← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 20692 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2005-10-18
2005-10-18 23:58 | User Profile
[I][B]I intend to buy this book soon, but meanwhile, here's long excerpt I just found online:[/B][/I]
[url]http://www.talkaboutabook.com/group/rec.arts.books/messages/455402.html[/url]
[FONT="Times New Roman"] [SIZE="5"][B]Michael A. Hoffman II - [I]Judaism's Strange Gods[/I], pp 6-31[/B][/SIZE]
[SIZE="4"]Judaism's Strange Gods[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"][B]Part One: The Talmud[/B][/SIZE] [SIZE="3"]
THE WEIRD cult of "Judeo-Christianity," is an oxymoron found on the lips of many Christians including even conservative ones.
This abominable "Judeo-Christianity" contrivance is of a piece with the cloning of human and animal genes or any of the other alchemical mixtures of two mutually contradictory substances which we have witnessed these last few decades in the modern cauldron.
The near-universal approbation and currency exerted by this cockamamie term exposes at one glance the level of abysmal historical ignorance which obtains today.
The Church Fathers knew of no "Judeo-Christian" tradition, since Judaism did not exist before Christ.
Before Him, there was the faith of the Israelites as it gradually decayed and was subverted by corrupt teachings such as were transmitted by the Pharisees and Sadducees.
This corruption was greatly escalated when a portion of the Israelites rejected the Messiah, Yashua (Joshua, i.e. Jesus), after which their leaders eventually made their way to Babylon, where the corrupt and reprobate, oral (cult tradition of the elders was committed to writing and compiled as the Mishnah, comprising the first portion of the Talmud. At that juncture, the religion of Judaism was born.
It is the Talmud, not the Bible, which is the hermeneutic system of orthodox Judaism.
According to Robert Goldenberg, Professor of Judaic studies at the State University of New York:
[FONT="Arial"]"The Talmud was Torah. In a paradox that determined the history of Judaism, the Talmud was Oral Torah in written form, and as such it became the clearest statement the Jew could hear of God's very word.
"...The Talmud provided the means of determining how God wanted all Jews to live, in all places, at all time. Even if the details of the law had to be altered to suit newly arisen conditions. the proper way to perform such adaptation could itself be learned from the Talmud and [/FONT][FONT="Arial"]its commentaries ...The Talmud revealed God speaking to Israel, and so the Talmud became Israel's way to God."[[/FONT]1]
The religion of Judaism as it has been known since it was concocted after the crucifixion of Christ is what is called "Orthodox" Judaism today.[2]
The early Church recognized Christianity as having been founded by Israelites and representing the only true religion of the Bible. It is Christians who are "a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation..." (I Peter 2:9).
Judaism was not viewed as the repository of the spiritual truths or knowledge of the Old Testament, but as a post-Biblical, Babylonian cult totally at variance with Biblical Christianity.
[I][B]1 [/B] Robert Goldenberg, "Talmud," Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), pp. 166-167.
[B]2[/B] We do not here concern ourselves with the supposed "Reform" branch of the synagogue because they do not accord the Talmud the supreme authority which Judaism does. Liberal "Reform" synagogues stand in the same relationship with Judaism as Unitarians who deny the Resurrection of Christ do with regard to Christianity: both represent a fundamental negation of the founding precepts of the religion they claim to profess. "Reform" (and in some cases "Conservative") synagogues that deny the obligations of the Talmud, do not constitute the religion of Judaism. They are ethnic and cultural offshoots. However, many liberal and secular Jews exhibit nearly the same chauvinism and racism as believers in the Talmud, by their embrace of the ideology of Zionism: "Secular... Israeli Jews hold political views and engage in rhetoric similar to that of religious Jews ... For religious Jews, the blood of non-Jews has no intrinsic value; for Likud (political party of Begin, Shamir and Netanyahu) it has limited value ... Most foreign observers do not realize that a sizeable segment of the Israeli Jewish public holds these chauvinistic views .... The world view of Likud politicians, enthusiastically supported by followers, is basically the world view of religious Jews; it has undergone significant secularization but has kept its essential qualities." Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, [London Pluto Press, 1999], pp. 11-16.[/I]
True Israelites could only be Christians, not followers of Judaism. The followers of Judaism are anti-Biblical; they had to violate the Old Testament in order to reject Jesus, for the "Scriptures testify of me."
One need only start with the historic Christian attitude toward sex and the body and contrast it with Judaism's teaching in these matters, to discover a vast and unbridgeable chasm which is nowadays obstructed and falsified in a frantic effort to appease and placate Jewish power.
Augustine, in his [I]Tractatus adversus Judeos[/I] declared rabbinic Judaism to be the counterfeit of true Israel. Augustine declared that Judaism was "Israel according to the flesh," carnal Israel.
For Christians, the essence of the human being is the soul, for Jews it is the body, hence their worship of their own race as the type of God.[3]
Virginity is highly problematic in Judaism where defilement is defined as failure to engage in the sex act. "Anyone who does not copulate it is as if he had spilled blood." The rabbis forbid virginity.[4]
On this subject of sexuality alone it is impossible to speak of a "Judeo-Christian" tradition.
That Christ and His Gospel are betrayed by those who declare an alleged "Judeo-Christian" tradition, is of no discernible concern to the ministers, popes and pundits thus engaged. They are Jewish Pharisees in all but name, engaged in the standard modern apologetic misinterpretation of Judaism, out of "fear of the Jews"[5] and a need to ingratiate themselves with the "god of this world."
[I][B]3[/B] Daniel Boyarin, "This We Know to be the Carnal Israel," Critical Inquiry, vol. 18, pp. 474-505; and David Biale, Eros and the Jews, [New York: Basic Books, 1992].
[B]4 [/B] Yebamot 63b. Shuthan Arukh, Even HaEzer 1:1, William Wright, The Homilies of Aphraates, the Persian Sage [London: 1869, vol. I, The Syriac Texts], p. 355.
[B]5[/B] John: 7:13, 19:38, 20:19.[/I]
John Chrysostom: [FONT="Arial"]"The Jews disdained the beauty of virginity, which is not surprising since they heaped ignominy on Christ himself, who was born of a virgin" ([I]Homily On Virginity[/I]).[/FONT]
There is no fundamental opposition between spirit and matter in Judaism. When Jesus declared in John 6 that "the flesh profiteth nothing" he was violating the oral tradition of the Pharisees:
[FONT="Arial"]"Rabbinic anthropology differs in this respect from ....Christian-anthropology...there is not a fundamental metaphysical opposition between (body and soul)..."[6][/FONT]
Judaism celebrates the body to such a sordid extent that it even has a defecation prayer which every Jewish male is commanded to recite every time he relieves himself: "Blessed art thou O Lord ...who has made the human in its orifices and holes."
Everything about Judaism is either a distortion or a falsification of the Old Testament because Judaism is based on a man-made tradition that voids the Old Testament by means of a series of dispensations and loopholes.
These begin with the Mishnah, which represents the commitment to writing of the occult legends and lore of those Israelites who had preserved "secret knowledge" which had arisen with the worship of the golden calf, of Molech and similar abominations.
With the rejection of their Messiah and the commitment of the formerly oral traditions to writing, these Israelites completely abandoned themselves to a perversion which had once been only a persistent underground stream polluting Israel, but after Christ's crucifixion, emerged as the main ideology of those who refused to accept Jesus as their savior.
Later Talmudic rabbis styled this primary canon of written Judaism as Mishnah (literally "repetition"). The term signifies "oral tradition learned by constant repetition." The connotation is derived from the Hebrew denotation, the root [I]sh-n-y[/I], meaning "to repeat." Within
[I][B]6[/B] Alon Goshen-Gottstein, The Body as Image of God in Rabbinic Literature, [Berkeley, Calif. 1991].[/I]
the text of the Mishnah proper, it is called [I]halakot[/I], literally, "extra-Biblical law."
Babylonian Jewish tradition in Talmud tractates [I]Berakot[/I] 5a and [I]Shabbat[/I] 31a teach that the Mishnah and the rest of the Talmud ([I]Gemara[/I]) were given by God to Moses on Mt. Sinai, along with the Ten Commandments.
The Mishnah was completed at the end of the Second Century A.D., more than 100 years after the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D. The exceptions are the tractates [I]Sotah[/I] and [I]Abot[/I] which are later additions misrepresented as a part of the original Mishnah by the rabbinic "sages" themselves (deceit compounding deceit).
Engulfed in a sea of prolix cogitations, Talmudic texts can be minefields of deception and pits of derangement and bogus reasoning, as befits those who would replace the Bible with their own authority.
Most of the laws of the religion of Judaism have no Biblical warrant; they contradict and nullify the word of God.
Where the sufficiency of Scripture is denied, the fallacies and imaginings of man come to the fore. The Talmud is one of the largest collections of such fancies and human error; sometimes intriguing and colorful, titillating the senses with the phantasmagoria of the [I]Aggadah[/I], but more often sordid, blasphemous and asinine, in spite of the intellectual prestige accorded its rabbinic authors.
There is a joke among those Jewish persons ([I]frierim[/I]) who might be described as resentful and reluctant "Jews" - those who are regularly swindled by the rabbis, by the [I]kashrut[/I] (kosher food) racket and oppressed by the multiple other forms of fraud and thinly veiled taxation foisted on them by their watchdogs and masters.
This joke ridicules the fact that so much of Jewish law, from the burden of keeping a separate kitchen for meat and dairy products, to the wearing of the ever-present head covering for men, is not of God, but derived from man-made tradition.
The joke is related herein because it illustrates rather well the type of Talmudic "reasoning" that became authoritative when the Pharisaic party rejected Israel's Messiah, and formally codified the anti-Scriptural precepts of the elders, by committing them to writing as the basis of the novel religion of Judaism, as opposed to the exclusively Old Testament foundations of Christian Israel.
The joke is occasioned by the bitterness of the frierim toward the judicial decision of Rabbi Joseph Karo, who imposed taxation on them for the support of indolent "Talmud students," including married men who sometimes spend a lifetime loitering in a [I]kollel[/I]. The esteemed Halakhic codifier Karo had over-ruled that other giant of Jewish jurisprudence, his medieval predecessor, Moses Maimonides.
Maimonides had decreed that Talmud students should work at least nominally, since this was the practice of the important early Pharisee, Hillel the Elder. But Kato decided that Talmud students do not have to engage in work and can be supported by taxes. Karo said that "we must assume that he (Hillel) engaged in labor only at the beginning of his studies ... How can we assume that when Hillel became famous the people did not give him support?"[7]
It is not difficult to see that Rabbi Karo has drawn his assumption from thin air.
To underscore the arbitrary nature of these out-in-the-ozone rabbinic rulings, the joke has it that a man quits Judaism and the first thing he does is remove his [I]kippah[/I], or skullcap. A rabbi challenges him to put it back on, but the disgruntled man replies that the rabbi will first have to furnish proof from the Bible that a head-covering for men is required.
The rabbi in the joke answers: "The Bible says: 'And Abraham went--' (to some destination). Can you imagine that he went without a head-covering?"
The rabbi's "reasoning" via his own imagination is very familiar to those acquainted with the works of Karo, Rambam, Rashi and Hillel, to say nothing of the oeuvre of
[I][B]7 [/B] Rabbi Joseh Karo, Kesef Mishne. Karo's ruling is still in effect and Israeli Talmud students are supported by a type of welfare.[/I]
the Gentile-hating mystagogues of the Kabbalah, such as Isaac Luria, Nachman of Bratslav and Shneur Zalman of Lyady.
A common rabbinic defense against criticism of the more blatantly horrible passages in the Talmud, is the allegation that the Talmud is merely a record of debates ([I]mahloket[/I]) between [I]tanna'im[/I] and [I]amora'm[/I][8] and that by seizing on one portion of the controversy and upholding that passage as authoritative, the critic errs, for no Talmudic sanction is given to either side of the debate in Talmud.
This is disingenuous, since the Mishnah and key Talmudic amplifications of it, comprise dogmatic Jewish law ([I]halakhah[/I]) by which every believing orthodox Jewish person is enslaved down to the most minute and intimate particulars of his or her daily life.
How Talmudic law is deduced and adjudicated is often a mystery to the non-Judaic mentality, but that it constitutes halakhah is undeniable.
The key point here is that the appearance of Talmudic indeterminacy does not preclude law-making by majority rabbinical consensus, which is the process by which Talmudic law is formed, both in terms of the decision on what constituted the oral law of the elders as presented in the Mishnah ([I]halakhah lemosheh misinai[/I]), as well as the subsequent [I]Mitzvot derabanan /I found in the Gemara, arising from the deductive process known as [I]Midot shehatorah nidreshet bahen[/I].
As a public relations ploy, certain rabbis and Judaic leaders pretend otherwise, revealing the low opinion they have of the public, whom they believe will swallow the
[I][B]8 [/B] The categories of Tanna'im ("repeaters") and amora'm ("interpreters") represent two rabbinic eras. The Tanna'im consisted of the elders of the oral tradition: Hillel the Elder, Gamaliel the Elder, Shammai, Zaddok, Eliezer and other first and second century A.D. Pharisees who kept alive their tradition by repeating it and eventually forming it into the Mishnah, The amora'm come after the Mishnah, and their amplification of it forms the teaching of a later period of Talmud, called Gemara.[/I]
line about the Talmud being a mere book of debates, where no clear teaching or law-making emerges, even though this claim is demonstrably false.
The cunning intent behind the deliberate sowing of this misapprehension rests in the stratagem that by promoting the idea that the Talmud is a collection of disputes meaning everything and nothing, no indictment of the Talmud is possible, since another text can always be cited to contradict the offending one.
But in practice the investigator need only examine the historic discipline and practice of Judaism from its codification after the crucifixion of Jesus to the rise of liberal-apostate Jewish groups during the 18th century European Enlightenment, to ascertain that a body of law codified in the Talmud exerted the most profound command over individual Jews and governs their behavior.
Following the trail of that body of law begins with linking it to the corresponding orthodox Jewish practice that has arisen from it. By this means we discern the synthesis of seemingly opposing tendencies that forms the Talmudic dialectic.
For example, while it can be accurately said that orthodox Judaism consists in living a life for this world through the body, the means by which this living is implemented are psychotic.
Sexuality in orthodox Judaism is mediated by thousands of regulations, because Talmud is the essence of the bureaucratic mentality, a fact that emerges as America and Britain abandon Christian-Israel's Biblically-inspired Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and Common Law and embrace the Talmudic law of Big Brother bureaucracy.
The American system of jurisprudence has degenerated from courts that ruled according to God's law, to courts that make the law through judicial interpretation and case law ([B]precedent[/B]). The latter is entirely Talmudic and reflects the subversion of our nation:
[FONT="Arial"]"The growth of Talmudic Law, in all its aspects, was for the most part, the work of judicial interpretation rather than of formal legislation ...The judge served in effect as a [/FONT][FONT="Arial"]creator of law and not only as its interpreter..."[9][/FONT]
To better investigate the root of the confusion about Judaism, let us now examine a classic statement of modern Protestantism's view of Judaism, as presented by conservative Presbyterian theologian Douglas Jones:
[FONT="Arial"]"...consider the case of Abraham, that ancient father of Judaism and Christianity ...One of the best ways of beginning to think about the nature of Christianity is to think of it in the light of Judaism.
"Today, we so often think of Judaism and Christianity as two distinct religions, almost like Buddhism and Islam. But early Christianity never saw itself in that way. The earliest Christians saw themselves as faithful Jews simply following Jewish teachings. In fact, the first main dispute in the Christian church was whether non-Jews, the Gentiles, could even be a part of Christianity!
"Christianity self-consciously saw itself as the continuing outgrowth, the fulfillment, of true Judaism. As such, Christianity didn't start in the first century but long before with King David, Moses, Abraham, and ultimately the first man, Adam. Everything in older Judaism was building up and pointing to the work of Jesus Christ. Over and over, the early disciples explained that Christ was the fulfillment of the ancient promises of Judaism.
"...So when we start thinking about Christianity, we have to understand its very Jewish roots. We should assume that Christianity ought to look and sound like Judaism except when it explicitly claims to change something. We should expect that the Scriptures. institutions, basic principles, laws, meditations, family life, etc. Of Judaism would carry over into Christianity, unless Christ, the final prophet, authoritatively changed a practice ....Christianity's Jewishness is pervasive indeed."[10][/FONT]
By improper application of the words Jew and Judaism, the preceding statement of modern conservative
[I][B]9[/B] Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, The Wisdom of the Talmud [New York: Philosophical Library, 1951). Thanks to Earl F. Jones of Deming, New Mexico for bringing this to my attention.
[B]10 [/B] "Why & What: A Brief Introduction to Christianity" by Rev. Douglas Jones, The Canon Press, lwww.canonpress.org/whywhat.htm]. Mr. Jones is senior editor of the orthodox Presbyterian magazine, Credenda Agenda.[/I]
Protestantism's view of Judaism, extols a palimpsest of confusion.
First and foremost, by terming the Old Testament religion of Yahwehism as "Judaism" an inevitable and inexorable connection is established between the religion of those who rejected Jesus as the Messiah, and the Old Testament religion of His Father, Yahweh.
The reader is given the distinct impression that modern Judaism bears within it the seeds of the religion of the Old Testament, that it is the Old Testament religion without Christ.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing could be a greater source of delusion. To ascribe to the ancient Israelite religion the term "Judaism" is a grave lexical and hermeneutic error.
It gives to the creed of the entire Twelve Tribes of Israel and their Covenant Elohim, the title of a perverse man-made tradition that flourished among one segment of the offspring of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob (the tribe of Judah).
The word "Jew" is a corrupted form of the word Judah. It is a reference to two of the 12 tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin, and does not even appear in the Bible until II Kings 16:6 and then again in 25:25 and II Chronicles 32:18.
Paul's allusion to the "Jews' religion" in this context is instructive. Paul's reference in this regard is negative: "And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers." (Galatians 1:14).
The hallmarks of the "Jews' religion" according to Paul, are two-fold: persecution of God's Church (I Thessalonians 2:14-16), and allegiance to the "traditions" of men.
The Pharisees asked Jesus why His followers disobeyed the Talmud (at that time known as the "tradition of the elders" and not yet in written form), by refusing to engage in ritual hand-washing: "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread."
[FONT="Arial"]"But Jesus said unto them, Why do ye transgress the [/FONT][FONT="Arial"]commandment of God by your tradition?" (Matthew 15:2-3).[/FONT]
How can it be said that "Judaism" (the "Jews' religion") is the root of Christianity, when according to Paul, it is a religion of man-made traditions and according to Jesus Christ, Judaism's traditions of men made the Law of Yahweh of "none effect"? (Matthew 15:9).
How can it be said that "Judaism" is the root of Christianity, when in the Old Testament there was no "Judaism"? One searches in vain for the term, yet modernist Christians today use it almost exclusively to describe the religion of the Old Testament, of Yahweh and His people.
After some Jews rejected their Messiah they formalized the tradition of the elders condemned by Christ as the very nullification of the Law of God, and that new religion is accurately and properly termed Judaism:
[FONT="Arial"]"This new system, treated at first as simply provisional because of the surviving hope of restoring the Jewish commonwealth, had soon to be accepted as definitive ...Then it was that Rabbinical or Talmudical Judaism fully asserted its authority ...the Mishna 'Oral Teaching' completed by Rabbi Juda I, committed ultimately to writing in the form of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds and expounded by generations of teachers in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia, held undisputed sway over the minds and consciences of the Jews.
"In fact, this long acceptation of the Talmud by the Jewish race, before its center shifted from the East to the West, so impressed this .... Law (Mishnah) upon the hearts of the Jews that down to the present day Judaism has remained essentially Talmudical both in its theory and in its practice ... Orthodox Judaism ... distinctly admits the absolutely binding force of the oral Law..."[11][/FONT]
Judaism has as its god, not Yahweh, but the Jewish people, whose self-worship is at the core of the Talmud.
It has as its law, not the [I]Tanakh[/I] (books of the Old Testament), but the Talmud.
[I][B]11[/B] The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1912), vol. 8, p. 402.[/I]
Jesus proclaimed that the initial stage of Talmud, the Mishnah, which existed in its oral form in Christ's time - was the tradition of the elders which nullifies the word of God:
[FONT="Arial"]"Then came together unto him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem, gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with "unclean" -- that is, ceremonially unwashed -- hands, and they found fault.
"For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, unless they wash, they do not eat. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.
"Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus, Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?
"He answered and said unto them, Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.
"How be it in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.
"For laying aside the commandments of God you observe your own traditions. You reject the commandment of God that you may keep your own tradition.
"For Moses gave you this law from God: 'Honor thy father and thy mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that a man may say to his father or mother, 'I can't help you, for I have vowed to give to God what I could have given to you.' You let him disregard his father or his mother.
"Thus you make the word of God of none effect by your tradition that you have handed down."[12][/FONT]
[I][B]12[/B] Mark 7:1-13. The issue here is not God's laws of hygiene for prevention of insanitary conditions, but burdensome and useless, ritual purification based on man-made additions to God's laws. The Talmud extols filth. Being soiled by feces and urine for example, is not regarded as defilement by the Talmud. Cf. Judith R. Wegner, Chattel or Person: The Status of Women in the Mishnah [NY: Oxford U. Press, 1988], f. 251 on p. 242. Jesus alludes to the hypocritical effects of such rituals in Matthew 23:25-26.[/I]
Here, as in Matthew 15:1-9, is direct and incontrovertible refutation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ of the falsification inherent in the Oral Law and its traditions, which the Pharisees and their heirs mendaciously claimed was a secret teaching from Moses.
Jesus contrasts the Law of God as Moses actually gave it with the nullification of that law by adherence to the tradition of the elders, which would soon be committed to writing, forming the Mishnah and the rest of the Talmud and upon which the religion of Judaism would be based.
Yet Christ's admonition was not heeded by the Pharisaic leadership and an entire religion of hypocrisy would subsequently arise, founded upon these "traditions of the elders," and their Talmudic counterfeit of God's word; all performed in the name of God, His Word and of Israel.
Jewish theologians claim that
[FONT="Arial"]"...ancient rabbis taught that the revelation granted to Moses had been delivered in two forms, a smaller revelation in writing and the larger one kept oral. This 'Oral Torah' had been transmitted faithfully by the leaders of each generation to their successors, by Moses to Joshua, and then to the elders, then to the prophets, to the men of the Great Assembly, to the leaders of the Pharisees, and finally to the earliest rabbis. The earliest rabbis saw themselves, as noted, as heirs to the Pharisees."[13][/FONT]
This supposed transmission of the "Oral Torah," the tradition of the elders, from Moses to Joshua, to the prophets, was challenged by Jesus Christ who termed it not Torah, but the commandments of men which nullify the word and doctrine of God, making the tale of the transmission itself a fraud.
It is a lie concocted in hell to claim Moses issued two sets of laws, one written and public, the other an oral tradition that was secret. In all of the Bible there is nothing to support this imposture. This diabolic fantasy is the basis of the religion of Judaism, and it this institutionalized, dogmatic delusion which distinguishes Judaism from the
[I][B]13[/B] Robert Goldenberg, op. cit., p. 130.[/I]
only Bible-based faith -- Christianity -- representing as it does the continuation of the Old Testament religion of Israel as it finds its prophetic fulfillment in the Gospel of the Messiah of Israel.
The spurious claim of an oral tradition of the elders bequeathed by God to Moses, is anti-Biblical and it was denounced by Jesus Christ Himself. In the divine brilliance of Jesus upon which the cunning and cleverness of the Pharisees was turned against them time and again, Jesus very simply and forthrightly illuminated the fact that if the Pharisees' tradition had been from Moses, then the Pharisees would have become Christians:
[FONT="Arial"]"For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5:46-47).[/FONT]
Christ has just annihilated, in one paragraph, the basis for the religion of Judaism and its conceit of a tradition given to it by Moses, for had such a tradition existed it would have testified of Jesus.
Instead, He tells them point-blank that they don't believe Moses. Jesus crushed the whole beguiling system of indoctrination predicated on the Pharisaic myth of a divinely-inspired, oral tradition of the elders.[14]
The French historian Daniel-Rops, in his seminal study of Christ and the early Church, writes:
[FONT="Arial"]"From the Talmudic definition of various ritual observances we can see how well justified were the sarcasms of Jesus; for instance it was forbidden to eat on the Sabbath day an egg of which the greater part had been laid by a hen before a second star was visible in the sky. On the sacred day it was as much a crime to crush a flea as to[/FONT]
[I][B]14[/B] The response of last resort to these facts is to rehabilitate the Pharisees and cast doubt on the New Testament account of Christ's ministry. The establishment now promotes the view that the Pharisees were misunderstood victims of four bigoted evangelists and two mendacious apostles; Judas was a scapegoat and Jesus Himself was confused and His Resurrection merely "symbolic." This is the revised life of Christ as put forth by the "Jesus Seminar" and similar Talmudic front-groups.[/I]
[FONT="Arial"]kill a camel, although Rabbi Abba Saul conceded that one might gently squeeze the flea and Rabbi Zamuel very broadmindedly allowed one to cut off its feet...
"We can also see, in these rabbinical texts, their immeasurable contempt for the common people, the peasants, the [I]am-ha-arez[/I], who did not enjoy the privilege of knowing the Law. And we can understand how the Gospel, sown among these untouchables, yielded such an immediate and mighty harvest."[15][/FONT]
The Pharisaic condemnation of the Israelite peasant class may be found in John 7:48-49: "Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him (Jesus)? No! But only this people that knoweth not the Law and are accursed."
Israelite peasants were "regarded ...as louts sunk in ritual impurity," and the Pharisee leader Hillel viewed them as sub-human: "a churl without a conscience."[16]
According to the article titled "[I]Am-ha-erez[/I]" by S. Bialoblotzki in the [I]Jewish Encyclopedia[/I], the common people of Israel "encountered only the most brutal repulsion" from the Pharisees, but when they became Christians they found "welcome and affection."
Persecution of Christian Israelites by Pharisees of the first century entails not only the crucifixion of Jesus but other murders, the most notorious being the stoning of Stephen, the attempted murder of Paul and, according to Josephus, the judicial murder of James the Just in the absence of the Roman governor.[17]
Judaism is a poisonous counterfeit, a "synagogue of Satan" (Rev. 2:9). To make any connection between a religion
[I][B]15[/B] Daniel-Rops, Jesus and His Times, translated from the French by Ruby Millar [Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1958], pp. 67-68.
[B]16[/B] Ibid., p. 157.
[B]17 [/B] In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, historian Edward Gibbon records little known massacres perpetrated by Jews against Gentiles in the first centuries A.D. in Egypt, Cyprus and Cyrene. See chapters 16 and 78.[/I]
which directly contradicts Jesus Christ's own solemn, admonitory condemnation of man-made traditions, and the religion of the God of Israel, is not only irrational and unscriptural, but an abomination.
If Judaism were simply -- having rejected Christ -- a corrupted variant of the ancient religion of the Israelites, then Judaism would not have, over the centuries, despised, reviled, denounced, persecuted, beaten and murdered the Karaites.
Paul Johnson in his [I]History of the Jews [/I]recounts how, in the 1100s, in the walled Jewish ghetto in Constantinople there was an interior wall that separated the thousands of followers of the religion of Judaism and its Talmud from five hundred anti-Talmudic, Bible-only Karaites.[18]
The Karaites are a tiny Jewish sect which attempts to understand and follow the Old Testament without either the Talmud or Jesus: "...as early as the eighth century of our era the authority of the Talmud was denied in favor of Biblical supremacy by the sect of the Karaites."[19]
Yet the Karaites are hated and severely persecuted by the adherents of Judaism. Why?
Because Judaism is Talmudism, not Old Testament, and those who revere the Old Testament teachings outside the prism of Talmud are its hereditary enemies.
A counterfeit cannot be said to be the heir to a genuine article. Judaism, whether qualified as ancient or not, is totally alien to the only Biblical religion on earth today, Christianity.
The religion of the God of Israel is Christianity. It has no root in the religion of Judaism which is the religion of
[I][B]18[/B] According to Prof. Albert S. Lindemann of the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Karaites are "...an ancient dissident Jewish sect that did not recognize the Talmud. A few thousand of its followers survived in the Caucasus area... the tsarist regime recognized this distinctness and did not apply anti-Jewish legislation to them." Esaus Tears: Modern Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews [NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997], pp. 430-431.
[B]19[/B] Catholic Encyclopedia, op. cit.[/I]
the Talmud.
Judaism is not simply a perversion, to some degree or other, of God's original revelation to the Hebrew nation. It is the very religion of nullification of the Old Testament; a diabolic counterfeit. Now, what fellowship hath darkness with light? None.
When Mr. Jones states, "Christianity ought to look and sound like Judaism except when it explicitly claims to change something," he is, no doubt unconsciously and with good intentions, creating a link in the minds of Christians between those observances practiced by Talmudic rabbis today and the ancient religion of Israel.
This is the fatal flaw in modern Christianity. They pay some obeisance, whether small or great, to the heinous hoax that there is a Biblical root to Judaism.
Can it be said that Christians who convert to Voodoo have a Christian root? Should we sit at the feet of formerly Christian Voodoo practitioners in order to gain insight into the Early Church?
Do the followers of Christ who betray Him to follow strange gods, be they Pan, Zoroaster or Voodoo, offer us some resonance of Christian heritage to which we must pay honor or study?
The answer is a resounding no. These people turned their backs on their solemn vocavo, their calling from God Himself. Heeding them in any way, except as wretched failures to be pitied and prayed for, is a recipe for disaster.
The Israelites who apostatized to follow the new religion of Judaism and its strange gods -- Talmud, Kabbalah and self-worship -- have no more claim on us than any other idol-worshipper.
[B]Strange Qualifications for Biblical Expertise[/B]
[I]Roman Catholic Books of Fort Collins, Colorado[/I] is the publishing arm of a Catholic organization that clings to the old Latin Tridentine Mass and the Pope of Rome (as opposed to the growing corps of Tridentine Catholics who regard the Pope as a public heretic and believe the "See of Peter" is vacant, i.e. sede vacantist).
In the spring of 2000, a four-page catalog of selections from the Roman Catholic Books company appeared as an insert in the flagship papist newspaper, [I]The Wanderer[/I]. One of the items advertised in the catalog was a reprint of [I]The Nazarene[/I], a book by Israel "Eugenio" Zolli, the former chief rabbi of Rome, who converted to Catholicism.[20]
In recommending the volume, [I]Roman Catholic Books [/I]stated:
[FONT="Arial"]"The years Zolli devoted to learning ancient languages and studying the Torah, Talmud, Midrash and other sacred Jewish texts gave him an advantage over Christian scholars. They came to Hebraic literature as outsiders; but Zolli had lived and breathed the words of the prophets and rabbis all his life. For this reason, Zolli's book stands head and shoulders above the innumerable Biblical commentaries."[/FONT]
In this advertisement for Zolli's book we observe the calamitous notion that there is some kernel of Biblical heritage worthy of our approbation and study in Judaism, which has contradicted and rejected Yahweh's teaching and laws.
The predominance of the faulty idea that Judaism is the root of Christianity, is responsible for much of the paralysis and impotence in the Church today.
Prof. Israel Shahak of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Prof. Norton Mezvinsky of Connecticut State University write:
[FONT="Arial"]"The Bible anyway is not the book that primarily determines the practices and doctrines of Orthodox Jews. The most fundamentalist Orthodox Jews are largely ignorant of major parts of the Bible and know some parts only through commentaries that distort[/FONT]
[I][B]20[/B] The story of Rabbi Zolli has been blacked out by the establishment who seek to tar Pius XII with a Nazi stigma. As Chief Rabbi of Rome during WWII, Zolli was able to judge Pius XII's actions under the Nazi occupation first hand. So impressed was this rabbi with the pope's rescue effort on behalf of Italy's Jewish population, that Rabbi Zolli converted to Catholicism in 1945 and changed his name from Israel to Eugenio in honor of the pope (Pius XII was christened Eugenio, his surname was Pacelli). Zolli died in 1956.[/I]
[FONT="Arial"]meaning ... Judaism, as it came to be known, did not exist during the biblical period."[21][/FONT]
Roman Catholic Books does not seem to grasp the fact that no other religion prepares one for the study, and more importantly the true understanding of the Bible than Christianity.
It is one thing to suggest that a lifelong facility with Hebrew is a significant aid to Bible exegesis. One may obtain such facility through diligent language study from an early age, so the advantage is not one of religion but of precocity and pedagogy.
It is quite another matter however, to claim that immersion in the Talmud and Midrash gives a Jewish scholar a theological advantage over Christian scholars who base their study of God's Word solely on the Old and New Testament and the Early Church. To make such a claim is to actually say that being familiar with a huge compendium of the lies and fantasies of men is an advantage over a researcher who has hewed to God's Word, and to the scholarship of those Christian exegetes who expound the Bible in faithful submission to its divine authority.
Like the Talmud, the Midrash upholds the rabbinic fallacy that the Bible is deficient and incomplete; that it requires the intervention of Midrashic traditions concocted between 400 and 1200 A.D. to be understood.
Barry W. Holtz, Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and director of the seminary's Melton Research Center states:
[FONT="Arial"]"The Bible is loath to tell us the motivations, feelings, or thoughts of characters. Rarely giving us descriptive details either of people or places, it is composed in a stark, uncompromising style. Hence, in the laconic style of the Bible, we find one significant cause of the necessity of Midrash.
"Midrash comes to fill the gaps, to tell us the details the Bible teasingly leaves out: what did Isaac think as his father took him to be sacrificed? The Bible doesn't tell us, but Midrash fills it in with[/FONT]
[I][B]21 [/B] Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Fundamentalism in Israel [op. cit.], p. 2.[/I]
[FONT="Arial"]rich and varied descriptions.
"Why did Cain kill Abel? Once again the Bible is silent, but Midrash is filled with explanation. How tall was Adam when he walked in the Garden?
"Look to the midrashic materials, not the Bible for such details...
"Where the Bible is mysterious and silent, Midrash comes to unravel the mystery.
"...the Bible often states matters of law without clarification or detail ... Observant Jews today keep separate dishes for milk and meat, but where is that outlined in the Bible? Nowhere in fact. It was the Midrash of rabbinic Judaism, legal Midrash, that defined the laws."[22][/FONT]
The Catholic publishing company that recommends Zolli's book because the author steeped himself for decades in the impostures and charlantry of rabbinic tradition, can only be ignorant of the actual character and content of the Talmud and the Midrash.
Presbyterian theologian Douglas Jones associates ancient Israel with Judaism, further compounding the oxymoronic myth of a Judeo-Christian tradition. For modern Protestantism to announce that Abraham is the father of Judaism and Christianity is to proclaim him the father of the Pharisees, and their tradition of the elders, contradicting the very heart of what Jesus proclaimed to the Pharisees in the book of John, chapter 8.
According to the [I]Oxford English Dictionary[/I], Christendom existed for 1494 years before this term Judaism was even coined in English, yet modernist Christians assign this name to the ancient Israelite religion of Yahweh.
"Well, okay, so what?" might be the sloppy, slothful modern reply. "It's just a word." But as William N. Grimstad states in his magisterial work, [I]Talk About Hate[/I], "We need to get to the bottom of the fact that ninety percent of what is haywire ... has to do not with water pollution or air pollution but with word pollution."
Indeed, the misuse of words in this digital media/infotainment age has repercussions far beyond the
[I][B]22[/B] Barry W. Holtz, "Midrash," Back to the Sources: Reading the Classic Jewish Texts, (op. cit.), pp. 180-181.[/I]
realm of the academic. Precision is of crucial importance and the failure to select the accurate word or term for a thing can mislead whole nations for generations. The substitution of Judaism for Israelite is perhaps one of the most spectacular examples of this detrimental process in action.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Presbyterian leader Jones had written,
[FONT="Arial"]"Today, we so often think of the Israelites and the Christians as two distinct religions, almost like Buddhism and Islam. But early Christianity never saw itself in that way. The earliest Christians saw themselves as faithful Israelites simply following Yahweh's teachings. In fact, the first main dispute in the Christian church was whether non-Israelites, the Gentiles, could even be a part of Christianity!"[/FONT]
Had Jones written the preceding there would be no argument, because the names Israelite and Yahweh are direct and historically accurate representations of the people, beliefs and deity of the Old Testament creed.
In fact, these accurate descriptive terms were in general use by Christian writers, scholars and theologians for centuries before the dawn of the modern period and the commensurate enormous pressure on the Church to pay homage to counterfeit Israel -- carnal Israel, to use Augustine's term -- a religion of ever-increasing dead ritual and occult superstition from the first century A.D. onward.
According to one of the leading orthodox rabbis and Jewish scholars in America, Jacob Neusner: [FONT="Arial"] "This book introduces the structure and the functioning system of Rabbinic Judaism... the particular religious system set forth by sages, or 'rabbis' who flourished in the first six centuries C.E. This same Judaism is also called 'talmudic' because its main statement is set forth by the Talmud of Babylonia..."[23][/FONT]
Rabbi Neusner refers to a "Rabbinic Judaism." He indicates that it arose in Babylon during the centuries
[I][B]23 [/B] Jacob Neusner, Rabbinic Judaism: Structure and System (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Fortress, 1995), p. vii.[/I]
after Christ was crucified.
Rabbi Neusner further notes that "rabbinic literature took shape during the nascent and formative age of Christianity."
He calls Christianity:
[FONT="Arial"]"...a challenge that had to be met, for Christianity appealed to the same authoritative writings, the Hebrew scriptures of ancient Israel, that this Judaism formulated in its way."[24][/FONT]
Notice the delineation Neusner makes between the ancient Hebrew scriptures and the rabbinic literature. They are quite patently not the same! The former is the ancient root of Christianity. The latter, formulated after Christ's incarnation and crucifixion, is the modern root of Judaism.
[B]A Closer Look at "Rabbinic Literature"[/B]
Let us take a closer look at this formative "rabbinic literature." It is formative because it, and not the Old Testament, is the foundation stone of Judaism.
The tradition of the elders condemned by Christ in Mark 7 and Matthew 15 was an oral gnosis that preserved the thinking behind the idolatry and the apostasy of the Israelites who had worshipped the Golden calf and fed their children to Molech.
It was an undercurrent of corruption ever-threatening to boil upward and become institutionalized into a formal and competing religion, by being committed to writing.
The boiling point of corruption was reached after the Pharisaic Jewish leadership rejected the Messiah.
Having rejected the Biblical Messiah, they were guilty of having perpetrated an enormous, indeed a cosmic crime against God's law, His prophecies and prophets.
As a result of the corrupting effects of this epochal transgression, they began to commit their oral traditions to writing, beginning with the Mishnah.
Rabbi Neusner admits that:
[FONT="Arial"]"The Mishnah certainly is the first document of rabbinic Judaism. Formally, it stands at the center of the system, since the principal subsequent rabbinic documents, the Talmuds, lay themselves out as if[/FONT]
[I][B]24[/B] Ibid., p. viii.[/I]
[FONT="Arial"]they were exegeses of Mishnah..."[25][/FONT]
Not the Book of Genesis, not the Pentateuch, but the Mishnah is the "first document" of Judaism, standing at the "center of the system." How can it be said that Judaism represents the teaching of Moses, when the Bible is not the center of the system? Is this what Moses taught?
It may come as a shock to learn that the rabbis are conscious of their monumental fraud and they privately admit among themselves that their system has no basis in Moses. In a cryptic passage from a book of the Jewish Kabbalah ([I]Tikkunei Zohar [/I]1:27b), buried within a double-entendre, is a reference to the Mishnah actually being "the burial place of Moses." How has our understanding of Judaism been so fundamentally distorted? How has so great a fraud been perpetrated as the claim that Judaism is based on the Bible, when Judaism actually began with the Talmud of Babylon?
Part of the answer may be found in the fact that Judaism began to infiltrate the Roman Catholic Church in earnest and contributed as well to the rise of certain major denominations of Protestantism, thanks to a myth which gained cachet during the Renaissance. The nature of this deliberately-planted disinformation was that the religion of Judaism was the Biblical religion par excellence and that for a Christian intellectual or spiritual seeker to truly know the Old Testament it was necessary to in some degree consult a rabbi.[26]
[I][B]25[/B] Ibid., p. 22.
[B]26 [/B]The occult infiltration of the Church was well under way by the 15th century when the hermetic, Neo-Platonic school of so-called "Christian Kabbalists" Led by Pico della Mirandola, circulated the Kabbalistic theses in Rome, whose central theme was that "No science can better convince us of the divinity of Christ than magic and Kabbalah." Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser claims that "Pope Sixtus IV was so delighted with his (Pico's) work that he urged him to translate Cabbalistic texts into Latin for the use of divinity students" (The Maharal, 1994, p. 11). Pico wars followed in 1517 by Johannes Reuchlin whose De Arte Cabalistica put gematria (a Jewish numerological system), to use in Bible study; by the Franciscan monk Francesco Giorgi's 1525 tribute to the Zohar, De Harmonia mundi and Cornelius Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia of 1531; all these culminated in the 1564 occult masterwork, Monas hieroglyphica by the reigning figure of Protestant occultism, the mathematician Dr. John "007" Dee, astrologer royal to Queen Elizabeth I and the founder of Freemasonry.[/I]
In modern times, the hysteria whipped up around the concepts of "anti-semitism" and "The Holocaust," caused frightened and guilt-laden Gentiles and Christians to halt almost all critical inquiry into the thesis that Judaism is synonymous with the Old Testament.
To view the thesis with skepticism became another thought-crime, another exercise in heinous "anti-semitism" that would of course, inevitably lead to another "Holocaust."
By this impressively effective intimidation device, the hoax that Judaism was the Biblical religion, was validated and given near-universal cachet.
But scared rabbits do not make for good scholars or good Christians, as William Scott Green of the University of Rochester, a contributor to Rabbi Neusner's [I]Rabbinic Judaism [/I]book, makes plain:
[FONT="Arial"]"It is commonplace to classify Rabbinic Judaism as a... religion in which practice and belief derive from the study and interpretation of Scripture ... The... model depicts Rabbinic Judaism as an ... exegetical development out of Scripture itself... The model makes reading and interpreting the Bible the quintessential rabbinic activities...
"Rabbinic Judaism emerges as Bible-centered -- the Bible read, the Bible studied, the Bible interpreted, the Bible 'put into practice'... Indeed the picture of... rabbis as Bible readers expounding their religion out of Scripture has a powerful intuitive plausibility in a culture in which religion is conceived largely in Protestant terms..."
But, the "model ... blocks our perception of the particularities of rabbinic culture ... the rabbis' interest in Scripture was hardly comprehensive, and vast segments of it, including much of prophecy and the Deuteronomic history, escaped their interpretation...
"Scripture neither determined the agenda nor provided the ubiquitous focus of rabbinic literary activity and[/FONT][FONT="Arial"] imagination ... substantial portions of rabbinic teaching -- for example, on matters as basic and important as Sabbath observance -- have scant Scriptural support.
"(The) complex of rabbinically ordained practices ... including most of the rules for the treatment of Scripture itself -- do not derive from Scripture at all. Rabbinism's initial concern was the elaboration and refinement of its own system. Attaching the system to Scripture was secondary. It therefore is misleading to depict Rabbinic Judaism primarily as the consequence of an exegetical process or the organic unfolding of Scripture. Rather, rabbinism began as the work of a small, ambitious, and homogenous group of pseudo-priests... "By the third century, (A.D.) the rabbis expressed their self-conception in the ideology of 'oral Torah,' which held that a comprehensive body of teachings and practices (halakot) not included in Scripture had been given by God and through Moses only to the rabbinic establishment."[27][/FONT]
Green gives the origin of Judaism as 70 A.D. (although he substitutes for the word Judaism the word rabbinism):
[FONT="Arial"]"...it helps to remember that rabbinism's initial catalyst was neither the canonization of the Hebrew Bible nor readerly research of Scripture but the demise of the Second Temple ..."[28][/FONT]
Judaism is the product of a "small, ambitious, and homogenous group of pseudo-priests..." The Talmud, beginning with the Mishnah, is the chief Scripture of the religion of Judaism. The great, Pharisaic "sages of blessed memory" decree this themselves in the Talmud.
From the Talmud, [I]Shabbat[/I] 15c and [I]Baba Metzia [/I]33A, comes the three propositions of the revered, Gentile-hating Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, one of the most honored of all Jewish "sages" whose supposed burial site in the Israeli state is the scene of a huge, annual mass pilgrimage. Yohai wrote:
[FONT="Arial"]A. "He who occupies himself with Scripture gains merit that is no merit.[/FONT]
[I][B]27 [/B]Rabbinic Judaism by Jacob Neusner with a contribution by William Scott Green, pp. 31-34, (op. cit.).
[B]28 [/B] Ibid., p. 33.[/I]
[FONT="Arial"]B. "He who occupies himself with Mishnah gains merit for which people receive a reward.
C. "He who occupies himself with Talmud -- there is no source of merit greater than this."[/FONT]
What part of the preceding unimpeachable statement from the supreme holy book of Judaism do Gentiles and Christians not understand?
Old Testament study is denigrated in Judaism unless it is viewed through the distorting prism of Talmud. This is what Jesus Christ stated in Mark chapter 7 about the oral tradition of the elders that became the Talmud when it was written down, it makes the Bible of "none effect."
Judaism is the religion of the tradition of the elders and the nullification of the Old Testament, exactly as Jesus Christ stated, yet his bold words of truth are so politically incorrect in our current Jewish age that, "for fear of the Jews," every somersault must be turned by those who claim to be His followers today, in order to blot out Christ's own words of warning, and conform instead to the iron dogma that the adherents of Judaism are the "People of the Book."
Indeed they are, but that book is not the Old Testament Scriptures, it is the Babylonian Talmud.[/SIZE][/FONT]
2005-10-19 00:33 | User Profile
[FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][QUOTE]a researcher who has hewed to God's Word[/QUOTE]
HEWN [/SIZE][/FONT]
2005-10-19 13:08 | User Profile
[I]Another excerpt:[/I]
[url]http://www.talkaboutabook.com/group/rec.arts.books/messages/455575.html[/url]
[FONT="Times New Roman"][SIZE="5"]Michael A. Hoffman II - [I]Judaism's Strange Gods[/I], pp 112-116[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"] [B]Papal Treason Symbolizes General Apostasy[/B]
Journalist Robert K. Dahl says that Pope John Paul II's acquiescence to Judaism "has the appearance of treason, regardless of intent."[194] Indeed, in 1999, when John Paul II made the unprecedented decree that "the seeds infected with anti-Judaism" must "never again take root..." he was forbidding opposition to the religion of the Pharisees and proscribing the basis of the mission of Jesus Christ.[195]
Given the vast repository of documents, manuscripts, learned treatises and privileged correspondence pertaining to Judaism dating almost to the foundation of Christendom which are on deposit in the Vatican archives,[196] John Paul II cannot be speaking from ignorance when he claims, as he did in the synagogue of Rome, April 13, 1986 that "Jews are our elder brothers in the faith."[197]
Since adherents of the religion of Judaism do not have faith in either Jesus or the Old Testament law and prophets, but in the Talmudic and Kabbalistic traditions, exactly what faith is it that John Paul II shares with these "elder brothers" of his?
When this pope claimed that opposition to the religion of Judaism was opposition to the Old Testament, that the religion of Judaism is "a response to God's revelation in the Old Covenant" and that the "Eucharistic prayers" of Christian worship are "according to the models of Jewish
[I][B]194[/B] The Remnant, [St. Paul, MN.], April 15, 1998. [B]195[/B] Statement of Pope John Paul II in his "General Audience" at Rome, April 28, 1999, as reported in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, May 5, 1999. [B]196[/B] On Feb. 27, 1994 a bomb was placed in the Maronite Catholic, Notre-Dame de La Delivrance Church, in Junieh, Lebanon, killing ten Catholics and wounding 60 others. The Vatican is aware of the fact that Lebanese Prime Minister Ralik al-Hariri and Interior Minister Michel Samaha indicated the massacre was engineered by Israeli intelligence. Cf. NY Post, Feb. 28, 1994. [B]197[/B] L'Osservatore Romano, English ed., April 21, 1986, p. 6.[/I]
tradition," he was either babbling dementia or falling far short of the truth.[198]
When, on Good Friday, 1998, the Pope turned the Christian Gospel upside down and proclaimed that "Jews have been crucified by us for so long," it was one of the most atrocious examples of modern Catholicism's slavishly Judaic orientation.
John Paul II is pretending that Judaism is the Old Testament faith minus Christ. But even if that false proposition were true, the Pharisaic leadership would still be guilty of deicide, as Thomas Aquinas held:[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial"]"The rulers of the Jews knew that He was the Messiah: and if there was any ignorance in them it was affected ignorance, which could not excuse them. Therefore their sin was the most grievous, both on account of the kind of sin as well as from the malice of their will."[199][/FONT]
[FONT="Times New Roman"]Moreover, the Bible itself declares unambiguously the guilt of the Jewish leadership and the fact that those who adhere to the dogma of these assassins are under wrath:[/FONT]
[FONT="Arial"]"For ye brethren became followers of the churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye also have suffered like things of your own countrymen, even as they have of the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own prophets and have persecuted us; and they please not God and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins always: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost." (I Thessalonians 2:14-16).[/FONT]
[FONT="Times New Roman"]No pope, preacher, president, prime minister, or professor has one scintilla of authority or competence to overthrow the preceding words. The whole world may be arrayed against the word of God but its force and validity endures.
The recent movement within the Church to declare opposition to Judaism an accursed form of "anti-semitic racism" is, in its inspiration and praxis, thoroughly
[I][B]198[/B] "Jews and Christians Share Much Together," L'Osservatore Romano, English ed., May 5, 1999. [B]199[/B] Summa Theologica, Q. 47, Art. 6 Pt. III.[/I]
Talmudic, for it either extinguishes the New Testament's teachings or distorts them to such a degree that they are effectively made "of none effect."
This movement must also ignore or negate 2,000 years of historic Christian exposition of these teachings.
The extra-Biblical and anti-Christian nature of this fifth column within the Church is patent. It derives its credibility almost entirely from the blind allegiance it commands from Christians duped by usurpers and traitors occupying high ecclesiastical office, and by the tremendous glamor which the media accord it.
Since the great criterion of Jesus Christ for assessing the diabolic or the divine was "by their fruits ye shall know them," we discern that the fruits of today's Protestant and Catholic leaders are mostly rotten in this regard. As such, their actions reveal that they are neither "vicars of Christ," nor His ministers or saints. They are in fact agents of Judaism in all but name.
Therefore, the various anathemas these impostors and apostates thunder against Christians, whose only crime is to believe as all the apostles, martyrs and saints of the Church always did, has about the same moral authority as a pronouncement from the Secretary General of the U.N. or the Master of the Masonic Lodge.[200]
The hidden hand of Talmud and Kabbalah is revealed wherever the Jewish people are made the objects of veneration and sanctity. Jewish supremacy was opposed from the earliest days of the Church. John Chrysostom wrote: "Jesus said to them, 'If you are children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham, but as it is, you are seeking to kill me.' Here he repeatedly returned to their murderous design and reminded them of Abraham. He did this because He wanted to detach them from their racial pride and to deflate their excessive conceit, and to persuade them to no longer place their hope of salvation in Abraham or nobility
[I][B]200[/B] Given that the occupation of even the highest of church offices is no longer a guarantor of fidelity to Jesus Christ, the question of who holds true Christian authority is one of the thorniest questions facing Christians today.[/I]
of race, for this was the thing that prevented them from coming to Christ; namely that they taught that the fact of their descent from Abraham sufficed for their salvation."[201]
By his radical departure from Biblical teaching and Christian practice, John Paul II and hundreds of thousands of Catholic and Protestant leaders who share his "elder brothers in the faith" falsehood, reveals himself as an accomplice of anti-Christ, by Scriptural definition: "Such a man is the anti-Christ who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father" (I John 2:23).
Christ testified that "no man cometh unto the Father except by me." Yet men have grown "dull of hearing" (Hebrews 5:11) and to the great drama of Christian salvation prefer instead a bland accommodation with the spirit of the modern age, which holds that a civilization based on the Father can be created by those who have made a religion out of denouncing and rejecting His Son.
This delusion, which would be laughable were its consequences not so tragic, has led to the rise of legions of "Judeo-Christians," who equate Judaism's strange gods with authentic Old Testament Israel and who go so far as to claim that it is necessary for Christians to embrace Judaism in order to be justified before God.
They look to a religion based on a Pharisaic sect comprised of the irreconcilable enemies of Christ for clues on how to become a better follower of Christ!
Worse, they intimate that Jesus is a liar. Jesus directly condemns the "tradition of the elders" and its "commandments of men," which are the oral basis of the idolized books, Talmud and Kabbalah. (Matthew 15:1-9, Mark 7:1-13).
Jesus puts paid to the lie that the Pharisees had any oral teaching from Moses. He tells them that if Moses were really their teacher they would follow Him (Jesus), not their tradition (John 5:46-47).
The brazen betrayal and hypocrisy of Judeo-Christians
[I][B]201[/B] The Fathers of the Church: St. John Chrysostom [New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1960), p. 70.[/I]
in the face of clear Gospel teaching on this subject, bids battle and defiance unto Heaven itself.
The glorified modern popes, preachers, politicians and rabbis often succeed for a time in deceiving the multitude, and in gathering a large and noisy following in this world, but their deeds also follow them and proclaim their evil, long after the paeans of media praise have wafted away on the sands of time. God is not mocked[/FONT].[/SIZE]
2005-10-19 13:12 | User Profile
Not happy to say it but Hoffman's book is a second rate ripoff of Israel Shahak's classic, [I]Jewish History, Jewish Religion[/I].
2005-10-19 13:20 | User Profile
[I]And more:[/I]
[url]http://www.talkaboutabook.com/group/rec.arts.books/messages/455541.html[/url]
[FONT="Times New Roman"][SIZE="5"]Michael A. Hoffman II - [I]Judaismââ¬â¢s Strange Gods[/I], pp 110-111[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"]Today the heirs of the Pharisees are discerned not by racial or ethnic criteria but by a supremacist ideology. Judaism is a cabal of thought, not a cabal of race.
The famous statement in the book of Matthew about Christ's blood being on the children of the Jews has long since expired, for where today is there a racially pure "Jew" descended from the people of that era?
But for a minuscule remnant, contemporary "Jews" are mostly [I]mamzerim[/I], of mixed race. A large segment of so-called Israeli "Jews" today are North African Sephardic people who are genetically indistinguishable from their Arab neighbors, while the overwhelming majority of "Jews" in America are actually descendants of converts from the Khazar tribe of Eastern Europe:
[FONT="Arial"]"After considering the strong evidence for cultural, linguistic and ethnic ties ... one can only come to one conclusion: that the Eastern European Jews are descended from both the Khazars and other converts, as well as from Judeans ... Ashkenazic Jews have the right, as well as the obligation, to rediscover and reclaim our unique, mixed heritage. Many of us are, indeed, heirs to the great Khazar Empire that once ruled the Russian steppes." [Kevin Alan Brook, [I]The Jews of Khazaria[/I], pp. 305-306][/FONT]
The extent to which the mixed racial character of the people who call themselves Jews has been acknowledged, beneath Judaism's covert charade, by the rabbis themselves, is instructive. One manifestation of this awareness centers on the heavily shrouded inner teaching that the adherents of Judaism are racially descendants of Cain. The secret teaching of one school of the Kabbalah centers on the instruction of Rabbi Isaac Luria who emphasized the high status of Cain. Rabbi Luria taught that the spirit of Cain would increasingly prevail in the world as the realization of the process of [I]tikkun olam[/I] is achieved:
[FONT="Arial"]"... therefore, many of the great figures of Jewish history are represented as stemming from the root of Cain, and as the messianic time approaches, according to Isaac Luria, the number of such souls will increase." [/FONT]
This is particularly perverse in light of the fact that Jewish lore holds that Cain is the literal descendant of Satan, conceived during sexual intercourse between Eve and the serpent. [[I]Yevamot[/I] 103b]
In spite of Rabbi Luria's diabolic fantasy, as Brook and other scholars have demonstrated, the overwhelming majority of people identified as Jewish have descent neither from Cain nor David.
They carry no racial taint or racial stigma. Whether they come under God's wrath or His blessing is decided by the choices they make as human beings possessed of the free will to choose good or evil.
To structure one's life according to the precepts of the Talmud and Kabbalah or its secular variants, Zionism and Communism, to adhere to the man-made traditions, pride and self-worship of Judaism, dooms the adherent to the enmity of God. Like all mankind, Jewish people can choose Christ or anti-Christ, truth or lies, freedom or bondage.
Anyone who sincerely wishes to be a true friend to an adherent of Judaism, will do as Jesus did: expose the Pharisaic system and expound the Gospel.
Only the enemies of the Jewish people, posing as friends in order to gain favor in the eyes of the world, would encourage people to remain in bondage to the rabbinic system that traps them as surely as it once trapped Paul.[/SIZE][/FONT]
2005-10-19 13:25 | User Profile
I absolutely disagree, Bardamu. I think your reading comprehension, well, [I]sucks[/I] on this. Hoffman goes a whole lot deeper on many issues that secular humanist Shahak overlooks, especially on spiritual issues.
Hoffman himself wrote that while Shahak did a great job on his own book, his footnotes were pretty scarce, while he himself had done a greater sourcework.
Petr
2005-10-19 13:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Bardamu]Not happy to say it but Hoffman's book is a second rate ripoff of Israel Shahak's classic, [I]Jewish History, Jewish Religion[/I].[/QUOTE]
I absolutely disagree, Bardamu. I think your reading comprehension, well, [I]sucks[/I] on this. Hoffman goes a whole lot deeper on many issues that secular humanist Shahak overlooked, especially on spiritual issues.
Hoffman himself wrote that while Shahak did a great job with his own book, his footnotes were pretty scarce, while he himself has done a greater sourcework.
Petr
2005-10-19 13:40 | User Profile
[I]And more stuff - here are good examples of issues that Shahak hardly even touched:[/I]
[url]http://www.talkaboutabook.com/group/rec.arts.books/messages/455517.html[/url]
[FONT="Times New Roman"][SIZE="5"]Michael A. Hoffman II - [I]Judaism's Strange Gods[/I], pp 94-102[/SIZE]
[SIZE="3"] [B]Gematria[/B]
The primary process for Kabbalistic exegesis of the Bible is known as gematria, a Babylonian system of cryptography involving the use of letters to signify numbers. The first recorded use of gematria occurs in an inscription of Sargon II (727-707 B.C.).
Gematria is a form of numerology whereby the Hebrew "aleph-bet" (alphabet) is assigned numerical value. There are a multitude of various permutations and systems for arriving at the correct letter/word correspondence. One authority describes this complex esoteric Judaica thus:
[FONT="Arial"]"In the gematria [I]ketanah[/I], the value of each letter is its value in the primary gematria with any final zeros removed. Then there is classical gematria involving writing out the name of each letter and calculating the total from that. To the total of a word it is permissible to add a one, known as the [I]kollel[/I]. Three transformations also are used: the [I]Atbash[/I], in which the first and last letters, the second and second to last, and so on, are exchanged; the [I]Albam[/I], which divides the aleph-bet into two parts of which the letters are exchanged; and the [I]Ayak-Bachar[/I], which is performed by dividing the letters into groups so that the letters of each have the same gematria [I]ketanah[/I]."[/FONT]
Kabbalists regard the Bible as unintelligible without the mediation of complicated rabbinic rigmarole:
[FONT="Arial"]"...the sacred books, of which the keys are all kabbalistic from Genesis to the Apocalypse, have become so little intelligible to Christians, that prudent pastors have judged it necessary to forbid them being read by the uninstructed among believers. Taken literally and understood materially, such books could be only an inconceivable tissue of absurdities and scandals...
"The ten [I]Sephiroth[/I] and the twenty-two Tarots form what the Kabbalists term the thirty-two paths of absolute science... The rabbins also divided the Kabbalah into [I]Bereshith[/I], or universal Genesis, and [I]Mercavah[/I], or the Chariot of Ezekiel; then by means of a dual interpretation of the kabbalistic alphabets, they formed two sciences, called Gematria and [I]Temurah[/I], and so composed the Notary Art, which is fundamentally the complete science of the Tarot signs and their complex and varied application to the divination of all secrets..."[160][/FONT]
The divinations being described in the preceding passage represent the stew of Babylonian superstition which the God of the Bible repeatedly excoriated and execrated. Yet it is this paganism which forms the central mystical system of the religion of Judaism for supposed "profound Biblical understanding."
Lest we imagine that the Kabbalah only has appeal to adherents of the religion of Judaism and occultists New Age or otherwise, we should recall the enthusiasm with which "Christians" greeted the 1997 publication of Michael Drosnin's [I]The Bible Code[/I]. According to Drosnin's bestseller, the first five books of the Bible are written in a code which has been deciphered by rabbis who have discovered various prophecies of historical events and scientific discoveries hidden in the Pentateuch.
Here again is the fruit of the notion that only those using exegetical tools based upon the traditions of the elders of Judaism can plumb the Bible to its most profound depths.
Bible scholar James B. Jordan terms Drosnin's modern spin on the same old Babylonian superstition, "just another form of Qabbalism, this time with computers." Researcher David E. Thomas demolished the ridiculous and deceptive
[I] [B]160[/B] Eliphas Levi (a.k.a. Alphonse Louis Constant), Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie (1855-1856); trans. by Arthur E. Waite as Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual, [Great Britain: Tiger Books International, 1995], pp. 129 & 328.[/I]
claims in Drosnin's kabbalistic code.[161]
The idea that the Bible cannot be understood without the mediation of the rabbis of Judaism --without Talmudic explication, or in the case of Kabbalism, without the intervention of gematric numerology -- makes the Old and in some cases even the New Testament captive to the "traditions of the elders."
The pernicious fallacy of the religion of Judaism, that one can't truly know the Bible without commentary and interpretation from Talmudic and Kabbalistic rabbis and their traditions, is growing among "Christians," commensurate with the growing prestige of Judaism within Christendom. The acceptance of this deadly error effectively enables the enemies of the Bible to keep the teachings of Jesus from the common people to whom He had originally preached.
Instead, the rabbis, through their frontmen in the Church, mold and redirect "Christian" dogma based on interpretations of the Bible by the Pharisees of antiquity, further "clarified" by modern rabbinic pronouncements as filtered through the latest university theology seminars and trendy Church synods and councils acting as their mouthpieces.
This process is also abetted by supposed former adherents of Judaism who allegedly convert to Christianity and yet bring their Talmudic and Kabbalistic baggage with them into the Church, and attempt to baptize these traditions of theirs ("Messianic-Judaism") and present them to Christians as the "true" Christianity "practiced by Jesus" and withheld from the people as part of a conspiracy by
[I] [B] 161 [/B] David E. Thomas, "Hidden Messages and the Bible Code," Skeptical Inquirer, Nov./Dec. 1997, pp. 30-36. Christians are often gulled into this numerology partly from the desire to prove the validity of the Bible "scientifically." But fraud, whether in science or hermeneutics is never justified, and in the case of Kabbalistic gematria, casts the Biblical texts into even worse repute, as Thomas' investigative article demonstrates. To prove a truth with faulty methodology only compounds error.[/I]
wicked anti-semites and medieval inquisitors.[162]
During the Renaissance, crypto-Judaism formed the centerpiece of the occult belt of transmission which gave rise to Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism, the founders of which professed a "Christian Kabbalah" and performed their magic rites in the name of Jesus Christ.[163]
There is a substantial literature on this occult amalgam, including Frances A. Yates' classic studies, [I]The Rosicrucian Enlightenment[/I] (1972) and [I]The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age[/I] (1979).
The great appeal of the Kabbalah to nascent Freemasons and Roscicrucians was Judaism's doctrine, as expressed by Scottish Rite Freemason Albert Pike in his [I]Morals and Dogma[/I], of the "perfection" of the universe through the intervention of human brain power.
By this concept, God's creation is imperfect and the "Jew" and the Jew's assistant, the Freemason (an incomplete "Jew" as symbolized by the masonic square and compass, which is an incomplete hexagram, i.e. "Star of David"), will perfect this flawed creation.
This is expressed in the Talmud and Kabbalah. In the Talmud it appears in [I]Sanhedrin[/I] 65b:
[FONT="Arial"]"Rabbi Hanina and Rabbi Oshaia spent every Sabbath eve in studying the 'Book of Creation' by means of which they created a third-grown calf and ate it."[/FONT]
[I] [B]162[/B] These "converts" continue to engage in self-worship based on their supposed status as hereditary Israelites. They mock "replacement theology," claiming Christians will never replace the Jews as God's Chosen people. However, in this sense, no "replacement" occurred. It cannot be said that the good fig tree replaced the evil fig tree (Mat. 21:19), because the good fig tree had been there from the beginning. Christian Israel was comprised of Israelites, including Judeans ("Jews") who accepted Jesus; as well as converts from other nations who were grafted in; even as the evil fig tree of Judaism has had many converts. [B]163[/B] Occultists regard the Council of Trent (1545-1563), as a setback for their hopes for a Hermetic-Kabbalistic beachhead within the Roman Catholicism of that era; cf. Gnosis Magazine, Summer, 1990, p. 42.[/I]
The reference to the "Book of Creation" in [I]Sanhedrin[/I] 65b, is to the Kabbalistic book of magic, the [I]Sefer Yetzirah[/I], which we discussed earlier.[164] The [I]Sefer Yetzirah [/I]text is Judaism's pivotal thaumaturgic handbook for man playing God.
The notes to the Talmud passage [I]Sanhedrin[/I] 65b in the Soncino edition state that the rabbis' magical act of creating the calf
[FONT="Arial"]"does not come under the ban of witchcraft (because) the Creation was accomplished by means of the power inherent in... mystic combinations of the Divine Name."[165][/FONT]
While this Talmudic reference to the rabbinic creation of life is obscure, another rabbinic act of creation using Kabbalistic combinations of the letters of the "Divine Name" is better known, if not notorious. This is the [I]golem[/I], dead matter supposed to have been brought to life as a Gentile-killing avenger. Kabbalistic legend has this occurring in the Bohemian capital city of Prague circa 1586, through the power of Rabbi Judah Loew, by means of a Kabbalistic amulet he fashioned containing magical letters.
This folklore, which has been invested with great significance by occultists within and without Judaism, is the original Frankenstein concept, which no longer seems so outlandish at the dawn of the 21st century with its animal and human cloning, its mixture of animal, human and insect genes and the subsequent growth of monstrous, hybrid creatures for the maximization of profit and under the pretext of finding "wonder cures" for various human ailments.
The rise of a city of death obsessed with autopsies, cadavers, fetal tissue and other dead matter, and with man playing God, was foretold in the writings of the Elizabethan mathematician, espionage agent, astrologer royal and founder of Freemasonry, Dr. John Dee.
Dee was a dedicated Kabbalist. He resided for several years in Prague at the height of Rabbi Judah Loew's
[I] [B]164[/B] See footnote 9 in the Soncino edition of Talmud Sanhedrin 65b [op. cit.]. [B]165[/B] Ibid.[/I]
supposed golem rites and collaborated with him on behalf of his own masonic research, and in his capacity as agent of the espionage network headed by Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir William Cecil, the latter Queen Elizabeth I's minister of state.[166]
On June 27, 1589, while at Bremen, Germany, Dee was visited by Dr. Henricus Khunrath of Hamburg. Dee was a major influence on Khunrath's extraordinary symbolic occult work, "The Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom," an engraving with myriad cryptic occult symbols embedded within it.
[FONT="Arial"]"The engraving is a visual expression of the kind of outlook which Dee summed up in his [I]Monas hieroglyphica[/I], a combination of Cabalist, alchemical and mathematical disciplines through which the adept could achieve ... a profound insight into nature...
"It could also serve as a visual expression of the leading themes of the Rosicrucian manifestos, Magia, Cabala,[167] and Alchymia united in an intensely religious outlook which included a religious approach to all the sciences of number."[168][/FONT]
Dee is the first scientist in western history who can be definitively linked to a Satanic praxis based on the Kabbalah.
Kabbalistic philosophy was transmitted by Rabbi Judah Loew to Dee and from Dee to avant-garde scientists, mathematicians and theologians through a secret society, the Rosicrucians, which in the early 17th century mixed
[I] [B]166[/B] Frances A. Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age [London: Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1979] p. 87. [B]167[/B] "Cabala," the Italian rendering of the word Kabbalah, is sometimes used even by Jews. The Latinized spelling derives from the works of the Italian humanists, beginning with Pico della Mirandola. From cabala comes the English word for conspiracy, cabal. In Spanish, cabala signifies a card trick. [B]168[/B] Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment [Great Britain: Ark Paperbacks, 1986], pp. 38-39.[/I]
Protestant terminology with praise for the Kabbalah.
The Rosicrucian fraternity was under the protection and patronage of certain powerful aristocrats and rulers, including the Elector Palatine, Frederick V, King of Bohemia, who was the head of the Protestant Union.
This Bohemian Protestantism
[FONT="Arial"]"...was an expression of a religious movement which had been gathering force for many years, fostered by secret influences moving in Europe, a movement toward solving religious problems along mystical lines suggested by Hermetic and Cabalistic influences."[169][/FONT]
The Rosicrucian appeal in this vein was two-fold. It was crafted to persuade devoutly evangelical Protestants of the divinity of Judaism as manifested in the Kabbalah, and to convince scientists and intellectuals of the Kabbalah's potential as a key to the godhood of man and the "perfection" of divine creation by the intervention of human brain power.[170]
For example, the Rosicrucian manifesto of 1614, [I]The Fama[/I], links the Kabbalah with men "imbued with great wisdom," who "renew and reduce all arts to perfection so that man might thereby understand his own nobleness and how far his knowledge extendeth into Nature."
The manifesto relates that of "Magia and Cabala" the master of the Rosicrucians "makes good use."[171]
[I] [B] 169[/B] Ibid., p. 40. [B] 170[/B] "Protestants" and "scientists" in this context is not intended to suggest a modern dichotomy of religionists vs. atheists. In 17th century Europe most scientists were Christians. The infiltration of the Kabbalah was conducted under the auspices of intense piety and aspiration towards God, combined with a complex magical-scientific striving, a legacy of a Renaissance conception of the sciences in terms of "Magia," "Alchymia" and Kabbalah. In the 18th century, after the Kabbalah gained a firm purchase among the intelligentsia, its vehicle would be the insipid ecumenical monotheism and nominal Protestantism of Freemasonry. [B]171[/B] Yates, op. cit., pp. 238-240.[/I]
Dr. Dee's role in this context was pivotal:
[FONT="Arial"]"The ... Rosicrucian manifesto, The Confessio of 1615, has published with it a tract in Latin called 'A Brief Consideration of a More Secret Philosophy.'
"This 'Brief Consideration' is based on John Dee's [I]Monas hieroglyphica[/I], much of it being word for word quotation from the Monas. Thus it becomes evident that the 'more secret philosophy' behind the manifestos was the philosophy of John Dee ... the Rosicrucian movement in Germany was the delayed result of Dee's mission in Bohemia 20 years earlier..."[172][/FONT]
And what was this secret philosophy?
It was the unmistakable rabbinic doctrine, expressed in the Kabbalistic texts as [I]tikkun olam /I whereby Jewish (or Judaized) man assumes God-like powers to "correct" an "imperfect" and "flawed" Creation.[173]
Here too is the central contradiction in this doctrine, for it nearly always advertises itself to its Novus Ordo and Judeo-Christian percipients as a means for achieving healing, harmony, tranquility, balance and bliss.
Yet when the magical doctrines of Kabbalism came to ideological dominance in the 18th century, producing the so-called "Age of Enlightenment," they produced not the path to renewal of the earth and a return to Eden, but the imposition and reign of "the Satanic mills" of the industrial revolution and a foreshadowing of the subjugation of humanity by an esoteric elite by means of machine
[I] [B]172[/B] Ibid., pp. 39-40.
[B]173[/B] The groundwork for the "repair" is rooted in government micro-management of our lives, along Talmudic lines of hair-splitting minutiae (cf. Gittin 4). Such unyielding bureaucracy paves the way for the apparatus of total control. Kabbalistic mysticism emerges as the antidote to control, in this dialectical process; cf. Rabbi Yitzchak Nissenbaum, Derushim ve-Homer li Derush, Kinyanei Kedem, b-Reishit; Rabbi Yitzhak ha-Kohen Kook, Orot hakodesh [Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook, 1985].[/I]
surveillance and control.[174]
The dialectical process engendered by immersion in the Judaic ideology of redemption of the world produced a catacylsmic reversal, a "profound irony" missed by most of the historians of modern science. The supposed Kabbalistic philosophy of "harmony" espoused by Judaized, Gentile Renaissance occultists such as Pico, Reuchlin, Giorgio and Dee, led to the imposition of the tyranny of rationalism and materialism, in what Frances Yates terms a momentous shift from magic to mechanism:
[FONT="Arial"]"It is one of the more profound ironies of the history of thought that the growth of mechanical science, through which arose the idea of mechanism as a possible philosophy of nature, was itself an outcome of the Renaissance magical tradition. Mechanism divested of magic became the philosophy which was to oust Renaissance animism and to replace the 'conjuror' by the mechanical philosopher.[175][/FONT]
In other words, once the principle of the religion of Judaism as expressed in the Kabbalah, of man's prideful, god-like power and his lofty "right" to tamper with Divine Creation, was established, and scientism began to emerge as a system of thinking and action unfettered by traditional restraints and fear of God, the mystical aspects of the philosophy were discarded, leaving Satanic pride to wed itself to technological prowess.
[I] [B]174 [/B] "And was Jerusalem budded here, among those dark Satanic mills?" (William Blake, Jerusalem, 1810). The vulnerability of people to management, surveillance and control was exploited in the industrial age by political economist Jeremy Bentham whose Panopticon ("all-seeing") penal architecture has become a dominant metaphor among surveillance cognoscenti today. [B]175 [/B] Yates, op. cit., p. 113. The pre-eminent "mechanical philosopher" symbolizing this shift was René Descartes, a product of the Jesuit college of La Fleche[/SIZE].[/I][/FONT]
2005-10-19 15:33 | User Profile
[quote=Bardamu]Not happy to say it but Hoffman's book is a second rate ripoff of Israel Shahak's classic, [I]Jewish History, Jewish Religion[/I]. I also disagree, Bardamu. I own both books, and while both address some of the same issues, they are very different. Shahak's book is that of a Jew looking honestly at the history of his people, and recognizing that some of the nasty parts are due to Jewish flaws, not the flaws of their hosts. While an informative book, it is still written from a totally secular, liberal perspective. His main problem with the Jews is merely their hypocrisy in not maintaining their stated values of egalitarianism and democracy. Hoffman's book is an examination of Jewish history from a Christian perspective, with an emphasis on showing that Judaism is not the continuation of the Old Testament religion.
2005-10-20 00:14 | User Profile
I will defer to you two on this as I'm not a scholar, but that is certainly the thought I had after reading the two books. Maybe I will go and reread both of them to defend my point of view. It would be a good exercise. And now I have the time, unfortunately.