reinforced the establishment of Orthodox doctrine. Each and every time that the threat of Arianism arose, the Chatholic Church felt compelled to hold a council and introduce even more legislation to safeguard their empire. Most aren’t even aware of the next Nicene Creed, the one that took place in 381 AD. From that the Church obtained, “For us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was made man.” There was also the new swearing of allegiance to the “Holy Ghost, the Lord and the Giver of Life.” But that didn’t succeed in being taken on very well by the congregations and eventually became replaced by the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” much easier for most to recite. The concept of the Holy Ghost had to be introduced because Arius refused to believe that the Spirit that infused Jesus was a part of God, insisting that it was no higher in its creation than that of an angel. In this way, the Church ensured that no part of their Trinity could be questioned as being anything less than God.

But by creating this new omnipotence and infallibility of Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost a new threat was created. These were referred to as the “divine mysteries”, unanswerable questions that were beyond man’s comprehension and therefore not required to be answered by the clergy. If God actually manifested Himself on earth, then why had nothing actually improved? If God gave forgave man all his sins, then why did he sin more than ever with each passing year? If had tasted the suffering of mankind during his experience in human flesh then why did he permit man to suffer so? All these divine mysteries and yet so few divine answers, for no other reason that anything divine had been totally eradicated from this new Christianity which claimed to be Orthodox yet had by the end of the fifth century as I have elucidated in these articles removed anything that may perchance have been the original Christian beliefs based on its Jewish heritage. What was left was a hollow shell filled with only the whims and desires a handful of sacrilegious men. What was also clear by the end of the fifth century was that the man in charge was the Bishop of Rome, a position as history has shown could be bought, stolen, killed for and above all, abused. And from that point in time was when the questions should have been asked. Was there ever an original Christian teaching that an institutional Church was the true path? Hardly, the use of the Greek word ‘ecclesia’ in Jerusalem actually translated as an assembly, suggesting leadership would only be via elders, not by something called a church which the Greek now is translated as. Was a single man ever destined to be considered the voice of God? Though James had assumed the mantle of leadership following his brother’s death, at no time did he claim his words to be infallible as the Pontiff of Rome now claimed. Error compounded upon error and every time a spiritual leader appeared that attempted to turn back the clock, he was branded as a heretic and his followers persecuted to death. And therein lies the root cause of so much which has gone wrong with our institutions of today. When the guiding light that a quarter of the world looks towards was based on principles that barely represented the original directives then it follows that all subsequent institutions wallow in their own ineptitude having nothing upon which to define their morality. Like a pendulum, they will swing wildly from end to end seeking the balance but never able to find that point of equilibrium since they are constantly out of sync with every other organization and institution. Without harmony there can be no balance. Without a return to the original beliefs there is no chance to find the guiding light. Without knowledge and understanding of whence we came there can be no comprehension of what we were destined for. And without Karaism there is no way of recognizing what it is we have all lost so long ago.

The Christianization of Zoroastrianism

2011-10-10T15:16:00.000-07:00

Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 13

By Kahana :Myths and fables are all we seem to have passed down from us in the early centuries after Yeshua lived. But what is a myth if not the hopes and aspirations of a people manifested into a physical form which beckons to all to relinquish their doubts, abandon their cynicism and embrace a belief beyond normal human comprehension. And in many of our religious belief systems that is all we possess, a myth that has grown into a reality. Let me take the time to tell you about one such myth which manifested in Persia and grew well beyond the borders of that land. Some of you may recognize it, others actually believe in it, yet the majority will not even know of its origins and would have come to believe that its roots in our society were otherwise. As a Karaite I am free of it but you may not be so lucky as most have come to call it Christian but as you will soon see, it was anything but.

A Gift From Persia

The Persian Magi, the spiritual leaders of Zoroastrianism studied the universe endlessly, contemplating its contradictions, catastrophes and endless sufferings. They found it hard to believe that the truth lay in the Judaic writings that all these events were the manifestations of a singular God. That the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe, He who called himself the Loving God and the Wrathful God could be the perpetrator of history’s greatest disasters. In order to reconcile their belief in an Almighty God they found there could only be one solution; a second Kingdom. Where God reigned in a Kingdom of light and beauty from above in the heavens, another being ruled from the pits, a Kingdom of darkness and evil. The primal God above and a second entity that ruled the universe from below and the two were eternally set in opposition. And in this second kingdom, Satan ruled and the demons were born from its depths.
Desiring more than what rested beneath his hand, Satan invaded the Kingdom of Light and the war began in earnest between the two opposing forces, the Light and the Darkness. To beat back the armies of Satan, God created primal man but Satan’s forces began to overcome the armies of this lesser being and God was forced to rescue Man lest he be lost to Satan. But even after being rescued, Man had suffered grievously, several particles of his original Light gifted by God now replaced by five elements of the Dark. And thus man was set on a path that if he was to return to the Light, return to God, he must overcome the Darkness that now dwells within in an everlasting eternal struggle.
The first of these men to live, a combined existence of both light and dark particles was named Adam. Because of what Satan had done, Adam and his offspring were to be forever born in original sin. There was a woman named Eve, and because she was only created to be Adam’s companion she possessed less particles of light and therefore was more susceptible to the darkness. But God loved his creation of man and throughout the history of mankind would send his heavenly spirits in the form of prophets to guide and correct the corruption that now resided within man’s soul.

The Manichaean Universe

As strange as it may sound, what you have just read was not Christian. The beliefs were neither developed by Christian theologists nor were they practiced by the early Christians. In truth, the concept of two kingdoms in perpetual battle were so foreign to the early Christians that it was rejected wholeheartedly but Christianity had never faced a threat before like Mani, with his charisma, his gift to speak and his determination that exceeded that of any Church leader. Mani was born around 215 AD to a wealthy Persian family. He spent his early years travelling throughout the Persian Empire and into India where he encountered Buddhism. In his later years he headed west into the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire where he preached the religion that incorporated his original Zoroastrianism and all the beliefs he had acquired during his travels. He immediately had universal appeal, providing to the people that had always been familiar with Gods at war from their earlier Greek and Roman pantheon beliefs an easy bridge between their present Christian instruction and the religion of their past. Mani listed the prophets that they should believe in; Adam, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Paul and himself whom he saw as the greatest of them all. In case you haven’t noticed, there is one prophet of significance missing from Mani’s list that being Moses. Moses represented everything contrary to what he was teaching to his new followers. To believe in Moses meant believing that all things good and bad did come from the one God of the Universe. To read Moses instruction meant that there was no such thing as Satan and his demons ruling from a secondary kingdom. To follow Moses meant that all men were born with free will to be either good or evil and were not tainted from birth. To Mani, he saw no hope in attracting the Jews to his new religion so he focused only on the susceptibility of the Christians knowing that they thirsted for a link to their old world of paganism.
But if man was born into a world of evil, a sinner from birth, Mani knew that he also had to provide a reward that mankind could strive for. He taught his followers if they learned and studied the prophets, strove against the evil within their souls, then if they were successful they would set the light free and would ascend to God. But if a man could not perform the purification within his lifetime then he would be sent back to live again until such time that he could release the light. And once all of mankind had succeeded in releasing the light then there would be the final apocalypse which would destroy the material universe and banish the Kingdom of Satan forever.

Something Familiar

Mani divided his followers into five levels. The first three levels were known as the Sons of Meekness. They were the Teachers, the Perfecti and the Electi. And only they would inherit the privilege of ascending to God after a single lifetime. The next level were the Administrators known as the Sons of Knowledge, comprising bishops and priests. The last level was known as the Sons of Understanding and they were the presbyters. The Sons of Meekness had additional restrictions, in that they had to be vegetarians, not engage in marriage or procreation as they had to remain pure if they were to ascend to God. The Sons of Knowledge did not have to endure the same restrictions. They had to follow several commandments including the forbidding of lying, adultery, murder, sloth, and doubt, along with keeping a certain number of fast days. As one can see, there are several parallels to the layering within the Manichean church to the establishment of the Catholic Church.
By the fourth century there already was a singular head, a Pope of the Manichean church. Many of the Marcionites that I had described in an earlier article adopted the Manichean beliefs and in fact by the end of the third century almost all of the Marcionite churches became Manichean. The appeal of the Manichean church exceeding anything witnessed before. It’s popularity amongst the aristocrats of the Roman Empire was immediate as it provided an easy transition from their pagan hierarchy to this new one, a far easier task than adopting the more man-centered concept of Mosaic law. One of the most notable personages to adopt the Manichean religion was St. Augustine who was actually one of the administrators in this church. Eventually St. Augustine left the Manichean church accusing it of teaching a falsehood of rival worlds of Light and Darkness in perpetual battle and that God was at constant war with Satan. In his new position within the Catholic Church he railed against these misguided beliefs enforcing the Mosaic belief that God was the only power in the universe and man was responsible for his own sinful ways, having nothing to do with an external power that forced him to commit wrong doings. How ironic that in spite of St. Augustine’s condemnation of Manichaeism in order to preserve the initial Judaic beliefs of the church, his protestations were eventually washed away in the tide as the Church raced to adopt Manichean beliefs.

The Ultimate Absurdity

By the fifth century, the Manichean belief system began to dominate the beliefs of Christians from all persuasions. So much so that the Catholic Church could see very little difference between their followers and those that claimed to be Manichaean. The primary difference was that the Manichaeans had their own Pope, their own elders, bishops, priests and lay clergy; a massive organization that bore no allegiance or recognition of the Church in Rome. How ironic that the Roman and Byzantine Churches would pronounce an edict condemning all Manichaeans to death, accusing them of heresy even though there existed by this time very little difference by this time between the beliefs of the two church systems. The decision was one of politics, of power, of greed and once again Christianity had been diverted from its true course without its followers having the slightest indication that the practices and beliefs that they now professed had nothing to do with the initial teachings of Yeshua whom they swore to follow. They had all become Manichaeans but they did not know it!

Christian Heretics of the Second Century

2011-10-06T01:43:00.000-07:00

Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 12

By Kahana

A Strange And Unusual Time

From a Karaite perspective what I personally find the most amazing about the second and third centuries AD is that you had two religious sects, both essentially Jewish in origin vying for the title of supreme monotheist but both willing to sacrifice the original teachings of the Torah. Let me explain if this statement has confounded you. Both Rabbanite Judaism and Christianity began writing furiously over this period two centuries to win over the hearts and minds of adherents whether established or new. The Rabbis began writing their Talmud feverishly and the Christians published a plethora of Gospels, both groups specifically designing their books to capture sayings, teachings, and histories, even if the subject material was speculative, inflammatory, and based solely on one’s own personal and therefore far from factual experiences. Whereas the Rabbanites were determined to catalogue their thoughts into one volume, even though it ended up in both a Palestinian and Babylonian version, the Christians made no attempt to consolidate their writings, keeping each manuscript distinct and separate. And therein lay the failure of the Rabbinates to win the race to the publishers and to their respective audience. The Talmud became a massive tome, unable to be finished for several hundred years and therefore never released to be mass circulated to the public and so introspective that it had practically no appeal to anyone but the rabbis themselves who enjoyed reading about their own endeavors, arguments, and congratulatory back patting efforts, whereas the Christian authors were able to circulate their small books quickly, often just as vellum manuscripts, suitable to be read by any individual and with stories bordering on the fantastical and supernatural thus very appealing and capturing an eager readership desiring to read about something other than mundane issues. There really wasn’t any contest when it came down to it. Even though most of these circulating Gospels were to be dismissed and discarded later when the Church decided to canonize the final version of the New Testament, it did so at a time that the general public had already been exposed to the multitude of books and their imaginations captured by the mythological status of the writing. The Talmud which was a never-ending exercise had none of the same mass appeal nor even had it been available early would it have been something the common person desired to read. Yet both of these massive documents, whether Talmud or New Testament had taken their intended audiences far afield from the Laws of Moses and the actual dictates of the Torah or Old Testament. And as I have pointed out numerous times in my articles, both these works of men were constantly in contradiction to the Torah and the teachings of Moses and were intentionally so. Of that as you will see in the next few paragraphs there could be now doubt!

Marcion Versus Montanus

“Who?” is the word you are probably uttering right now. Just two of the most important men in early Christian history and yet the majority reading this will have absolutely no idea who they were and what was their true significance. But both these men were the most prominent leaders in Christianity during the second century AD and shaped the Christianity that we know today. But because they possessed views outside the mainstream Catholic teachings they were later branded as Gnostics even though as I mentioned they were each responsible for giving Christianity its greatest surge in growth and popularity by attaining thousands upon thousands of adherents at that time and providing an ideological framework upon which the Church did build its current concepts thus eventually attaining mass appeal.

As hard as it may be to believe to Messianics and Christians today, during these first two centuries, to refer to the Catholic Church was to imply that those adhering to this view were either Jews or Judaized-Gentiles strongly leaning towards the Old Testament teachings as presented by the Jerusalem Church, initially under James and then his cousin Simon Cleophas. It was the Catholic Church that was entrenched with both these Judaizers and Old Testament exponents. Initially it saw itself as the defender against the rise of polytheistic ideologies that began to permeate the other churches throughout the empire. But as the old adage goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em then join ‘em,” especially when those others were growing faster, stronger and with far more determination than your own congregation could ever accomplish.

Marcion who lived between 130 and 180 AD considered his Church to be the only authentic one. The speed at which Marcion gained adherents was troublesome to the Catholic Church and Irenaeus wrote against them claiming they would eventually fractionate the early Christians beyond a point of recovery. It was not that Irenaeus condemned the teaching of Marcion only that this adversary did them better and in turn had better conversion results than the orthodox Catholics. Marcion’s message was simple. He wanted to build a church that could bring salvation but was not involved in the speculative and mystical ideas that seemed to have taken over the Christian church. Of interest is that Marcion taught that God had two natures. The wrathful, angry God of the Torah, and the kind loving God that had sent Jesus to save the world. But these two aspects of God were always constantly seesawing in what could be viewed as an eternal battle. Perhaps Marcion was familiar with the Yin and the Yang of eastern philosophy but he determined that it was the wrathful side of God that created the world and therefore all material creations were evil. That meant that man was evil as well but the pure side of God loved man and therefore sent part of himself in the form of a phantom body to live amongst man and die in order to save mankind. Quite interesting that the man that accused the traditional church of being too speculative and mystical was in fact the man that provided the spiritual concept of a non-human Jesus to Christianity in the first place. Marcion insisted that the only apostle that understood all of this was Paul and therefore he justified Paul’s abolition of the Law under the excuse that he was serving the Grace. In this manner Marcion claimed that Paul had done away with the wrathful God of the Old Testament and replaced him with worship of only the pure form of God as revealed in the New Testament. Having this narrow perspective meant that Marcion also had a very narrow canon of scripture which included the Gospel of Truth, which was a collection of sayings but not directly from Jesus, the four Gospels although Luke was an edited version, and the Acts of Paul. Hence he claimed that the only scriptures within his church emphasized the mercy of God whereas the Catholic Church was opposed to the teaching of mercy and therefore failed to comprehend true Christianity. Having condemned the material world as evil, Marcion preached that sex was also evil but only those that were Perfect needed to abstain from sex, whereas the rest of the followers could still engage in it and only when they were about to die would they be baptized. Salvation came through the love of God and the Old Testament was negated by this Loving God. As much as this view by Marcion would appear naïve and perhaps even childish, his teaching had a major impact on the Catholic Church and threatened its survival. So much so that Tertulian wrote, “The Marcionites make churches as wasps make nests.” This rapid expansion could not be stopped but it certainly could be absorbed. Catholic leaders met to see which of the Marcionist views should be incorporated into their own doctrines and in so doing they were to markedly reduce the impact by eliminating many of the differences.

Just as threatening were the Montanists which like the Marcionists wanted a return to what they called pure Christianity. Their approach was far more Old Testament, claiming that the Catholic Church was governed by men that had no true sanction by God and therefore their unethical and immoral behavior was not to be tolerated. The only laws that could be considered as truthful were those already passed down by God and his prophets. As you might have noticed, the concepts espoused by the Montanist were not unlike the Boethians and Zadokites of the same time against the Rabbis; in fact these Montanists were very Karaite in their comments. All we know of Montanus is that he appeared preaching in Phrygia around 156 AD. He dispelled the teaching of both the Rabbis and Catholic Church that the age of prophets was gone and that there would be no further prophets. In fact Montanus claimed that he himself was a chosen prophet of God. Montanus’ concept of the Holy Spirit was that it was sent down by God to enter the bodies of his chosen prophets. Therefore any that spoke the word of God were engaged by the Holy Spirit and Yeshua was one such man. Montanus believed that all scriptures were the word of God and therefore he maintained that in his Church all doctrines were acceptable, none were to be repudiated but God’s only requirement was that the followers maintained a high level of morality, fasted regularly, and had strict marriage laws. But as his followers pursued their beliefs, Montanus expected them to abandon the daily world and separate themselves into religious communes. This was in direct contradiction with the Catholic Church that decided its followers should maintain their everyday lives and didn’t need to separate themselves from Roman life in order to become holy.

By the end of the second century it appeared that the Montanists would become the dominant sect of Christianity. The Catholic Church reacted as it had done so many times before, labeling the Montanists as heretics, excommunicating the lot, and condemning their prophets to either banishment or death. This dogma of branding anything that opposed them as heretics was exactly the institutionalized corruption that the Montanists were opposed to. There considerable threat forced those leaders in the Catholic Church to move closer to the reigning powers in Rome. By emphasizing that the Catholic Church supported the Roman authorities and advised its followers to contribute as part of everyday society, they were able to demonstrate the danger represented by a Montanist Church that encouraged its members to withdraw from society and become separate. It didn’t take much encouragement for the Roman authorities to join in the condemnation of the Montanists and use them for their entertainment in the coliseums. Although Christian history will talk about the martyrs fed to the lions and slaughtered in gladiatorial exhibits, it fails to comment that it was Montanists providing this entertainment while a Catholic elite grew closer to the Emperor and 100 years later actually was proclaimed as the one and only Christianity of the Empire.

The Best And Worst

Having survived the century of turmoil and beating back those breakaway sects that condemned it, the Catholic Church, soon to be the State Church of the Empire, recognized that the Marcionists and Montanists had been popular for two entirely antithecal reasons. The first gained popularity by emphasizing the spiritual nature of Jesus and therefore won over the hearts and minds of a people seeking far more than the strict laws that evolved from the Torah.

The latter, the Montanists gained their popularity by emphasizing the freedom of choice, the fact that God intercedes in the world through his prophets and that survival meant separation from the daily life of the Empire. From the general description, they were not very unlike the Jews that still represented a large portion of the eastern populations.

And therein lay the solution that would become the hallmark of the Church for a couple of thousand years. By adopting Marcion’s teachings of the uniqueness of Christianity, the spiritual nature of Jesus and the rejection of all the old laws that were Jewish or Old Testamental they could create a distinct separation between themselves and their original beliefs. And by categorizing the Montanists as nothing more than Christians practicing a Jewish mode of life, they could again emphasize that separation and at the same time focus the Empire’s distrust on any people that were determined to remain separate, especially the Jews. In doing so, the Catholic leaders gained the trust of the Empire and were to eventually to take over the operation of the empire itself in the form of the Holy Roman Empire where the power to invest kings and emperors suddenly lay within their Church.

It was a learning process that would not have been possible if it had not been for the advent of both the Marcionists and Montanists. In a very short time they had gained all the myths and fables necessary to reshape the Catholic Church into the image of bishops; men seeking power at the cost of its heritage. It would have to go through one more phase before the transition was complete. That involved the canonization of the New Testament and finalization of its arrangement with the Empire in the sharing of power. That wouldn’t happen to the fourth century and will be the topic of discussion for the next article.

Christian Heretics of the First Century

2011-10-04T20:48:00.000-07:00

Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 11

By Kahana

This article unlike the previous ones will not have anything to do directly with the Hazuk Emunah. It will actually be a slight diversion from the previous topics and focus on early Christian History rather than the first century Pharisaic history which precipitated Christianity. The context of this article I actually owe to one of my Messianic readers who asked me the question, “Is everything she learned about Yeshua merely the result of fable or myth?” A very difficult question for a Messianic to ask because even though they have struggled to break away from the Christian religion, they so carefully want to hold on to something tangible to say that all was not a loss. In their particular case it means holding on to Yeshua or Jesus as their life buoy as they lose their grip on the dock which was their previous Christian faith and are now set afloat in a raging sea of conflict, contrast and contradiction. One wants to believe so strongly that the floatation ring will keep them safe even as the waves crash and the winds howl as the storm sets in. Unfortunately the lifering is unlikely to do the job as one would need a raft if they were even to stand a chance at survival. But a raft needs to be constructed from a far studier material than the simple floatation device, and without an outboard motor, or in the least oars, even the best raft will capsize without direction. The person that was rumoured to have managed to survive the storm at sea without these items was/is a myth or as we have become accustomed to saying, an urban legend.

The Legends Surrounding Yeshua

Myth, fable, tales, it really doesn’t matter what we call it the fact remains that all three are fabrications of the imagination. But when it comes to Yeshua, it was not as if the truth didn’t try to prevail at times. When we review the early history of the Church, any attempt to tell a more humanistic history was met with exile, excommunication and extermination. The X’s have it when it came to trying to present anything contrary to those that held the reins of power. It is ironic that in today’s age people question what has happened to the historical Jesus. The fact is that any essence of historical fact or reality was killed off and silenced by the Church. And what those in power presented as the one and only authentic story of Jesus is in fact the product of men’s imaginations. Through process of elimination the history of the Church has answered my Messianic reader’s question. Everything she has learned about Yeshua is likely the result of fable and myth.
But one should not take my word for it. After all, I am a Karaite and as such the belief in Yeshua as Messiah is foreign to me and that would render me prejudiced in any accounting. So instead, let’s examine what those within the early Church had to say about it. After all, at one time these were esteemed and credible leaders of the Christian communities, only to find themselves ostracized and banished once a new emperor or a new bishop courted and craved power. And the best way to eliminate a rival was to brand the old teachings as heretical even if they were the original teachings and therefore probably more accurate.

James and Ignatius

What most people forget is that for almost thirty years Jacob (James), the brother of Yeshua was spiritual leader of the Jerusalem Church. He was the most important leader of the early church and those in Rome or Antioch were secondary, perhaps even tertiary to his authority and rank. From 36 AD until 62 AD when he was murdered he was the man that made the decision regarding the future of the Nazoreans and Minim, not Peter and certainly not Paul. Though some might argue that he took control in 33 AD arguing that is the year when Jesus was crucified, in the book Caiaiphas Letters which provides a prespective unlike any other coming from that of the high priest (http://legendsofthekahana.webs.com/3onthecharts.htm), I present sufficient information to suggest that the year was actually 36 AD. But for the point of this discussion three years is neither here nor there. What is important is recognizing for the duration of his leadership, James taught from the Temple, something he would not have been able to do if his lessons ran counter to the established religion. For the punishment for heresy, any heresy against the Jewish religion was stoning; stoning to death. If there had been any element of heresy within James’ teachings then he would have met that outcome long before his murder in 62 AD. Any suggestion of Jesus having divinity, magical powers, or making statements contrary to the Laws of Moses would have resulted in immediate trial and punishment. And all it took to lay the accusation would be two witnesses so it wouldn’t have been difficult if James was guilty of saying such things. Therefore to have survived for almost three decades while preaching outside the Gates of Nicanor could only mean that the sermons were well within the acceptable parameters of Judaism. That could only mean no immaculate conception, no resurrection, and nothing of a magical nature that would upset the status quo. That still meant that James could have proclaimed Yeshua as the Messiah since that would have been perfectly acceptable. There already were those claiming that John of Gamala, both Theudas and Judas of Galilee and John the Baptist were already the messiahs, so one more wouldn’t have made any difference to anyone. And therein lays the first myth that the early followers of Jesus already viewed him in terms of being greater than man. They didn’t; all that was to come much later, very much later.
And though the doctrines of these initial followers as instructed by James and who appeared to have an understanding of the essential Jesus continued to exist and grow throughout that first century they were condemned as heretics by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch just before the end of the first century AD as he was being led to Rome to be executed. For Ignatius, a man born after the death of Jesus insisted that he knew much better than those that had sat and learned at the feet of Yeshua. In his letters to the early Christians Ignatius makes the point sixteen times that Jesus and God were one and the same. And there is no misunderstanding of what he meant by this claim since Ignatius affirms he believed Jesus to be the invisible and timeless (achronos) one, incapable by his godlike nature of suffering so he had to come earth so that he would be capable of suffering as a result of his human birth. But Ignatius had far more on his agenda than just argue about the divine nature of Jesus. As his letters indicate he insisted on creating an entire set of rituals that would set Christianity apart from its all too Jewish early followers and the traditions of James’ Jerusalem Church. For Ignatius and those to whom he writes that the Eucharist had to be the center of the Church’s existence and it could only be performed by a bishop or by one he authorizes, hence providing a ritual of consecration that is totally under the control of Bishops thereby giving them total control. Furthermore, in order to eliminate the Judaizing teachings of James, Ignatius ordered that Christianity cease keeping the Sabbath on Saturday like the Jews and instead to observe it on what he referred to as the Lord’s Day or Sunday. And finally in his bid to preserve powers in the hands of his fellow bishops, Ignatius instructed that there could be no church unless you had a bishop in charge and presbyters and deacons which they would appoint to do their bidding. So in reality, much of the doctrinal changes that separated Christianity from its Jewish heritage were the result of this individual who had purposely contradicted everything that James had established. The only myth would be to assume that Ignatius had either divine inspiration or divinely granted authority to do so.
From the little bit you have now read, you can either assume that the first century Jerusalem followers that had direct contact with Yeshua didn’t know him and only one man almost a century later who had no contact knew him better, or you can assume that these early followers did know him very well for the man he was and it was only after the initial followers passed away and men like Ignatius assumed control of the church that they could create a story that smacked of polytheism but would appeal to the Greeks and Romans that they wished to convert t their new religion. Myth, legend or fable, the choice is yours.

Forbidden Food

2011-07-22T02:55:00.000-07:00

Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Part 10

There Are No Coincidences

Now you might ask, “What provides me with the authority or knowledge to talk of such things as if I understand the intricacies of God’s commandments. Just what are my qualifications to make the following statements?” Fair enough, legitimate questions but of course I have legitimate answers as well. Firstly, let me say that I am doing exactly what my family has been instructed to do for the past three millennia, fulfilling the role of Kahana as intermediaries with the purpose of saving mankind even if it is only one human life at a time. Secondly, for those that may have wondered what I actually do (my everyday job so to speak) since whatever my role in life it’s obvious that it’s now taking me to China on a monthly basis, has me speaking internationally at biotechnological conferences, and sees me supporting scientific breakthroughs that eliminate suffering for thousands, perhaps even millions. So let me elaborate for you and then you can judge the veracity and credibility of the statements I will make subsequently. I am a veterinary trained preclinical toxicologist, a test development medical technologist and a biotechnological researcher. Yes, I have university degrees in each of those three areas of specialization. Big words but then it’s a big job. I am one of those men that each day faces the challenge of how do we find the cures and prove that they work against X, Y or Z. And as I mentioned, it is simply the extension of what we as the Kahana have done for a thousand years both in the Tabernacle and the Temples while they still stood. Of course then it was much simpler, as all we had to do in those days was make animal sacrifices on the altar and pray for cures and divine intercession. And we only had to face the Big Boss in the Holy of Holies for our performance review once a year. Now the job is a little more demanding since in the past my family prayed that God would intervene on behalf of the people but now the onus has become for us to provide the answers on our own. It is no mere coincidence that there are three family members involved in a similar line of scientific endeavor even though we were initially unaware of each other’s professional choices at the time. One might say it’s in our genes, and a more lengthy aspect of that particular discussion can be found at http://hubpages.com/hub/GLEEM but as you will see, it is highly likely that we are products of our past and we are all predestined to do what we do. So, having the benefit of several decades of medical and veterinary specialization has provided me with a perspective that Isaac ben Abraham of Troki did not possess. It enables me to examine the dietary laws and find a rationale behind their instruction. But what it really does is leave me in awe because I have to consider that three thousand years ago these laws were clearly established with an impossible precognizant foresight and knowledge of discoveries that we have only made over the last 150 years. And that too cannot be simply passed off as another coincidence. Remember, I’ve been telling you for a long time that there are no coincidences!

The Eating of Dead Things

Over a decade ago I wrote my thesis on the Apolipoprotein E pathway’s involvement in both CJD and Alzheimer’s. Without going into the details, I was looking at ways in which abnormal proteins were absorbed, transferred and reproduced in neurological tissues to the detriment of the host. The key appeared to be Apolipoprotein E and the production of Tau proteins. What does this have to do with dietary laws you might ask, well let me explain. One of the undiscovered routes I proposed was Vagal nerve (10^th Cranial Nerve) transference; a conduit directly from the stomach to the central nervous system. It was one of the only ways to explain the rapid transposition of an ingested abnormal protein to the brain (neurocellular phagocytosis) resulting in diseases we refer to as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. You would call one of these diseases Mad Cow. The story behind prion diseases is an exciting one. When Prusiner first proposed its existence he was laughed off the stage. Science refused to believe that abnormal proteins once ingested would cause a disease. Twenty years later it was a fact and more alarming would appear to be the reason that cattle had suddenly developed the disease because they were being fed rendered protein. Essentially herbivores were being turned into carnivores. Cattle were being fed byproducts that were remnants of dead animals. Let’s first think of the prohibition of contact and consumption of dead animals in Leviticus. If the animal is found dead, even if it was one of the approved animals for consumption, we would never be certain of what it had died from. Though not necessarily a prion disease, it was a forewarning that the byproducts of dead animals could still transfer disease, a finding that most certainly shocked the world in the 1980’s and still presents a major threat. Studies in a Wisconsin game park where there was an outbreak of CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) in mule deer in 1972 turned out to be a prion disease as well. The fact that Wisconsin is a major dairy state should send off the alarm bells as you’ll read in the next paragraph. All the deer in the park were eradicated and the park was not repopulated until ten years later. The new population also succumbed to CWD which meant that the prions had been retained in the soil and were virtually indestructible; a fact which leads into my discussion over the next couple of paragraphs.

Weasels, Mink and Ermine

And there’s more when it comes to prions. A little known study in the 1970’s traced a higher incidence in dairy states of downer cows where there was also intensive mink farming. A neurological disorder in mink that was later identified as a Mink Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy would be running at high levels when these mass outbreaks of downer cows would occur. For those that aren’t familiar with downer cows, it’s a term used for cows with a calcium deficiency and they start stumbling and going down. Usually, a quick IV drip of Cal-Mag salts gets them back up on their feet. The difference with these cows was they weren’t getting back up and were then sent off to the rendering plants with no diagnosis other than Downer Cow made. Incidentally, as my thesis examined, the incidence of CJD or the human prion disease was higher in the dairy states. Therein lays the link because in some way this disease in Mink was eventually showing in humans and since mink, ermine and weasels (mustelids) are all in the same family we have a credible reason why God specifically mentioned not eating weasels. What took us until now to understand a little better scientifically was known 3000 years ago. All we did was corroborate it with our current scientific techniques.

Only If It Jumps

How strange that there would be a distinction of which insects could be eaten based on their having large jointed hind legs for the purpose of jumping. Why should this even make a difference you must wonder? It took me a long time to understand this prohibition and it wasn’t until my work with prions that I finally understood it. Jumping insects like grasshoppers and locusts aren’t burrowing into the ground. They consume live and dead plant tissues above ground but not the organisms or waste in the soil. Whereas those insects that creep and crawl on the ground are consuming dead organic tissue, especially from other animals. A matter of fact, the Torah insists that once we die we do not embalm our bodies so that we will be consumed by the myriad of creatures that creep and crawl. And if that is the case, then any disease causing entity that cannot be destroyed will in turn be preserved within the bodies of these creatures. Now you should be recognizing the threat that was exposed during the investigation of prions and the insects consuming dead organic material. They are a conduit to the preservation of the disease ensuring that there is a preservation of these abnormal proteins unto eternity. We’ve only known about this new category of disease causing entities for the past thirty years. God knew about it three thousand years ago. Incredible as it sounds it is the only logical conclusion.

Scavengers

The birds listed are known carrion eaters. Not only that, some of them are hunters and would therefore eat the small animals and other birds that were forbidden. I’ve already provided a warning of the threat that dead animals present in the transference of disease. But it’s not only prions but many other viruses, bacteria and parasitic cysts that will be provided a continuance through intermediate hosts.

Forbidden Swine

It has only been over the last fifty years that medical research has demonstrated a close link between swine and humans. It is the major reason that the species is being suggested for xenotransplantation or in other words why science wants to use swine for replacement parts, such as hearts, skin, pancreatic cells, etc. The fact is that swine actually came off the evolutionary chain closer to humans than other species except for the primates. But being closer has its drawbacks which we have all come familiar with over the last year with the outbreak of Swine Flu. If we are close then we also share things in common such as parasites and worst of all viruses. Of major concern to transplant specialists are the REO and Retro viruses but there are far more diseases that can spread the fear of mass death within humanity. The transmission of disease between pigs and swine and back again is not a new thing. It would have been known long ago that pig farmers and those in close proximity to swine herds had a higher incidence of serious illness. Thereby through the forbidding of swine to be eaten the animals wouldn’t even be kept in the vicinity of the community as they’d serve no economic purpose. As a result the following would be avoided by their exclusion; Swine Flu, Swine Vesicular Disease, and Foot and Mouth virus; all of them serious diseases that theoretically could exterminate humanity. But let’s not forget the bacterial transmission of such diseases as brucellosis, campylobacteriosis, erysipelas, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, streptococcus, anthrax and colibacillosis. Swine are a threat to spread all of these and they can be as equally serious as the viruses. Then there are the parasitic diseases spread by swine such a trichinosis, sparganosis, taeniosis, scabies, cysticercosis, yersiniosis (Plague), tularaemia and balantidiasis. Probably the most serious, even though Plague was in that aforementioned list, is that pigs not only carry the tuberculosis of cattle and birds but they can also be the source for human tuberculosis and that has a greater precedence to exposure than the others.

Are you thinking twice about eating pork, well you should be? As consumed species go, swine is the one that has the greatest chance of causing severe illness through ingestion because not even cooking the meat well eliminates all of the listed organisms and quite a number on the list are deadly. Foot and Mouth has been found to survive pickling, salting and drying of meat. Even after eradication of swine herds, some of the viruses and parasites were found to survive the decontamination process living on inanimate objects. Bacterial such as leptospirosis were found to be surviving well in water barrels and bowls and sparganosis favourite means of transfer is through water where the cysts for this foot and a half tapeworm are deposited. From just these few organisms it should readily be seen why there was such concern with any water that came in contact with these prohibited carcasses and why even the bowls and utensils became a concern. Once again you must say ‘Wow’, how amazing that three thousand years ago God was able to forewarn Moses about these possibilities.

No Fins Or Scales

From the fish perspective that leaves us with either those fish that scavenge the bottoms such as catfish or those that are aggressive hunters such as eels to be avoided but it also eliminates the shellfish and mollusks from the menu. We should all know about paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) by now, there’s been enough press about it. But what you may not know is that there are at least twenty derivatives of the saxitoxin produced by the dinoflagellates that then accumulates in the shellfish such as mussels, clams and scallops. PSP is only one of these and the others can be just as dangerous. The toxins are heat stable which means that not even cooking destroys them, so how confident are you when you consume your next meal of shellfish? Does Red Lobster provide a medical plan? Tetramine poisoning is common when eating whelks (marine snails) as it exists in their salivary glands causing a wide variety of neurological signs when ingested by humans. Not to mention that these snails are both predators and scavengers which means they’re picking up whatever diseases their last meal might be carrying. But besides toxins there are many other dangers presented by shellfish. Dioctophymiasis is a parasite from crayfish and other crustaceans in which the nematode migrates to our kidneys and begins its destructive process. Removal of the kidney is the only treatment. If both kidneys are affected then there is a serious problem. Short of a transplant, you will die. The facts are that shellfish are bottom filter feeders, which means their exposure to bacteria is quite high and it should be no surprise that they are disseminators of microbial diseases. The fact that aquaculture farmers know their lobsters are susceptible to such diseases as shell disease, Gaffkemia, microbial epibiont disease, Lagenidium disease, Haliphthoros disease, and Fusarium disease does not provide us with any reassurance that these entities do not cause a disorder in humans if digested. We just don’t know enough about them yet. Back in July of 2008 the FDA released an advisory regarding tomalley, the soft, green substance found in the body cavity of the lobster that functions as the liver and pancreas. High levels of PSP toxins were present in lobster tomalley The FDA advisory applied only to tomalley, the government declaring the rest of the lobster meat was safe since high levels of PSP toxins were only present in the lobster tomalley and only insignificant levels in the remainder of the lobster. Perhaps one should define insignificant since we know that these toxins can accumulate and cooking no matter how long did not eliminate it. The symptoms of PSP included tingling and/or numbness of the mouth, face or neck; muscle weakness; headache; and nausea and in extreme cases large amounts of the toxin if consumed, could lead to respiratory failure and death. They warned that symptoms usually would occur within two hours of exposure to the toxin. Two hours before you press the panic button. And if that wasn’t enough to worry about the FDA warned that PSP toxins normally occur in clams and other shellfish. Often these symptoms will lead to respiratory failure and death. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should seek medical attention was their last bit of advice. Perhaps the advice should have been “think twice before eating shellfish.” The Torah warned you first and now the FDA is giving you their warning.

In regards to eels, there is still much we have to learn. In a report from the Protein Journal in 2008 the following was disclosed, “Although eels are well known to contain toxins in the serum, their chemical properties have remained to be clarified for a long time. In this study, a proteinaceous toxin was purified from the serum of Japanese eel Anguilla japonica and was lethal to both mice and crabs.” And in 1995 we find the following article which reveals that the researcher isolated and purified a lethal protein toxin from the Indian catfish Plotosus canius. The toxin was lethal in mice being both cardiotoxic, and having neuromuscular blocking activity. The toxin also produced cardiac arrest on isolated toad and guinea pig hearts. Prior administration of atropine and propanolol failed to counteract toxin activity on isolated heart preparations. Even antiserum raised against the toxin failed to antagonize its lethal activity in mice. And in a recent report from the University of Michigan a study there concluded that poisonous catfish are far more common than previously thought. The researcher Jeremy Wright warned of how catfish venoms poison nerves and break down red blood cells, producing severe pain, reduced blood flow, muscle spasms, and respiratory distress.

In Conclusion

This article has merely emphasized the fact that three thousand years ago dietary laws were put in place for the preservation of mankind. There were issues that the people of that time period couldn’t even contemplate let alone understand. God asked that they trust Him. An act of faith that He knew what was best for humankind. And along came a heretic twelve hundred years later that challenged the Jerusalem Church. He told Peter he was a fool for following the commandments within the Torah when it came to the dietary laws. And then Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem and they stood down the elders in Jerusalem and managed to sway them to their opinion. A fact that it was not Yeshua who changed the dietary laws but a man named Paul. And ever since Christians have been acting contrary to the commandments of the Lord. Perhaps now the science of today and the teachings of a Karaite can help you reconsider that decision!

Wisdom of Kahana: The Soul of Man

2011-07-20T04:06:00.000-07:00

Wisdom of Kahana: The Soul of Man

One of the hardest concepts to appreciate and understand is the soul of man. And to further exasperate the problem, religions have decided to confound the matter even more by ignoring what is clearly defined in Genesis, that the soul was a particular gift from God to man, and to no other species on this planet. For it is clearly written that even after God had created all the other animals he did something different with man at the time of our inception.

7 Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

ז וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.

This breath of life was different from the the actual act of living which all the other creatures possessed. Man became the embodiment of this soul. We are the vessel to contain it but it is something very different and apart from our own existence. This was an actual part of God which He infused into man to become the soul and our essence. So even though you will have religious leaders today claiming that dogs and cats have a soul and they too will be granted an afterlife, the fact is that man is unique in this attribute. Only man, and man alone possesses a soul. And we don't even really possess it because as God clearely stated, we become part of it, not the other way around.

Now what I am about to say may upset some of you because even though I am a Karaite, and some Karaites would like to believe there is a final reward, my beliefs are those of a Zadokite and therefore I have no concept of an afterlife. And to those that have come to believe that your soul grants you some form of immortality, and that you find some respite from the hardships of this world by finding a place in heaven where you can idle away eternity in discussion with sages and ancestors of the past, I am afraid those are concepts that have little to do with the 'soul' that I am about to discuss. The only reward to life is this beautiful gift of life we already have. And we should choose not to follow God's laws because we expect some reward of eternity or paradise but because it is necessary for the betterment of the soul that we have been gifted with to nourish and protect for reasons I will attempt to explain.

What I am about to relate to you has to do with the Shekinah, or what Moses described as the cloud which contained the presence of God. It was not God but a manifestation of his creative power, or as we might describe in our scientific language of today, an energy 'sink' or 'pool'. And as I have said repeatedly, all things come form the Shekinah and all things return to the Shekinah. It is the Shekinah that provided us with the origin of what we refer to as our soul. Perhaps we should think of it as a library book that we have borrowed for a time, derived great joy and pleasure from it, but when we are done we must return it so that others may also benefit. I know this is a difficult concept to accept but let me explain:

The Soul of Man

Above all things is the greatness of God, but under Him and above all else on this earth is the soul of man. The soul of man is not separate from God but is in itself a part of God by which He has spanned the gulf between Heaven and Earth. It is the chord which binds man to God and why man is the only creature on earth that recognizes its own mortality. Only man understands that he will grow old and succumb to death and pass into nothingness. No other animal on this planet understands that their lives will end in decay and doom.

And it is this nothingness, this sentence of death which frightens man the most and why he has always desperately searched for an answer to immortality. All of man’s superiority and yet mankind is terrified by the ultimate fate that awaits. Born as a hapless babe and dying like a hapless babe, crying for one more chance, one more hour, fearing the unknown and not appreciating the divine plan where the spark returns to its origin through the chord attached.

To the beast of the field, they have no comprehension of time. Each day is like the next. There is no understanding of the changes of life, the span of time or the desire of youth. The carnivore has no understanding that one day itself will be prey to the ravages of time, its bones bleached beneath the blazing sun no different from the animals it has slaughtered. The cow marched through the abattoir has no concept of what awaits in the stunning chamber. Only man can appreciate what happens next and it shakes him to the core of his bones.

The soul must not be confused with life for all creatures have life. That is nothing more than an electrical-chemical spark that infuses the cells with activity, the heart to beat, the nerves to relay their signals through the synapses. But that is not the soul, that essence of spirit that drives us to achieve more than we think ourselves capable of achieving, to contemplate that which we have no knowledge of. The receptors in the nose smell but it is the soul that brings back sweet memories to a particular odour or fragrance that fills us with a longing and desire. It is the stomach that digests, but the soul that makes us savour a particular flavour that makes our heart sing. Our eyes see but it is the soul that gives us that second sight that transmits what we saw into lessons we treasure for the rest of our lives.

All creatures can sense fear, rage, anger and love. These are basic needs that drive life to survive and exist. But other than man, what creature can have a sense of honour and shame, justice and treachery, or chivalry or cowardice. These are qualities that require not only intellect but willpower and the ability to overcome the basic instincts. Only with a soul can a man react in a completely opposite manner to the fight or flight instincts that are hardwired into all living organisms. It is the soul which provides us with the ability to act noble, to appreciate beauty, to act contrary to our animal directives.

The soul is malleable, waiting for us to shape it well beyond the simple spark that was infused within us the day we were conceived. It is ours to beautify, ours to fill with goodness, ours to glorify with love. In the same manner that we can shape it into a thing of ugliness should we choose to follow a path of darkness, filled with vices and hatred. What you do with the soul is within your own power and therefore it is left to your imagination to carve and shape into a final image of your life. The soul thirsts for its final transformation and it is the product of free will which was God’s gift to mankind. God has provided his guidelines by which man is to shape the soul but the determination of whether one does or doesn’t is left to each one of us.

Though man will never know immortality, the soul is already part of the everlasting existence of the universe. It is returned to the Shekinah when life is done, back to the domain which is God, Himself. How it returns to the Shekinah is our responsibility. Glorified, splendiferous, or scarred and damaged, that is within our power. And only when we realize that our existence does have a purpose, that it just isn’t about being born, living a life of toil and hardship, and then dying but in reality is finding ways in which to care and nurture this soul through the love and happiness that life can offer, then and only then do we face death knowing that we can achieve immortality but in a manner different than we assumed it would be achieved. Once we appreciate that throughout our lives we carry the soul like a foetus in the womb in order to give birth to it at the moment of our death then we have also attained an understanding of the meaning of life. The knowlege and experience that we impart to this soul will then either be of benefit or detriment to those already contained within the Shekinah, awaiting to spark another life, another existence. That is within our power. That is how our life is measured and weighed in the balance when we reach our final destiny. Not seeking some personal benefit and reward as we would like to believe, reducing God to some market haggler for our own fulfillment but instead with nobility and honour knowing that we have done our part to shape a better future for mankind and provided and instilled the love for a kinder world with the spark that we have passed on.

Wisdom of Kahana: The Nature of God

2011-07-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

Wisdom of Kahana: The Nature of God

In Karaism, it is the role of those born Kohen to teach. And although that is what I have been trying to do over the years, it would appear that there is far more that I could be doing and should be doing. So often, I find that people are willing to debate the small and insignificant matters and lose their perspective on the big picture. Sadly, all this leads to is confrontration and consternation within and amongst my Kariate brethren and in so doing fragments us further. And for that reason I have decided to start this series which will provide my perspective on matters but not to the infinite dissection that some seem to desire but through a broad scope with panoramic vision. Karaism was intended and is still intended to paint its teachings with as broad a brush as possible. It mattered not so much whether God's name is pronounced with a 'vav' or an extra 'heh' but that in our hearts and our mind that we knew there was only God to turn to in our hours of need. That it was only his divine existence that we should praise, and that it was only He that could bless us. Everything else was of inconsequence because He needs not to hear His name upon the lips of men but only inscribed upon their hearts. And because this very issue has seemed to have taken upon itself a life of its own and caused endless debate amongst some Karaites, some of which has turned insulting and cruel at a personal level, then I felt it was time to do what it is I have been hereditarily conscripted to do. So this first teaching will be on what I see as the essential nature of God without concern if we pronounce His name with a vav or a heh.

The Nature of God

There is but one God. He is the designer, the creator and the ultimate ruler over all things. He is everlasting and all powerful, both to degrees that can never be fathomed by the intellect of mankind. His existence permeates all things and for that reason He is invisible but yet we see Him at all times and He is unknowable but yet we know of his nature through the world we live in. He is silent, yet his words and actions ring in our ears every day of our lives.
He is the father of fathers, the mother of mothers, for all has come from Him yet he is not defined by sexual attributes or gender. He, or Him is only a pronoun, a tool of language but in no way tries to define God. Those that try to do so do not understand. Man never walks alone, he is never unescorted because God is there at all times whether we choose to see Him or not. He is self-created, there at the beginning and at the end, and He was the one that separated the Light from the Darkness, the Chaos from the Ordered, the Substance from the Void. His is the universal consciousness from which all existence has sprung.
His knowlege is the wisdom of an eternity, and hist strength reaches to the limits of infinity. He dwells within and without the universe, from the core of an atom to the heart of a blazing sun. From the emptiness of space to the dancing radiance of the quazar.
His voice whispers to us from the running waters as they splach over the rocks and pebbles, and roars to us from the force of the whirling tornado. He sighs from the bending treetops and he laughs upon the leaves dancing as they blow in the wind. All these are the voice of God and yet we hear him not.
A man dreams and wishes that it would be reality but God dreams and it becomes reality. Man tries to rationalize God through reason, but the essence of God is beyond reason and therefore always beyond human comprehension. Man seeks God through science but fails to understand that even the laws of science had to be set by one who possessed the creative power. Therefore it is nothing more than a tool and a tool can never reveal its maker. Because through His laws of nature he governs the destinies of all living creatures and we are bound to these laws that we continually try to master. All the forces within and withou are controlled by God and that which we continually seek to explain these forces is none other than Him. Whether we accept it or not, our spirits are filled with the urge to seek God. It is an insatiable hunger no matter how much we try to deny it.
All things have their appointed place and purpose in the universe, and all existence conforms to the laws that He has created. The workings of the universe transcends our understanding so how can we even attempt to understand He that has created the universe? Few will understand the path that He has set for us. We wil curse the stones that cut our feet and scream in agony at the thorny brambles and adversity that block our way. We equate riches and fame with blessings and money and possessions with heavenly reward but none of these are from God and only deceive us into thinking we have found Him. For God is in the order of nature and His plan is in the direction of its orderly laws. Look for Him amongst the stars in the heaven and the sands on the beach and then you will appreciate His grand scheme.
See His glory in the heavens, his brilliance in the light of the sun that gives life to all creatures and plants upon this Earth, his peace in the moon that inspires us to love, his creativity in all which inhabit the oceans and the air, His bounty in the fruits of all that grows from the soils of our planet. Then and only then will you truly appreciate the Glory of God.
The Earth bends to His will. Mountains rise and islands sink beneath the waves. Ground quakes and the winds ravage all that we create. We are insignificant against all that He has created and we must find our place in His universe. We are bound by His limitations but these are still beyond our grasp for He has given us the intellect and capacity to far exceed our present knowledge.
We must realize that the sun shines down on the good and the wicked alike. The heartbreak of misfortune will strike the worthy and unworthy with indifference. Only the wise man will appreciate that this seeming indiffence by God actually serves a purpose. For God neither rewards nor punishes. Long ago he gave us the intellect to establish our own fate. But all that we think that we accomplish has only been throuh His initial design. Each man ultimately decrees his own fate and is rewarded according to their own achievements.
Order and beauty is God's gift to us. All things within the universe move accordingly to the direction of His hand. And it is the beauty of this creation which is His face. It is the awe of our own existence that is His wisdom. It is the sounds we hear from a world of amazement that is His voice. Know that He is with us always. He walks beside us wherever we may go. He is all that we are, and all that there is. From the burning bush He told us so but so many fail to listen and understand. Let us appreciate that Life is a gift and existence is its reward. We come from the Shekinah and all things return to the Shekinah. Such is His law, such is His glory.
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kahana

Jesus of the Talmud: Rabbinical Shame

2011-07-06T18:53:00.000-07:00

Changing World

Why now? A simple question that deserves a simple answer. Although there are many that will argue that the world is a far better place now than it has ever been, based on their arguments that mankind has become more tolerant, more accepting of differences, more liberal in its thinking, more technologically attuned, less prejudicial against its fellow man and generally world focused regarding global causes rather than the egocentric universe of the past, I beg to differ. These are merely illusions provided to us on a daily basis by the spin doctors that control our media, our politicians, our education and if I dare say so, our religious institutions too. Scrape past the thin veneer and it becomes obvious that which is being promoted as a better, kinder, wiser world is in reality nothing more than a repackaging of everything we struggled and fought against in the past that we knew was wrong. But in past days we would speak up and would not tolerate the misappropriation of power. The wants and desires of the majority have been replaced by the whims and cravings of minorities wishing to exercise their way of life over the many. The prejudices of the past have taken on an entirely new set of labels; religious prejudices of the past are now adorned with national labels; color prejudices are merely shrouded in economic adjectives; cults and glamorized activists are merely the masks of those we viewed in the past as megalomaniacs bent on the destruction of the world. We have words such as ethnic cleansing, collateral damage, terrorism, anti-terrorism and anti-anti-terrorism bantered about as daily occurrences. Movies and television have raised the occult to a desirable status of the young generation, while an older generation looks at the anti-hero or the vigilante as a desirable endpoint since law and order no longer bears the hallmark of justice. Nothing has actually changed other than the fact that because we have now relabeled our sins of the past we can now say that mankind has progressed beyond those days of violence, pettiness and misguided prejudices. If the pendulum has swung the other way, then being 180 degrees from the starting point does not make the offense any better, merely different, designed to confuse and silence the average person who still dreams of a better world. And that is our greatest sin in that we have become silent and let this happen.

Curse of the Talmud

A while back I posed the question as to whether it was acceptable for someone to perform evil in order to achieve something good.   That question runs throughout the plot of Shadows of Trinity (http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html) as each of the real-life characters was faced with answering the same question for themselves. To some it was clearly acceptable based on the things they did during those years at the end of sixteenth century. The Emperor Rudolf II definitely thought so since his status as monarch was preserved as a result, at least for another two decades before he was forced to abdicate. So it was not too surprising when some of my readers responded that they too would find it perfectly acceptable as long as the response was of a greater benefit than the action. Let me rephrase that, the majority of those that responded found it perfectly acceptable. But therein lies the problem because nothing in life is guaranteed.   Just because one expects to achieve a certain result or reaction does not necessarily mean it will happen. Exactly the misguided premise that the Rabbis took when they decided to give their perspective on Christianity when writing the Talmud. Rather than deal with and confess to their own iniquity when they transformed the messiah legends that created the false legacy making Christianity possible in the first place as discussed in previous articles in this series, they instead chose to attack the religion that resulted from their fabrications, thinking that by doing so that they could make it disappear through ridicule and condemnation.   Now it should be remembered that these were the ignorant actions of men living between the first and fourth centuries A.D. , so it would be difficult for us to expect any better of them or try to judge them according to modern standards but they are living proof that often evil actions do not result in good responses even though in their minds that was their expectation. Instead, by recording their religious intolerance, bias, prejudice and desire to see the Minim dead, they essentially created the future waves of anti-Semitism that underscored Christian history once the Church came to power. The Minim was an early Hebraic reference to the Christians along with the term Nazorean. The actual translation of Minim was those Jews that used the Torah in a manner deemed contrary to Judaism. One must remember that the early Christians were all Jews and therefore they’re justification of Jesus was Torah based since they used the very precepts that had been laid down by the rabbis to battle the Sadducees over the derivation of the messiah. Just how these so-called knowledgeable and righteous men could have expected any different response from a people they identified as enemies and worthy of being smitten from existence and sent to hell is beyond any reasoning I can think of? As it is written in the Talmud in Seder Mo’ed (Rosh Hashanah) page 17a, ‘But as for the Minim and the informers and the scoffers, who rejected the Torah and denied the resurrection of the dead, and those who abandoned the ways of the community, and those who ‘spread their terror in the land of the living’, and who sinned and made the masses sin, like Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his fellows — these will go down to Gehinnom and be punished there for all generations’. This very nice comment of condemnation to a rotting hell for eternity was not only directed at Christians but at Zadokites as well. One must not forget as much as the rabbis resented the early Christians their hatred for the Sadducees was far greater. In fact, anyone who disagreed with the rabbis was going to be sent to Hell forever. But the rabbis, whom I’ve often described as old men sitting about with nothing better to do than listen to the sound of their own voices, went further than they should, making comments regarding Christianity and Jesus that they barely attempted to disguise by giving false names to the individuals. But unable to restrain themselves they would always insert enough facts that it became obvious whom they were talking about as is the case of Sanhedrin 106a where they wrote, ‘Balaam also the son of Beor, the soothsayer, [did the children of Israel slay with the sword]. A soothsayer? But he was a prophet! R. Johanan said: At first he was a prophet, but subsequently a soothsayer. R. Papa observed: This is what men say, 'She who was the descendant of princes and governors, played the harlot with carpenters.' Examining their comment about a woman that was from the Davidic line that wed a carpenter, but played the harlot indicating she had someone else’s child, and that son was initially a prophet but became a soothsayer or magician subsequently is obviously alluding to Jesus. They furthermore say in their addled talk that he was slain as a result of the Jews which only further infuriated Christian clerics when they translated the Talmud.   Their attempt to ridicule Christianity, never thinking it would become a dominant religion was their attempt to do something evil with the expected outcome that it would simply disappear over time.   Such stupidity has led to the massacre of millions of Jews over time, all because a bunch of men sought power and had neither political nor diplomatic acumen to understand neither the ways of the world nor the foresight to realize that if you continually hit upon someone they will eventually hit back a hundred times harder.

The matter becomes even more obtuse when one realizes that the Talmud that is published today has undergone an extensive editing process over the years due to censorship. When Christian leaders became aware of some of the sayings of the Rabbis in the Talmud regarding Christianity and Jesus, they demanded these be changed. Some of the ancient Talmud manuscripts prior to these changes still exist today and one of the more noteworthy comments in Sandhedrin 107b was as follows: And a Master has said, 'Jesus the Nazarene practised magic and led Israel astray.' At first it doesn’t sound like much. Hardly enough to raise the ire or objections of any reader. It’s not until one appreciates what these rabbis have admitted in their statement. From my perspective they have publicly stated that Jesus possessed powers beyond that of most men and that he had a considerable following. As a Karaite I do not see this as a declaration of his being a messiah but what it does suggest to me that he most definitely had the abilities of a prophet, not dissimilar from an Elijah or an Elisha. If that was the case and they did know that he was special right from the start, then what were they thinking by continually ridiculing him in the Talmud. Surely they knew the lessons from the Tanach that we are a people guilty of harassing and attempting to slay the prophets sent to us by God and their own actions were reaffirming this.
It is obvious that these Rabbis had lost control of the situation. Rather than remedy the turmoil they created they only aggravated it further and alienated Jews and Christians further in the process. Nothing would improve and the resultant separation would never be resolved. The planned evil that they perpetrated certainly didn’t result in a bettering of mankind.   Modern Rabbanites acknowledge that their ancient predecessors may have lacked critical judgment where necessary but then excuse them as having lived in an age without the benefits of critical scrutiny that we now possess. Rabbanites agree that some of the statements made were inflammatory and not worthy of men they hold in reverence and quickly shovel them underneath the carpet and exclaim that we can ignore these minor transgressions because of the greatness that is found elsewhere in the Talmud.

I for one am not so forgiving to accept that as a legitimate defence and I’m certainly not willing to accept any part of the Talmud which was written by these same men that were never divinely inspired based on the dissemination of intolerance that they exhibited in their writings. God would have never accepted that nor would advise His children to do so. But there also is a logical refutation to the defence made by the modern Rabbanites in support of these ancient Talmudists. And as a logical equation it removes any doubt as to their validity and is written as follows: If their logic was impaired; if their intentions were misguided and if the evil they perpetrated was nourished by malcontent and misinformation and then it must be accepted that their judgment was both inaccurate and unsupported in this regard. And that is being true then it must be assumed that everything else they’ve incorporated into the Talmud was made under identical conditions and therefore is doubtful as to its accuracy and authenticity. Essentially if they were completely wrong about their facts and approach in one area and that they fabricated the facts and stories to support their beliefs then the same will hold true for everything they produced. That would include their doctrines of the Messiah which were purposely designed to run contrary to those of the Sadducees and Zadokites.   And from this we can deduce that if statement (A) being their intent behind particular stories in the Talmud was malicious and non-righteous, this leads to conclusion (C) that the Talmud was therefore not sanctioned by God. Furthermore statement (B) that these stories included derogatory and defamatory statements regarding sects and other religions which resulted from Rabbinical fabrications and lies regarding the advent of the messiah and perpetrated as in (A). That being the case, then if B=A and A=C then it can be concluded that similarly B=C indicating the resulting religions of Rabbinic alterations of the truth are not sanctioned by God.

It was this scenario that Isaac ben Abraham Troki found himself immersed in when he examined the repulsion between the two religions. But he also knew that as long as rabbinical dogma took a sarcastic and malicious approach to Christianity the slaughter of Jews by Christians would continue as a normal reaction of human nature. Only by exercising a logical approach and finding a way to promote self-evaluation amongst Christians he knew that many would see the validity and sense of his argument and Christianity would then be brought to a crossroads, not because the rabbis ridiculed them but because their own conscious demanded they do so.   And upon self-evaluation he hoped they would recognise the preceding errors behind their origins and move closer to aligning themselves with Karaite beliefs.

Isaac ben Abraham Troki

As I have introduced the logical argument, Troki went on to prove in the Hazuk Amunah that the argument was flawless. There were four conditions he wrote that demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that Yeshua was not the Messiah and these were all provided from the New Testament. The first condition of irrefutable proof had to do with the pedigree provided. The second had to do with the acts he performed as described in the Gospels. The third had to do with the period in which he lived and the last was based solely on the fact that during his existence the promises which herald the advent of the Messiah were not fulfilled and only by fulfillment could the identity of the Messiah be beyond a shadow of doubt.
The first, regarding pedigree was the Gospels own refutation that he was a patrilineal descendant of King David. Since it is written in Chapter 1 of Mathew that Joseph did not know Mary until after she had given birth to Jesus, then Joseph’s pedigree has absolutely nothing to do with Yeshua. Conflicting pedigrees between Mathew and Luke don’t help the matter either but since both end with Joseph, to be the result of virginal birth, then neither really matters.
The second, looking at specific acts of Yeshua as indicating he was not the Messiah can be summed up with just one, the rest being supporting details. In Zechariah 9:10 it is written that the Messiah will speak peach until the heathen and in Isaiah 2:4 it is said they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But Yeshua says in Matthew 10:34 says, “Think not that I have come to make peace on earth: I came not to send peace but the sword, and to set a man at variance against his father and a daughter against her mother and the daughter-iin-law against her mother-in-law.” In essence Yeshua was telling everyone right there and then he was not the Messiah.
The third issue raised by Troki was about timing. Isaiah stated in 2:2 that the timing of the Messiah comes to pass in the latter days when the Lord’s house shall be established on top of the mountains.” Clearly Yeshua did not exist during the latter days. Two thousand years afterwards we can look back and say they definitely weren’t the latter days.
And fourthly Troki raised the issue of fulfilling the promises of the Messiah. These included the prophesy of Daniel in 2:44 that at the time of the Messiah there will only be one kingdom and one King, that being the Messiah. Of course that isn’t the case with the world divided into many kingdoms, empires and states. And Isaiah speaks of the time of the Messiah being a time of one creed and one religion and that is the religion of Israel in 52:1. Well, that certainly isn’t the case either. In fact it’s the opposite with many of the old pagan religions such as Wiccan, Earth-goddess, etc. experiencing a revival. This is echoed in Zechariah 13:2 with the predicted disappearance of all false idols. Once again, in this time we are living the opposite is happening. Even more condemning in this regard is the prediction by Zephaniah 3:13 that when the Messiah does come the remnant of Israel shall not speak lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. I think one can already tell from my numerous articles in which I argue against the false and misleading statements made by the Rabbanites that his certainly has not come to pass nor does it appear to be in any time soon. But most importantly, as a Karaite, the Shekinah plays a very important role in my beliefs of Messianic times. All things come from the Shekinah and all things return to it is the core of my beliefs. And it is clearly evident from Ezekiel 37:26 that we will know when the Shekinah has returned because it will be as it was in the former days with the Lord living in our midst evermore and the people will increase in prophecy, wisdom and knowledge. That definitely has not happened and it was reported during the Roman-Jewish War that the exact opposite may have happened with people witnessing what they assumed was a remnant of the Shekinah fleeing from the Temple in Jerusalem prior to its destruction.
It should be evident from Troki’s opening arguments and my few comments in addition to his that the logical approach of utilizing the Christian Gospels as the determinant of Yeshua’s messiahship was the only approach that should have been taken and the rabbis when they had the opportunity to fix their mistakes completely fumbled the ball in that respect. Now we are left with the consequences of their errors in judgment. And once more I raise the initial question of whether it is acceptable to perform evil in order to achieve good and I will qualify it with my own answer: Only when the outcome is guaranteed to be far greater than the evil committed. And since there are no guarantees in life then like my ancestor Yakov Kahana in Shadows of Trinity, I’d have to say the answer is ‘No’.

Historical Evidence fo the Ten Plagues of the Exodus

2011-07-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

The last article established some basic considerations that are hard to refute. For your recollection, these were: 1. The Exodus occurred in the last two years of the reign of Amenhotep III, 2. Moses was a Crown Prince of Egypt and in fact was the renegade Thutmose, 3. Monotheism was already becoming a contentious issue in Egypt and was challenging the existing pantheon of gods. 4. The city of Pi-Ramses was actually Avaris and over a twenty-five year span, Amenhotep used slave labour comprised of the Hapiru, the same people it is believed were the Hebrews. All this sounds very convincing but it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There is far more evidence which is about to be discussed which helps cement the case solid. Once again, I repeat my belief that the more scientific, archeological, historical evidence that can be provided to support the Exodus story, even if it does not actually portray the events exactly as they are described in the Torah these are vital to the overall teachings of the Law Giver, proving that it was not the story but the lessons that must be learned by all. Again, this is the essential pillar of Karaism, that the teachings and the law supersedes all else. And if clarifying the means by which these teachings are portrayed helps to create believers of those that have lost their way, then so much the better. Because teaching is what not only being a Karaite but being Kahana is what our purpose in life has been since the beginning.

Dating the Plagues

The matter of the plagues has already been discussed in the article http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus and therefore rediscussing each individual plague doesn’t serve any purpose in establishing the time line since none were ever recorded by Egyptian historians. But this article did serve the purpose of demonstrating that such events could occur if there was a major eruption. And the reality of an eruption of this magnitude was thoroughly discussed in http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2 where we see there were a series of major volcanic eruptions occurring in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, the Thera eruption being the most catastrophic and the one which occurred during the reign of Amenhotep III.
Now the first of those articles looked at the plausibility of the plagues occurring but the question has always been why was there never any record of them in Egyptian history? And as mentioned previously, Egyptian Pharaohs had no desire to list their disasters for posterity, concentrating only on their successes. Unfortunately, this meant that even if they did occur, there purposely would be no record of them as proof and that is where most investigators leave off their pursuit and classify the event as impossible to prove. Had they thought beyond the black and white they would have seen that there was circumstantial evidence to suggest the plagues actually did occur and they happened in the last two years of Amenhotep III’s reign.
For every action there is a reaction. We have all experienced this law of mankind. If someone was to hurt us, we would take action to protect ourselves from it ever happening again. There is always a response to an adverse event and Amenhotep was no different from any other human. He had been hurt, his country had suffered, his firstborn was lost to him forever, and he would rely on the gods to ensure that he would never suffer such a catastrophe again. There was only one god of Egypt that he would turn to. The goddess of disasters, Sekhmet and in the last two years of his reign, the Pharoah dedicated to Amun and Ra at his birth was suddenly history’s biggest advocate of this small time goddess. He began erecting hundreds upon hundreds of statues all over the country. The temple at Ashur that he was building for the chief goddess Must was suddenly dedicated to this second string goddess, Sekhmet. Many of these statues can now be found in museums all over the world because he erected so many. At Luxor alone he erected seven hundred Sekhmet statues. So despite history’s recording of Amenhotep III’s reign as being a period of stability, prosperity and expansion, there was obviously something that occurred that sent shivers down his spine and made him start trying to appease the goddess of disasters almost to the point of madness. If we examine Egyptian Mythology and realize that Sekhmet according to legend tried to destroy all of mankind and only through the intervention of her father Ra was mankind saved, then we have a gauge of the degree of madness he was experiencing. As far as Amenhotep was concerned, he was saving his people, his country, his kingdom from total destruction; the weapons of mass destruction known as the Ten Plagues. He was desperately trying to appease the goddess of disaster so that she would stop the plagues being visited upon the land by this unknown God of his son, Thutmose.

Summary

Now we have a date. The last two years of Amenhotep III"s reign which places the events somwhere between the years 1350 to 1360 BC since we don't actually know the actual dates of Egyptian Pharaohs within more or less of a decade. Even though the historical records do not say that the plagues were visited upon Egypt at this time, we have enough evidence in the form of statues to suggest that a major catastrophe did occur that terrified the Egyptian monarch beyond any nightmare that we could imagine. But then again, we don't have to imagine it because the Torah provides us with a pretty accurate description of what occurred. I'm not about to stop here, there is more to my investigation yet to be revealed but that will have to wait until the next article. So until then, Peace be with You.
Avrom Aryeh Zuk Kahana

True Moses of the Exodus

2011-06-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

Every hub I’ve written on the Exodus has been leading towards these next few that I’m writing. This article is designed to shock the senses; to make the reader ask questions of their own foundation of beliefs, not to weaken but instead to strengthen their convictions. It purposely will interweave historical fact with the existing legendary tales and demonstrate that what we have perceived and dismissed as legends were probably legitimate historical details that others in the past, those responsible for recording the actual origins of our religion, refused to accept and either purposely dismissed or eliminated in their process of refinement. In their efforts to rewrite history for the sake of preserving religious icons in their own image they have in reality not achieved affirmation but instead created doubt, confusion and skepticism in the society of the last hundred or so years, because we are now a people that thrive on facts and are suspicious of anything that lacks supporting documentation or scientific grounding. Essentially, we need proof that what we have been expected to accept on faith for three thousand years really did occur. There will be those that will find the statements made in the content of this article threatening. They will not understand that just because the facts might present a different storyline from what they have grown up to believe does not mean that the teachings are in any way negated. Because as some of the more notable Karaite scholars recognized, the stories of the bible are exactly that, stories. Stories designed to convey lessons in morality, justice, behavior and social interaction. And it mattered not if the story did or did not happen precisely as described but only that the laws as presented to us were handed down by God to his chosen representative and that we recognize that we have only managed to survive for the past three millennia as a result of these laws. Sadly, too often the focus has been on the dazzling bling and very little of the substance. The miracle is not whether a wind from the east parted the Reed Sea and a people walked across on dry land but that this hunted, refugee people actually survived at all and went on to conquer a land within one generation to call their own. Too often we are mesmerized by the spectacular and fail to recognize that it is the simplicity that should draw our attention. The definition of faith should never be about being led around blindly and believing wholeheartedly in the unrealistic and unimaginable. There are other words for that kind of belief and faith certainly isn’t one of them. As a Karaite, faith is about trusting and believing in an interpretation that seems good to me. Creating a framework that reinforces the structure of my religious observance and customs. That is the essential role of the historical traditions in the Torah, and thusly we must relegate them to their actual purpose and not transform them into the actual religious teachings that are held sacred and therefore immutable. They merely provide the scenery, the background, but are not the actual religious ordinance that we must follow.

A Rose By Any Other Name

I have already introduced the likelihood of our Law Giver, Moses, being none other than the crown prince Thutmose, son of Amenhotep III. There are many reasons for making this supposition and once they are laid out in a clear and organized manner, it will become obvious how I have drawn this conclusion. This particular article will concentrate on the background of this mysterious Crown Prince that disappeared completely from the annals of Egyptian history, except for his mummified cat that was entombed along with his mother. The one piece of evidence that tells us that a mother’s love transcends even the eternal command of a disappointed father that his memory was to be obliterated completely. Clearly, the Crown Prince Thutmose was no longer living within his father’s kingdom and was clearly not welcome had he returned. Thutmose, the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, was also known as Djutmose, Thutmosis and Tuthmose. His name means "Thoth is Born" or "Child of Thoth." Thutmose disappears from Egyptian records completely somewhere between year 27 and year 33 in his father's reign, so he never became a Pharaoh, otherwise he would have been Pharaoh Thutmose V. If the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1352) is correct then that means that Thutmose disappeared between 1363 and 1357 BCE. One can attempt to justify his absences by claiming that he probably died, but that would not explain why his tomb was not discovered with or close to those of the rest of his family. The tomb that would have been constructed for his eventual entombment since he was already named as Crown Prince was never found in the cluster that was reserved for Amenhotep’s family. What we do know is that during the short period of his recorded life that he was a very important member of the royal family, clearly being groomed to be Amenhotep III's successor. The existence of Thutmose is also attested by a total of 7 pairs of calcite and pottery vases that are held in the Louvre. As for his mother taking his mummified cat into her sarcophagus, we can appreciate had he died, there would have been numerous mementos that Tiye would have taken with her, but the apparent absence of anything of that nature tells us that they had all been purposely destroyed.

Monotheism In Egypt

To comprehend the religious understanding of the Crown Prince Thutmose, it is necessary to appreciate exactly what was happening during the 18^th Dynasty. A religious reformation was occurring, that reached its pinnacle under the reign of Akhenaton, Thutmose’s brother. One can describe Akhenaton’s attempt to alter the religious practices of Egypt as an introduction of monotheism, but it ultimately met with failure. The question that should be immediately asked is whether Akhenaton just arrived at this unique vision of monotheism of his own accord, or was he in fact attempting to copy a pattern of beliefs already established by a predecessor? It certainly wasn’t his father that he modelled himself after. His father’s birth name was Amenhotep Heqawaset ("Amun is Pleased, Ruler of Thebes). His father’s throne name was Nub-maat-ra ("Lord of Truth is Ra"). The combination of these names into a singular title would be Amram. Again, one of those reoccurring coincidences that seem to surround the Book of Exodus in that Amram was also the name of Moses’ father. And as I have said repeatedly, there are no coincidences. Amenhotep III also used the Horus name Kanakht Khaemmaat ("Strong Bull, Arising in Thebes"), the Nebty name Semenhepusegerehtawy ("One establishing laws, pacifying the two lands") and the Golden Horus name Aakhepesh-husetiu ("Great of valour, smiting the Asiatics"). So it is apparent that his father was definitely not a monotheist or would he have been in any way a role model for the young Akhenaton’s monotheism.
Yet, although the worship of Ra, Amun and Horus are clearly evident in the 18^th Dynasty, so to were the beliefs in the ancient gods of Egypt, those that came first. Djehuty is sometimes alternatively rendered as Jehuti, Tahuti, Tehuti, Zehuti, Techu, or Tetu or as jt-nṯr "god father". The first rendering of Jehuti is very close to names that were commonly used by the children of Israel as in Jehudi, or one from the Tribe of Yehudah or Judah, the J being pronounced as a Y in Hebrew. Once again, another of those coincidences but that is not the point of this discussion so we won’t explore it further. The Crown Prince Thutmose, named after this primordial god Djehuty would be aware of the many roles his namesake held in the Egyptian pantheon. Thoth served as a mediating power, especially between good and evil, making sure neither had a decisive victory over the other. According to the texts of the ancient Egyptians, Thoth was regarded as One, self-begotten, and self-produced. This belief bears a striking resemblance to the basis of monotheism in which God was there from the beginning, omnipresent. Thoth was considered the master of both physical and divine law, once again a striking similarity to Moses’ appreciation of our one and only God. Similarly, Thoth is credited with making the calculations for the establishment of the heavens, stars, Earth, and everything in them, identical to the wording in Genesis. The Egyptians credited him as the author of all works of science, religion, philosophy, and magic. With this description of Thoth in mind, it would not be surprising if the Crown Prince came to the realization that his namesake was the one and only God of the universe, the primordial God from which all things flowed, just as the description of Nun proclaims. In this belief, there would have been only one God, this Djehuty or Nun. And as discussed in http://hubpages.com/hub/Of-Karaite-Things the letter Nun is quite significant, especially in the matter of Rabbinical cover-ups. If Jehuti was the most probable pronunciation, then Yahweh is certainly well within the scope of that name.

The Building of Pi-Ramses

The building of these twin cities in Goshen is golden key to the story of the Exodus. In fact, it was the naming of these cities that led to the belief that the Exodus had to occur during the 19^th Dynasty because how else could it be explained that one of the twin cities was named Ramses. But again, it is imperative that we understand that the recording of these stories in their final written form, came long after the actual events, meaning that the editors would use names of towns and cities with which they were familiar in their own timeline. How many today would refer to the city of New York as New Amsterdam, its original name? They wouldn’t because that name is lost to later generations, the same way the original names of the cities of Pithom and Ramses were lost in the time period of the actual writing of the Torah. We know for a fact that these cities had another name, long before the restoration of the 19^th Dynasty. We know this because archeology has proven that Seti and Rameses weren’t the first to begin building these cities. In fact these weren’t original cities at all but the reconstruction of a much older one. The original name for the city where the twin cities were being reconstructed was Avaris. This city which once was the capital of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt, was leveled by Ahmose several hundred years earlier when he conquered the Hysksos and reestablished Theban rule over Egypt. And what is even more interesting is that the excavations by Dr. Mandfred Bietak of Vienna University have found inscriptions that were records of the slave labour force that was used to rebuild the city. This rebuilding occurred between 1385 and 1360, during the reign of Amenhotep III. The use of slaves on a mass scale to rebuild this city would correlate well to what is written in Exodus. There is other evidence that suggests that it was this first rebuilding, almost one hundred years earlier than the reign of Ramses II, that is the correct dating of the Exodus. We know that the Egyptians recorded that they had slaves from the Hapiru. We also know that the Hapiru apparently came from the land of Canaan. Once again, the coincidence of slaves referred to as Hapiru and the Children of Israel referring to themselves as Hebrew would suggest that it was no coincidence at all but one and the same people. But if that is the case, then the inscription on the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak celebrating the victories of Ramses’ father Seti would only make sense if the Exodus occurred during the reign of Amenhotep III. This inscription reads, “Fallen are the Hapiru of Beisham.” The city of Beisham, located in central Canaan, unless one wants to argue that the Hapiru and the Hebrew were not the same people, was already conquered by the Israelites and had a large enough population that they attempted to defend the city from the Egyptian army. This could only mean that the Hebrew were already well established in the land long before the 19^th Dynasty.
Archeology gives us one more vital piece of information that also dates the Exodus to the reign of Amenhotep III. Originally, when Kathleen Kenyon excavated Jericho she placed the date of its destruction around 1500 BC. A date which many used as a weapon to negate the story of the conquest since that date was well before any possible Exodus by the Children of Israel. From that date they also tried to say that the Joshua of the Bible never existed. But in 1996, two researchers at Groningen University radiocarbon dated cereal grains that Kathleen Kenyon herself had actually excavated at the site. The dating of these grains had an approximate date of 1320 BC plus or minus 10 years. This would place the event 30 years after the reign of Amenhotep, or the one generation that the Children of Israel wandered in the desert.

Summary

This article is just the first of several that will utilize existing information to provide the framework of the Exodus. What we have seen is that there was a Crown Prince that disappears from Egyptian recorded history at the same time there are Hapiru slaves building the historical city called Pi-Ramses at a later date. We know that monotheism was taking shape in Egypt exactly at the same time that these other events were occurring. We know that archeology is suggesting that Jericho was burnt to the ground one generation after these aforementioned events. What is left now is to find the evidence for the actual exodus, the plagues, and true identity of the Law Giver. These will be provided over the next few articles. And when all is completed, there will be a historical Exodus that we can clearly point a finger at and all will hopefully find their faith strengthened.

Exodus and Ethiopia Part 7

2011-05-08T02:16:00.000-07:00

The most read article that I have on this website concerns the Ethiopian Princess that Moses married. Why has this story created such a stir that it has become a feature on other sites that have copied and posted it, spreading the word of this long forgotten relationship? I have seen the information in the article used from those proclaiming the true decent of the Israelites was through Africa, by others that proclaim that we are all one people, and also by those that have seen it as one more device to spread anti-Semitic propaganda. Three different perspectives, diametrically opposed and yet all quoting the same article for their justification. I have even witnessed its rebuttal by Jewish groups, totally ignoring that the Torah, the Old Testament, itself states that our origins were as a mixed multitude. Do they not understand what a mixed multitude means? Are we that myopic that we must divide our religious beliefs between black and white and taint it with the prejudices that have afflicted mankind since its creation? Or cannot the simple beauty of this ancient story, where a man and a woman see one another, not in terms of their external appearance but for what they are inside. That which counts the most is the lesson tht must prevail. And no where better do we learn this lesson tha from the Queen of Sheba.

A Sacred Line

I cherish the fact that we had roots that extended beyond the borders of Canaan and Egypt. I praise Moses for his lofty ideals that transcended race or creed or colour. And once upon a time, so too did the rest of the Israelite population as we can recognize from Flavius Josephus’s record of this fabled liaison, the inclusion of such stories in the Talmud (one of the few times I’ll praise the Talmud for any of its content) and the writings of Artapanus and Cornelius Polyhistor. None of these authors saw the marriage of Moses to the Princess of Ethiopia as anything less than a testimony of Moses’ greatness. A relationship that was well known and understood in ancient times because the Queen of Sheba had no other purpose in seeking the bed chambers of Solomon but to re-establish the sacredness of offspring of her lineage. Recognizing that the line of Moses had been superseded by the house of David, in her wisdom she knew that that the legitimacy of her own reign rested on carrying this seed blessed by God. And whether or not we choose to recognize the legends and historical records of the Ethiopian royal house, this is exactly how they explained the traditions that they have passed down from father to son for the last three thousand years. And although no one can state exactly how the Felashim came to be, those Black Jews of Ethiopia, the majority now residing in Israel, that practiced a religion not dissimilar from that which was practiced in Israel pre-Babylonian exile, why should we doubt the obvious. That they did return with the Queen of Sheba and her son Menelik, and they did rekindle the faith that had been first introduced to them by Moses when he married their princess Tharbis, three hundred years earlier. Probably the most valuable lesson I learned in life, long ago was that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. Why are there are so many of us that refuse to accept that. This simple Karaite belief, the fundamental concept of Karaism, that some things in the Torah simply are the way they are described.

The Queen of Sheba

Or do we forget what it says in the Song of Songs? In chapter 1 Verse 5 she admits that she is a beautiful black woman. In the next verse she repeats that she is swarthy, tanned darker than the daughters of Jerusalem. As dark as the tents of Kedar. The Kedarites were a tribe descended from Ishmael. The expression to dwell in the Tents of Kedar was often used to imply that one was cut off from serving God. Therefore she is admitting that she does not follow the Hebrew faith but in Solomon’s eyes she is still beautiful. To read the Targum now, the Rabbis will insist that the story has nothing to do with the love between a man and a woman. They state that the kiss is representative of Gods revelation of the Torah at Sinai. That when the woman says that she is black she is actually referring to Israel’s sinning nature to chase after idols. And that in Verse 9 her reference to herself as Pharaoh’s mare is in reality a reminder of the crossing of the Red Sea. Even Maimonides could not accept the Song of Songs as it simply reads, stating in his Guide to the perplexed it was actually about the love between God and the human soul and not with Israel proper. The fact is that they were all embarrassed by its inclusion by the earlier editors and in their efforts to justify what essentially would have been early pornography they have spent eons trying to explain away the obvious. Because if they didn’t, then they would have to confess that the stories of Moses in Ethiopia were all true and the reasons for the Queen of Sheba visiting Israel had far more to do with a continuation of a royal lineage than they did with coming to ask Solomon a few questions to test his wisdom. They’d have to admit that Solomon as this pinnacle of God’s faithful was lusting after a woman that was neither part of the faith nor physically resembling the general populace.
Firstly, if we were to accept the Rabbi’s arguments then we would have to accuse them of anthropomorphizing God, giving him human features which the woman (being Israel in their view) has now described physically. The invisible, indefinable God is no more. He has circlets on his cheeks and wears beads about his neck as it says in verse ten, and God also has a desire for gold and silver as it states in verse 11. Human obsessions and human frailties and therefore the intended man in this song could never have been God. But in verse 9 we have the ultimate perversion of the Song if we choose to attribute its description to the Almighty. To be a steed has only one implication when a woman describes her lover in such terms. It creates an image that is religiously profane for it would be not in any way dissimilar from the images of Greek gods where Zeus had taken delight in riding human woman after woman, just like a steed rides a mare. And if this truly was a description of a God:Israel relationship, then the banter that is exchanged between the lovers makes no sense at all. For example in Chapter 6 Verse 8, the woman speaks of his having 60 other queens and 80 concubines, as well as a number of serving women, a recognition that she must be happy with the moments she does have with him, content that for a time he has placed her above the others. And as we read Chapter 8 we recognize that they are parting, that the Queen is going away. She cannot be fenced in with walls and turrets as he could do with other women; hardly a comment that Israel would make to God. She knew that the people did not accept her, she admonishes them for her rejection, knowing that had they been of the same people (a brother) then her presence in his bed chambers would have caused no offense to the daughter of Jerusalem that have awoken to condemn their love. But though she must leave, not all the water in the world could quench the love they have for one another. Obviously this is not a song about God and Israel but is exactly what it claims to be. A song of Solomon. A song of Sheba. A song of love!

Exodus and Direct Clues from Moses Part 6

2011-05-05T03:10:00.000-07:00

That Which Has Been Written

From http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Karaite-Reading-of-Exodus I wrote about the fable about Moses's name being Moshe, a Hebrew word meaning to draw out, as in to 'draw out of the water' a reminder of the baby in the basket inference. But this was an addition, a post exilic Rabbinic creation. And we know this for a fact because in their commentaries to the Torah, they admit it freely that they knew that the word 'mehshitihu' only had the barest resemblance to the name Moshe and that an Egyptian princess would never have used, let alone known the Hebrew language. But although they admit this literary flight of fancy, they also refused to admit what the name really meant even though they knew that it was a shortening of the Egyptian meaning ‘son of’. And in that article, I wrote of the likelihood that Nunmose or Nunmoses was probably the actual name of Moses. And being the primordial god of the river, the Egyptian god that was there at the beginning of all things, it is understandable how the story of drawing the baby from the Nile was born. Later in the article http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2 I mentioned that the likelihood of the Egyptians even mentioning the Exodus of 15,000 slaves was unlikely, but as I will discuss in a later article, the plagues were a completely different matter. And there is evidence through extrapolation of events in Amenhotep III’s reign that a catastrophe of biblical proportions did take place. Throw in the fact that the Exodus was led by a renegade prince from the Great House, his own son, and it is understandable that the events were stricken from Egyptian historical records as was the common practice for all embarrassments to the royal household. Do we have an indication of any such son of Amenhotep that was erased from history, yes we do, because even with the best attempts to erase memories, there is always something overlooked. And then in the article http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3 I quote from the Book of Jasher, “But the tribe of Levi did not at that time work with the Israelites their brethren, from the beginning, for the children of Levi knew the cunning of the Egyptians which they exercised at first toward the Israelites.” And from this I suggested that the Levites were actually an Egyptian priestly caste that for reasons unknown threw their lot in with the Hebrew slaves at the time of the Exodus. Conjecture would say that in some way, the Levites did something that offended Pharaoh and therefore lost any status that they once held in Egypt. And sure enough, we have record of a priestly rebellion amongst the priests of Heliopolis that ultimately failed and was put down by Amenhotep III. And then we have other stories, stories which I inferred in http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-4 talk about Moses’ role in conquering the Cushites or Nubians. A role which in Egyptian history is attributed to this disgraced son of Amenhotep III. And there are other stories that state this conqueror of Ethiopia later rebelled against his Egyptian Pharaoh. His punishment was never defined but we know that the man responsible was never caught or slain. It would have been something that the Amenhotep III would have made certain never got recorded in his own royal chronicles. And the pharaoh might even banish his son to one of the religious cities where it would be expected that he could do no harm.

Egyptian Clues

Much of the preceding events indicated will be discussed in subsequent articles, but more importantly we must ask ourselves, if Moses was truly a Egyptian Prince, a prince of the blood, did he leave us any clues to confirm this? Because if we believe the great Law Giver was far more than the average slave, a man of destiny, of privilege, of intelligence then that part of him that was Egyptian would want to ensure that his life was never obscured; that it was immortalized no differently from those buried in their pyramids and royal tombs. The likelihood of his displacement, of his history being rewritten was already evident to him through the numerous insurrections, rebellions, and challenges he had to face, especially from those closest to him. Knowing all this, then someone like Moses would attempt to leave a trail of evidence that would go unnoticed by most but for those taking the advice of an Anan ibn David, or a Kirkisani, they would search for the truth, the logic of it all, and they would find that which was purposely left behind to be rediscovered. And just how would Moses accomplish such a feat? He would do so by leaving this trail of bread crumbs scattered through the Torah, but so sublime that it would be overlooked completely and not recognized for just how Egyptian it truly was. Something completely overlooked by those he knew would attempt to make revisions of the sacred book in the future. And the obvious choice for a man raised and educated in the Great House would be to use something that no other culture had at that time and that was Egyptian mathematics. The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text that we have available is called the Ahmes Papyrus or Rhind Papyrus dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000-1800 BC. This papyrus provides evidence of a mathematical knowledge that included composite and prime numbers as well as arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means. Prime numbers are the key here since there is no known formula that yields all of the prime numbers and no composites. The distribution of primes, by calculating the statistical behaviour of primes was only modelled in a proven statement since the end of the 19th century. So there use in ancient Egypt were intentional and could never have occurred randomly or coincidentally. As I have always said, there are no coincidences. And since the knowledge of Prime Numbers was exclusively the domain of Egyptian scientists, the high priesthood and the Royal Family, then their incorporation into the Torah would have been intentional. And if intentional, then Moses was using them to make a statement.

Prime Numbers

On this premise, the inclusion of a string of prime numbers in the Torah would be the means by which Moses would be clearly pronouncing his Egyptian heritage. His vehicle for stating that he was raised not only in the Great House, but would have also attained the higher learning of the high priesthood. We know that the Prince Tuthmose was installed in the high priesthood of Heliopolis following his conquest of Ethiopia. A strange reward for someone that should have been hailed as the next conqueror and heir apparent. In the twenty-third year of his father’s reign, Tuthmose suddenly disappears, never to be heard from again. Two years later, Amenhotep’s reign ends. Far from coincidences but actual facts.
So where are these prime numbers? Placed exactly where they would go unnoticed because they would be hidden in plain sight. In the one book where Moses knew statements bordering on the fantastical could be readily accepted; that book being Genesis, incorporating the legendary stories of the ancient traditions. As Karaites, we learn from the Book of Genesis the morals and origins that shaped our civilization but as both Anan ibn David and Kirkisani stated, we must use logic and build our faith not on the literal translation but on the intent. As we read about the incredible ages of our ancestors, we have a choice; either accept them as actual ages or look for something deeper. Firstly, it matters little that Adam lived for 930 years or Methuselah 969 and but yet they are included in the Torah with no seeming purpose. Until we look at Adam’s age, made up of the four prime numbers 2, 3, 5 and 31. Each number unique and used only once. Just like Enosh, consisting of the two prime numbers 5 and 181, and his son Kenan consisting of 2, 5, 7 ,13, and his son Mahalel consisting of two prime number 5 and 179, and his son Jared consisting of three prime numbers 2, 13 and 37, and his son Enoch consisting of two prime numbers 5 and 73. This trend continues with Enoch’s son Methuselah, 3, 17 and 19, his son Lamech 3, 7 and 37, and his son Noah, 3, 11 and 29, and his son Shem 2, 7 and 43, and his son Arpachshad 2, 3, and 73, and his son Shelah consisting of a single prime number 433. From the above list, only Seth, Adam’s son has an age that does not consist of single use prime numbers. It would appear that it was Moses’ intent to highlight Seth as being different for another purpose. So out of a possible thirteen ages, twelve are purposely derived from the multiplication of prime numbers used only once. Clearly intentional and serving a specific purpose. Only when we reach Shelah who’s age is derived from a single prime number does the trend stop once more with his son Eber who’s age like that of Seth’s consists of multiple use of the same prime number. But Eber’s son Peleg consists of a single prime number 239, as does his son Reu, also 239. Clearly Eber was to be highlighted, framed between generations using only single prime numbers, an obvious change of trend from the previous ages. And Reu’s son Serug is a return to three prime numbers 2,5 and 23 and his son Terah once more only consisting of two prime numbers 41 and 5. After this we are in to the Abraham and his children and we no longer have a need to conceal any message in the ages of the patriarchs since Moses is aware that the knowledge of Abraham and subsequent patriarchs was already well established as would have been any legends regarding their ages. Eighteen generations out of which sixteen have been clearly manipulated to consist of prime numbers used only once.

In Conclusion

Whether you choose to believe it or not, the ages described were intentionally selected since you have a better chance to win the lottery than to have successive ages made up of single use prime numbers occur with such a high frequency. Since the statistical formula for deriving these numbers, which again is only a probability formula and not exact, was only arrived at in the nineteenth century, then the author of these ages had an advanced knowledge of higher mathematics and was able to determine prime numbers, even one as high as 433 without the advantages we have of our present education. So truly this was a person of exceptional skill and knowledge, but knowledge that only existed amongst a very elite in Egypt.
As to why highlight Seth and Eber from amongst all those other patriarchs, that too can be explained if I attempt to be so bold as to guess at what Moses may have been suggesting. If we look at the three individuals, Seth, Eber and Abraham, we have the three identifiable fathers of our people. Seth, who came into existence so that we would be his descendants and not those of Cain, Eber who fathered us as a distinct race, that being the Hebrew, derived from his name and the language he gave us, and then Abraham who’s own name states clearly that he would father a people that would be unique amongst the nations. Through the use of mathematical principles, Moses has made two very evident statements. Firstly that his origins were clearly Egyptian from that of the Great House but secondly that the parentage of the majority of the people he led were not. Our Lawgiver has spoken to us directly in a manner that only he was capable of doing. A message that he passed down through time so that we would have a better understanding of our origins.

Exodus and the Book of Yasher Part 5

2011-05-02T02:17:00.000-07:00

There are so many unresolved questions regarding the Exodus that it is truly surprising that those of us that claim to follow Karaite traditions have not done our utmost to search the realm of possibilities in order to discover our past. After all, it is the nature of a Karaite to be inquiring and constantly exploring the essence of our beliefs. These are the fundamental instructions of our early progenitors. From Anan ibn David’s advice to believe in that which seems right to you, to Kirkisani’s instructions to apply logic when attempting to comprehend the scriptures and avoid rhetoric and dogma. Both of these men knew that there were essential truths still awaiting discovery, and that once revealed they would not weaken our beliefs but in fact strengthen them for we would be able to built our faith upon an undeniable foundation that could withstand the skepticism that now infiltrates all our religious institutions resulting in a new generation that has no belief at all.

The Book of Jasher

Awhile back I was questioned why I would raise the book of Jasher as a resource for our religious beliefs. It was raised because to understand our early beginnings we must recognize that many of the foundation stones were built upon the revelations that came from that particular book. The question should not be why I would use the book of Jasher but why it was deemed necessary post-Babylonian exile that the book was made to disappear from the annals of Judaism. We know it was in existence and well preserved at the time of the Babylonian exile because we know that Nebuchadnezzar requested that he be provided with a copy. But 70 years later, with the rebuilding of a new Israel, the Book of Jasher was expunged from our historical documents. The reasons for this occurring are far more important than trying to establish which chapters from the current versions presently available are verifiable. Because what becomes obvious is that the religious leaders during the reformation of the third to fifth century BCE feared that the Book of Jasher would contradict everything they were trying to achieve in their pursuit of political and religious domination. Specifically because the book of Jasher placed a far greater emphasis on the Hebrew faith of the Kingdom of Israel which sharply contrasted to that which was now emerging from shores of the river of Babylon.And secondarily, how would they be able to exclude a Samaritan population from the New Judea if it was to become common knowledge that our most illustrious founders of our religion were anything but Hebrew. Or what if the Israelite practices which were condemned by the Judean prophets happened to be those that were instructed by Moses and Aaron and not sacrilegious at all? How does one deal with historical truths that suggest the taking of wives as captives from other nations was entirely permissible as long as you gave them the right to leave if they refused to accept the nation’s belief? What if the early records suggested that Jerusalem had no entitlement to become the religious centre of Israel and it was Beth-el that was eternally to serve in that function? These issues would continually divide the people, much as they had done in the time of Reheboam and Jereboam unless they could be made to disappear once and for all.

Or H'Oylum

So what I teach as a Karaite is as I have been instructed; as my ancestors have done, generation after generation. Yes, there have been times when my family has decided it was easier to join the other side than fight against the tide. There is a long line of Kahana and ha-Cohen Katz (KAhana TZadek) that became chief rabbis throughout eastern Europe. That is often the way when men start a path of questioning their belief structures. Often they question so much that they end up becoming stalwarts in the antithesis of their beliefs. But similarly, those of us that have remained faithful to our origins will grow even stronger in our fundamental principles and whether or not you choose to accept what I am about to tell you, at least it will make you think. Hopefully it will make you question and then subsequently apply rational judgment. That is all that Kirkisani wanted to achieve in his lifetime. That those of us that proclaim ourselves to be Jews, not only Karatites but Rabbanites as well, examine our beliefs, question them and arrive at logical conclusions so that we have no doubt in what we teach or practice. I have spent my life doing exactly that and as a result my faith is unswerving, inexhaustible, and inextinguishable. I do not need outward signs, a style of dress, a cut of my hair, to say who or what I am. That is clearly expressed as soon as a stranger sits with me. They learn very quickly what motivates me, and for the most part they respect my beliefs because I live my life without pretense of being anything more than I am, and in so doing they choose to sit and listen because I paint a world that they have never heard of before. Essentially I try to be that light, that Or Ha-Oylum. Not a light that shines upon myself and says look at me, ‘how great am I’ like so many of my spiritual counterparts but a light of self-examination, of self-evaluation and hopefully they will come away better for the experience of having taken the time to sit with me. Essentially I am both ‘sinner and winner’ and that which makes me all too human is what attracts them to the stories I have to tell.

All Too Human

So to those of you that fail to comprehend what Kirkisani was trying to tell you, then let me express it in plain English, “Those that we have elevated to greater than human status in our early traditions were nothing more than men and women like you and I. They have to be examined within the framework of human emotion and motivation. They excelled neither in righteousness nor saintliness but instead in determination and fortitude. Their motivations were often self-serving but in so doing they also achieved a greater good for the people. Yes, some of them heard the word of Yahweh and were able to separate us from the sea of nations that surrounded us, but we must never to forget that they were human and as such their greatness was not in the hand of God that rested upon them but in the fact that they could overcome their human frailties, fears and failures time and time again.
So this being the context of how we should examine the Exodus, I will in my next article discuss the two people that were essentially the instigators of that greatest of all stories. A story of brothers, yet that brotherhood may have only been in spirit and not in the true sense of biological brotherhood. To some of you, that suggestion might appear sacrilegious, but considering that one of these brothers was my ancestor I think it’s only fair that I have the right to question my own origins in the search for truth.

Exodus and the Book of Yasher Part 4

2011-05-01T04:57:00.000-07:00

Hopefully, many of you have already begun investigating the book of Yasher for yourself and realize just how important this ancient text is for the understanding of our origins both historically and religiously. One might ask why it was not included in the original canonization of the sacred Tanach and that is a very legitimate question because if a book was actually being used as a reference text, it is surprising that it never made it into the final scriptures which have ultimately changed the world through three major religions.
There are there possible explanations for this failure to include the Book of Yasher. First, it may not have been available at the time having been used as a resource based on oral traditions but never formalized into an actual document. It would not have been unusual after Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleukid occupations that the oral traditions never had an opportunity to actually edit the stories into a structured version. But what goes against this possibility is the fact that even in Joshua and Samuel, it is referred to as a Book of Yasher, thereby implying that it had undergone the process of final editing and scripture.
The second possibility is what we now experience in our current age, where there are multiple versions of the Book of Yasher, most obvious hoaxes and therefore they would have presented a problem for the editors in the 2^nd Century BCE to decide what was truth and what was fiction. They had neither the investigative tools that we now have, nor the knowledge of period texts and styles that would have supported their decisions that currently exist in our time. So, in order to avoid including a heretical and false text it was easier to exclude them all.
The final possibility is that those canonizing the Tanach refused to include the Book of Yasher because of some of the stories that were included. Some do appear more of a fantasy nature and in conflict with some of the events as recorded in the Torah. For example, in the Book of Yasher, both Abraham and Noah were concurrent rather than separated my many generations. In order to avoid confusion and conflict, it was best to remove the presence of these stories completely. But if I was to make an educated guess, it was not only this reason that they used as their justification to exclude the Book of Yasher but specifically it concerned the stories of Moses that brought them their greatest distress. In my earlier article, http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess , which also happens to be my most popular article with close to a thousand readings, it is clearly evident that there are far more stories about Moses’ origins that have been intentionally kept from us than there are actually included in the Torah. The reasons for this are obvious; they suggest that Moses was neither Apiru (Hebrew), or Shazu, but could have been very easily Hyksos or even Egyptian. These stories are well preserved in the Book of Yasher and they certainly confirm his presence in Ethiopia which took a large part of his earlier life to achieve. So as you read these verses taken from Yasher, I ask that you open you mind and ask, what is far more believable; that a son of slaves walked into the palace of the Pharaoh and made demands on the most powerful regent in the known world, or that a man of equal status walked into the chambers of his father and caused an insurrection that eventually led to the release of a people because Pharaoh feared the consequences of refusing this Prince and his protector God more than he feared the loss of his own power and influence in acquiescing.

Establishing the Timeline

In Chapter 70 verse 1 of the Book of Yasher it reads, “And in the third year from the birth of Moses, Pharaoh was sitting at a banquet, when Alparanith the queen was sitting at his right and Bathia at his left, and the lad Moses was lying upon her bosom, and Balaam the son of Beor with his two sons, and all the princes of the kingdom were sitting at table in the king's presence.” This corresponds well with the legends recorded by Ginzberg, the works of Josephus and other tales of Moses’ early life. Some texts record his royal mother as Bithyia, but I believe this one to be the most accurate. The one on his left would have been a secondary wife, sister or daughter, whereas Alparanith would be the Royal Consort, or primary queen. The name Bathia if it was a Hebrew construct would translate as the House of Yahweh. We can call this a mere coincidence but as I have stated repeatedly, there are no such things as coincidences. Her name had a purpose and it was to inform us that there was a royal wife of Pharaoh that was a follower of this desert God.
But who was Bathia? Do we have any suggestion in Egyptian recorded history of such a woman existing? And if so, why has no one bothered to connect the dots so to speak to explain one of the great mysteries of the Bible. Well, avoiding connecting the dots does make sense if the editors feared the consequences of Moses’ origins being known more than their intent to commit a serious crime of omission. What they failed to comprehend was that it never really mattered who Moses’ parents were, even though they felt they had to prove they were Levites and therefore part of the migrant tribes that entered Egypt at the time of Joseph. That was more important to them than the realization that it mattered not whom God chose, whether he was from the Apiru, Mittani, Canannites, Egyptian, Hittites or whomever. What was truly important was that God found a man that was willing to undertake the greatest burden imaginable, defy odds and persecutions that would have humbled and destroyed most human beings, and do so all because in his heart and in his mind he heard the voice of God and he had no doubts regarding his mission.
To identify the period in which Bathia may have been a secondary queen it is necessary to focus on the name of his primary wife. The fact that we have an actual Egyptian name as evidenced by the ending of her name of ‘nith’ or ‘neith’ as was commonly used in such names as Neithotpe, Herneith, Merneith, Nit, Henite, all suggest that this truly was a royal name. In fact the Egyptian meaning of Neith is either "water" or "weaver." In mythology, this is the name of a mother goddess, the personification of the waters of life which would be interchangeable with the male form or the god Nun that I have already disclosed in http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess as the most likely concealment of Moses’ actual name and how the Rabbis have still preserved the ‘Nun’ in the Hebrew texts for fear of altering sacred scriptures too much. Since Nun was the primordial god of Egypt, or the one that preceded all other gods, then he would have been essentially the one and only for a period of time even in Egyptian religion. So Alparanith could have been easily referring to a time when monotheism had a hold on Egypt. If we divide the word into Al-Para-Neith then we know her name actually means The Province of Neith, which means strictly that she belongs to or was dedicated to Neith. Neith also was thought of being the goddess of wisdom, so this could actually be a characteristic reference to the Queen, meaning the one who is wise, or gifted with wisdom if she had a been given a role in making royal judgements in the court. It is said by some that Tiya or Tiye was the most influential royal queen in Egyptian history, which is quite a statement since Hatshepsut had actually ruled as a Pharaoh all on her own. Egyptian Queen. Tiye was the daughter of Yuya, the King's Lieutenant of Chariots and Master of the Horse, and Thuyu the Superintendent of the Harem of Min of Akhmim and of Amun of Thebes. Tiye was also the niece of Mutemwiya, a wife to Thutmose IV making her Amenhotep III's first cousin and sufficiently royal to be his Great Wife. But it is Tiye's parentage which is a subject to debate and provides us with a significant clue; she was probably not full Egyptian. We know from the study of the mummies found in 1904 that her mother had Egyptian features, but her father did not and from the features it is most likely that her father may have been Apiru, Shazu or similar coming from Mesopotamian origins. . Tiye bore the pharoah at least seven children including Thutmose, Sitamen, Isis, Henut-Taneb, Nebetah, Beketaten, and Amenhotep who is better known to history as Akhenaten. Historians believe that Tiye was the power behind the throne as she acted as her husband's advisor and confidant, playing an active role in foreign relations; so much so that she was the first Egyptian queen to have her name included on official records. Tiye even remained visible during the reign of her son, Akhenaton's correspondence speaking of Tiye's continued political influence. So the picture of Alparanith and Tiye being one and the same has a better probability than most. But what of this second wife Bathia.
From the list of offspring above we know that Princess Nebetah was apparently the fourth daughter of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Once again we have the intial ‘Nun’ beginning the name, as is the possible case with Moses, but only the last part of the name being preserved, or in this case Betah or as the Book of Yasher would have recorded it as Bathia, to give it a more Hebrew sound, the same way that Moses loses it Egyptian orginin when transcribed into its Hebrew form of Mosheh. Though she is not as well known as her sisters, perhaps because she has disappeared from the palace later on, as the story of the Exodus suggests, her name does mean 'Lady of the Palace' or 'Great Lady', which would be unusual for a lesser daughter and one that certainly didn’t marry her brother as was tradition.
In fact, it appears as if Nebetah has been intentionally removed from Egyptian history by her father for some act that she must have committed even though it is clear from her name that he prized her quite highly at one point. All of her sisters appear frequently on statues and reliefs during the reign of their father and are also represented by smaller objects but Nebetah is purposely absent as if any of these items had been destroyed. This removal of her existence is further enhanced by the Egyptian chronicles where she is never referred to as a 'King's Wife' and she was never officially married to her father, Amenhotep III. Yet here she is referred to as the ‘Great Lady’ and was recorded to have the official title of ‘'King's Daughter Whom He Loves.' All these would suggest that she was her father’s favourite, and if Tiye was as powerful as the history would suggest, then she could easily have stopped her husband from officially marrying this daughter, yet still permitting her to sit on the left hand of the throne in the early days, and if as the Exodus story suggest, Bathia went with her attendants and retinue into the wilderness with Moses, then it would make sense that her father eradicated practically every memorial to her existence. And like any favourite daughter, she would have had her every wish granted by her doting father until such time that she defied him and then he would have overreacted as is human nature and declared that she was no longer any child of his.

Young Prince Moses

If the reign of Amenhotep III is correct in fixing the time that Moses existed then what evidence is there to support that Moses was a member of this particular royal dynasty? For this we have to look at Chapter 72 verse 22 and following from the book of Yasher to read, “And Moses was eighteen years old when he fled from Egypt from the presence of Pharaoh, and he fled and escaped to the camp of Kikianus, which at that time was besieging Cush.
23 And Moses was nine years in the camp of Kikianus king of Cush, all the time that they were besieging Cush, and Moses went out and came in with them.
24 And the king and princes and all the fighting men loved Moses, for he was great and worthy, his stature was like a noble lion, his face was like the sun, and his strength was like that of a lion, and he was counsellor to the king.
25 And at the end of nine years, Kikianus was seized with a mortal disease, and his illness prevailed over him, and he died on the seventh day.
26 So his servants embalmed him and carried him and buried him opposite the city gate to the north of the land of Egypt.
27 And they built over him an elegant strong and high building, and they placed great stones below.
28 And the king's scribes engraved upon those stones all the might of their king Kikianus, and all his battles which he had fought, behold they are written there at this day.
29 Now after the death of Kikianus king of Cush it grieved his men and troops greatly on account of the war.
30 So they said one to the other, Give us counsel what we are to do at this time, as we have resided in the wilderness nine years away from our homes.
31 If we say we will fight against the city many of us will fall wounded or killed, and if we remain here in the siege we shall also die.
32 For now all the kings of Aram and of the children of the east will hear that our king is dead, and they will attack us suddenly in a hostile manner, and they will fight against us and leave no remnant of us.
33 Now therefore let us go and make a king over us, and let us remain in the siege until the city is delivered up to us.
34 And they wished to choose on that day a man for king from the army of Kikianus, and they found no object of their choice like Moses to reign over them.
35 And they hastened and stripped off each man his garments and cast them upon the ground, and they made a great heap and placed Moses thereon.
36 And they rose up and blew with trumpets and called out before him, and said, May the king live, may the king live!
37 And all the people and nobles swore unto him to give him for a wife Adoniah the queen, the Cushite, wife of Kikianus, and they made Moses king over them on that day.
38 And all the people of Cush issued a proclamation on that day, saying, Every man must give something to Moses of what is in his possession.
39 And they spread out a sheet upon the heap, and every man cast into it something of what he had, one a gold earring and the other a coin.
40 Also of onyx stones, bdellium, pearls and marble did the children of Cush cast unto Moses upon the heap, also silver and gold in great abundance.
41 And Moses took all the silver and gold, all the vessels, and the bdellium and onyx stones, which all the children of Cush had given to him, and he placed them amongst his treasures.
42 And Moses reigned over the children of Cush on that day, in the place of Kikianus king of Cush.
As was discussed in the article on the Ethiopian Princess, Moses actually came to the land of Cush with an army intent on conquering its major city. There are similarities in that for 9 years Moses fought until such time that the city fell. According to the other story it was the daughter of the Ethiopian King that finally put an end to the war, whereas here it would appear to be tied to the death of Kikianus. At first reading it would appear that Moses was fighting for Kikianus and for some reason the Ethiopian King was attacking his own city. But on closer examination, although it says that Moses went to the camp of Kikianus, it could have just as easily been a mistranslation of the word ‘against’ as ‘in’. The former making far more sense that Moses came as general and counsellor for Pharaoh in a war against Kikianus’s city which he eventually took after nine years. But most importantly is that after the death of the Cushite king, Moses has himself proclaimed as king or Pharaoh of Upper Egypt. The reference to ‘his treasures’ makes us well aware that Moses has taken the glory all for himself and not for his Pharaoh.

The Nubian War

Do we have anything in Egyptian history that lends veracity or is comparable to this history provided by the Book of Yasher? The answer is obviously yes. It is recorded that before Akhenaton, Egypt was to be ruled by his brother since Crown Prince Thutmose was the eldest son of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. He is also knowns as Djutmose, Thutmosis and Tuthmose. His name means "Thoth is Born" or "Child of Thoth." Thutmose disappears from Egyptian records completely somewhere between year 27 and year 33 in his father's reign, so he never became a Pharaoh, otherwise he would have been Pharaoh Thutmose V. One can say that he probably died, but that would not explain why his tomb was not discovered with or close to those of the rest of his family. So very little is known about this doomed Prince Thutmose, that it would suggest that he too, like Bathia was erased from the records intentionally. But during the short period of his life that was, recorded, he was a very important member of the royal family, clearing being bred to be Amenhotep III's successor as he was a member of the priesthood of Ptah in Memphis, most likely being the High Priest and had a role in the military though this is not elaborated upon. Prince Thutmose had a pet cat, Ta-Miu ('the Kitten' or 'the lady cat'), who, like many animals in Ancient Egypt, was mummified and placed in her own sarcouphagus when she died. The cat sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose, states that he was indeed the eldest son of Amenhotep III giving his current title of 'Crown Prince at the time of the cat’s death. Thutmose is also attested by a total of 7 pairs of calcite and pottery vases in the Louvre. But the cat is most interesting in that it was buried within his mother’s tomb, that of Queen Tiye, who died long after her husband, almost as if this was the last possession or memory of a son that she had and she wanted to cherish it even after death. One would think that if the son had died naturally, there would have been many items that the Queen would have selected to take into her tomb with her having preserved a son’s memory as best as she could as any mother would do. But all she had left was the cat that he himself had mummified. Everything else was gone, but with her husband dead 12 years earlier, he could not stop her from having this last item of a cherished son buried with her.
Building on this connection of the Crown Prince and the military campaigns of Moses, we do know that Amenhotep III did have campaigns in Nubia, or Cush to the South. His army we can presume was under the direction of the man appointed as his Viceroy of Cush, one Merimose. Obviously, this is a very different name from Thutmose but it must be remembered that Egyptian members of the royal family had numerous names by which they were called. And since Meri-mose translates as ‘Beloved Son’ there is no reason why these two men were not one and the same. As to how this son could be both Thutmose and Nunmose as I consider the case, then as mentioned each Pharaoh had five different names but it is of interest that Toth the god referred to in Thutmose was considered the tongue of the chief god, as well as the messenger. Now this Merimose, Viceroy of Cush was found in a burial tomb for servants of the king and his mummy currently lies in the British Museum. And though it says Royal son, this Merimose was not a member of the royal family, nor was he treated as such in his burial so it is clearly not the same man as Crown Prince Thutmose, whom also would have been Merimose, or the beloved son. So the presence of this mummy in no way excludes the fighting prince of the Book of Yasher from being the fighting prince of Amenhotep’s army.
So more importantly, the clarification of this issue of warfare in Ethiopia is paramount as it should connect this Prince of Egypt with the Moses in the Hebrew stories being proclaimed a king in Cush. We know that in 1375 BCE there was an ending to a revolt by the Nubians against Amenhotep III, the 27^th year into his reign if counting from the time he was co-regent with his father. How interesting that Moses would have been 27 years of age when he finally took the city and became king of Cush according to the Book of Yasher. This war in Cush is the only recorded military activity undertaken by Amenhotep III army and it is only commemorated on three rock-carved stelas found near Aswan and Sai Island in Nubia. Hence, it was not an undertaking of such tremendous magnitude that it was commemorated with the building of massive temples such as was the case of Amenhotep’s father and also by later Pharaohs such as Rameses II. Instead it was merely marked within the affected territory itself, clearly indicating that the Pharaoh never had an actual presence during the skirmish and also that it was not given the status of a major threat to Egypt itself that Amenhotep could claim to be the Defender of the Two Lands. The official account reads as follows:

“Regnal Year 5, third month of Inundation, day 2. Appearance under the Majesty of Horus: Strong bull, appearing in truth; Two Ladies: Who establishes laws and pacifies the Two Lands, King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Nebmaatra, heir of Ra; Son of Ra: [Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes], beloved of [Amon]-Ra, King of the Gods, and Khnum, lord of the cataract, given life. One came to tell His Majesty, "The fallen one of vile Kush has plotted rebellion in his heart." His Majesty led on to victory; he completed it in his first campaign of victory. His Majesty reached them like the wing stroke of a falcon, like Menthu (war god of Thebes) in his transformation...Ikheny, the boaster in the midst of the army, did not know the lion that was before him. Nebmaatra was the fierce-eyed lion whose claws seized vile Kush, who trampled down all its chiefs in their valleys, they being cast down in their blood, one on top of the other.”
The title of the rebellious king of Cush is the ‘fallen one.’ Fallen from where one might ask. Fallen from grace, from honour, but then that would imply that he had a high status to begin with. Perhaps it was not fallen in any of those senses but to be taken literally as in he has fallen down dead. Whoever he was, he had underestimated Amenhotep’s general who came at him like a lion. Or in the sense of a nine year campaign, a general who refused to give up and was relentless in his pursuit to destroy the city. This rebel is given a name or an insult being Ikheny, the boaster but this could easily be a play upon his actual name as recorded in the Book of Yasher. Kikianus is obviously a Greek stylized rendition of the name, and in most likelihood it would have ended in a vowel, such as ‘i’. In that situation we’d have the name Kikiani. If we remove the first letter k then we have a name that is very similar to Ikheny. In fact it would be almost indistinguishable. This King of the Cushites did not know this lion before him, this Lord of Ra’s Ma’at that clawed his way through Kush until he finally conquered it. This would suggest that the general was a young unknown, with no reputation that preceded him. And because he was unknown and underestimated he was able to take the country piece by piece, eliminating each chieftain of the Nubians one by one until the finally laid siege to the king’s city. But it is clear that although the other chiefs that had fought under the banner of this rebel were slain, the king of Cush, the man responsible for the rebellion was never caught or slain. Just like Kikianus in the Book of Yasher, neither of these was possible because the king died of other causes during the siege at which point the people threw open the doors and ended the war by surrendering. Hardly a victory worth commemorating with a major building project to the north, and certainly not one to be commemorated if this general-Prince happened to place the crown upon his own head and place himself in direct opposition to Amenhotep III. It would have been something that the Pharaoh would have made certain never got recorded in his own royal chronicles but he would not have been able to eradicate the steles set up independently by his general far to the south near Aswan.

In Conclusion

Though one might claim that the historical data listed in this article in no way confirms or establishes that the time frame and family connections of Moses as being part of the 18^th Dynasty in Egypt, it must be appreciated that it does not deny it either. In fact, it is the only historical time period in which the almost all the events of the Exodus have a correlating connection to actual events. As I stated in http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3 my role is to make you think, to open your minds and appreciate that in the Karaite manner, the Torah is a compilation of historical truths that merely need to be interpreted in their proper context. And as such, the true miracle is that Yahweh not only made them happen for a specific purpose but that when required there were men of incomparable stature that rose to the occasion, defied incredible odds, and in the end overcame impossible barriers because God imbued them with a faith that could move mountains. And the history that we uncover together only emphasizes how incredible those feats may have been.

Exodus and The Book of Yasher: Chapter 3

2011-02-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

As mentioned previously, one of the most common questions asked is how can such a major event, a defining event for the monotheism of today’s world, be overlooked so completely from the historical records. This has led many to falsely accuse the Old Testament, the Torah, of being a fable, a fabrication of nomadic tribes that sat around the campfire and concocted their own history. It is what the atheists, Anti-Semites, archeologists, etc. have used as their weapon to challenge the veracity of the Bible. And they have done an admirable job of overlooking the obvious, discounting the clues, and ridiculing the researchers that have even attempted to connect the dots on what is a poorly established historical truths that we are taught in school. For example, we are taught the Sphinx was constructed around 3500 BCE but those geologists that have examined it found the traceable waterlines of a much earlier flood engraved on into its stone; a flood that occurred four thousand years earlier. In Germany they have discovered stone implements and designs, quite intricate stone carvings by the way, that have been dated to 25,000 years ago, long before current historians and scientists claim we had the tools and skills to create such devices. So why are we so reliant on our current historical knowledge, provided by research that obviously is inaccurate, confused, and concealing, that we will let those that wish to repudiate, mock and ridicule the accuracy of the Torah to do so publicly within our schooling system?
In Rediscovering the Exodus, I am not asking you to take every word I have to say as undeniable truths. They are alternatives, suggestions, issues to be discussed honestly and openly, as we use the knowledge that we do have in an effort to understand events long ago for which we no longer have confirmation of eye witness accounts. We must let go of our 21^st century thinking and try to perceive events through the eyes of what were primitive and tribal thinkers; men who saw miracles in every bolt of lightning and covenants in every rainbow. When you can open your minds at that level, then you will make the connection with your ancestors and see the world and the truths as they perceived them. That is the Karaite way.

The Book of Yasher

Firstly, it must be recognized that there were other holy books in existence besides the Tanach that were passed down through the centuries. One of these is referenced twice in the Tanach and that is the Book of Yasher. It is not seen as a companion text but as a resource text from which both the Books of Joshua and Samuel have drawn their material. Therefore it is a very ancient text which preceded most of the books in the Tanach. The dilemma is that there are in existence several books with that title. Some are easy to identify as later Greek period frauds. Some are Latin period frauds and one is even an 18^th century English fraud but then there are a select few that appear to be segments from a single text, ending well before the establishment of David’s Kingdom and therefore concerned only with the early events of Children of Israel. These are the texts from which the next few articles will be drawn because they paint a very intriguing and interesting picture of the Exodus that does correlate to historical events recorded in Egypt and Canaan. They also say much regarding our early priesthood, a priesthood that many claim only began with Aaron but which may have predated him by centuries if not millennia and from which Aaron was just one of many on a line of descendancy from earlier times. As one of the Kohanim, this in no way depreciates or deprecates my family’s historical background but what it does implicate, is that those now caught in the genetic tracing of our roots and claiming historical accuracy regarding the J1 controversy, most likely have it all wrong but that I will save for another article on another day. Using the Book of Yasher, known as the Book of the Upright, I will make an attempt to connect the dots but for those that are adamant that every word in the bible is to be taken literally, without interpretation ,then I’m afraid that what I have to discuss is only going to offend your religious values and you may wish to desist reading now. Because if you truly believe that the Hebrew slaves were constructing the cities of Pithom and Ramses as is recorded, not recognizing that when the stories of the Torah were finally written down, 700 years later, there were only these names in existence for the places where the slaves toiled and the earlier names had been forgotten and erased from memory, then you are failing to do as Anan ben David instructed; to seek with an open mind and find the answers that are good to you. But if you choose to recognize that that the recorders were merely using names familiar at the time to provide location, reference markers and scale of construction, then what I have to say I believe you will find enlightening. Remember, as Kohan, I have inherited a primary purpose and that is to teach and I have always dedicated my life to doing so.

The Levite Priesthood

The book of Yasher has been divided into chapters even though its original format would have been one continuous dissertation that scrolled on paragraph after paragraph. The current format makes it easy to reference certain sentences and therefore is a convenient tool for this discussion. Those that obtain a copy of the particular Book of Yasher that I’m reading from will find these sentences easily.
The Torah already indicates to us that Aaron is a recognized leader of the people. He has authority, prestige and the people listen to him He also serves as interpreter and spokesperson for Moses, indicating that either Moses did not speak the same language as the Hebrews, or else he could not immediately command the same respect that Aaron already had. Either way, it provides us with a clue that Aaron, and the entire Levite Tribe have an inherited status far exceeding that of the other Children of Israel. Part of this has already been discussed in my article A Karaite Reading of Exodus at http://hubpages.com/hub/Of-Karaite-Things but I will look to the Book of Yasher to provide a more in depth perspective than what can be gleaned only for the Torah. In Yasher, specifically Chapter 65 verse 32 we find the following written. “But the children of Levi were not employed in the work with their brethren of Israel, from the beginning unto the day of their going forth from Egypt.” What we can interpret from this sentence was that the Tribe of Levi were not part of the slave force. That from the beginning, ie. beginning of recorded Egyptian history, or from the time of their arrival in Egypt, hundreds of years earlier, or even from being of a specific and recognized caste, they were elite and therefore not subject to manual labour, or treated as inferior to the native Egyptian population. This is further emphasised in the next sentence 33 in which it is written, “For all the children of Levi knew that the Egyptians had spoken all these words with deceit to the Israelites, therefore the children of Levi refrained from approaching to the work with their brethren.” What we can infer from this, is not only are they not subject to being treated as an inferior stock, but they have access to all the written laws and beliefs, ordinances and palace documents, so that they are well aware of what was happening to the Hebrew slaves but they ensured that they neither became embroiled in the issues nor attempted to intercede in any manner to stop the persecution. The book then makes its most startling of comments in the next verse 34 which reads “And the Egyptians did not direct their attention to make the children of Levi work afterward, since they had not been with their brethren at the beginning, therefore the Egyptians left them alone.” What this sentence clearly implies is that the Tribe of Levi was not identical to the Hebrew slaves. It had different origins, different roots and in the eyes of the Egyptians, were not considered Apiru, Shazu or similar which made up the Hebrew stock. And later in verse 37 where it is written, “And the children of Israel called Melol the king of Egypt "Meror, king of Egypt," because in his days the Egyptians had embittered their lives with all manner of work,” it is clear that servitude is what the Children of Israel were subjugated with but it was not in the time period of Ramses or his father Seti, but during the reign of the Pharaoh bearing a title that sounded like ‘Melol’. A first clue as to placing the time of the Exodus and proving the veracity of the Biblical story. Later on in Chapter 69 verse 9, the author of Yasher reaffirms his earlier statement thusly, “But the tribe of Levi did not at that time work with the Israelites their brethren, from the beginning, for the children of Levi knew the cunning of the Egyptians which they exercised at first toward the Israelites.” This is a most surprising statement because if you read it correctly, not only are the Levites distinct and separate from the Hebrews but in fact, they persecuted the Hebrews no differently than did the other Egyptians. From this we can surmise that that the Levites were actually an Egyptian caste that for reasons unknown threw their lot in with the Hebrew slaves at the time of the Exodus. Conjecture would say that in some way, the Levites did something that offended Pharaoh and therefore lost any status that they once held in Egypt. So they went from first being persecutors of the Hebrews to allies and leaders of this outcast group through some strange quirk of fate. Exactly what this may have been, I will leave for the next article. For now I believe I have left you with enough to contemplate and discuss as we rediscover the Exodus.

The Exodus Story: Chapter Two

2011-02-05T03:49:00.001-08:00

As mentioned previously, the Exodus could not have occurred in a vacuum, even thought there does not appear to be any other eye witness accounts or historical records from other kingdoms to confirm any such event of such a magnitude having occurred. But therein lies the first issue, the one concerning magnitude. What we perceive of having been a tremendous event of such significant numbers to represent the evacuation of all of Goshen, may not have been that significant at all. Although the Torah would suggest the exodus was measured in hundreds of thousands, we do know that the scriptures often used numbers metaphorically, often in an exaggerated nature in order to emphasize a point. Then again, they may have been describing the total after a generation’s birth in the desert rather than at the actual time of the Exodus. We do obtain a suggestion of the actual numbers from the Exodus based on the size of the Tabernacle. We know that it was built shortly after entering into Sinai in order to accommodate all men of suitable age for prayer. Moses was a strict authoritarian, so there would have been no excuses for the men not to attend the sacrifices and services. The children, women, etc. would have remained camped outside its perimeter fence along with any people that had not joined the covenant. Since we know that the perimeter fence was 100 cubits by 50 cubits, and we commit the first 20 cubits of its length to the priestly functions and altar, then we roughly have space to accommodate worshippers of approximately 10,500 square feet. Although it would be a tight fit, we can imagine 7500 men of 20 years and older standing upright within the confines of the inner court for prayer. If they had to prostrate themselves, then it would be with some difficulty but manageable. Even if we were to assign one woman to every man of that age, then we can safely assume there were at least 15,000 people of a mature age. And if that is the case, then we can also assume there would have been probably double that in children, from infants to teenagers accompanying them, or roughly 45,000 people at the time of the Exodus. Though 7500 men of age may sound like a large number, it would hardly be sufficient to go to war with, battling the tribes that inhabited the land. So there may have been a practical reason as well why Moses chose to stay in the desert. By allying themselves with the Midianites, he would have perhaps doubled this number, but against cities even that number would barely register as a threat. So Moses stayed a generation in the desert until he had sufficient numbers to continue on his way and then dismissed Jethro with his tribe back from whence he came. With this younger generation now grown to manhood, the numbers would have been closer to a twenty thousand man standing army, much more formidable, and with the offspring born in the desert, an insurance of future numbers to go to war with Moses was prepared to enter the land of Canaan. If they did stay in the desert for a single generation, then the total population would have been a multiple of the 45,000. Perhaps they averaged five children per family unit, then if that was the case they would be of a total number suggested by the Torah, numbering over 200,000.

Insignificant and Ignored

Would the Egyptians have bothered mentioning the Exodus of 15,000 slaves, the children not even being considered in the equation? Probably not; especially if their leader was a known renegade prince from the Great House as the Torah describes Moses. Like every other prince or Pharaoh that ran afoul of the gods of Egypt, their names were erased from history, literally chiselled out of the stone in which they had been engraved. And taking into consideration that the new dynasty wanted nothing more than to eliminate anything to do with the heretical 18^th Dynasty that preceded their rise, it should be no surprise that there is no recorded history of this event. After all, the 18^th Dynasty attempted to introduce monotheism into Egypt, a failed experiment as far as the Ramesids were concerned and it was their role to expunge if from the Book of Life. So any event where what they would have considered a continuation of the leprosy on their Ka, they would be thrilled if it voluntarily separated itself and passed quietly into the desert. The Pharaoh would have been grateful for this gift from the gods and would not have described it as anything more than the breaking of the curse or similar. There would have been no mention of Apiru, Shazu or any other slaves fleeing from the country as they had become undesirables, and beneath mentioning.
So the error of those looking for validation of the Exodus is the fact that they look for confirmation through the historical archives recording an event that actually concerned people. But as you can see, there was no reason or justification to record such an event other than by the Israelites themselves who saw it as the turning point in their lives. But what could not be overlooked were the catastrophic events described as the Ten Plagues. History would not have been able to ignore this had they occurred. If those truly were phenomena of nature then there would be a geological and possibly archeological evidence and recording of such events and these would be beyond dispute. In order to fully appreciate this it is necessary to have an understanding of what was occurring around this time. We must look towards the great Hittite Kingdom (1750-1200 B.C) which besides Egypt, dominated the known world. By 1750 B.C.E., the Hittites had taken control of a large part of Anatolia (Turkey) and established their first kingdom at Nesa, near Kultepe. The old city of Bogazkoy was declared the capital of the Kingdom and the name of the city was changed to Hatusa. Hattusili became the first king of the Hittites. Hittites used chariots against the Egyptian army for the first time in the history of wars and not too surprisingly, the Egyptians lost that war. Hittites used both cuneiform and hieroglyphic inscriptions so we must appreciate that this was not a barbaric civilization but a highly sophisticated one that had mastered the manufacturing of iron implements. By the latter part of the Late Bronze Age (c. 1400-1200 B.C.E.), Mycenaean civilization flourished in Greece and Crete but the Hittites controlled most of Anatolia and northern Syria while the Egyptian New Kingdom ruled not only in the Nile Valley but also in Palestine and southern Syria. Even though these three civilizations were in a perpetual state of war, commerce flowed over trade routes that crisscrossed both land and sea carrying cargo from Cyprus, Canaan, Egypt, Anatolia and Mycenaean Greece. Everything points to a bustling, burgeoning and flourishing multicentred civilization that looked unstoppable. In the scope of civilizations developing to this degree, the expulsion of a few thousand slaves was insignificat but even more so if there were other matters of a far graver concern.

World Catastrophe

But at around the same time of the Exodus,during the 13^th century B.C.E. the great Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Near East suddenly collapsed without any indication or advance warning. The destruction of the palace at Knossos which had been originally dated c. 1400-1380 B.C.E. by Sir Arthur Evan, a dating that had stood without question for a long time, has now fallen under recent review of evidence from Knossos. It is now considered more likely that the palace continued to exist under Mycenaean rule well into the 13th century B.C.E. Again making the timing of its destruction more in line with the timing of the Exodus.
Similarly, if we were to examine the events of a century later, all these great civilizations had begun to unravel simultaneously with evidence of their cities burned, their once extensive trade becoming virtually nonexistent, and large groups of people migrating from one place to another without any known justification. The Aegean raiders that sailed to the near east only to become the Philistines of the Torah are no more or less a displaced people as Moses and his people wandering in the desert were. And when the legacy of this catastrophe ended and the world awakened from under this spectre of terror, it had metamorphosed into brave, new world. Within the magnificent Late Bronze Age two new peoples eventually arose, which we know of as the classical Greeks and biblical Israelites. From a catastrophe came two people that would ultimately define Western civilization.
So let's assume there was a major earth shattering event (still to be defined) that destroyed the archaic Greek civilization, caused the Hittites to disappear as a force to be reckoned with, caused a mass migration of peoples throughout Europe and had its effects seen and felt in ancient Egypt. Then surely there would be some physical evidence of this cataclysm spread across the Mediterranean and thereby confirming it was of a magnitude never seen before by humans; in other words, a divine punishment in the eyes of these ancient people. For more evidence we only have to look at what archaeologists refer to as Troy VI which has been dated to 1800-1275 B.C.E. Troy VI was concurrent with the Great Hittite Kingdom and established its kingdom on the ruins of Troy V near Canakkale in the northwest region of Anatolia only to disappear at the same time the Hittite Kingdom appears to have been knocked off its pedestal. The city kingdom was abandoned following a migration of Indo-European groups from the Balkans into the region after a major earthquake devastated the city around 1200 B.C. But the coincidence of a mass migration for Balkan people at the same time this great city of legend was being destroyed would suggest that the migration had been forced upon these people by the same event that destroyed Troy. What may have been an earthquake in Troy, may have been a tidal wave in Greece, or an eruption elswhere on the continent. Combine these events and you have mass devastation. So as we can see, what was occuring in Anatolia, was also occuring in Greece and the Balkans, and from what we know from the Torah, was affecting Egypt as well. We also know that during this same time period, there were major population displacements and replacements throughout the region, including Cyprus and the Levant all while the Hittite empire was collapsing.These were not random events but caused by a single source yet to be determined.
Every event must have its epicentre, so where would this earth shattering event have taken place? From the Torah we know that the looking from Goshen, there was a pillar of light at night and a pillar of smoke by day that guided Moses initially to the Northeast, towards Yam Suf, or the Sea of Reeds. This would suggest that we should look to the northeast which draws our eyes to present day Turkey, the home of the once mighty Hittites. Karprinar is a volcanic filed located in central Turkey and it consists of five cinder cones, two lava fields and several explosion craters and maars. The 300-m-high Meke Dağı, is surrounded by the crater lake known as Meke Golu and it is one of the largest cinder cones in Central Anatolia. A volcanic field of this size if it was erupting all at once, may have also triggered the Mediterranean Ring of Fire to ignite all around the north and east of the sea. And with that much ash, smoke, and sulfur being spewed into the air, it had to have a long term effect as well. And we do get some comment from Egypt that something had changed drastically in that it was recorded that from the time of Ramses III (c. 1182-1151 B.C.E.) until that of Ramses VII (c. 1133-1127 B.C.E.), the price of an emmer of wheat rose to eight times its earlier price. Not until the reign of Ramses X (c. 1108-1098 B.C.E.) did the price drop, but even then it remained twice what it had been at the beginning of the 12th century. During this time, the government also frequently failed to pay grain and other food rations owed to artisans that worked on the royal tombs. These craftsmen staged strikes at least six times between about 1154 B.C.E. and 1106 B.C.E. because their grain allotments were months in arrears. It is obvious that there had been a major alteration to the climate, the soil, etc. which for quite some time (the biblical 7 X 7) or 49 years affected the crops resulting in poor harvests. Whatever the change, it predated Ramses III and would again have likely occurred in the 13^th Century B.C.E. From the change of soil, moisture,, etc., it is suggetive of soil contamination from massive ash clouds.
The truth is we don't know yet the exact location or magnitude of this catastrophic event. But with science we are learning more and more each day that it did happen. And its just a matter of time until science does prove the Exodus and the plagues happened exactly as they were recorded.

In Search of The Real Exodus: Chapter One

2011-02-02T01:33:00.000-08:00

One of the most pivotal events in Jewish history is the Exodus. No other event played such a defining role in the establishment of a people. Yet, the entire story appears to be absent from the cultural histories of those nations in the immediate vicinity at the time the event likely occurred. This has led many to claim that the plagues and the actual events of the Exodus never occurred otherwise this vacuum could not exist. Faith can take one only so far before doubts begin to creep into one’s belief system. But without the Exodus, the justification for monotheism, the rational origins for Judaism, Christianity and Islam are suddenly placed in a precarious situation. And as bizarre as this might seem to religious fanatics, we may have to rely on science to prove that the events of the Exodus. What has always been perceived and accused of being the anathema of religion may in fact prove to be its savior. By understanding what science has recorded and teaches us about the time period, through means of extrapolation we can rediscover the Exodus.

The Ultimate Scientist

There are those that no matter how you try to explain to them that events of Torah were described through the perceptions of people that lived during the time and therefore we of a more modern and learned time must interpret their words carefully but they were biased by the limitations of their knowledge and they refuse to accept this. Their response is that everything in the Torah has to be accepted literally and if you cannot accept this, then you are not a true believer. These are the same people that if you show them a uranium dated rock as being three billion years old, accuse you of being in league with the Devil as their world is only less than 6000 years old. Interestingly enough, the Devil isn’t in the Torah but they’re willing to accept him as being so.
The reality is that their reliance, and our reliance shouldn’t be based on the words of men, for as I stated, those perceptions could only be manifested through their current level of knowledge which we know was minimal at best, but instead based upon that which God has taught us. As we begin to understand the universe that God created, we begin to appreciate the beautifully designed plan that He worked from. God created the rules of physics, the laws of nature, to achieve His master plan. Like an architect, He had a blueprint from which He designed everything around us and only now do we even have an inkling of how He achieved this great design. It is in this context that we must view the events of the Exodus, as naturally occurring events which followed a sequence of events dictated by physical laws. And as we now know, energy can be converted into physical mass. In other words, that which did not exist as a solid object, can be created when enough energy is released and converted. Had we had the equipment at the time of Moses, we would have been able to measure the EDMs and EMPs that probably preceded each event. One could even suggest that Moses was given the gift of sensing these energy spikes prior to the event, like the rheumatism in one’s bones making them sensitive to an oncoming storm. Only Moses would be able to say for certain, but nevertheless, the fact that we know enough now about energy transformation and conversion, and can appreciate that God is pure energy and the source of all that is, then science does tell us that everything was possible.

Chronology of the Plagues

From Exodus Chapter 7 we read:
לְעֵינֵי פַרְעֹה, וּלְעֵינֵי עֲבָדָיו; וַיֵּהָפְכוּ  וַיַּעֲשׂוּ-כֵן מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן כַּאֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה, וַיָּרֶם בַּמַּטֶּה וַיַּךְ אֶת-הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר בַּיְאֹר, כָּל-הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר-בַּיְאֹר, לְדָם. 20
And Moses and Aaron did so, as the LORD commanded; and he lifted up the rod, and smote the waters that were in the river, in the sight of Pharaoh, and in the sight of his servants; and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.
וְלֹא-יָכְלוּ מִצְרַיִם, לִשְׁתּוֹת מַיִם מִן-הַיְאֹר; וַיְהִי הַדָּם בְּכָל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם  וְהַדָּגָה אֲשֶׁר-בַּיְאֹר מֵתָה, וַיִּבְאַשׁ הַיְאֹר 21 And the fish that were in the river died; and the river became foul, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the river; and the blood was throughout all the land of Egypt
As strange as this first plague may seem to be, rivers turning to blood on demand, it is not that unusual. We know from events like the eruption of Krakatau, when there is a major disturbance to the bedrock, there is often the release of corrosive toxins such as iron oxide. It is iron oxide which give Mars the nickname, the Red Planet. As with Krakatau, fish died in the hundreds of thousands and this devastation extended for hundreds of miles. If there was a major earth shattering event that made Krakatau look like a relative non-event, the release of iron oxide in Egypt would not have been that unlikely.
Since an event of this nature also occurred during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helen’s where fish were found floating dead on the surface of the riverways hundreds of kilometres from the volcano, and that the drinking of water in the area was forbidden until such time that the impurities could be filtered from the reservoirs, then we have on a much smaller scale, a repetition of biblical events.
And from Exodus Chapter 8 we read:
- אֱמֹר אֶל-אַהֲרֹן נְטֵה אֶת-יָדְךָ בְּמַטֶּךָ, עַל-הַנְּהָרֹת עַל-הַיְאֹרִים וְעַל-הָאֲגַמִּים; וְהַעַל אֶת וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה, אֶל-מֹשֶׁה -הַצְפַרְדְּעִים, עַל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.
1 And the LORD said unto Moses: 'Say unto Aaron: Stretch forth thy hand with thy rod over the rivers, over the canals, and over the pools, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt.'
, הַצְּפַרְדֵּעַ, וַתְּכַס, אֶת-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וַיֵּט אַהֲרֹן אֶת-יָדוֹ, עַל מֵימֵי מִצְרָיִם; וַתַּעַל.
2 And Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.
  וַיַּעֲשׂוּ-כֵן הַחַרְטֻמִּים, בְּלָטֵיהֶם; וַיַּעֲלוּ אֶת-הַצְפַרְדְּעִים, עַל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.
3 And the magicians did in like manner with their secret arts, and brought up frogs upon the land of Egypt
As soon as the water became contaminated by the metal toxins, amphibians have a choice to make. Either stay in the water or run to the next water source in the hope that it would be cleaner. If they chose to stay they would die, and even the most primitive of neuro-responders have built in fight or flight receptors that tell them when they in dire consequences. So the swarming of the frogs over the land would have been a normal sequelae and the Egyptian magicians would have been able to think they could reproduce it as well since they could walk to any water source and see similar events unfolding. In modern times we have seen a similar event though are memories are short lived and people seem to forget. After Mount St. Helen’s erupted, the toxins from the volcano had settled into most of the water courses and as a result, there were frogs stretching throughout Washington State that were making a run for it but with nowhere to go. People reported that they could not drive down the roads without literally squashing them in the thousands and this became a driving risk as the roads became slick with frog blood and remains. In the local newspapers the stories talked about people finding their lawns covered in frogs, and in their search for water, the amphibians were invading the houses.
Later in Chapter 8 we read:
וְסָרוּ הַצְפַרְדְּעִים, מִמְּךָ וּמִבָּתֶּיךָ, וּמֵעֲבָדֶיךָ, וּמֵעַמֶּךָ: רַק בַּיְאֹר, תִּשָּׁאַרְנָה.
7 And the frogs shall depart from thee, and from thy houses, and from thy servants, and from thy people; they shall remain in the river only.'
  וַיֵּצֵא מֹשֶׁה וְאַהֲרֹן, מֵעִם פַּרְעֹה; וַיִּצְעַק מֹשֶׁה אֶל-יְהוָה, עַל-דְּבַר הַצְפַרְדְּעִים אֲשֶׁר-שָׂם לְפַרְעֹה.
8 And Moses and Aaron went out from Pharaoh; and Moses cried unto the LORD concerning the frogs, which He had brought upon Pharaoh.
  וַיַּעַשׂ יְהוָה, כִּדְבַר מֹשֶׁה; וַיָּמֻתוּ, הַצְפַרְדְּעִים, מִן-הַבָּתִּים מִן-הַחֲצֵרֹת, וּמִן-הַשָּׂדֹת.
9 And the LORD did according to the word of Moses; and the frogs died out of the houses, out of the courts, and out of the fields.
וַיִּצְבְּרוּ אֹתָם, חֳמָרִם חֳמָרִם; וַתִּבְאַשׁ, הָאָרֶץ.
10 And they gathered them together in heaps; and the land stank.
The significance of these four sentences is paramount to our understanding of events. What we read in sentences 8 through 10 are in contradiction to what Moses stated he would do in sentence 7. His promise to Pharaoh was to make the frogs depart, essentially return to the river where they would be confined once again. But even as he prayed to God, the resultant solution was not as he had promised but instead was massive deaths of the creatures. Moses did not have complete control nor full understanding of the events occurring. Because the fact was that the water was still contaminated and the frogs could not return to the waters. And as we all know about amphibians, without water to maintain their hydration, the oxygen diffusion skin ratios, etc., they die. And they died in such numbers that the Egyptians made mountains of their remains. And rather than burn them, it would appear that they permitted these corpses to remain in their piles until they stank.
כָּל-עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ הָיָה כִנִּים וַיַּעֲשׂוּ-כֵן, וַיֵּט אַהֲרֹן אֶת-יָדוֹ בְמַטֵּהוּ וַיַּךְ אֶת-עֲפַר הָאָרֶץ, וַתְּהִי הַכִּנָּם, בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה: , בְּכָל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם.
13 And they did so; and Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and there were gnats upon man, and upon beast; all the dust of the earth became gnats throughout all the land of Egypt.
I prefer this translation of the next plague being that of gnats, and not lice as some versions have been translated. But even more so, I would suggest that the Egyptians made little distinction between gnats or mosquitoes and subsequently there are few words to describe these insects in the ancient hieroglyphics. For an appreciation of the event as translated being gnats then we merely have to look at more recent situations such as the volcanic eruptions of Mount Pelee in 1851 and again in 1902. After the eruptions, swarms of flying ants descended upon the villagers and viciously attacked the people.   The ants caused the people to flee, consumed their plantations and were reported to have killed babies through their bites and acid stings. Gnats fly, lice don’t. Either way, gnats or mosquitoes, their lives were made miserable. Of course we also know, that mosquitoes in Egypt bring other plagues, such as malaria, Nile Fever, etc. Something to consider.
, מִפְּנֵי הֶעָרֹב וַיַּעַשׂ יְהוָה, כֵּן, וַיָּבֹא עָרֹב כָּבֵד, בֵּיתָה פַרְעֹה וּבֵית עֲבָדָיו; וּבְכָל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם תִּשָּׁחֵת הָאָרֶץ.
20 And the LORD did so; and there came grievous swarms of flies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses; and in all the land of Egypt the land was ruined by reason of the swarms of flies.
The flies should be seen as a natural consequence of rotting corpses of all the frogs, fish, and everything else that may have been affected from the toxic nature of the water. And as any entomologist will inform you, flies go through cycles in which they become active biters as well, a carnivorous phase when they are seeking out living creatures on which to feed.
The events of Chapter 9 become far more serious:
וַיַּעַשׂ יְהוָה אֶת-הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה, מִמָּחֳרָת, וַיָּמָת, כֹּל מִקְנֵה מִצְרָיִם; וּמִמִּקְנֵה בְנֵי-יִשְׂרָאֵל, לֹא-מֵת אֶחָד.
6 And the LORD did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Egypt died; but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one.
The loss of all the Egyptian cattle is contradicted in sentences 19 and 20 of the same chapter and therefore we realize that the events of sentence 6 was intended as an exaggeration, emphasizing that the Egyptians suffered more than the Israelites but then it was unlikely the Israelites had as extensive a farming industry as the Egyptians, and being in Goshen, the ocean breezes and the fresh moving river waters as they came into the basins of salt water would have meant that the insect populations were far less than those inland.
וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת-פִּיחַ הַכִּבְשָׁן, וַיַּעַמְדוּ לִפְנֵי פַרְעֹה, וַיִּזְרֹק אֹתוֹ מֹשֶׁה, הַשָּׁמָיְמָה; וַיְהִי, שְׁחִין אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת, פֹּרֵחַ, בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה.
10 And they took soot of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses threw it up heavenward; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man and upon beast.
וַיֵּט מֹשֶׁה אֶת-מַטֵּהוּ, עַל-הַשָּׁמַיִם, וַיהוָה נָתַן קֹלֹת וּבָרָד, וַתִּהֲלַךְ אֵשׁ אָרְצָה; וַיַּמְטֵר יְהוָה בָּרָד עַל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
We can assume that whatever the clouds were that were passing overhead they definitely weren’t raincloud. In fact the plagues to follow next suggested that the Egyptians were looking a volcanic ash and far more of it than that which was spewing from the volcano in Iceland that grounded all European air traffic for a week. It may have come in waves, it may have come all at once, but whatever the case, its high acidic content caused severe rashes and burns to all that it touched. This is right in line with reports of hundreds of people following the eruption of Mount St Helen’s that had to be taken to the hospital for treatment of acid burns from the fallout. And just as Moses suggested, it was a contact dermatitis because if the farmers took their beasts inside and sheltered them, then they did not develop the sores.
It is when we start discussing the plagues associated with the soot and the hail that people start to reject the concept of a geophysical event, since they appear out of order with the locusts and darkness that follow afterwards. But the question I will raise is where does it insist that the events as they were being retold were guaranteed as being chronological? As a retelling of the plagues, God wanted us to remember what devastation he had brought down upon Egypt but I see no insistence that they must be recalled in a specific order for a specific reason. Nor is there anything to suggest that events could not have overlapped in some respects. It is only the third party narrator that says Moses went back and forth between events to pray to God thereby separating the plagues into distinct timeframes, but who’s to say that each time he prayed represented, a day or days, or even weeks. Perhaps these intervals of prayer were several times within a single day. The point of the redactor was to emphasize that as intermediary, Moses communicated often with God and God would speak directly to him. Timing was not the issue here but the evidence of divine intercession.
23 And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven; and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down unto the earth; and the LORD caused to hail upon the land of Egypt.
Without a doubt we are looking at the fire and ash that one associates with a volcanic eruption. What the Egyptians perceived as thunder could have just as easily been the massive rumblings of a distant volcano. The obvious question would be why a people so famous for their historical recordings would not report such a major geophysical event?   I will deal with the answer to that question in the next article because there is a logical explanation.
Chapter 10 becomes the clean up mission prior to the Exodus. By clean up I mean anything that hasn’t already been destroyed was not being destroyed, leaving Egypt with nothing of value.
וַיַּעַל הָאַרְבֶּה, עַל כָּל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, וַיָּנַח בְּכֹל גְּבוּל מִצְרָיִם: כָּבֵד מְאֹד--לְפָנָיו לֹא-הָיָה כֵן אַרְבֶּה כָּמֹהוּ, וְאַחֲרָיו לֹא, יִהְיֶה-כֵּן.
14 And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt, and rested in all the borders of Egypt; very grievous were they; before them there were no such locusts as they, neither after them shall be such
As I mentioned, there may have been alterations to the chronological events as it was not necessary to record them in the exact order, but also, the possibility of locusts swarming after a major devastation of crops from the ash and fires would not be out of the question. So in fact, this third plague of insect might be in its proper place.
וַיֵּט מֹשֶׁה אֶת-יָדוֹ, עַל-הַשָּׁמָיִם; וַיְהִי חֹשֶׁךְ-אֲפֵלָה בְּכָל-אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם, שְׁלֹשֶׁת יָמִים.
22 And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days
We already saw earlier that there were clouds of acid ash descending upon people and the beasts. Initially it would have looked like snowflakes but as the clouds of volcanic ash and debris increased in their magnitude and extent, they would have eventually formed an ash cloud that blotted out the sun. Three days of darkness gives you an appreciation of just how large this cloud had to be and just as the ancients would panic about an eclipse that lasted for minutes, that fear would also be intensified as each of those days appeared to stretch on for an eternity.
The final and greatest plague occurs in Chapter 11:
וּמֵת כָּל-בְּכוֹר, בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם--מִבְּכוֹר פַּרְעֹה הַיֹּשֵׁב עַל-כִּסְאוֹ, עַד בְּכוֹר הַשִּׁפְחָה אֲשֶׁר אַחַר הָרֵחָיִם וְכֹל, בְּכוֹר בְּהֵמָה
5 and all the first-born in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first-born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the first-born of the maid-servant that is behind the mill; and all the first-born of cattle.
We are all aware of the story of how fresh blood was to be painted on the lintel and door posts of the homes where the Hebrews dwelled. Whereas the emphasis has always been placed on the ‘sign’ perhaps it should have focused on the blood itself. Having suffered through what may have been days or weeks of catastrophic events, the penultimate plague could be nothing less than death. Epidemiologist will tell you similar stories of how people were able to thwart plagues carried by insect vectors by similar means. Insect vectors will be attracted to the easiest food source available. The path of least resistance so to speak. Moses through the word of God, knew how to avoid this last plague but not necessarily why.
What was unique about this last plague was the enormity of the events which followed, the apparent knowledge by one man of exactly how everything would play out, and the predictability of Pharaoh’s behaviour. Firstborn is a common expression for those of the aristocracy and here it is most likely suggesting that the princes, nobles and wealthy of Egypt were not immune from the plagues. This is further emphasized with the mention of the maid servant to emphasize that this was not merely the death of the poor and helpless. And further emphasized when the term is used again for cattle. Cattle don’t have firstborn. Calves are usually born singly and as they mature are either put into production or slaughtered. Therefore there is nothing recorded to identify what was the first calve of any cow, so it is obvious that the reference to firstborn means something else. Once again, the reasonable suggestion is a reference to something ‘elite’. In this case, a prize cow. As we recall from the boils, Moses had suggested that all the farmers bring their prize cattle in doors and that would protect them. Here the event is being contrasted to that earlier plague. In other words there was nothing that could be done to protect the cattle from certain death. Even if brought in doors, without the blood on the entryway, they would surely die.

To Be Continued

But there is far more to be considered from a scientific perspective than just the plagues. There is geology and archaeology that still has to be considered in the backdrop of these world changing events. Because although the written word of mankind can be lost, altered or never written in the first place, there will always be a record of events recorded in some other manner. These I will explore in the next article and I hope that by the time I’m finished, there will be no doubt in anyone’s mind that Moses and the Exodus are far more than an interesting story of mythical proportions. For me to present the scenario of a volcano or similar being responsible for the Greatest Story ever told, then there has to be some proof of an eruption of enormous magnitude occurring at the time. There must be events to suggest that such catastrophes didn’t occur just in Egypt but in numerous other areas around the Mediterranean around the same time. Be assured, I would not have raised this topic if I didn’t have far more to say on this matter to support this train of thought. It’s just time to take a break and begin writing the next article.
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kahana

Beware of the Kabbalah

2010-10-31T03:04:00.000-07:00

It is a perplexing world this Magical Land of Kabbalah, with its myriad of divinely created beings that flitter in and out of men’s lives as if we have all journeyed into Neverland, only to find that those that wish to control these sprites and fairies is not the infamous Captain Hook but these self-emulating masters of the Kabbalah. In their language of double-speak they will say things such as, “All the names we call Him do not refer to His Self, but only to His Lights, expanding from Him to the lower ones. Even the holy name, Ein Sof (Infinity), presented in the Kabbalah books, is also regarded as Light that expands from His Essence,” which besides being totally baffling to anyone assessing their beliefs, in its most sinister of innuendos it is implying that there are these ‘lower ones’ all capable of superhuman feats, and that their books are themselves divinely inspired and magical as they contain a spark from God. There is an obvious obsession with implying that in some way their books, written by their hands, human hands and subject to human vices are beyond question, filled with magic and secrets that only they have attained and therefore only they have any perception of God. After all, they write, “However, it is a great Mitzva to examine and research in His illuminations, which expand from Him, which are all the holy names and appellations brought in the books. It is an utter must for any person from Israel to study and understand the secrets of Torah and all the ways of His bestowal upon the lower ones, which are the gist of the wisdom of truth and the future reward of the souls at the end of correction.” Simply put they are suggesting that only those that are followers of their secrets, their esoteric wisdom that they have gleaned have any reward in this world, either now or in the future. Did I not say in my last article that the goal of any cult is to make their followers believe that only they have the answers, that everything else is a lie, and by condemning all other beliefs and systems, they tether their adherents to their own doctrines through various means of mind manipulation so that they can see no other hope but to hang on to that tether as much as they can for fear of losing everything. Remember, true religion tells you that no matter how many times you fail, there is always the opportunity to pick yourself up, do the right thing and redeem yourself.

The Worthless Shepherds

It is not only myself as a Karaite that has seen this threat of the Kabbalah and its obvious attempts at manipulating the minds of the susceptible. Even the Rabbanites from time to time have seen the threat of this movement within their own followesrs. One such group known as Dardaim, were adherents of the Dor Deah movement in rabbinical Judaism.. It was founded in Yemen during the nineteenth century by Rabbi Qafih, and had its own network of synagogues and schools. Its stated objectives were as follows:

to combat the influence of the Zohar and subsequent developments in modern Kabbalah, which were then pervasive in Yemenite Jewish life, and which the Dor Daim believed to be irrational and idolatrous;
to restore (what they believed to be) a rational approach to Judaism rooted in authentic sources;
to safeguard the older (Baladi) tradition of Yemenite Jewish observance, which they believed to be based on this approach.

But if looking at Yemenite teachings is too foreign for most Ashkenazi, then let me provide a reference closer to home such as the works of Rabbi Yehuda Aryeh of Modena who was an Italian rabbi and intellectual figure of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. In his writings he was a very harsh critic of Kabbalah , suggesting if Jews were to accept the Kabbalah, then the Christian trinity would indeed become compatible with Judaism, as the Trinity closely resembles the Kabbalistic doctrine of sefirot. He was a major critic of the practice where Jews were addressing individual sefirot by name in their prayers, the practice of commanding spiritual beings taught in the Kabbalah.
I can continue with a seemingly endless list of Rabbis that condemn the practice of Kabbalah and yet we have this modern phenomena growing exponentially with movie stars and celebrities flocking to it in droves. It should not be too surprising because this occurrence is actually well documented in Zechariah 11:15-17. For these are the days of the worthless shepherds that corrupt our teaching with the design of leading us astray. They have come not to abandon us but through their negligence, purposeful falsifications and corruption of the Torah, they will destroy us.

Exposing the Truth

The Kabbalah was designed to lead the follower astray. By disguising its intent in pretty words and poetic ambience it conceals it’s true intent. For example, “It is written in the words of our sages, in The Zohar, and the Tikkunim that all the Upper Worlds and all the Holy Sefirot of the five worlds AK and ABYA have been prepared ahead of time in quantity and quality to complement the children of Israel. This is so because the soul of one from Israel is a part of God Above and “The end of an act is in the preliminary thought.” When examined this paragraph is having its followers acknowledge five worlds of different spiritual beings and that the followers of Kabbalah will be raised into these five worlds as their souls are on a level with God. They are promised that this will be their end because this is how they choose to believe in their own self; the manifestation of god-like attributes because they choose to believe themselves so.
So let me comment on these god-like beings that teach the Kaballah. Philip S. Berg is the charismatic founder and leader of one such Jewis-Kabbalah cult functioning under the name of "Research Centre for Kabbalah." Along with his power, his wealth has also grown dramatically with branches in New York City, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, just to name a few cities. In an article regarding his research centre the following was written: Berg claims to be an orthodox rabbi and proclaims his "Kabbalah Centre" to be a Jewish orthodox institution, which by definition of one studies under orthodox tutors then by old traditions once can call themselves a rabbi but Berg also claims to have a doctorate (all his books go under the name "Dr. Philip S. Berg but some of his books say this doctorate is in "comparative religion," while others claim it to be in "jurisprudence in biblical law." When challenged about these discrepancies by a reporter during an interview, Berg admitted that t -he has no academic degree at all and that his supposed "doctorate" is "part of his smichah (ordination)" Smichah Doctorates?

Although Berg advertises himself as "the greatest Kabbalist in the world and the world's foremost authority on the Kabbalah" it would appear that outside of his congregation very few religious academic authorities have heard about him. The word charlatan is what is commonly uttered from their lips. I will reprint an article here from the Canadian Jewish News dated March 18, 1993, pp. 2, 6-7 and 9. It discusses Rabbi Dr. Berg and his Kabbalah Centre giving it all the attention it deserves.:

In the autumn of 1990, a Marilyn McLeod was dying of cancer. She was visited by a "Rabbi" Yardeni of the Kabbalah Centre who persuaded her to purchase a complete hard cover set of the Zohar, as well as a few other books about Jewish mysticism, for hundreds of dollars. Marilyn was also told to change a mezuzah and her Hebrew name. For $250, they changed her mezuzah, gave her about a dozen audio tapes from the centre, and changed her name altogether. Though Marilyn couldn't read any Hebrew, she was told to simply scan the Zohar for its healing properties. Shortly thereafter (January 1991) she dies.

Other cases are cited of people unable to read Hebrew (let alone Aramaic - the language of most of the Zohar), and who could ill afford the high prices charged, who were persuaded to purchase the Zohar and other works, who were told that mere scanning of the books would help them in their quest for spiritual fulfillment.

Young people drawn into the centre were persuaded to help with maintenance of the building and other jobs.

When thoroughly questioned, Berg "readily concedes that 'most' of the students as well as the teachers at the centre would likely not be able to read or interpret a page from the Hebrew Zohar." But Berg paraphrases Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai" that :you can learn from someone who doesn't know" to explain why his students and teachers did not have to be able to read or interpret.

Both in the interview as well as in their promotions, Berg calls his centre "Yeshiva Kol Yehuda," alleging affiliation and association with (as the continuation or successor to) the Yeshivah Kol Yehuda in Jerusalem, originally founded in 1922 by the late Rabbi Yehudah Ashlag and later headed by the late Rabbi Yehudah Tzvi Brandwien. Berg calls himself as "Rabbi Brandwein's chief student." There is no affiliation.

The Red String Conspiracy

But as if that wasn’t enough to condemn these schools of Kabbalistic thought for being nothing more than money generating, naïve proliferating, cultic rip-offs, let’s look at what has become one of their more common means of religious thievery, one especially practice by Rabbi Berg but not limited to his organisation alone:
·         There is a laughable but unfortunately corrupt practice of selling "kabbalistic" red strings that have been wound around Rachel's Tomb and then cut into bracelet size strings and sold to the unsuspecting public to ward off the evil eye. The Kabblalist will not precisely say that he or she was commanded to wear this string but provide you with a dissertation on the positive and negative energies of which one negative energy is jealousy or envy and that these emanate through the eyes, hence the reference to ‘the Evil Eye.’ They claim that the Evil Eye has been and always will be part of the history of mankind and will quote sources such as Socrates (pagan), Plato (pagan), and Aristotle (another Hellene pagan).   The kabbalist will then tell you how it was accorded fear and respect by kings, queens, and conquerors throughout the ages (more Saxon, Goth and Gaulic pagans). They’ll point out how ancient Greek seafarers painted eyes on the prows of their ships as protection against this evil (A pantheon of Pagans). The Romans they claim called it oculus malus (Latin Pagans). To the Scots it was droch shuil (Celtic Pagans). And then they sum it up by saying that as Kabbalists they refer to it as ayin horeh. Need I say it, but I will (Kabbalic Pagans).
·         They tell me that it has become quite the latest Hollywood fashion worn by the stars and therefore copycatted extensively by their equally gullible fans. These strings actually sell for $26 apiece from Rabbi Berg’s operation. As I mentioned laughable until such time someone accuses those of us that practice true Judaism of being thieves and gypsies because of these dubious practices by fringe Jews, selling magical trinkets at exorbitant prices while making victims of innocent worshippers that had no way of knowing better. And that’s when the persecutions, accusations and pogroms begin all over again.
·         Although I condemn Kabbalah in its entirety, in its defence I will say that there is no source in all its writing that makes a claim that wearing a red thread around one's left wrist will ward off the "evil eye." Of course the implication that there are people that have ‘special powers’ that can cast an evil eye would suggest that there is a source of power other than God in this universe and that is contrary to the basic tenet of Judaism and is contemptible.
·         I will mention though that there is a statement in the Talmud about the practice of tying a bundle of herbs or gems and wearing them in order to ward off the "evil eye" but this makes no reference to colour, Rachel’s tomb or any such nonsense. This helps justify the practice of Rabbanites wearing mezuzahs, chai jewellery, stars of David and the likes.
·         But coincidentally there is one reference to a red string to ward off the evil eye in the Tosefta of the Talmud (Shabbat, ch. 7-8) and it clearly states that tying a red string around one’s wrist is prohibited. More than that it is characterized as "Darchei Emori," a superstitious practice, close to idol-worship. So how is it that these Kabbalistic masters can perpetrate this fraud against their gullible followers knowing full well it is in violation of their Talmudic beliefs? The answer is simple, it’s not about the worship of God, it’s about the Almighty Dollar.
Now as a well respected scientist working within the world vaccination programme, from a purely academic perspective I take offense to any implication that in some way sorcery, magical spells, etc. can take the place of medicine. And that is exactly what these spurious Kabbalists do when they write their advertisement for their ‘red string’ sales in the sense of being a medical technology. As described in this advertisement which follows:

Applying the Red String Technology
Worn around the left wrist, the Red String works in the same way as the vaccines of modern medicine. When we receive a vaccination against a disease, a weakened strain of the illness is integrated into the vaccine. Spiritual immunizations are based on a similar principle. Kabbalah teaches that colors have specific frequencies and energies. Red, for example, is the color of danger. By binding a Red String to ourselves in a very specific manner, we shield ourselves against the dangerous negativity that might be directed our way—a spiritual vaccine against the destructive forces of the Evil Eye.   Negative forces enter the body through the left side. By wearing the Red String on the left wrist, negative energies are intercepted at the precise point of entry. The string is tied in a carefully prescribed sequence of seven knots, each of which symbolizes a separate spiritual dimension that infuses our reality. It’s important that someone who loves us—someone we deeply trust—ties the string around our wrist. As they do, we should ask for the power to radiate kindness, compassion, appreciation, and absence of the Evil Eye to everyone around us.
The use of terminologies such as vaccines, medicine, illness and immunization are all intended to construct a sense of protection against anything we consider evil, and this would include viruses, infections and sickness through implied correlation of the two trains of thought. Unfortunately there are people that will come to believe that they can preserve their health not through the miracles of modern medicine but from this absurd ‘Red String Technology’. To even infer that there is a technology behind this sorcerous practice is a deliberate attempt to deceive the wearer into thinking that something scientific supports their false claims. If people should die as a result of the delusions and misconceptions created by these Kabbalistic deceivers then the truth is that it is no longer an unfortunate incident but murder.

Before It's Too Late

I fear that the majority of the Judeo-Christian world will not come to the same opinion that I have of the Kabbalah, seeing it clearly as a plague upon us that heralds our demise. It has become too ingrained into the present practices of Rabbanites for it to disappear easily. People like Madonna have elevated it to a world-wide phenomenon. As I mentioned in a previous article, even some of my distant relatives have taken to practicing Kabbalah and that is worrisome. It is an insult to our ancestors, besmirches the name of Kahana and Goldenthal but then those practicing it aren’t even aware of our long history, having become assimilated into the modern world of the ‘western’ Jew. But as a Karaite I do know that whenever one seeks to add to the words that God has given us then it is wrong. When men claim to understand God’s secrets and have mastered his codes then they are liars. And as history has always proven, when those same self-adulating men proclaim that all we have to do is follow them and they will show us the way to God, then they have forgotten the one lesson that was made apparent in the Torah by God, Himself and that is when God wants us to follow a certain path then he will send us his prophets and as they had done time after time, they will not encourage us to follow a new path but they will tell us very succinctly, either return to the one true path instead of following these strange gods of human idolatry or suffer the consequences. Time for those that have gone astray to read Zechariah as I have pointed out and see these wicked men for who truly are and condemn them for their sins before it is too late!

The Evil That Men Do

2010-08-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

There is far more that I wish to say about the Kabbalah and those that pursue its mysteries thinking that it will unlock unworldly rewards and unlimited pleasures. Such is the pursuit of fools and magi, which by most other historical societies were classified as alchemists and esoterics, although during various periods of history the references were far worse and punishments far more severe. Those that choose to ignore my warnings may do so at their own peril, but let me provide you with a better perspective of those that you herald as great Kabbalists and loved by God. For not all the righteousness in the universe will mask the one great evil performed by a man and the evil I speak of is no less than a man portraying himself as a god. I’ve already pointed out how it is that the Kabbalah tries to teach its followers to learn the language and key words to command both angels and other divine creatures but it is guilty of far worse. A crime committed by someone no less prestigious in their own eyes than Rabbi Judah ben Loew, who they consider one of their great masters and teachers.

The Maharal

Who was Rabbi Loew, referred to by many as the Maharal and what did he have to do with the Kabbalah? He certainly is not the man that has been currently portrayed and recently celebrated back in the Prague festivities of September 2009 celebrating the 400th anniversary of his death. And contrary to the publicized claim that Loew was the chief rabbi of Prague after he had served for 20 years as a chief rabbi of Moravia which is now a region of the Czech Republic he never actually held that distinction. Twice turned down for the position of Chief Rabbi of Prague the community actually feared the power grabbing attitude and mystical bent of the man therefore denying him the honour which is now falsely claimed for him. Just so his supporters and false biographers can’t pretend any longer that this was true, I’ll provide you with the two men that the community deemed worthier than Rabbi Loew for the position. The first time the position became available the community and council elected Rabbi Isaac Melling and the second time when he put his name up for election in 1604 with the hope that he’d come out of exile in Poland and return to Prague, the community unanimously selected Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim. The Jews of Prague didn’t want the Maharal anywhere near their city. “Exile?” you ask. Exactly what happened to him as he packed his bags and left the city just weeks after his private meeting with the Emperor Rudolf II in February 1592. After all, if he was as great as his followers claimed, he would hardly have left the city after being praised as they claimed by the Emperor and asked to tutor this monarch in the ways of the Kabbalah.
The truth is that he was a man constantly in conflict with his own community and who committed specific forbidden acts under the guise of religious mysticism or the Kabbalah as these Rabbis wish to call their esoteric and forbidden arts. What exactly was this black art that he performed to cause his expulsion from Bohemia and earn the antagonism of his own community? Like Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelly’s book, he allegedly created a monster that terrorized the city and caused the death of a dozen people. Commonly referred to as the Golem, as much as we’d like to discuss this creation of animate matter as utter nonsense we as Karaites cannot because this ‘nonsense’ infests our Rabbanite brethren to the point of blackening Judaism with its heresy and affront to the Almighty. To ignore it is to watch the demise of Judaism as the spread of these Kabbalistic teachings which are in vogue in today’s society, take both heart and mind of the confused, desperate and dissatisfied that are constantly searching for God but don’t know where to find Him

The Golem

Both Singer and Rosenberg based their books on the original legend of the Golem of Prague and Rabbi Loew as it was passed down by Katz who just happened to be the Maharal's son-in-law. Obvious distortions occurred as a result of their reliance on a relative that owed his position and income to the Maharal but the flatteries and claims of greatness were more so out of necessity to cover up the truth than by an intention of bias. Yes, just as both their versions testify, there was a banker involved, as was the mayor and several other prominent people from the Prague Jewish community just as these mythological tales reveal but what they overlooked to tell their readership was that the Emperor did have very good reasons to lay charges and as historical documents point out, to not only take possession of the mayor of Josefov’s fortune as well as his property, but even to have his two nephews arrested. Points of law which Emperor Rudolf did do after Meisel's death but for which the authors accuse one of the most benign and tolerant monarchs of his time as being both criminal and anti-Semitic. The latter accusation which is entirely incongruous with Katz’s claim that Rudolf was enthralled by the Maharal and couldn’t praise him enough with the hope that he would become his teacher in the Kabbalah. The story as presented by Singer, although quaint and enchanting, does not provide the history behind the actual events. The crimes committed by the banker, the printing house and the Golem were more than legend but reality evident in historical facts but buried in fables. And since the art of fables is well mastered by the rabbis as proven in their Talmud it should not be to anyone’s surprise that they have created something of such magnitude that it defies the imagination though concealing the perpetration of the crime quite effectively.
Challenging God

But in their efforts to mix myth and alchemy into the true practice of Judaism they have willingly overstepped the bounds of mortal men until they have proclaimed themselves as superior and in their own minds as being gods themselves. For they have said as much in the Talmud and made no effort to hide their perfidy though the size of their egos would have made that virtually impossible. For it is written in their Talmud that Rava said, “If the righteous wished, they could create a world, as it is written [Isaiah 59:2]: "it is your iniquities that have separated you from your God" (i.e., made a distinction between you and God). Rava created a man and sent him to Rabbi Zera. Rabbi Zera spoke to him but he [the man] did not answer. Then he [Rabbi Zera] said to him: You are from the companions (i.e., a creature created by the rabbis). Return to your dust.” Here we have proof of their efforts to practice the black arts, to create living beings that they could command, and in so doing openly declaring that they have the right to play God because it was their dues for being righteous as promised in Isaiah. For any man to see himself as a god is the establishment of a false image, a graven statue to one owns glory, and in thinking themselves lofty and having the power of gods, they have condemned themselves to the greatest heresy possible. Their fate is no different from that of Nimrod as he built his tower into the heavens in order to challenge God. When men who are thought of us the spiritual leaders of Judaism have chosen a path into darkness then it can be no wonder that the world has come to see the Children of Israel as being abandoned by the Lord. Let us look no further than the Babylonian Talmud, in Sanhedrin 65B where it states, “Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Oshaia spent every Sabbath eve studying the Book of Creation (Sefer Yezirah); a third-grown calf was created for them, and they ate it.” Remember carefully what I said in my article http://hubpages.com/hub/39-Lashes-Karaite-Sabbath in regards to what is banned and not banned on the Sabbath and that which is referred to as melakha. If it has to do with creation then it certainly is banned work and by God’s own words ‘the creation’ is punishable by death. When we examine that ruling we realize that God was not talking about people doing simple tasks but instead exactly what these two fools were doing. Using the Sabbath to create a living creature, practicing black arts on the Sabbath and then sacrificing the animal not to God as would have been the Sabbath sacrificial right but eating it themselves as if they themselves were accepting the burnt offering. Not only was the entire act sacrilegious, it is obviously praised by their rabbinic colleagues that have incorporated it into the Talmud. This one act alone renders the Talmud a thing of evil, the antithesis of Judasim, and a blasphemy before God.

Telling It Like It is

But returning to the matter at hand, the reality was that in the year of 1588, the city of Prague was held in the grip of terror, victim to the murderous rampage of an inhuman monster created from the seeds of hatred and sown through religious intolerance and mortal greed. Not 1580 as the legend presented by Singer and Roseberg would have you believe based on Katz’s notes. Rabbi Loew was still in Morovia in that year and didn't travel to Prague until 1586, the same time the Roman Catholic priest Taddeush was leading the mobs against the Jewish community. Therefore the legend of the Golem must be viewed from this perspective to appreciate it fully. Persecutions and murders of Jewish citizenry were taking place and in defence a creature or something even more sinister was let loose on the city but in so doing, not only those guilty of the murder of Jews were in turn killed but innocents as well. And therein lies the dilemma, for at what point do we as God’s light to the world end up as corrupt and evil as the rest of the world? When have we become no different from them? I’m not saying I have the answer but it certainly wasn’t the one these Kabbalists including Rabbi Judah Loew arrived at. According to Prague’s Chabad rabbi, Manis Barash, he claims the Maharal was one of the first rabbis to popularize Kabbalah, If this is what the Kabbalah was intended to achieve, then a curse upon all of them. Sherwin, the director of doctoral studies at Chicago's Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, says Rabbi Loew achieved fame as the golem’s creator because of his greatness but there were many other rabbis of his era who are also well documented as trying to animate golems. Greatness? Since when is evil and the practice of black arts deemed greatness? How misguided have these Kabbalists and their Jewish followers have become to see what they are doing as greatness and no longer view it as the great sin it truly is.

There is another story about the events in Prague, a more accurate and definitive story that portrays what occurred in the light in which it should be properly viewed. Yes, it is a Karaite perspective but it is my ancestor’s perspective and he more than anyone had a right to say what really happened. To read his story and understand the dark path that the Kabbalah will lead you down then I recommend reading Shadows of Trinity released by Eloquent Books http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html (Also available from Amazon Books at http://www.amazon.com/Shadows-Trinity-Allen-Goldenthal/dp/1606933337/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275204896&sr=1-1) and Barnes and Noble at http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Shadows-Of-Trinity/Allen-Goldenthal/e/9781606933336/?itm=1&USRI=Shadows+of+Trinity )in order to compare the legend against the historical documentation. I will not state that I did not take some creative leniency in telling of the story but only doing so to make the story flow more easily as historical facts are reeled off one after the other for all to see. For the most part the story preserves each historical fact as it was recorded in the Austrian Royal Archives, familial traditions passed down orally, and details recorded in the legends by both Singer and Rosenberg, revealing a series of strange and shattering events that occurred during the years 1588 and 1589 in Prague as supposedly good men turned evil.

A Karaite Sabbath

2010-08-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

Amongst Karaites the commandment to keep Shabbat as a day of rest is imperative and although it is repeated many times in the Tanach, its vital importance is probably no better stressed than in Exodus 31:12-17:

And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 'Verily ye shall keep My sabbaths, for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations, that ye may know that I am the LORD who sanctify you. Ye shall keep the sabbath therefore, for it is holy unto you; every one that profaneth it shall surely be put to death; for whosoever doeth any work (melakha—מְלָאכָה) therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. Six days shall work be done; but on the seventh day is a sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the LORD; whosoever doeth any work in the sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death. Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the sabbath, to observe the sabbath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant. It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel for ever; for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and rested.'

So the question that must be asked is how is it that the Shabbat restrictions can be so varied and so different between both Karaites and Rabbanites. Even more so between the various branches of Karaism where some may still observe the Ananite tradition of sitting in darkness an entire evening though others have taken a more reasonable and practical approach. The issue revolves around a single word. Where the interpretations have struggled is when it comes to understanding the word (מְלָאכָה) melakha. Traditionally it has been translated as "work" but it was never intended in my opinion to mean work as we know it. It is very different from the common use of (עבודה) avodah that is associated with physical type labour. Instead we can look to Genesis 2:1-3 for its true meaning. That paragraph reads as follows:

Heaven and earth, and all their components, were completed. With the seventh day, God finished all the work (melakha) that He had done. He ceased on the seventh day from all the work (melakha) that he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day, and he declared it to be holy, for it was on this day that God ceased from all the work (melakha) that he had been creating to function.

Therefore it can be seen that melakha was not a term for work but a word that was in reference to the physical act of creating or the making of something new and unique. Perhaps we can extend and extrapolate its meaning to cover starting something new as well but it is clear that it was not a reference to doing work that was already started or established. The term is also used in Exodus 31:1-11 when God is instructing Moses about the construction of the Tabernacle and even though this was a work in progress, it would appear that He is clearly telling Moses that the work on the Tabernacle must cease on the Sabbath since all the manufacturing done by Bezalel is referred to as being melakha. From this we can further deduce an understanding to the term melakha that it was a reference to work especially pertaining to that having a religious connotation or spiritual significance. It may never have been intended for everyday activities.

Rabbinical Folly

It is no coincidence that the 39 lashes for transgressions has taken on a mystical significance for the Rabbanites as they list their 39 concepts of melakha. By relating the traditional punishment to an exact number of prohibitions the Rabbis have used a very old technique of association to reinforce their policing of their own statutes. A case of merging A and B in order to form C and give it a religious stature as if God had provided them. Demanding that the people do not transgress in any manner their edicts the rabbis have extended their prohibition to practically everything and no longer confining it to that which is creative and which might change the environment. Their use of the biblical threat of lashes created the impression amongst the minds of their followers that it must be the law. But in so doing they created a fallacy of hardship that in some essences is even cruel when extended to the prohibition of saving lives as I will point out later. Even matters which can be rectified and thereby provide a greater level of safety are banned such as the removal of small bones from fish, or the filtering of water. Are we foolish enough or gullible enough to think that God would want our health and safety placed in jeopardy so that we would not be able to worship Him? The Rabbanites obviously think so and therefore I take exception to their regulations though I have to admit there are many Karaites that still adhere to these rules because they have not fully understood and interpreted the meaning of melakha for themselves. Those wishing to see the exact working of the thirty-nine forbidden activities of the Rabbanites, I direct your attention to the Mishna Shabbat 7:2.

Horticultural Prohibitions

These activities include 1. Planting, 2. Plowing ,3. Reaping, 4. Binding Sheaves, 5. Threshing , 6. Winnowing , 7. Selecting, 8. Grinding, 9. Sifting, 10. Kneading, and 11. Baking. Although it is obvious that one could not bake bread if there was no wheat planted, the question of creating as implied from the word melakha would really only extend to activities 1 and 2, since everything that follows is material that has already been generated. But since many of these other activities would distract the individual from finding time to worship God on the Sabbath as the day was intended, then perhaps activities that would involve extended lengths of time should not be engaged in. What would be the rabbinical ruling if the threat of flooding could be avoided by opening a sluice gate or closing a damn if it fell on the Sabbath, thereby preventing the loss of crops? The answer is that they would forbid it but in so doing they have placed the lives of the people in jeopardy which is forbidden even on the Sabbath. Clearly it is evident that the rabbis have not given the act of forethought to this matter and by extending their prohibitions beyond the restrictions of creating and altering the environment they have failed to appreciate the full meaning of the Sabbath Laws.

Wool Prohibitions

Their list continues with 12. Shearing, 13. Scouring 14. Beating 15. Dyeing 16. Spinning 17. Weaving 18. Tying two loops 19. Weaving two threads 20. Separating two threads 21. Tying and Untying, 22. Sewing two stitches 23. Tearing for the purpose of sewing. It is clear that God did not want Bezalel working on the curtains and fabrics of the Tabernacle during the Sabbath but did this prohibition truly extend to the day to day work of shepherds and wool scourers? Once again, if this work prevented the worker from observing the Sabbath properly and praying to God then it was not to be permitted but it should not be restricted under the context that shearing and scouring were thought of as creative acts whereas the production of coloured wool through dyeing could be. Similarly, the knotting of the wools, the subsequent looping to make a design or fabric were creative acts. But if I tie up my horse with more than two loops, that must be considered a completely different activity than one would use when making macramé or knitting. The first is practical, the second is creative. The fact is that there is a distinct line between what might term as ‘creating’ and the rabbis failed to appreciate this but still enforced their regulations upon their congregations. How fortunate for Karaites that we are entitled to use independent thought and interpret the Tanach in a practical manner. In the early days of Karaism when it first broke away from the Rabbanites there was the matter of indoctrination by the rabbinical sabbatical laws and some thought that by making them even more stringent they could show that they were better followers of Judaism but fortunately cooler heads prevailed and over the next few hundred years Karaites began to interpret the laws more clearly and with better intent.

Livestock and Animal Prohibitions

The Mishna then moves on to prohibition 24 about trapping which the rabbis use as a reference to hunting but they are quick to say that this does not apply to domestic animals. So if I put my cattle and sheep in a pen, or my dog in a kennel, then that is not considered work but if I snare a deer then that is work. It gets even more ludicrous when the rabbis try to explain their inconsistencies in the Meno Netziv which says that an animal that is not normally trapped (e.g. a fly, a bee, or a lizard) is not covered under the Torah prohibition of trapping. But the rabbis themselves prohibit it, so they instruct not to trap the animal unless one is afraid of the animal. In that situation one may trap it. That being the case, if I’m afraid of deer and do not normally trap them, then for my own security I could ensnare them. The fact was simply that hunting was not an activity practiced by the rabbis. It was an activity of the common man, living off nature in order to provide for himself and his family. Something unfamiliar to the rabbis since it involved hard work, rather than living off the gifts and offerings of the community. So it was very easy for them to pass edicts and make rules that never affected themselves directly.

Prohibitions 25. Slaughtering, 26. Flaying, 27. Salting, 28. Curing, 29. Scraping and 30. Cutting. These are a mixed bag of activities, the first three having nothing to do with creating an object, especially one that might have religious significance since there are only in preparation for a meal, but the next three have to do with making leather goods and therefore are about creating an object that didn’t exist before. Since the offerings on the Sabbath did involve parts of the burn offerings that could be eaten by the priests, then would that not be considered to be similar to parts of the normal cooking process and therefore not prohibited? Once again common sense should have prevailed and the question was not which activity was prohibited but which ones would prohibit sufficient time to worship properly on the Sabbath.

Lettering Prohibitions

We next move on to prohibitions 31. Against the writing of two or more letters and 32. Regarding the erasing in order to write two or more letters. That being the case I must assume that the rabbis didn’t think very carefully about coded messages with perhaps symbols instead of letters, or else code consisting of one letter that meant far more. Let us take a more sensible approach or should I say a more Karaite approach. The Sabbath was about praising and worshipping God. If in doing so I chose to write a prayer, or my thanks or a psalm to God then I am fulfilling the Sabbath obligation. It never should have been a prohibition about letters or writing but an assurance that if writing one is not doing their customary business but the business of God. Because if writing more than two letters was seen as an evil act on the Sabbath by the rabbis then so too would have been reading two or more letters. And that being the case then reading a prayer book in the synagogue, especially since so many read the words without the meaning, in an act to get through the service as quickly as possible is more of a contravention of the Sabbath requirements than any writing of letters.

Construction Prohibitions

Then there is the matter of 33. Building and 34. Tearing down. Though the first would definitely be creating an object and very time consuming the second is not a creative accomplishment but in fact a destructive one. But again, the matter should not be which activities are prohibited in this case but what will involve copious amounts of time that prevent the proper keeping of the Sabbath.

Fire Prohibitions

Two of the key prohibitions that I will take exception to as a Karaite will be 35. Extinguishing a fire and 36. Igniting a fire. In the early days of Karaism the Rabbanites taunted us and accused us of being ‘Sitters in the Dark,’ a reflection of some of Anan’s early laws in which he would not permit a fire to be lit before the Sabbath so that there would be light in the home during the Sabbath evening. Perhaps a little too zealous in his interpretation and preserved for a long time by those that were part of the Ananite sect, at least common sense prevailed and by the time of Kirkisani the acceptance of candles lit before the Sabbath was reinstated. So let’s put the first prohibition into its proper perspective since the restriction should have been about lighting fires not putting them out. If a fire has the potential to cause serious destructive damage, then it also by implication has the potential to be life threatening. The failure to extinguish any unsafe, uncontrolled or monitored fire is by itself a failure to perform an act that ultimately would result in great environmental change. And since it was the rabbis themselves that said environmental change on the Sabbath was forbidden, then their ruling in this case is in error simply because it violates their own restriction. Exodus Chapter 35 שְׁמוֹת clearly states the following:

א וַיַּקְהֵל מֹשֶׁה, אֶת-כָּל-עֲדַת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל--וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם: אֵלֶּה, הַדְּבָרִים, אֲשֶׁר-צִוָּה יְהוָה, לַעֲשֹׂת אֹתָם.

1 And Moses assembled all the congregation of the children of Israel, and said unto them: 'These are the words which the LORD hath commanded, that ye should do them.

ב שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים, תֵּעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה, וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן, לַיהוָה; כָּל-הָעֹשֶׂה בוֹ מְלָאכָה, יוּמָת.

2 Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you a holy day, a sabbath of solemn rest to the LORD; whosoever doeth any work therein shall be put to death.

ג הַשַּׁבָּת. לֹא-תְבַעֲרוּ אֵשׁ, בְּכֹל מֹשְׁבֹתֵיכֶם, בְּיוֹם,

3 Ye shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations upon the sabbath day.

Once again as in Chapter 31 the word for work used is melakha and this was not intended to be interpreted as every day type work otherwise there would have been a tremendous number of people being executed for meaningless tasks in those days. And in the third sentence it was explicitly forbidden to ‘kindle’ a fire in the home on the Sabbath. The act of kindling meant that it did not apply to having a fire already lit in the home, only of starting a new one. Obviously it was the igniting a flame which was strictly prohibited in the Torah and there are no ifs, ands or buts. The kindling of a fire in the home was given a specific ordinance because of its use in other religions as not only part of their temple worship but what would have been their house sanctuary as well . This especially was true for Moloch worship and later in Zoroastrianism. It was probably also true for Aster or Ishtar worship with fire seen as part of the purification rites. We know from the Greeks and Romans they two had their little home sanctuaries in which they would light numerous candles and incense as part of the ancestor worship ceremonies. In prohibiting such a practice it would become immediately evident if someone was practicing these rites from other religions and that is why they would be put to death.

The rabbis failed to understand and appreciate this restriction and have distorted it even further with their prohibition of flicking a light switch in our modern age. But let’s be perfectly clear, fire and electricity are two entirely different processes. So when the rabbis extended the prohibition to electricity they in fact were in error because they lacked the knowledge of appreciating these differences. We know now that fire is a chemical reaction involving the release of energy through the consumption of oxygen but electricity is the flow of an electric current, movement of electrons and is therefore a physical reaction. Rather than admit their error the rabbis have insisted that electricity is still forbidden as it involves construction or building (i.e., the building and completion of an electric circuit). No this is not true, the circuit already exists, it’s just a matter of whether it is open or closed and therefore is not a case of creative work.
The Finishing Touches Prohibition

If one wishes to split hairs, then they can look at Prohibition 37 which involves applying finishing touches, or bringing something into a state of final use. Yes, one can say this is an act of creating and therefore the ban applies. But again, more importantly is not the act of making finishing touches but the fact that to do so the individual is not praying to God, is not giving the day its proper religious respect and is not putting aside his own personal interests to appreciate what God has given him.

The Travel Prohibition

Prohibition 38 is the transferring between two domains which can be one of the most confusing of all the rabbinical prohibitions. In Chapters 1 and 11 of the Talmud tractate Shabbat it deals with what the rabbis called the melakha of transferring from one domain to another. Let’s put this into more practical language and refer to it as it actually was or what we would commonly refer to as carrying an object even if that object is yourself. The tractate distinguishes four domains: private, public, semi-public and an exempt area. It holds that the transfer of an article from a private to a public domain is Biblically forbidden; transferring an article between a semi-public to a private or public domain is Rabbinically prohibited; transferring of an article between an exempt area and any other domain is permissible; and carrying an article about 1.7 miles may be forbidden in a public or semi-public domain and permitted in a private domain or exempt area; but carrying inside a private domain or between private domains may be permissible. For these purposes "transferring" means "removing and depositing", so that carrying an article out of a domain and returning to the same domain with it does not constitute transferring. This may fall into the category of "wearing". But the rabbinical definition of public and private domain is related to the number of enclosures and has nothing to do with actual ownership of the tract of land. If you’re already confused by this list of restrictions then imagine those that tried to live by them. Of course these very confusing restrictions are all related to the commandment of Exodus 16:29, which states, "Let no man leave his place on the seventh day." How one interprets this commandment may certainly differ but what the rabbis have done with it in regards to the prior restrictions is sheer nonsense and spin doctoring to the point of massive confusion. How I interpret it is at its most simplistic of meanings and I think the way God intended it to be interpreted. God was referring to someone starting a trip on the Sabbath. Placing their own desires or needs, whether it be business or pleasure before that of attending to worshipping God on that day. So ‘his place’ as it is referred to had a much broader concept as indicating that no man should set himself upon the highway or a ship, and thereby making it impossible for himself or his family to tend to their keeping of the Sabbath day. There was no restriction on distance as long as the individual could provide the time to worship properly. Common sense was all that God wanted to prevail, something which is clearly lacking in the last prohibition by the rabbis that I will now discuss.
Saving of Certain Lives Prohibition

Finally but definitely not least is the 39th prohibition the one which I take the greatest exception with as it is a clear display of not only the failure of the rabbis to interpret properly but of their prejudice and improper advice that has led to the persecution and death of our people for almost two thousand years by those this prohibition actually affects. This final prohibition involved the saving of human life of which more information can be found in the Pikuach Nefesh of the Talmud. If there is a human life in danger on the Sabbath then it is not a violation of the Sabbath to save that life, an interpretation which is not only correct but inviolate, but the rabbis could not help themselves but to turn this one infallible statement into a controversy. They had the audacity to speak for all of us and say that it only pertained to Jews and was not applicable to the saving of a Gentile’s life on the Sabbath. In the writings of Maimonides (1137-1204), he said, “As for the gentiles, the basic Talmudic principle is that their lives must not be saved, although it is also forbidden to murder them outright.” This is further emphasized by the writings of Rabbi Samuel Eliezer Eidels (1555-1631), who said in regards that the release from the prohibition only applies to Jews, "That any man who saves one soul in Israel, and it is intentionally specified 'one soul in Israel', in the singular form, as this is the image of God, the Singular one of the world, and Jacob's [Israel's] form is His likeness ... but Kuttim [non-Jews] do not have the form of man, only the form of other creatures, and whoever brings about the loss of a soul among them does not lose the world, and whoever saves a soul among them neither adds nor diminishes anything in this world." Rabbi Eidels comments were in regard to many of the sayingsin the Talmud including the one that says non-Jews are neither to be lifted out of a well nor hauled down into it if found on the Sabbath. If leaving them in the well is not being complicit to murder, I do not know what is. Sadly this flawed thinking was taken to Israel’s Chief Rabbi Untermann in 1966 and although he said that it would be acceptable to violate the Sabbath to save the life of a non-Jew it was only made so under the codicil expressed by the orthodox religious authorities that it was not based on democratic ideals, but instead only to protect the Jewish religion (and the life-saver) from possible retaliation and therefore in essence had nothing to do with the Gentile at risk but the fact that it could ultimately save Jewish lives if the act was performed.

In Conclusion

Obviously, I am greatly saddened by what these rabbis had to say and their subsequent malicious interpretations. They certainly are not my interpretations as I have clearly made evident and although my own personal interpretations may differ from my fellow Karaites, they are mine and they are as God intended; for each of us to find our own path to his words. But what these 39 prohibitions are, when we closely examine them, are certainly not the way of Judaism and they certainly are not the voice and words of God as He intended. These men had neither the right to speak on behalf of the Jewish people nor propagate this evil intent as a manifestation of the Torah. One of my Karaite colleagues has recently opened up a forum on Facebook calling for debate with the Rabbanites. Yes, debate should be encouraged, but how do you argue with men that are so deficient in their thinking? How do you rationalize with men that think there are Jews created in the image of God and all the rest that are creatures not worthy of saving? How do you reconcile what God has given to Moses and what men of their own volition perverted to their own cause? Perhaps there is no debate only condemnation and the warning that those that have pronounced themselves as the upholders of Judaism are nothing more than the most vile of men that have ever betrayed Judaism. Let us look to our next Sabbath not only as the day to give God praise but as the day we take back the Sabbath from these rabbis and their prohibitions that were never God’s intended message to us. Let us make the world aware that 'yes' we have been relatively silent for the past six centuries but we will be quiet no longer.

The Hero Within

2010-07-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

Today I had an epiphany, a revelation, a rebirth so to speak. So often we reach a point in our lives where we say there's nothing more, no hope and we accept the defeat of both time and relationships, waiting until that moment when we take that long, deep step descending into the cold, damp ground. We watch zombie movies knowing full well that we have become no different, unfeeling, unloved, carrying on daily through routine motions without any hope of redemption. We never fully understand how or why we let it happen, and we can't even recall exactly when it did happen, but somewhere in the past, life silently slipped away leaving us with nothing but the shadows of its depression. We are drained, physically and emotionally unable to move either forward or backward, frozen in our hopelessness. At this point many of us have succumbed to the medical reflief in little plastic bottles or the excesses of vitners in much larger glass bottles but either way we have merely admitted defeat and have relegated the person we may have once been to an irretrievable past. So many willingly releasing who and what they were into the realm of shades, creating a living death from the chaff of failed dreams. We have become beings without substance, lacking purpose, barren of focus and lost to everything and everyone we once held important.
I freely admit that at times I felt myself slipping away into the abyss of failed nightmares and shattered dreams, praying, hoping that someone would toss a lifeline into the spiralling milieu that had become my life. The spark had been extinguished long ago and the few times the kindling burst into flames it was shortlived and barely enough to fuel the passions that stirred within my soul.
But today as I said was an awakening. A beginning to forgotten memories and times long buried from a life I once had. The complacency and passiveness that had become the rotting deacay of my spiritual essence had overwhelmed me, robbing form me years of my life. And then today I bore witness to a different decay that has affected our society. The loss of connection from our fellow human beings. We are a people that have become obsessed with being humane in order to conceal our flaws but in the process have lost our humanity. We are unable to feel or care for those we consider strangers; afraid to rush to their aid lest we forfeit our anonymity and the shallowness that we have filled our hearts with. As I sat and ate a meal today I stared outside the window to see a young woman in distress. An argument with a boyfriend, or ex, or what may or may not have been turned ugly. He turned to violence intent on hurting her and even though specatators looked on and others passed pretending not see at all, that spark that within me that I had long ago considered lost ignited into a roaring flame. Before I even realized what I had done, I was outside and between the victim and her attacker. My sudden appearance brushed him backwards with enough force and rage in my voice that he knew that had he even attempted to lay another hand upon her, he may have found it separated from her body. A man in his fifties against the youth and arrogance of twenties. The fury and chivalry that I once had, suddenly returned as if the clock had turned back three decades within the blink of an eye. The feeling of being there for a perfect stranger, willing to risk all because it was the right thing to do, a feeling that personally I never dreamed still existed within me. I had kept it trapped, imprisoned beneath chains of responsibilities and political correctness imposed upon me by an insensitive world that will never shed a tear when I pass on. But today I made a difference and as I heard one person whisper the word 'hero', I have the courage to make every day from now on make a difference.

The Good Samaritans

2010-06-21T05:26:00.000-07:00

I find it truly amazing that no matter how many centuries may pass in the blink of an eye, there is always one issue of permanence that is a guaranteed constant in this universe and that is that amongst Jews, regardless of which sect I might be referring to, we will argue to the point of death, with no other rewarding purpose it would seem than the sheer enjoyment of the argument itself, the revelling in the sheer pettiness we can exhibit, and the thrill of the irrational behaviour we can exemplify. And what is even more amazing is that the underlying principle behinds most of these confrontations is the assertion by one of the participants that they are a 'better Jew' than the other. I'm not certain what a 'better Jew' actually means in the true scales of our lives. If it's reference to superior mastery of the Torah, then I'm afraid we're all merely students when it comes to that assertion. It will take longer than a lifetime to even consider oneself qualified in practicing Torah let alone mastering it. Perhaps it'a a reference to being somehow closer to God than the other person but I don't know where they would find the yardstick to make that assertion either. In history, very few have ever approached God and in all likelihood there will be just as few in our future. Then again, it might be an issue with birthright, but as I've explained in several other articles, carrying the Hebraic genes does not necessarily mean you're of a decent character and we must remember we are judged on our actions, not on our line of descent. God made no distinction between the natural born Jew and the one that coverted to Judaism. David as a descendant of Ruth was proof enough of that. Even the product of a convert could become King of Israel which should end that argument quickly. And finally I heard it said that it is a matter of which Torah you read and in which language, a clear reference to the slight variations that exist amongst the various sects. As Karaites, depending upon which community we originated from there are Torahs in different langauges such as Arabic, Tartaric, English, and of course Hebrew. We may wish to believe that the Hebraic version is a 100% reproduction of the original handed down by Moses to the elders but with human involvement that essentially would be an improbability if not an impossibility. Therefore, for anyone wishing to establish the superiority of one version of the Torah over another, in truth it cannot be done since all of our various versions in their multitude of languages are based on the original document which no longer exists. Fortunately Karaism has always promoted a policy of supporting the Torah to be written in whichever language was primary in the town or city where Karaites were domiciled. As a result, you have Karaite Torahs in all the languages mentioned previously and these are all based on the Masoretic Text (MT). But this raises another interesting issue; what if a Torah was based on the Samartian Text. Would that make those following it any less Jewish than their MT counterparts? I think not, for as we examine the commonalities between Karaism and Samaritanism, we see that to do so would only be condeming ourselves.

Samaritan History

Embattled, surrounded, practically forced to the point of extinction, the Samaritan community has hung on its efforts to survive against insurmountable odds. And survive they have for 2700 continuous years even though doing so meant they bore the wrath and animosity of their Judaic brethren. That is not to say that it was without justification. The attempt on their part to convince Alexander the Great to attack Jerusalem so that they could seize the city and raze it to the ground was not an act that could be easily overlooked or forgiven. Once more, it would appear that the bitter rivalry as to "Who's a Better Jew," syndrome that I spoke of previously had its roots long ago in our development. Even in 330 BCE it would still seem to have been a major component and flaw of our character whether Samaritan or Judean. Why such intense hatred between brothers can only be consigned to the bitter feud that evolved from the splitting into the two kingdoms during the reign of Reheboam. We may think of the northern kingdom being accursed by God, but when you take into consideration the sheer number of prophets that were based in the north you realize that God had not abandoned them, so what right had we to do so?

And after the fall of Israel in the north, did those of us in the south try to rescue the remnant? Did we offer them shelter against the onslaught of assimilation? Did we give them aid to remain vigilant against the introduction of the foreign religions into their services? Did we offer them priests from the overflowing numbers that filled the upper city of Jerusalem? The answer was no to all of these. The decision was made to let the remnant of the northern kingdom perish because the seeds of animosity had been sown too deep to harvest anything but a foul crop. But the north didn't evaporate as had been expected. Two new families filled the void left behind by the fall of kings, these were the Tobiads and the Sanballets. Together they re-established a working government and economy, preserving the religious practices in the gathering place on Mount Gerzim and therbey presenting a true challenge to the south.

With the return of the socially elite accompanying Ezra the high priest from Babylon, the opportunity existed to heal the rift once and for all. Under the guize of religion the offer of the Samaritans to help build the Temple and reunite with their southern brethren was rejected but the reality is that the politics was a more significant factor in this decision. During the time of their absence, the aristocracy of the south had lost much of their wealth and now the real power in the region were these two northern families. Even Ezra would have been challenged by the fact that the services in the north still were under the direction of descendants of the High Priest Hilkiah, equal if not superior to his own standing. As such, jealousies would have fuelled the ancient hatreds as much or more than any rational justification.

Samaritans and Karaite Beliefs

It must be remembered that once rejected, the Samaritans would have dug in their heels and clung tenaciously to the ancient laws and customs in an effort to demonstrate that they performed the services and practices of the religion to a superior degree than their southern neighbours who were busy reforming the religion upon their return from exile. Not unlike the Sadducees in the south, the Samaritans would have centred their religious structures and performance around the priestly perogatives, maintaining a centralized religious cult as had been the way of the past. We know from the experience in the south that as soon as the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed the Pharisees asserted their control over the day to day life of the people, removing the exclusive rights of the priests and then going on to rewrite the entire body of the law to conform to their own interpretations and beliefs, which they later called the Talmud. How can we be so certain? From the work of Geiger on the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan which served as a depository for the remnants of the ancient Sadducean-Samaritan-Karaite traces of the ancient halakah. The ancient and therefore presented by God through Moses Halakah that was suppressed by the Pharisees and intentionally concealed from the Jewish population. So it can be assumed that the model of Samaritan practice and law closely resembled the pre-Pharisaic period which would then suggest that it would have been very Karaite in its conduct just as Geiger concluded. Written around the time that the Talmud and its new laws or halakah were being introduced, Pseudo-Jonathan was written by someone determined to preserve the old ways and much of its content reflects the ante-Pharisaic traditions. Geiger demonstrated that these 'anti-traditional' laws are both common to Karaites and Samaritans. As an example, the interpretation of Leviticus 19:24 by the rabbis regarding the the fruit of the tree in its fourth year is said to be like the second tithe, to be transported and consumed by the owner within the walls of Jerusalem. But in Pseudo-Jonathan it translates 'kodesh helolim' to mean that it is to be given to the priests or redeemed by its owner, exactly as both the Samaritans and Karaites interpret it.

Another point of agreement between Karaites and Samaritans regards the observation of the fiftieth day after the waving of the sheaf (omer) that it is to be offered on the morrow after the sabbath. The rabbanites interpret it to mean on 'the day after the holy convocation' which to them means the 16th of Nisan but the Sadducees saw it to mean the day after the weekly sabbath that occurs during the feast of unleavened bread so that the Feast of Weeks is celebrated always on the first day of the week. This Sadducean interpretation is the same as that used by the Samaritans and Karaites.

The list of similarities is quite extensive and it only demosntrates that both the Karaites and Samaritans practice and interpret the Torah identically in many circumstsnces. To do so can only mean that the interpretations of both sects is based on the Sadducean interpretation which was the origianl halakah of Judaism. Therefore to reject Samaritanism as a recognized path of Judaism by a Karaite would be in a sense like rejecting ourselves.

Neither Add Nor Subtract

Moses prohibited us from adding or subtracting from the Torah. Since the Samaritans we can assume were strict in their observance of this prohibition since their history has always been one of trying to prove themselves 'holier' than their southern brethren, then it becomes difficult to explain why there exist what Rabbanites have labelled as Samaritan additions to the Masoretic Text which forms the Samaritan Torah. But to rely on the Rabbinical statement that there were additions would be not dissimilar to believing Abraham Ibn Daud, the Rabbanite author of the Sefer ha-Kabbalah written in 1161 when he states that only rabbinical Judaism can be validated by its claim of being an uninterrupted tradition and all the rest such as Islam, Christianity, Karaism and Samaritanism are heresies. According to Ibn Daud, all heresy stems from Samaritianism and as a result of their errors there is a continued presence of unreformed idolatry exisiting in the world. In fact, Ibn Daud claims that the high priests Zadok and Boethus, the two major influences upon Karaism prior to Anan ben David both took refuge amongst the Samaritans and assumed the leadership of their temple on Mount Gerzim. Though Ibn Daud is erroneous in his claims, he does provide one kernel of truth and that is there are connections and similarities between Karaism and Samaritanism.

Firstly, it should be established that the Samaritan Torah is longer than the Masoretic Text. It is written in the Samaritan alphabet which is different from the Hebrew alphabet which didn't get widely used until the exiles in the south returned from Babylon. There alone should be the first clue that the Masoretic Text in its Hebrew alphabet was a rewriting from the older alphabet which provided the first incidence of change. Following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which often were in agreement witht the Samaritan version of the Torah, it became somewhat more evident that the Masoretic text may have been the one that changed, primarily through deletions. Of the approximately six thousand instances in which the Samaritan and the texts Masoretic Texts differ, the Septuagint (LXX) version agrees with the Samaritan in two thousand of those cases. We can see an example of this from Exodus 12:40 where both the Samaritan and the LXX state, "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel and of their fathers which they had dwelt in the land of Canaan and in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years." This differs from the Masoretic Text which only reads that the soujourning of the Children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years. Historically, the Samaritan version would be more accurate as we know from the transition of the 17th to 18th dynasties in Egypt, there probably was only about a two hundred year period where the enslavement would have taken place, and probably another hundred years where the descendants of Joseph became established in positions of power prior to the changeover. Clearly the Masoretic text experienced a loss, most likely through scribal error, of this vital information providing an inaccurate history of the duration of the slavery. But that is not the only difference in Exodus that is quite noticeable. In Chapter 6 in the Samaritan version, the people are quoted complaining to Moses that he should leave them alone to stay in Egypt and serve the Egyptians whereas that line doesn't occur until Exodus 14:12 in the Masoretic text, when the Children of Israel were already marching in the desert. When examined, it actually makes sense that they did say this when Moses first appeared to them, refusing to accept his leadership rather than recount it much later as an afterthought.

Gramatically there are also differences between the two texts. Those improper gender differences that exist in the Masoretic text are not present in the Samaritan version which has appropriate gender agreement. This again suggests that the translation into Hebrew was being performed when the language was still young and being adjusted to, as in the post exilic period when it came out of Babylon.

One of the more interesting differences between the two texts is the use of the name Benjamim in the Samaritan Torah versus Benjamin in the Masoretic Text. At first one would point to the failure of the Samaritans to accurately record the name of one of Jacob's sons, but when one reads Genesis 44:20 in which his brothers explain to Joseph that their father has a son of his old age, that their brother is called בן ימים or 'the son of many days referring to his fathers old age at the time of his birth it makes more sense than being the 'son of the right hand'.

In Exodus 15:3 the Masoretic text says that "the Lord is a Man of War" whereas the Samaritan version reads as, "the Lord is mighty in War". It is surprising that the Lord would have been represented as a man, giving fuel to later Christian doctrines that claimed God could appear as a man. To do so was a lessening of God's stature, reducing him to an inferior creature like ourselves. Once again I have to think the Samaritan version may be more accurate and the Masoretic Text was a scribal error.

Therefore I think it is necessary that we examine the accusation of heresy on the part of the Samaritans and think that perhaps the heresy was on the part of the Rabbanites who have actually subtracted from the original Torah. That being the case, then how can we actually fight over the superiority of one text over another, of one Jew being preferred over another. These are things we do not know and because of our separation through our arguments and our fighting amongst ourselves for countless centuries as a result may never know. Let us practice instead what Anan ben David has encouraged us to do all along, read everything and make a decision based on rational, educated decision making processes and avoid the hystrionics that have done nothing but divide and weaken us as a people. I recall the words of Abraham Lincoln that "A house divided cannot stand," and I look at our house with it's shakey framework and fear that we will bring it crashing down through our own devices. As Karaites it is our duty to seek the truth. We must look beyond the deceptions, the distortions and the inaccuracies and find the true essence of God's words, whether it lies in the Masoretic Text, the Samaritan Torah, or even scrolls still to be found in the desert that we do not yet know.

Misreading Isaiah

2010-06-20T04:32:00.000-07:00

Some of the most interestings remarks I receive regarding my articles are from Rabbanites. They are also in many ways some of the most ludicrous. For example, one such protagonist wanted to argue that Karaites have offered little in comparison to the great achievements in Jewish literature by the Rabbis who were writing and compiling material (the Talmud) from the second century AD onwards. He then goes on to say that Karaites didn't write anything of renown until the eighth century AD, thereby supporting his argument that there were six centuries of Rabbinical literary achievements and even some Karaite writers suggested that their followers should read some of this Rabbinical documentation. That was the sum total of his argument for the superiority of Rabbinical Judaism. That it had six centuries of writing in advance of Karaism and that Karaites were urged to read that material. Whoah! I don't know if I can debate against such an advanced and credible argument (dripping sarcasm). First of all, the greatest of all Karaite scripture is the Torah. Yes, I will call that Karaite since it is the heart of Boethian and Zadokite teachings which were the forerunners of Karaism. And since Karaism relies only on the Tanach (original 24 books which include the Torah) unlike Rabbinic Judaism which relies more heavily on the Talmud which in many instances negates what is written in the Torah (as some of my articles have pointed out), then by all rights it can be claimed and supported that the original Karaite scriptures are from the twelfth century BC and therefore are far oldelr than these much later Rabbinic writings. As for Karaites reading Rabbinic documents, how fortunate that we practice a religion that is tolerant of other sects, and as Anan ben David, our spiritual founder encouraged us to do in the eight century, to read everything and then make our own personal decisions based on the Torah. My protagonist missed to point of how enlightened we Karaites are as contrasted to the narrow scope of the Rabbanites, whom still in their daily prayer of reciting the Amidah, curse the names of Boethus and Zakok and pray for the demise and destruction of their followers. Since Karaism was the natural evolution of the religious doctrines established by these two second century BC priests, it only naturally follows that these Rabbanites are also praying for our demise and destruction as Karaites. How enlightened is that?

But todays article is not about Rabbinical Jewish followers and their inability to see and comprehend that they are the anomoly that resulted within Judaism, not Karaites. What I'll be discussing today is again from the works of one of the great Karaite scholars and writers, Isaac ben Abraham of Troki, whom the Rabbanites would like to pretend was one of theirs but sadly for them, he was not and he openly declared himself a Karaite so that there would be no mistake when referring to his works. Just one more point to make for those Rabbanites that still think the weightiness of Rabbinical writing is justification for its superiority; it was never a matter of how much is written but a case of how well it was written. And in that regard, Troki's Hazuk Emunah is one of the great books of Jewish wisdom.
The Misunderstood Virgin

Much is made of Isaiah 7:14 by Christian scholars when they read, "Therefore the Lord shall give unto you a sign; behold the young woman is with child and she will bear a son and she will call his name Emanuel.(God is with us)" For most Christians this one verse is the evidence they claims supports their entire faith. They proclaim that this son born to a young virgin was none other than Jesus and that the prophet Isaiah had predicted his arrival six centuries earlier.

The first evidence of something not right should be the reference to 'the young woman' by the prophet. He used the word Almah which does not in any manner refer to a young woman that has not had sexual relations with a man. We find the same Hebrew word used in Genesis 24:14 when Eleazar is sent back east to find a wife for Isaac and is instructed that "there shall be a young woman who cometh out to draw water." There certainly was no reference to the girl's virginity, only her youthfulness. And just to emphasize the point further, we would hardly refer to a young man as being a virgin, so in 1 Samuel 17:58, when the prophet asks, "Whose son is this lad," he uses the word Alem which is the masculine form of the word Almah. And we would hardly suggest that when in Isaiah 54:4 the prophet says, "And thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth," that he was acutally saying, "And thou shalt forget the shame of they virginity," because he used the word Alumim to indicate youth. So as it should be obvious to my Messianic and Christian readers, the reference to a virgin giving birth was a total distortion of what was actually written.

That being the case, then what is 7:14 actually about? To provide that answer, it is necessary that one reads what precedes this statement. It wasn never intended to be taken out of context and only when read in conjuction with the earlier sentences of the chapter does it start to make sense. The chapter is about King Ahaz, the king of Judah, and what decisions he needed to make concerning the alliance by Pekah, King of Israel and Rezin, King of Syria who were preparing to attack Jerusalem. Isaiah went to Ahaz in order to tell him not to fear, God would be on his side. A sign would be given to Ahaz to show him that God would not abandon him and it was this child that would prove to be this sign. Ahaz, who saw the immediate danger on his borders would hardly care about a sign that only manifested itself six centuries later. The urgent danger was then and there and Ahaz needed to know that his kingdom was going to survive. So who was this young woman with child? It was none other than Isaiah's young wife. And when she gave birth he named the child Emmanuel and later also called his son, Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz (Speed the plunder and hasten the spoil). Why the second name or title? Because Isaiah wanted to reassure the king that not only would his kingdom be saved but in turn both the Kingdoms of Israel and Syria would be crushed. As far as prophecies go, this one may have been self-fulfilling because at the same time Ahaz was being reassured by the prophet he was also being counselled to ally himself with Tiglath-Pilezar, King of Assyria. And as we know from Kings 16:9, Tiglath-Pilezar hearkened unto him and went up against Damascus and took it and slew Rezin. We also know form verse 30 that Hosea led a coup against Pekah shortly afterward, putting the king to death and reigning in his stead.

So now that you have a better historical perspective, read the prophecy again in Isaiah 7:14 and recognize what was actually being prophesized. When you appreciate that it had nothing to do with Jesus, you then have to reconcile all the other misunderstood concepts related to the virgin birth. Of course, there will be those that refuse to accept this interpretation even though it is crystal clear, arguing that we never have a reference from Isaiah that he first called his son Emmanuel. The only reference to naming the son is in the next chapter and then he is called by the Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz name and no other. The fact that he was called Emmanuel is implied from Isaiah 7:16, "for before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that thou abhorest shall be forsaken of both the kings." It is obvious which two kings the prophet is referring to and there can be no question that the significance of naming him, "God is With Us," was to provide Ahaz with the confidence that he would withstand their assault. In the next chapter when describing the events around Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, he uses the same references of the child being too young to know what's happening, a clear indication that he's talking about one and the same child in both accounts.
Emmanuel

For those that still wish to believe that Isaiah 7:14 was still in reference to Jesus, then let's examine why the name Emmanuel was never applied to the son of Joseph and Mary. Firstly, the significance of God is With Us is entirely different from the meaning of Yeshua, or Saviour. In fact the indication of God's presence is not necessarily equivalent to his being a saviour in that capacity. In fact in Luke 2:21 we find at the naming ceremony following his circumcision, the baby was named Jesus because that was the name given to him by the angel while he was still in the womb. It is strange that had he been fulfilling the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah, that it did not say that he was named Emmanuel by the angel while he was in the womb. In that way they could have easily explained his being named Jesus after his birth without negating the possibility he was called differently at time of conception. But they didn't and in so doing they did negate any such possibility.

So with this in mind, let us reflect on whether it was ever intended by the early Christian followers that Jesus was to be seen as a fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy. It would appear that any linkage to Emmanuel was a much later development. And if there was no linkage intended then the entire concept of the virgin birth was not intentional either and merely something that was contrived at a much later date when certain individuals decided to take Christianity in an entirely different direction from its early leaders.

The Arian Heresy

2010-06-11T03:04:00.000-07:00

“Whenever we are witness to the great assemblies of self appointed learned and great men we can expect the world to shake and quake in fear. “

One doesn’t have to dig deep into the history of mankind to see that the quotation is as valid today as it was sixteen hundred years ago. Whether it is an assembly for political change, religious institution, a war council or even a modern day assembly like the United Nations, the truth is that the outcome more than often results in the inevitable destruction and devastation that only mankind can unleash upon his own species. We are guilty of the most heinous crimes yet we appear doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past.

What is it that drives us to unequalled levels of cruelty against our fellow man in order to exercise our narrow minded pursuit to exercise our will over that of others, to both the detriment and neglect of others, as long as it satisfies our own selfish needs? How is it that we can cloak are misguided intents beneath a shroud of liberalism or humanitarianism even though from the outcome it is obvious that our imposition of our myopic view only causes greater suffering to the many while the few we have protested to protect are minor in significance and very often worth.

It today's PC, mixed up world, it would appear that in our efforts to appear humanitarian, we have forgotten the meaning of a word which implied the ‘taking care of the human race’ not the interests of an individual or a small group that are opposed to the good of society. To safeguard a minority bent on evil, destructive and anti-social programs is to be anything but humanitarian. From criminals to activists, they are still simply people that feel they have the right to exercise their rights illegally and often violently. We must reexamine the misguided concepts that have pervaded our legal, political and religious structures. We must protect the majority as long as that majority does not persecute or harass the minority. And most importantly we must act in the public good if we are to survive as a species. These last few points are easily forgotten when minorities obtain power and a voice well beyond their proportion and measure and a majority remains both passive and silent. Such was the case with Christianity as it moved towards being granted state recognition. But rather than learn from the mistake of Church development, the error has been perpetrated and perpetuated for countless centuries into modern times and these new minorities, vocal well beyond their numbers, have inherited the legacy of enforcing their will upon the majority simply because they have gained the support of high ranking officials, political pawns, acceptable violence and a legal system that has abandoned the Mosaic Laws with no sentence or sensibility behind its enforcement.

The Arian Church

This setting of an impossible goal led many to fall into the ever widening net of heresy. One of its victims that it ensnared was a questioning priest in Alexandria by the name of Arius. Arius could not understand how God, being so pure and good have any direct contact with the real world. To do so would mean that the Lord would willingly allow himself t be contaminated by impurity and imperfection and that was unacceptable. How could he or his followers believe in a God anything less than perfect? Therefore he concluded, Jesus could not be a version of the same being. He would have had to have been something completely different; an intermediary with a divine spark but not then or ever a manifestation of God himself. That being the case, Arius continued to teach his followers that Jesus was a being completely separate from the Father and therefore should not be worshipped as such. Immediately, the Bishop of Alexandria called for the excommunication of Arius before he could do irreparable harm.

Concerned that this Arian heresy would tear apart the Church that he had so neatly stitched together, the Emperor Constantine summoned the great council in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea. With close to two hundred bishops from all over the empire, Constantine insisted by the end of the assembly they must have a unified decision on the direction of Christianity, a document we have come to know as the Nicene Creed.

The Attainment of Power

Following Constantine’s Edict of Toleration written 311 AD, the power of religious authority was concentrated in the hands of one church and one church alone, that being the Catholics, then regarded as the official Church of Rome. The word ‘Toleration’ in the title was a misnomer since it was obvious the Catholic Church was proposed as the universal church and all others were discluded from the equation. With the balance of power to determine the future direction of Christianity, the Catholic Church immediately switch its policy from safeguarding the traditions from misinterpretation to that of eliminating deniers of the Truth. What this meant to the early adherents of Judeo-Christian traditions that they could no longer deny the divinity of Christ. To do so would be to refuse the Trinity and accept the Unity of God. Those churches that believed Yeshua was a man in whom the spirit of God dwelt had to adopt the belief that Jesus was a divine spirit that assumed human flesh. And in so doing the belief in Jesus as the Son of God had to be upheld otherwise you could not belong to this new Orthodox Church. The difficulty in accepting the ideology that the Father and Son were actually different designations of the same being was overcome in one of two ways. Either you accepted it at face value, never to question it again, or you were to be branded a heretic and either killed or banished. Doubt, disbelief, endless questioning were all silenced rapidly.

Enforcement of these beliefs to the elimination of all others could only be met by growing resistance. A Yeshua without humanity became an unattainable goal. Why worship a being that couldn’t possibly be a role model for other human beings, since as God he was incapable of performing or contemplating a sin. Perfection couldn’t be tainted and therefore any relevance as a role model was negated. The Jesus of this old-new church was out of touch with the common people.

The Final Solution

Homoousios was the word that became doctrine at the assembly in Nicaea. Translated it meant ‘of one substance.’ That was their final decision that the Father and Son were from one substance and Yeshua’s divinity was never to be questioned again. In reality, the decision failed to decide anything. Those that still believed as Arius taught refused to accept the final decision and publicly stated so. As for Arius, he was publicly humiliated, excommunicated and exiled but that resolved little. Even though the majority stood against Arius, he challenged them on their creation of a terminology ‘homoousios’ which was nowhere to be found in either the Old or New Testaments. Therefore, similar to Karaites like myself whom accuse the Rabbanites of constantly inventing religious doctrine to suit their own needs, Arius did likewise to his Catholic brethren. In their defense the Bishops passed a ruling that they too could be divinely inspired and therefore they were permitted to create new doctrine. Now legally backed by their newly established power they were confident they could mold Christianity any way they so desired and in feeling thus, they introduced the dogma of immaculate conception which had no religious foundation in any of the sacred books but they no longer required sacred writings to establish the rules.

Constantine found himself sitting in a quagmire. By initially agreeing with the Council’s doctrine he had given them powers far in excess of any they held previously. By instilling within them the ability to create religious doctrine and dogma based entirely on their own feelings at the time, he had turned them into rivals rather than subordinates. The Nicaean Creed was received well in the West but the Eastern Bishoprics struggled with its introduction since they had the greatest concentration of adherents from the early Judeo-Christian Churches and those members refused to accept the incorporation of absolute power into the hands of the clergy.

Fearing what he had done, Constantine in 328 AD recalled Arius from exile and supported the Arian policies or anti-Nicene party but it was too late.

Absolute Confusion

For the next four hundred years Arianism survived but wherever it raised its head it was hunted down, tortured and eradicated. The Catholic Church was determined to eliminate this threat no matter how long that might take fearing that the policies of Arius called into question their power and the divine nature of Yeshua. As soon as the populace began to question those doctrines then it would spell the end of the control over the minds and bodies of men. Arianism served a purpose; it reinforced the establishment of Orthodox doctrine. Each and every time that the threat of Arianism arose, the Chatholic Church felt compelled to hold a council and introduce even more legislation to safeguard their empire. Most aren’t even aware of the next Nicene Creed, the one that took place in 381 AD. From that the Church obtained, “For us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was made man.” There was also the new swearing of allegiance to the “Holy Ghost, the Lord and the Giver of Life.” But that didn’t succeed in being taken on very well by the congregations and eventually became replaced by the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” much easier for most to recite. The concept of the Holy Ghost had to be introduced because Arius refused to believe that the Spirit that infused Jesus was a part of God, insisting that it was no higher in its creation than that of an angel. In this way, the Church ensured that no part of their Trinity could be questioned as being anything less than God.

But by creating this new omnipotence and infallibility of Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost a new threat was created. These were referred to as the “divine mysteries”, unanswerable questions that were beyond man’s comprehension and therefore not required to be answered by the clergy. If God actually manifested Himself on earth, then why had nothing actually improved? If God gave forgave man all his sins, then why did he sin more than ever with each passing year? If had tasted the suffering of mankind during his experience in human flesh then why did he permit man to suffer so? All these divine mysteries and yet so few divine answers, for no other reason that anything divine had been totally eradicated from this new Christianity which claimed to be Orthodox yet had by the end of the fifth century as I have elucidated in these articles removed anything that may perchance have been the original Christian beliefs based on its Jewish heritage. What was left was a hollow shell filled with only the whims and desires a handful of sacrilegious men. What was also clear by the end of the fifth century was that the man in charge was the Bishop of Rome, a position as history has shown could be bought, stolen, killed for and above all, abused. And from that point in time was when the questions should have been asked. Was there ever an original Christian teaching that an institutional Church was the true path? Hardly, the use of the Greek word ‘ecclesia’ in Jerusalem actually translated as an assembly, suggesting leadership would only be via elders, not by something called a church which the Greek now is translated as. Was a single man ever destined to be considered the voice of God? Though James had assumed the mantle of leadership following his brother’s death, at no time did he claim his words to be infallible as the Pontiff of Rome now claimed. Error compounded upon error and every time a spiritual leader appeared that attempted to turn back the clock, he was branded as a heretic and his followers persecuted to death. And therein lies the root cause of so much which has gone wrong with our institutions of today. When the guiding light that a quarter of the world looks towards was based on principles that barely represented the original directives then it follows that all subsequent institutions wallow in their own ineptitude having nothing upon which to define their morality. Like a pendulum, they will swing wildly from end to end seeking the balance but never able to find that point of equilibrium since they are constantly out of sync with every other organization and institution. Without harmony there can be no balance. Without a return to the original beliefs there is no chance to find the guiding light. Without knowledge and understanding of whence we came there can be no comprehension of what we were destined for. And without Karaism there is no way of recognizing what it is we have all lost so long ago.

How Man Created Satan

2010-05-30T19:56:00.000-07:00

Myths and fables are all we seem to have passed down from us in the early centuries after Yeshua lived. But what is a myth if not the hopes and aspirations of a people manifested into a physical form which beckons to all to relinquish their doubts, abandon their cynicism and embrace a belief beyond normal human comprehension. And in many of our religious belief systems that is all we possess, a myth that has grown into a reality. Let me take the time to tell you about one such myth which manifested in Persia and grew well beyond the borders of that land. Some of you may recognize it, others actually believe in it, yet the majority will not even know of its origins and would have come to believe that its roots in our society were otherwise. As a Karaite I am free of it but you may not be so lucky as most have come to call it Christian but as you will soon see, it was anything but.

A Gift From Persia

The Persian Magi, the spiritual leaders of Zoroastrianism studied the universe endlessly, contemplating its contradictions, catastrophes and endless sufferings. They found it hard to believe that the truth lay in the Judaic writings that all these events were the manifestations of a singular God. That the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe, He who called himself the Loving God and the Wrathful God could be the perpetrator of history’s greatest disasters. In order to reconcile their belief in an Almighty God they found there could only be one solution; a second Kingdom. Where God reigned in a Kingdom of light and beauty from above in the heavens, another being ruled from the pits, a Kingdom of darkness and evil. The primal God above and a second entity that ruled the universe from below and the two were eternally set in opposition. And in this second kingdom, Satan ruled and the demons were born from its depths.

Desiring more than what rested beneath his hand, Satan invaded the Kingdom of Light and the war began in earnest between the two opposing forces, the Light and the Darkness. To beat back the armies of Satan, God created primal man but Satan’s forces began to overcome the armies of this lesser being and God was forced to rescue Man lest he be lost to Satan. But even after being rescued, Man had suffered grievously, several particles of his original Light gifted by God now replaced by five elements of the Dark. And thus man was set on a path that if he was to return to the Light, return to God, he must overcome the Darkness that now dwells within in an everlasting eternal struggle.

The first of these men to live, a combined existence of both light and dark particles was named Adam. Because of what Satan had done, Adam and his offspring were to be forever born in original sin. There was a woman named Eve, and because she was only created to be Adam’s companion she possessed less particles of light and therefore was more susceptible to the darkness. But God loved his creation of man and throughout the history of mankind would send his heavenly spirits in the form of prophets to guide and correct the corruption that now resided within man’s soul.

The Manichaean Universe

As strange as it may sound, what you have just read was not Christian. The beliefs were neither developed by Christian theologists nor were they practiced by the early Christians. In truth, the concept of two kingdoms in perpetual battle were so foreign to the early Christians that it was rejected wholeheartedly but Christianity had never faced a threat before like Mani, with his charisma, his gift to speak and his determination that exceeded that of any Church leader. Mani was born around 215 AD to a wealthy Persian family. He spent his early years travelling throughout the Persian Empire and into India where he encountered Buddhism. In his later years he headed west into the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire where he preached the religion that incorporated his original Zoroastrianism and all the beliefs he had acquired during his travels. He immediately had universal appeal, providing to the people that had always been familiar with Gods at war from their earlier Greek and Roman pantheon beliefs an easy bridge between their present Christian instruction and the religion of their past. Mani listed the prophets that they should believe in; Adam, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Paul and himself whom he saw as the greatest of them all. In case you haven’t noticed, there is one prophet of significance missing from Mani’s list that being Moses. Moses represented everything contrary to what he was teaching to his new followers. To believe in Moses meant believing that all things good and bad did come from the one God of the Universe. To read Moses instruction meant that there was no such thing as Satan and his demons ruling from a secondary kingdom. To follow Moses meant that all men were born with free will to be either good or evil and were not tainted from birth. To Mani, he saw no hope in attracting the Jews to his new religion so he focused only on the susceptibility of the Christians knowing that they thirsted for a link to their old world of paganism.

But if man was born into a world of evil, a sinner from birth, Mani knew that he also had to provide a reward that mankind could strive for. He taught his followers if they learned and studied the prophets, strove against the evil within their souls, then if they were successful they would set the light free and would ascend to God. But if a man could not perform the purification within his lifetime then he would be sent back to live again until such time that he could release the light. And once all of mankind had succeeded in releasing the light then there would be the final apocalypse which would destroy the material universe and banish the Kingdom of Satan forever.

Something Familiar

Mani divided his followers into five levels. The first three levels were known as the Sons of Meekness. They were the Teachers, the Perfecti and the Electi. And only they would inherit the privilege of ascending to God after a single lifetime. The next level were the Administrators known as the Sons of Knowledge, comprising bishops and priests. The last level was known as the Sons of Understanding and they were the presbyters. The Sons of Meekness had additional restrictions, in that they had to be vegetarians, not engage in marriage or procreation as they had to remain pure if they were to ascend to God. The Sons of Knowledge did not have to endure the same restrictions. They had to follow several commandments including the forbidding of lying, adultery, murder, sloth, and doubt, along with keeping a certain number of fast days. As one can see, there are several parallels to the layering within the Manichean church to the establishment of the Catholic Church.

By the fourth century there already was a singular head, a Pope of the Manichean church. Many of the Marcionites that I had described in an earlier article adopted the Manichean beliefs and in fact by the end of the third century almost all of the Marcionite churches became Manichean. The appeal of the Manichean church exceeding anything witnessed before. It’s popularity amongst the aristocrats of the Roman Empire was immediate as it provided an easy transition from their pagan hierarchy to this new one, a far easier task than adopting the more man-centered concept of Mosaic law. One of the most notable personages to adopt the Manichean religion was St. Augustine who was actually one of the administrators in this church. Eventually St. Augustine left the Manichean church accusing it of teaching a falsehood of rival worlds of Light and Darkness in perpetual battle and that God was at constant war with Satan. In his new position within the Catholic Church he railed against these misguided beliefs enforcing the Mosaic belief that God was the only power in the universe and man was responsible for his own sinful ways, having nothing to do with an external power that forced him to commit wrong doings. How ironic that in spite of St. Augustine’s condemnation of Manichaeism in order to preserve the initial Judaic beliefs of the church, his protestations were eventually washed away in the tide as the Church raced to adopt Manichean beliefs.

The Ultimate Absurdity

By the fifth century, the Manichean belief system began to dominate the beliefs of Christians from all persuasions. So much so that the Catholic Church could see very little difference between their followers and those that claimed to be Manichaean. The primary difference was that the Manichaeans had their own Pope, their own elders, bishops, priests and lay clergy; a massive organization that bore no allegiance or recognition of the Church in Rome. How ironic that the Roman and Byzantine Churches would pronounce an edict condemning all Manichaeans to death, accusing them of heresy even though there existed by this time very little difference by this time between the beliefs of the two church systems. The decision was one of politics, of power, of greed and once again Christianity had been diverted from its true course without its followers having the slightest indication that the practices and beliefs that they now professed had nothing to do with the initial teachings of Yeshua whom they swore to follow. They had all become Manichaeans but they did not know it!

Myths of the Second Century

2010-05-26T04:23:00.000-07:00

Having begun the revelation of the myths and fables surrounding the birth of Christianity in my last article it is time to look more in depth at the development of Christianity as to what it has become now. It is a pale reflection of its beginnings and the essential Judaic teachings of its origins were intentionally stripped from it so that it could stand apart and bend to the will of those that controlled its destiny. Men in the Catholic orthodoxy that were not unlike the Rabbis that made a determined effort to mould both their respective religions into something other than intended and most importantly, to their own benefit. These changes were not by accident, were not normal evolution, nor were they done with the best intentions of its worshippers. But what is sadder is that with the wealth of historical information available, so many have not taken the time to read about their Christian origins. Had they merely taken the time and cherished advice of our Karaite sage and founder Anan ben David, they would have recognized that he was not only speaking to those of us that are Karaites but to people of all denominations and religions. His was a warning that to follow blindly is the greatest sin of all because it will do exactly the opposite what it claims it was designed to do. The preaching will be “Do not lead us unto evil” yet the outcome for any religion where it demands blind obedience, advises not to question its teachings or origins, and both assails and condemns any opinion that it deems contrary will do exactly that; it will lead you unto evil! The heritage of Christianity has been the eradication of any opinion that those in power deemed contrary. Silencing the heretics was the norm for hundreds of years. Yet heresy is from the Greek “haerens” which only means an act of choosing. So the execution of the heretics really meant eliminating anyone that wanted to make a free choice and that is the legacy of the rise of Christianity.

A Strange And Unusual Time

From a Karaite perspective what I personally find the most amazing about the second and third centuries AD is that you had two religious sects, both essentially Jewish in origin vying for the title of supreme monotheist but both willing to sacrifice the original teachings of the Torah. Let me explain if this statement has confounded you. Both Rabbanite Judaism and Christianity began writing furiously over this period two centuries to win over the hearts and minds of adherents whether established or new. The Rabbis began writing their Talmud feverishly and the Christians published a plethora of Gospels, both groups specifically designing their books to capture sayings, teachings, and histories, even if the subject material was speculative, inflammatory, and based solely on one’s own personal and therefore far from factual experiences. Whereas the Rabbanites were determined to catalogue their thoughts into one volume, even though it ended up in both a Palestinian and Babylonian version, the Christians made no attempt to consolidate their writings, keeping each manuscript distinct and separate. And therein lay the failure of the Rabbinates to win the race to the publishers and to their respective audience. The Talmud became a massive tome, unable to be finished for several hundred years and therefore never released to be mass circulated to the public and so introspective that it had practically no appeal to anyone but the rabbis themselves who enjoyed reading about their own endeavors, arguments, and congratulatory back patting efforts, whereas the Christian authors were able to circulate their small books quickly, often just as vellum manuscripts, suitable to be read by any individual and with stories bordering on the fantastical and supernatural thus very appealing and capturing an eager readership desiring to read about something other than mundane issues. There really wasn’t any contest when it came down to it. Even though most of these circulating Gospels were to be dismissed and discarded later when the Church decided to canonize the final version of the New Testament, it did so at a time that the general public had already been exposed to the multitude of books and their imaginations captured by the mythological status of the writing. The Talmud which was a never-ending exercise had none of the same mass appeal nor even had it been available early would it have been something the common person desired to read. Yet both of these massive documents, whether Talmud or New Testament had taken their intended audiences far afield from the Laws of Moses and the actual dictates of the Torah or Old Testament. And as I have pointed out numerous times in my articles, both these works of men were constantly in contradiction to the Torah and the teachings of Moses and were intentionally so. Of that as you will see in the next few paragraphs there could be now doubt!
Marcion Versus Montanus

“Who?” is the word you are probably uttering right now. Just two of the most important men in early Christian history and yet the majority reading this will have absolutely no idea who they were and what was their true significance. But both these men were the most prominent leaders in Christianity during the second century AD and shaped the Christianity that we know today. But because they possessed views outside the mainstream Catholic teachings they were later branded as Gnostics even though as I mentioned they were each responsible for giving Christianity its greatest surge in growth and popularity by attaining thousands upon thousands of adherents at that time and providing an ideological framework upon which the Church did build its current concepts thus eventually attaining mass appeal.

As hard as it may be to believe to Messianics and Christians today, during these first two centuries, to refer to the Catholic Church was to imply that those adhering to this view were either Jews or Judaized-Gentiles strongly leaning towards the Old Testament teachings as presented by the Jerusalem Church, initially under James and then his cousin Simon Cleophas. It was the Catholic Church that was entrenched with both these Judaizers and Old Testament exponents. Initially it saw itself as the defender against the rise of polytheistic ideologies that began to permeate the other churches throughout the empire. But as the old adage goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em then join ‘em,” especially when those others were growing faster, stronger and with far more determination than your own congregation could ever accomplish.

Marcion who lived between 130 and 180 AD considered his Church to be the only authentic one. The speed at which Marcion gained adherents was troublesome to the Catholic Church and Irenaeus wrote against them claiming they would eventually fractionate the early Christians beyond a point of recovery. It was not that Irenaeus condemned the teaching of Marcion only that this adversary did them better and in turn had better conversion results than the orthodox Catholics. Marcion’s message was simple. He wanted to build a church that could bring salvation but was not involved in the speculative and mystical ideas that seemed to have taken over the Christian church. Of interest is that Marcion taught that God had two natures. The wrathful, angry God of the Torah, and the kind loving God that had sent Jesus to save the world. But these two aspects of God were always constantly seesawing in what could be viewed as an eternal battle. Perhaps Marcion was familiar with the Yin and the Yang of eastern philosophy but he determined that it was the wrathful side of God that created the world and therefore all material creations were evil. That meant that man was evil as well but the pure side of God loved man and therefore sent part of himself in the form of a phantom body to live amongst man and die in order to save mankind. Quite interesting that the man that accused the traditional church of being too speculative and mystical was in fact the man that provided the spiritual concept of a non-human Jesus to Christianity in the first place. Marcion insisted that the only apostle that understood all of this was Paul and therefore he justified Paul’s abolition of the Law under the excuse that he was serving the Grace. In this manner Marcion claimed that Paul had done away with the wrathful God of the Old Testament and replaced him with worship of only the pure form of God as revealed in the New Testament. Having this narrow perspective meant that Marcion also had a very narrow canon of scripture which included the Gospel of Truth, which was a collection of sayings but not directly from Jesus, the four Gospels although Luke was an edited version, and the Acts of Paul. Hence he claimed that the only scriptures within his church emphasized the mercy of God whereas the Catholic Church was opposed to the teaching of mercy and therefore failed to comprehend true Christianity. Having condemned the material world as evil, Marcion preached that sex was also evil but only those that were Perfect needed to abstain from sex, whereas the rest of the followers could still engage in it and only when they were about to die would they be baptized. Salvation came through the love of God and the Old Testament was negated by this Loving God. As much as this view by Marcion would appear naïve and perhaps even childish, his teaching had a major impact on the Catholic Church and threatened its survival. So much so that Tertulian wrote, “The Marcionites make churches as wasps make nests.” This rapid expansion could not be stopped but it certainly could be absorbed. Catholic leaders met to see which of the Marcionist views should be incorporated into their own doctrines and in so doing they were to markedly reduce the impact by eliminating many of the differences.

Just as threatening were the Montanists which like the Marcionists wanted a return to what they called pure Christianity. Their approach was far more Old Testament, claiming that the Catholic Church was governed by men that had no true sanction by God and therefore their unethical and immoral behavior was not to be tolerated. The only laws that could be considered as truthful were those already passed down by God and his prophets. As you might have noticed, the concepts espoused by the Montanist were not unlike the Boethians and Zadokites of the same time against the Rabbis; in fact these Montanists were very Karaite in their comments. All we know of Montanus is that he appeared preaching in Phrygia around 156 AD. He dispelled the teaching of both the Rabbis and Catholic Church that the age of prophets was gone and that there would be no further prophets. In fact Montanus claimed that he himself was a chosen prophet of God. Montanus’ concept of the Holy Spirit was that it was sent down by God to enter the bodies of his chosen prophets. Therefore any that spoke the word of God were engaged by the Holy Spirit and Yeshua was one such man. Montanus believed that all scriptures were the word of God and therefore he maintained that in his Church all doctrines were acceptable, none were to be repudiated but God’s only requirement was that the followers maintained a high level of morality, fasted regularly, and had strict marriage laws. But as his followers pursued their beliefs, Montanus expected them to abandon the daily world and separate themselves into religious communes. This was in direct contradiction with the Catholic Church that decided its followers should maintain their everyday lives and didn’t need to separate themselves from Roman life in order to become holy.

By the end of the second century it appeared that the Montanists would become the dominant sect of Christianity. The Catholic Church reacted as it had done so many times before, labeling the Montanists as heretics, excommunicating the lot, and condemning their prophets to either banishment or death. This dogma of branding anything that opposed them as heretics was exactly the institutionalized corruption that the Montanists were opposed to. There considerable threat forced those leaders in the Catholic Church to move closer to the reigning powers in Rome. By emphasizing that the Catholic Church supported the Roman authorities and advised its followers to contribute as part of everyday society, they were able to demonstrate the danger represented by a Montanist Church that encouraged its members to withdraw from society and become separate. It didn’t take much encouragement for the Roman authorities to join in the condemnation of the Montanists and use them for their entertainment in the coliseums. Although Christian history will talk about the martyrs fed to the lions and slaughtered in gladiatorial exhibits, it fails to comment that it was Montanists providing this entertainment while a Catholic elite grew closer to the Emperor and 100 years later actually was proclaimed as the one and only Christianity of the Empire.

The Best And Worst

Having survived the century of turmoil and beating back those breakaway sects that condemned it, the Catholic Church, soon to be the State Church of the Empire, recognized that the Marcionists and Montanists had been popular for two entirely antithecal reasons. The first gained popularity by emphasizing the spiritual nature of Jesus and therefore won over the hearts and minds of a people seeking far more than the strict laws that evolved from the Torah.

The latter, the Montanists gained their popularity by emphasizing the freedom of choice, the fact that God intercedes in the world through his prophets and that survival meant separation from the daily life of the Empire. From the general description, they were not very unlike the Jews that still represented a large portion of the eastern populations.

And therein lay the solution that would become the hallmark of the Church for a couple of thousand years. By adopting Marcion’s teachings of the uniqueness of Christianity, the spiritual nature of Jesus and the rejection of all the old laws that were Jewish or Old Testamental they could create a distinct separation between themselves and their original beliefs. And by categorizing the Montanists as nothing more than Christians practicing a Jewish mode of life, they could again emphasize that separation and at the same time focus the Empire’s distrust on any people that were determined to remain separate, especially the Jews. In doing so, the Catholic leaders gained the trust of the Empire and were to eventually to take over the operation of the empire itself in the form of the Holy Roman Empire where the power to invest kings and emperors suddenly lay within their Church.

It was a learning process that would not have been possible if it had not been for the advent of both the Marcionists and Montanists. In a very short time they had gained all the myths and fables necessary to reshape the Catholic Church into the image of bishops; men seeking power at the cost of its heritage. It would have to go through one more phase before the transition was complete. That involved the canonization of the New Testament and finalization of its arrangement with the Empire in the sharing of power. That wouldn’t happen to the fourth century and will be the topic of discussion for the next article.

Further to the Question of Who's a Jew

2010-05-23T15:47:00.000-07:00

Shalom Ilan and Hag Sameach,
As you're probably aware, I've written two articles on the subject of Who's a Jew. Because Karaites follow a patriarchal link, the maternal line is secondary in establishing that fact. And because the Rabbinical philosophy of 'Jewish' eggs would negate such illustrious persons from our history such as David, not to mention our patriachs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, it is evident that I cannot agree with their definition. Jewishness is more about nurturing than genetics. The Tanach as I quote in my articles is quite specific I feel in instructing us to unite the nations under the Torah, which in itself is a declaration that its not about birthright but what is in the heart. The rabbis have played an exclusionist game for two millennia and look where it has gotten us. Hunted, persecuted and practically annihilated. The Torah calls for 'inclusiveness', a light unto all the world. Do you think their edict on a non-Jewish sourced ova actually follows the Torah? Here is a child that will be loved, nourished, educated, and raised in the Torah and its teachings. Do you not think that renders the child Jewish or not? Judaism is an observance, it is a commitment, it is a demonstration of faith, and those qualities go well beyond genetics. God asked to be loved with all your heart and all your soul. He stated the qualification for Judaism and who are the rabbis to challenge it?

Now on your pursuit of gaining knowledge regarding this modern Ebionite Sect:
Although I agree with Mr. Phillips that you're playing a dangerous game by using words from one writer to challenge those of another, and as you should know if you light a candle at both ends and hold it, ultimately you will get burned, I want you to appreciate that Karaism is not something being resurrected, or rewritten. It has always existed,which makes it very different from modern day sects of a messianistic nature. And because I view the messianistic cults as false teachings which were predicted by the prophets as being the darkness that will descend near the end times I will respond but for purpose of clarity that there are no shortcuts to the Torah. If one is wanting to be seen as Jewish, then one must make the leap fully to Judaism. They must let go of their past and immerse fully in the Torah. The history of Ebionites is well recorded and commented upon almost from the day they were formed. For the record, let me provide a dozen books on the subject just so I can back my words and bring closure to this discussion.

The Gospel of the Ebionites is known only by the quotations from Epiphanius in the passages of his Panarion: 30.13.1-8, 30.14.5, 30.16.4-5, and 30.22.4, but these early historical facts were corroborted by such books and articles as the "Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman (2003), John O'Grady's Early Christian Heresies, The Mythmaker: Paul and the inventino of Christianity by Hyam Maccoby, and G. Uhlhorn, "EBIONITES," Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn., Vol. 2. Toronto, New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp.684-685, just in case you wanted an early scholarly article.
But Epiphanius wasn't the only early Christian scholar that wrote about the Ebionites. And if we can't trust sources written in the time period of this sects existence or shortly after their disappearance then
we negate anything that is assumed afterwards because it would only be based on conjecture. Here are just some of the other Catholic sources that confirm the original beliefs of the Ebionites: Euseubius, Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.22, 34: 9.13-17, Iraneaseus, Against Heresies 1.26.2, 2.11.7, 3.21.1, 5.1.3/
More modern sources such as:

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L.E.. Keck, "The Poor Amongst the Saints in the New Testament," Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 56 (1965): 100-129.

L.E. Keck, "The Poor Amongst the Saints in Jewish Christianity and Qumran," Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 57 (1966): 54-78.

Albertus Frederik Johannes Klijn & G.J. Reinink, Patristic evidence for Jewish-Christian sects. Supplements to Novum Testamentum 36. Leiden: Brill, 1973. Hbk. ISBN: 9004037632. pp.313.{Amazon.com}

H.J.. Schoeps, "Ebionite Christianity," Journal of Theological Studies 16 (1955): 219-24.
Article G. Strecker, "On the Problem of Jewish Christianity," R.A. Kraft & G. Krodel, eds. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971. pp.241-285.

Of course, you probably can't get any more authorative on early Christian sects than the Catholoic Church itself since they were around at the time and here's what they had to write about Ebionites which I've cut and pasted from the Catholic Encyclopedia:
The doctrines of this sect are said by Irenaeus to be like those of Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They denied the Divinity and the virginal birth of Christ; they clung to the observance of the Jewish Law; they regarded St. Paul as an apostate, and used only a Gospel according to St. Matthew (Adv. Haer.., I, xxvi, 2; III, xxi, 2; IV, xxxiii, 4; V, i, 3). Their doctrines are similarly described by Hippolytus (Philos., VIII, xxii, X, xviii) and Tertullian (De carne Chr., xiv, 18), but their observance of the Law seems no longer so prominent a feature of their system as in the account given by Irenaeus. Origen is the first (Against Celsus V.61) to mark a distinction between two classes of Ebionites, a distinction which Eusebius also gives (Church History III.27). Some Ebionites accept, but others reject, the virginal birth of Christ, though all reject His pre-existence and His Divinity. Those who accepted the virginal birth seem to have had more exalted views concerning Christ and, besides observing the Sabbath, to have kept the Sunday as a memorial of His Resurrection. The milder sort of Ebionites were probably fewer and less important than their stricter brethren, because the denial of the virgin birth was commonly attributed to all. (Origen, Hom. in Luc., xvii) St. Epiphanius calls the more heretical section Ebionites, and the more Catholic-minded, Nazarenes.

I think I've exceeded the 12 sources but there is one more that I consider very important.

In regards to being followers of John the Baptist, you'll see from the following article that is the historically accepted story and this is from Dr. James Tabor that I believe Mr. Phillips said he used as a consultant to this newly resurrected Ebionite sect:
Nazarenes and Ebionites - An Introduction by Dr. James Tabor

© 1998, all rights reserved.

Josephus reports four main sects or schools of Judaism: Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots. The earliest followers of Jesus were known as Nazarenes, and perhaps later, Ebionites, and form an important part of the picture of Palestinian Jewish groups in late 2nd Temple times.
The Ebionite/Nazarene movement was made up of the mostly Jewish/Israelite, followers of John the Baptizer, and later Jesus, who were concentrated in Palestine and surrounding regions, and led by “James the Just,” oldest brother of Jesus, flourishing between the years 30-80 CE. They were zealous for the Torah, and continued to walk in all the mitzvot (commandments) as enlightened by their Rabbi and Teacher, accepting non-Jews into their fellowship on the basis of some version of the Noachide Laws (Acts 15 and 21). The term Ebionite (from Hebrew ’Evyonim) means “Poor Ones,” and was taken from the teachings of Jesus: Blessed are you Poor Ones, for yours is the Kingdom of God” based on Isaiah 66:2 and other related texts that address a remnant group of faithful ones. Nazarene comes from the Hebrew word Netzer, drawn from Isa 11:1 and means a Branch—so the Nazarenes were the “Branchites,” or followers of the one they believed to be the Branch. The term Nazarene was likely the one first used for these followers of Jesus, as evidenced by Acts 24:5 where Paul is called “the ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.” Here we see the word used in a similar way to that of Josephus in writing of the four sects/schools of Judaism: Pharisees; Sadducess; Essenes; and Zealots. So the term Nazarene is probably the best and broadest term for the movement, while Ebionite (Poor Ones) was used as well, along with a whole list of other terms: Saints, Children of Light, the Way, New Covenanters, et al. We also know from the book of Acts that the group itself preferred the designation “The Way” (see Acts 24:14;22, etc.). The term “Christian,” first used in Greek speaking areas for the movement, actually is an attempt to translate the term Nazarene, and basically means a “Messianist.

So let's put this to rest now and rather than bother with these fringe sects, let's deal with the only issues that matter and that is the dualism in Judaism between Karaism and Rabbinism. Against the odds, Karaism has survived, overwhelmed by the tide of Rabbanites. It is going through a revival because the events of the times are predicating such events. Even the tide can be counteracted by the rip-tide that pulls in the opposite direction against the major force of the ocean. If one let's themself stand in the riptide they will be pulled in to it. So to those Rabbanites that have found fault with their traditions and teachings: that see there is a cancer within the rabbanite community that feeds itself on deceit and illusion, whose eyes have opened to the removal of sacred ordinances that were purposely eradicated by the rabbis, the intentional failure to preserve the houses of David and Aaron, exactly as Salmon ibn Yerushim accused the Gaons of doing a thousand years ago, then let yourself be pulled by this small rip-tide within the sea of Judaism that is tugging at your soul.
Shalom Aleichim
Allen
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kahana

Christian Myth, Legend and Fable

2010-05-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

The context of this article I actually owe to one of my Messianic readers who asked me the question, “Is everything she learned about Yeshua merely the result of fable or myth?” A very difficult question for a Messianic to ask because even though they have struggled to break away from the Christian religion, they so carefully want to hold on to something tangible to say that all was not a loss. In their particular case it means holding on to Yeshua or Jesus as their life buoy as they lose their grip on the dock which was their previous Christian faith and are now set afloat in a raging sea of conflict, contrast and contradiction. One wants to believe so strongly that the floatation ring will keep them safe even as the waves crash and the winds howl as the storm sets in. Unfortunately the lifering is unlikely to do the job as one would need a raft if they were even to stand a chance at survival. But a raft needs to be constructed from a far studier material than the simple floatation device, and without an outboard motor, or in the least oars, even the best raft will capsize without direction. The person that was rumoured to have managed to survive the storm at sea without these items was/is a myth or as we have become accustomed to saying, an urban legend.

The Legends Surrounding Yeshua

Myth, fable, tales, it really doesn’t matter what we call it the fact remains that all three are fabrications of the imagination. But when it comes to Yeshua, it was not as if the truth didn’t try to prevail at times. When we review the early history of the Church, any attempt to tell a more humanistic history was met with exile, excommunication and extermination. The X’s have it when it came to trying to present anything contrary to those that held the reins of power. It is ironic that in today’s age people question what has happened to the historical Jesus. The fact is that any essence of historical fact or reality was killed off and silenced by the Church. And what those in power presented as the one and only authentic story of Jesus is in fact the product of men’s imaginations. Through process of elimination the history of the Church has answered my Messianic reader’s question. Everything she has learned about Yeshua is likely the result of fable and myth.

But one should not take my word for it. After all, I am a Karaite and as such the belief in Yeshua as Messiah is foreign to me and that would render me prejudiced in any accounting. So instead, let’s examine what those within the early Church had to say about it. After all, at one time these were esteemed and credible leaders of the Christian communities, only to find themselves ostracized and banished once a new emperor or a new bishop courted and craved power. And the best way to eliminate a rival was to brand the old teachings as heretical even if they were the original teachings and therefore probably more accurate.

James and Ignatius

What most people forget is that for almost thirty years Jacob (James), the brother of Yeshua was spiritual leader of the Jerusalem Church. He was the most important leader of the early church and those in Rome or Antioch were secondary, perhaps even tertiary to his authority and rank. From 36 AD until 62 AD when he was murdered he was the man that made the decision regarding the future of the Nazoreans and Minim, not Peter and certainly not Paul. Though some might argue that he took control in 33 AD arguing that is the year when Jesus was crucified, in the book Caiaiphas Letters which provides a prespective unlike any other coming from that of the high priest (http://legendsofthekahana.webs.com/3onthecharts.htm), I present sufficient information to suggest that the year was actually 36 AD. But for the point of this discussion three years is neither here nor there. What is important is recognizing for the duration of his leadership, James taught from the Temple, something he would not have been able to do if his lessons ran counter to the established religion. For the punishment for heresy, any heresy against the Jewish religion was stoning; stoning to death. If there had been any element of heresy within James’ teachings then he would have met that outcome long before his murder in 62 AD. Any suggestion of Jesus having divinity, magical powers, or making statements contrary to the Laws of Moses would have resulted in immediate trial and punishment. And all it took to lay the accusation would be two witnesses so it wouldn’t have been difficult if James was guilty of saying such things. Therefore to have survived for almost three decades while preaching outside the Gates of Nicanor could only mean that the sermons were well within the acceptable parameters of Judaism. That could only mean no immaculate conception, no resurrection, and nothing of a magical nature that would upset the status quo. That still meant that James could have proclaimed Yeshua as the Messiah since that would have been perfectly acceptable. There already were those claiming that John of Gamala, both Theudas and Judas of Galilee and John the Baptist were already the messiahs, so one more wouldn’t have made any difference to anyone. And therein lays the first myth that the early followers of Jesus already viewed him in terms of being greater than man. They didn’t; all that was to come much later, very much later.

And though the doctrines of these initial followers as instructed by James and who appeared to have an understanding of the essential Jesus continued to exist and grow throughout that first century they were condemned as heretics by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch just before the end of the first century AD as he was being led to Rome to be executed. For Ignatius, a man born after the death of Jesus insisted that he knew much better than those that had sat and learned at the feet of Yeshua. In his letters to the early Christians Ignatius makes the point sixteen times that Jesus and God were one and the same. And there is no misunderstanding of what he meant by this claim since Ignatius affirms he believed Jesus to be the invisible and timeless (achronos) one, incapable by his godlike nature of suffering so he had to come earth so that he would be capable of suffering as a result of his human birth. But Ignatius had far more on his agenda than just argue about the divine nature of Jesus. As his letters indicate he insisted on creating an entire set of rituals that would set Christianity apart from its all too Jewish early followers and the traditions of James’ Jerusalem Church. For Ignatius and those to whom he writes that the Eucharist had to be the center of the Church’s existence and it could only be performed by a bishop or by one he authorizes, hence providing a ritual of consecration that is totally under the control of Bishops thereby giving them total control. Furthermore, in order to eliminate the Judaizing teachings of James, Ignatius ordered that Christianity cease keeping the Sabbath on Saturday like the Jews and instead to observe it on what he referred to as the Lord’s Day or Sunday. And finally in his bid to preserve powers in the hands of his fellow bishops, Ignatius instructed that there could be no church unless you had a bishop in charge and presbyters and deacons which they would appoint to do their bidding. So in reality, much of the doctrinal changes that separated Christianity from its Jewish heritage were the result of this individual who had purposely contradicted everything that James had established. The only myth would be to assume that Ignatius had either divine inspiration or divinely granted authority to do so.

From the little bit you have now read, you can either assume that the first century Jerusalem followers that had direct contact with Yeshua didn’t know him and only one man almost a century later who had no contact knew him better, or you can assume that these early followers did know him very well for the man he was and it was only after the initial followers passed away and men like Ignatius assumed control of the church that they could create a story that smacked of polytheism but would appeal to the Greeks and Romans that they wished to convert t their new religion. Myth, legend or fable, the choice is yours

You Are What You Eat!

2010-04-18T04:16:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned in Part 9, I would use the scientific discoveries of today to focus on laws handed down over 3200 years ago. But first it is imperative that those of the Messianic or the Christian path understand exactly how your falling away from the Lord’s commandments occurred. To do so you have to appreciate that the first Christians were Jews and that they continued in their worship at the Temple and their obedience to Jewish Law. At the same time they were able to reconcile their following of Yeshua’s teachings by referring to him as the greatest of the prophets a point of difference between them and both Karaites and Rabbanites. But soon a division was to take place as the result of one man; a man that Jesus never even selected as one of his apostles. As described in Galatians II:7 the main body of Christians were circumcised Jews and that the Gospel of the circumcised was unto Peter. But there was another group rapidly developing and Paul wrote in the same Galatians II:7 that “The gospel of the uncircumcised was committed unto me.” A self appointed commission to the Gentiles that would ultimately be a slap in the face of God. Paul reveals that Peter came to Antioch where Paul had his base and under pressure Paul convinced him to eat with the Gentiles. But when a delegation came from Jerusalem to berate Peter for his abandonment of the commandments, he quickly separated himself from the Gentiles and then insisted that they should all “live as Jews do.” Paul was furious and he went after Peter with all the ferocity he could muster as revealed in Galatians II:11. Of course having a large threatening Gentile mob in your face could be enough to convince the weak and indecisive fisherman that he was backing the wrong horse. Paul then went to Jerusalem along with Barnabas and after similarly threatening the apostles and elders he not only convinced them that the dietary laws and circumcision were not required but as he states, “they no longer needed to keep the Law!” The only restriction was they abstain from eating meats offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled and from fornication.” But we have historical proof that the community that was originally Jewish never abandoned the original Torah laws and remained as a separate entity within Christianity. Though Paul was able to intimidate them into fearing his wrath of the Gentile mob, he could not sway them from the teachings of Jesus and his brother James. For those wishing to know more about these original Christians and their preservation of Jewish ways, I suggest you read about the Ebionites. They existed for another 400 years before they were hunted down and killed by the Church of Rome.

There Are No Coincidences

Now you might ask, “What provides me with the authority or knowledge to talk of such things as if I understand the intricacies of God’s commandments. Just what are my qualifications to make the following statements?” Fair enough, legitimate questions but of course I have legitimate answers as well. Firstly, let me say that I am doing exactly what my family has been instructed to do for the past three millennia, fulfilling the role of Kahana as intermediaries with the purpose of saving mankind even if it is only one human life at a time. Secondly, for those that may have wondered what I actually do (my everyday job so to speak) since whatever my role in life it’s obvious that it’s now taking me to China on a monthly basis, has me speaking internationally at biotechnological conferences, and sees me supporting scientific breakthroughs that eliminate suffering for thousands, perhaps even millions. So let me elaborate for you and then you can judge the veracity and credibility of the statements I will make subsequently. I am a veterinary trained preclinical toxicologist, a test development medical technologist and a biotechnological researcher. Yes, I have university degrees in each of those three areas of specialization. Big words but then it’s a big job. I am one of those men that each day faces the challenge of how do we find the cures and prove that they work against X, Y or Z. And as I mentioned, it is simply the extension of what we as the Kahana have done for a thousand years both in the Tabernacle and the Temples while they still stood. Of course then it was much simpler, as all we had to do in those days was make animal sacrifices on the altar and pray for cures and divine intercession. And we only had to face the Big Boss in the Holy of Holies for our performance review once a year. Now the job is a little more demanding since in the past my family prayed that God would intervene on behalf of the people but now the onus has become for us to provide the answers on our own. It is no mere coincidence that there are three family members involved in a similar line of scientific endeavor even though we were initially unaware of each other’s professional choices at the time. One might say it’s in our genes, and a more lengthy aspect of that particular discussion can be found at http://hubpages.com/hub/GLEEM but as you will see, it is highly likely that we are products of our past and we are all predestined to do what we do. So, having the benefit of several decades of medical and veterinary specialization has provided me with a perspective that Isaac ben Abraham of Troki did not possess. It enables me to examine the dietary laws and find a rationale behind their instruction. But what it really does is leave me in awe because I have to consider that three thousand years ago these laws were clearly established with an impossible precognizant foresight and knowledge of discoveries that we have only made over the last 150 years. And that too cannot be simply passed off as another coincidence. Remember, I’ve been telling you for a long time that there are no coincidences!

The Eating of Dead Things

Over a decade ago I wrote my thesis on the Apolipoprotein E pathway’s involvement in both CJD and Alzheimer’s. Without going into the details, I was looking at ways in which abnormal proteins were absorbed, transferred and reproduced in neurological tissues to the detriment of the host. The key appeared to be Apolipoprotein E and the production of Tau proteins. What does this have to do with dietary laws you might ask, well let me explain. One of the undiscovered routes I proposed was Vagal nerve (10th Cranial Nerve) transference; a conduit directly from the stomach to the central nervous system. It was one of the only ways to explain the rapid transposition of an ingested abnormal protein to the brain (neurocellular phagocytosis) resulting in diseases we refer to as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. You would call one of these diseases Mad Cow. The story behind prion diseases is an exciting one. When Prusiner first proposed its existence he was laughed off the stage. Science refused to believe that abnormal proteins once ingested would cause a disease. Twenty years later it was a fact and more alarming would appear to be the reason that cattle had suddenly developed the disease because they were being fed rendered protein. Essentially herbivores were being turned into carnivores. Cattle were being fed byproducts that were remnants of dead animals. Let’s first think of the prohibition of contact and consumption of dead animals in Leviticus. If the animal is found dead, even if it was one of the approved animals for consumption, we would never be certain of what it had died from. Though not necessarily a prion disease, it was a forewarning that the byproducts of dead animals could still transfer disease, a finding that most certainly shocked the world in the 1980’s and still presents a major threat. Studies in a Wisconsin game park where there was an outbreak of CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) in mule deer in 1972 turned out to be a prion disease as well. The fact that Wisconsin is a major dairy state should send off the alarm bells as you’ll read in the next paragraph. All the deer in the park were eradicated and the park was not repopulated until ten years later. The new population also succumbed to CWD which meant that the prions had been retained in the soil and were virtually indestructible; a fact which leads into my discussion over the next couple of paragraphs.

Weasels, Mink and Ermine

And there’s more when it comes to prions. A little known study in the 1970’s traced a higher incidence in dairy states of downer cows where there was also intensive mink farming. A neurological disorder in mink that was later identified as a Mink Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy would be running at high levels when these mass outbreaks of downer cows would occur. For those that aren’t familiar with downer cows, it’s a term used for cows with a calcium deficiency and they start stumbling and going down. Usually, a quick IV drip of Cal-Mag salts gets them back up on their feet. The difference with these cows was they weren’t getting back up and were then sent off to the rendering plants with no diagnosis other than Downer Cow made. Incidentally, as my thesis examined, the incidence of CJD or the human prion disease was higher in the dairy states. Therein lays the link because in some way this disease in Mink was eventually showing in humans and since mink, ermine and weasels (mustelids) are all in the same family we have a credible reason why God specifically mentioned not eating weasels. What took us until now to understand a little better scientifically was known 3000 years ago. All we did was corroborate it with our current scientific techniques.

Only If It Jumps

How strange that there would be a distinction of which insects could be eaten based on their having large jointed hind legs for the purpose of jumping. Why should this even make a difference you must wonder? It took me a long time to understand this prohibition and it wasn’t until my work with prions that I finally understood it. Jumping insects like grasshoppers and locusts aren’t burrowing into the ground. They consume live and dead plant tissues above ground but not the organisms or waste in the soil. Whereas those insects that creep and crawl on the ground are consuming dead organic tissue, especially from other animals. A matter of fact, the Torah insists that once we die we do not embalm our bodies so that we will be consumed by the myriad of creatures that creep and crawl. And if that is the case, then any disease causing entity that cannot be destroyed will in turn be preserved within the bodies of these creatures. Now you should be recognizing the threat that was exposed during the investigation of prions and the insects consuming dead organic material. They are a conduit to the preservation of the disease ensuring that there is a preservation of these abnormal proteins unto eternity. We’ve only known about this new category of disease causing entities for the past thirty years. God knew about it three thousand years ago. Incredible as it sounds it is the only logical conclusion.

Scavengers

The birds listed are known carrion eaters. Not only that, some of them are hunters and would therefore eat the small animals and other birds that were forbidden. I’ve already provided a warning of the threat that dead animals present in the transference of disease. But it’s not only prions but many other viruses, bacteria and parasitic cysts that will be provided a continuance through intermediate hosts.

Forbidden Swine

It has only been over the last fifty years that medical research has demonstrated a close link between swine and humans. It is the major reason that the species is being suggested for xenotransplantation or in other words why science wants to use swine for replacement parts, such as hearts, skin, pancreatic cells, etc. The fact is that swine actually came off the evolutionary chain closer to humans than other species except for the primates. But being closer has its drawbacks which we have all come familiar with over the last year with the outbreak of Swine Flu. If we are close then we also share things in common such as parasites and worst of all viruses. Of major concern to transplant specialists are the REO and Retro viruses but there are far more diseases that can spread the fear of mass death within humanity. The transmission of disease between pigs and swine and back again is not a new thing. It would have been known long ago that pig farmers and those in close proximity to swine herds had a higher incidence of serious illness. Thereby through the forbidding of swine to be eaten the animals wouldn’t even be kept in the vicinity of the community as they’d serve no economic purpose. As a result the following would be avoided by their exclusion; Swine Flu, Swine Vesicular Disease, and Foot and Mouth virus; all of them serious diseases that theoretically could exterminate humanity. But let’s not forget the bacterial transmission of such diseases as brucellosis, campylobacteriosis, erysipelas, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, streptococcus, anthrax and colibacillosis. Swine are a threat to spread all of these and they can be as equally serious as the viruses. Then there are the parasitic diseases spread by swine such a trichinosis, sparganosis, taeniosis, scabies, cysticercosis, yersiniosis (Plague), tularaemia and balantidiasis. Probably the most serious, even though Plague was in that aforementioned list, is that pigs not only carry the tuberculosis of cattle and birds but they can also be the source for human tuberculosis and that has a greater precedence to exposure than the others.

Are you thinking twice about eating pork, well you should be? As consumed species go, swine is the one that has the greatest chance of causing severe illness through ingestion because not even cooking the meat well eliminates all of the listed organisms and quite a number on the list are deadly. Foot and Mouth has been found to survive pickling, salting and drying of meat. Even after eradication of swine herds, some of the viruses and parasites were found to survive the decontamination process living on inanimate objects. Bacterial such as leptospirosis were found to be surviving well in water barrels and bowls and sparganosis favourite means of transfer is through water where the cysts for this foot and a half tapeworm are deposited. From just these few organisms it should readily be seen why there was such concern with any water that came in contact with these prohibited carcasses and why even the bowls and utensils became a concern. Once again you must say ‘Wow’, how amazing that three thousand years ago God was able to forewarn Moses about these possibilities.

No Fins Or Scales

From the fish perspective that leaves us with either those fish that scavenge the bottoms such as catfish or those that are aggressive hunters such as eels to be avoided but it also eliminates the shellfish and mollusks from the menu. We should all know about paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) by now, there’s been enough press about it. But what you may not know is that there are at least twenty derivatives of the saxitoxin produced by the dinoflagellates that then accumulates in the shellfish such as mussels, clams and scallops. PSP is only one of these and the others can be just as dangerous. The toxins are heat stable which means that not even cooking destroys them, so how confident are you when you consume your next meal of shellfish? Does Red Lobster provide a medical plan? Tetramine poisoning is common when eating whelks (marine snails) as it exists in their salivary glands causing a wide variety of neurological signs when ingested by humans. Not to mention that these snails are both predators and scavengers which means they’re picking up whatever diseases their last meal might be carrying. But besides toxins there are many other dangers presented by shellfish. Dioctophymiasis is a parasite from crayfish and other crustaceans in which the nematode migrates to our kidneys and begins its destructive process. Removal of the kidney is the only treatment. If both kidneys are affected then there is a serious problem. Short of a transplant, you will die. The facts are that shellfish are bottom filter feeders, which means their exposure to bacteria is quite high and it should be no surprise that they are disseminators of microbial diseases. The fact that aquaculture farmers know their lobsters are susceptible to such diseases as shell disease, Gaffkemia, microbial epibiont disease, Lagenidium disease, Haliphthoros disease, and Fusarium disease does not provide us with any reassurance that these entities do not cause a disorder in humans if digested. We just don’t know enough about them yet. Back in July of 2008 the FDA released an advisory regarding tomalley, the soft, green substance found in the body cavity of the lobster that functions as the liver and pancreas. High levels of PSP toxins were present in lobster tomalley The FDA advisory applied only to tomalley, the government declaring the rest of the lobster meat was safe since high levels of PSP toxins were only present in the lobster tomalley and only insignificant levels in the remainder of the lobster. Perhaps one should define insignificant since we know that these toxins can accumulate and cooking no matter how long did not eliminate it. The symptoms of PSP included tingling and/or numbness of the mouth, face or neck; muscle weakness; headache; and nausea and in extreme cases large amounts of the toxin if consumed, could lead to respiratory failure and death. They warned that symptoms usually would occur within two hours of exposure to the toxin. Two hours before you press the panic button. And if that wasn’t enough to worry about the FDA warned that PSP toxins normally occur in clams and other shellfish. Often these symptoms will lead to respiratory failure and death. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should seek medical attention was their last bit of advice. Perhaps the advice should have been “think twice before eating shellfish.” The Torah warned you first and now the FDA is giving you their warning.

In regards to eels, there is still much we have to learn. In a report from the Protein Journal in 2008 the following was disclosed, “Although eels are well known to contain toxins in the serum, their chemical properties have remained to be clarified for a long time. In this study, a proteinaceous toxin was purified from the serum of Japanese eel Anguilla japonica and was lethal to both mice and crabs.” And in 1995 we find the following article which reveals that the researcher isolated and purified a lethal protein toxin from the Indian catfish Plotosus canius. The toxin was lethal in mice being both cardiotoxic, and having neuromuscular blocking activity. The toxin also produced cardiac arrest on isolated toad and guinea pig hearts. Prior administration of atropine and propanolol failed to counteract toxin activity on isolated heart preparations. Even antiserum raised against the toxin failed to antagonize its lethal activity in mice. And in a recent report from the University of Michigan a study there concluded that poisonous catfish are far more common than previously thought. The researcher Jeremy Wright warned of how catfish venoms poison nerves and break down red blood cells, producing severe pain, reduced blood flow, muscle spasms, and respiratory distress.

In Conclusion

This article has merely emphasized the fact that three thousand years ago dietary laws were put in place for the preservation of mankind. There were issues that the people of that time period couldn’t even contemplate let alone understand. God asked that they trust Him. An act of faith that He knew what was best for humankind. And along came a heretic twelve hundred years later that challenged the Jerusalem Church. He told Peter he was a fool for following the commandments within the Torah when it came to the dietary laws. And then Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem and they stood down the elders in Jerusalem and managed to sway them to their opinion. A fact that it was not Yeshua who changed the dietary laws but a man named Paul. And ever since Christians have been acting contrary to the commandments of the Lord. Perhaps now the science of today and the teachings of a Karaite can help you reconsider that decision

Religious Dietary Restrictions and Modern Science

2010-04-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by saying, “There are those things which we could put into our mouths that would be an abomination to the Lord.” This is a line taken from the Torah but to many a Christian they would consider such an absurd statement as having come from me and it would inspire both ridicule and contempt. After all, why would God really care about what we eat? And they will quickly point out that Jesus said, “It is not that which goes in to the mouth that defiles man but what comes out of it,” from Matthew 15:11. But Yeshua was only half right. Some of the things that spew forth out past people’s lips are an abomination of that there’s no argument; Hurtful, spiteful, vicious words that maim and harm as surely as if they had a knife and twisted it into one’s back. But in regards to the other half, he was most definitely wrong for it is clearly stated in Deuteronomy 14:3, “Thou shall not eat any abomination,” and God’s instructions cannot be overridden. Rather than try to negate God’s ordinances Christians would have been better off to try and understand why the Lord would have demanded such a thing as kosher (kashruth) and to follow them. There is nothing in the Torah that does not have purpose or justification so why should it be assumed that the restrictions regarding food were just random statements made by God that could be dismissed and ignored so cavalierly? This discourse will be quite lengthy. It's not an easy topic to tackle especially since most people like to eat and denying them that pleasure might become confrontational. Part 9 of this series will examine the laws as they were dictated and the responses in the Hazuk Emunah but Part 10 is where I will use a modern age religion to support the ancient laws; a thing called science!

What is the Real Question?

A fair amount of the discourse in the Hazuk Emunah is dedicated to the dietary laws. Isaac ben Abraham of Troki wrote on this topic but alas his perspective was still that of only a sixteenth century mind and that had its limitations. Over the past four hundred years there have been major advances and far more understanding that supports the dietary restrictions of the Torah. Since then there has been an entirely new perspective that sprouted which we call science. But science is only a tool and should not be considered the new religion. Those that have read Dan Brown’s latest book ‘The Lost Symbol’ will have already heard his frequent proclamation that the Bible was actually concealing scientific facts. Unfortunately, Dan Brown became a bit too carried away thinking that every statement made in the text was a scientific code that required deciphering. He began looking for hidden meanings where they did not exist but he was right in one respect, there is an element of medical science incorporated into the Torah that should not have been common knowledge at that time and that is the real mystery. Whether it was the result of rudimentary clinical observations and thereby assumptions regarding the etiology of disease or simply the direct intervention of an all-knowing God that couldn’t possibly explain the concept of organisms causing disease to a people with absolutely no understanding of such concepts, it resulted in God commanding the Israelites to simply do as He said for their own benefit. And for numerous centuries they would ask ‘why’ but that was not the correct question they should have been asking. The question we now should ask is ‘How’. How was it possible that these scientific and medical issues were known at a time when mankind was still trying to perfect the wheel? There are many theorists that have written their speculations on the matter but let us not seriously look at these theories involving space aliens, time travelers, or inter-dimensional communications through the Ark as some have proposed. Let’s simply attribute it to God and accept that He would know of such things and that only recently we have gained the knowledge to confirm them.

The Hazuk Emunah

Troki’s argument was as follows; there are certain creatures which are unclean and Israel was intended to be a holy nation. To remain holy, it could not ingest that which was considered unclean because if it did, it would be considered contaminated. But the converse is true because if Christians willingly partake of food that was clearly identified as being unclean then they must consider themselves to be unholy based on this simple logic. Otherwise how could they ignore what is written in Leviticus 11:18, 11:43 and 11:44. “Ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth, neither shall you make yourselves unclean with them that you should be defiled thereby. For I am the Lord your God, ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves and ye shall be holy, for I am holy.” The use of the word abominable is severe. It is neither wishy-washy nor challengeable. If it creeps or crawls then you are forbidden to eat it. Similarly in Leviticus 20:25-6 God says, “Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowl and clean, and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast or fowl or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground which I have separated from you as unclean. And ye shall be holy unto me for I the Lord am holy and have severed you from other people that you should be mine.” The repetition of the banning of anything that creepeth is quite interesting as it obviously was a grave concern of the Lord’s and not to be challenged or ignored. After all, Adam just ate a single apple that was forbidden and look at the consequences. If we were to examine Leviticus chapter 11 with clear understanding we would appreciate that God did not dedicate an entire chapter of the Torah so that it would be ignored. Only that which is cloven hooved and cheweth the cud is permitted to be eaten. But this required both characteristics and that meant the camel, swine, rabbit and rock badger were excluded. But more importantly, there is a strict prohibition of touching their carcasses as well indicating that contact with these animals after death also presented a danger. In 11:9-12 God prohibits anything in the waters that has neither fins or scales. Everything else is labeled detestable. In 11:13-19 those birds which are forbidden to be eaten are listed including the bat. And of winged swarming things, only those that have jointed legs to jump upon the ground are permitted which meant that crickets, grasshoppers and locusts could all be eaten but no other insects. In 11:29-30 the eating of lizards is prohibited and I should mention that just prior to this God purposely instructs us not to eat the weasel. I raise this point as its essential to my subsequent discussion. A few sentences later a considerable amount of time is spent on explaining if these prohibited animals come in contact with water and in turn this water comes in contact with our eating utensils or food, etc., then all that will be rendered unclean. And let us not forget the singular most misinterpreted command from Exodus 23:13, the prohibition of boiling a kid in its mother’s milk. The Rabbanites have built an entire industry around the separation of dairy and meat products, totally unnecessary since all God was demanding was that next time you eat goat’s meat you were not to boil it in its mother’s milk. If He wanted more He would have stated do not eat anything that is from milk along with meat at the same time. God was quite direct; his commandments not intended to be cryptic. So rather than countermand God’s commands it should be more important that we try to understand them now that we have the advantage of 21st century knowledge. In part 10 I'll examine the scientific discoveries which suggest that there never should have been any doubt that God was the ultimate scientist.