|
You will never understand history -- especially those aspects
of history which are used to make Christianity -- above all, the
Catholic Church or Catholic confessional states -- appear
"anti-semitic," unless you come to understand Judaism and the concept
of the Kingship of Christ. It is as simple as that. And without
understanding history, you will understand neither the present -- its
confusion, its decadence, our powerlessness -- nor the future.
Now, to speak of the things I am going to write about is to be labelled
an "anti-semite." I fully expect to be so labelled, and there is no way
around the slurs until Jewish leadership examines its "collective
conscience" (as it were), rejects both Talmudism and revolutionary
politics (whatever flavors they come in, including the push for One
World
Government), and comes to know Christ as Messiah Whose coming was
foretold by the Prophets. I am no longer concerned with that
"ant-semite" label per se except insofar as it would damage my
"apostolate," but I most certainly want to cause no harm to the Hebrew
people, especially those who are "innocent but ignorant," led to their
beliefs by their more conscious leadership and their sense of
solidarity with their ethnic brothers. My options, however, are to be
bullied into silence out of "fear of the Jews," or to simply follow
Christ and speak what is so in charity. I choose the latter,
and the sooner other Christians choose the same, the better off
Christendom will be.
"Anti-semite" (or "self-hating Jew") is a label used to slur anyone who
disagrees with Zionism, who speaks the Truth about the post-Temple
Jewish religion
and aspects of history that Jewish leadership would rather you not know
about, or who dares to offer social criticism of the Jewish community
in any way. As soon as one is labelled an "anti-semite," he is out of
the game, a bigot, a Nazi, a fascist, a hater, a nutter. His ideas can
be written off, he will never hold political office or be taken
seriously again by "decent people." That slur, though, is usually
hurled by one who, ironically, is the true hater and bigot (not that
there are not true racially-motivated anti-semites out there in the
world, to be sure). Writer Joe Sobran sums it up by saying:
"An
'anti-semite' in actual usage, is less often a man who hates Jews than
a man certain Jews hate. The word expresses the emotional explosion
that occurs in people who simply can't bear critical discourse about a
sacred topic, and who experience criticism as profanation and
blasphemy. The term 'anti-semitism' doesn't stand for any intelligible
concept. It belongs not to the world of rational discourse, but to the
realm of imprecations and maledictions and ritual ostracisms."
(National Review, March 16, l992).
Have a problem
with Eretz Israel's policies? You're an "anti-semite."
Know what is contained in Jewish "holy" books and dare to even mention
their true contents? You're an anti-semite.
Dare to compare the 20,000,000 Christians dead at the hands of
(Jewish-led) Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union to those Jews who died
under the Third
Reich? Actually believe that Jewish people haven't cornered the market
on suffering? You're an anti-semite.
Speak the truth that Jews speak among themselves concerning Jewish
power over the media and America's political system and culture? Not
only are you an anti-semite, you're a paranoid one who probably has an
SS Uniform in your closet.
Accusing one of being "anti-semitic" who speaks the Truth about
Zionism, the post-Temple Jewish religion, and Jewish history conflates
a reasoned
commitment to Truth and basic morality with irrational psychopathology
or "racism." That is the trick.
But the Jews are not a "race" 1 in the
biological sense (that is Hitler talk and Talmud talk), and any Jew is
welcome to walk away from Zionism and the Jewish religion and to face
historical Truths; many Jews have. I repeat the point and hope you read
it three times: "race" in the biological sense is not the issue,
"ethnicity" per se is not the issue, who one's mother and
father are is not the issue; ideologies are the issue. This
paper will treat the issue of "the Jews" as a religous and political
one, not an ethnic one per se (outside of how the Jewish sense
of peoplehood affects Jews' political attitudes as a group), and
definitely not as a biologically "racial" one. In addition, please be
clear that the "average Jew" is only culpable in the matters I
describe insofar as he, consciously and with full knowledge,
goes along with the ideologies of Jewish leadership and the Jewish
religion. Going along with these ideologies without knowledge and
consent of the will may well be materially, objectively sinful, but one
cannot say that those who commit these sins are necessarily culpable.
Now, all ethnic groups have members and aspects that are unsavory: I am
Italian; my acknowledging that some of my paisani were and are Mafiosi
does not make me any less of a human being, is not a denigration of my
ethnicity per se, and does not detract from all the gifts the
Italian people have given the world (opera, painting, sculpture, etc.).
If I were to yell "Anti-Italian!" at someone who pointed out the fact
that some Italians were Mafiosi, it wouldn't make the fact that some
Italians were Mafiosi less true. If I were to follow the leaders of
some "Italian Defense League" that denied the historical Truths about
Italian involvement in organized crime, slurred anyone who dared
disagree, and had the political and economic power to destroy careers
and reputations, etc., then that would only add another layer to the
problem and give true bigots another reason to dislike me once my
tactics of intimidation were discovered (a lesson the average, every
day Hebrew had better learn for his own safety!).
As with any group, if that someone were to say that "all" Italians were
Mafiosi, or if he were to treat me with disdain only because I
have an Italian father, then we'd have a case of bigotry. But a
statement such as "some Italians are Mafiosi" (or even "most Italians
are mafiosi," if it were true -- which it definitely isn't) and
general statements using general
nouns, such as "Italians like pasta" or "Italians tend to be very
emotional people" -- these are not examples of "bigotry." It's Truth.
And so, I will write of "the Jews", with "Jews" being a general noun
and
meant to describe not a biological "race," let alone every individual
Hebrew, but those who identify as "Jewish" and, as a group,
follow various ideologies promulgated by Jewish religious and political
leaders.
If you are like me, though, and I hope you are in this regard, you are
concerned about true hatred of the Hebrew people
as an ethnic group or as people perceived as belonging to a
biological "race." This is a serious concern, and I understand
hesitance and an unwillingness to believe or repeat some of the things
I am compelled to write about for fear of bigots using it as ammo for
their twisted thinking. I conclude, however, that the Truths I will
write about are too important to ignore, and that any Truth can be bent
just so to make some evil person happy. This is the way of the Father
of Lies. I have tried, though, to be very careful with my information,
checking, double-checking, going to Jewish sources and to Hebrew
Christian sources, and the like. I encourage you to do the same,
double-checking what I write and never using only one source of
information for such a sensitive topic. I must warn you, though, that
in researching such a subject, one is almost forced to at least look at
literature deemed "racist" or that might actually be truly racist
because, sadly, buried in that latter sort of
garbage are at least kernels of truth which must be sifted out and
because any attempt to defend Western culture is often deemed "racist"
whether it truly is or not. In either case, to disregard a fact because
someone of an unsavory character -- say, a White Supremacist or someone
devoted to Nazism -- revealed it is a logical fallacy, and I only hope
that anyone reading this understands well the evil of racism and knows
how to separate messages from messengers.
Before I begin, two more issues must be addressed:
1) there exists the idea that a conspiratorial view of history is an
outlook that only "nutters, fruitcakes, and schizos" take seriously.
But a conspiracy is merely a plan made by two or more people, simple as
that. To not have a "conspiratorial view" of history is to
ignore historical fact and forego common sense. No battle could be
planned without a "conspiracy," no revolution could be planned without
one. One couldn't even throw a decent garden party without a plan. So,
if you are immediately "turned off" by the idea of "conspiracy" and
chalk up such notions to the blatherings of paranoid whackos, I ask you
to ask yourself where this attitude comes from. Granted, there are
bizarre conspiracy theories out there, and there exist people who
feel the need to wear tinfoil hats to ward off the radio waves
originating from the Pentagon's Ultra-Secret "Project Derange Bob," but
just because some conspiracy theories are obviously insane and have no
evidence doesn't mean that all conspiracy theories are insane and have
no evidence.
2) there also exists the idea that "historical revisionism" is
inherently evil, the very term "revisionism" having been tarnished by
incessantly linking it to Nazi apologists. "Revisionism," however, used
to be a politically neutral term based on the Latin revisere,
meaning "to look again." Historical scholarship must be
revisionist as we "look again" as more facts become available to us.
This is simply good history. While some who engage in historical
revisionism may have nefarious motives, these motives must be looked
past as they, in themselves, don't change facts. What is, is, and as
Our Lord said, the Truth shall set us free. If a capuchin monkey were
to tell me Jesus is God, I may write off the monkey as theologian or
dinner date, but I will still agree with him in that one gloriously
true statement.
(It feels silly to have to point out these basic logical fallacies, but
apparently it's necessary: so many of the arguments against the things
I will write about amount to demagoguery, ad hominems, arguments of
"guilt by association," chalking things up to a "nutter conspiracy
theory," or worrying about the ramifications of speaking the
Truth, only the last being a legitimate concern.)
Judaism
In common with
religious Jews, true Catholics see themselves a "light unto the world."
Catholics see themselves heirs of the Truth of Christ's coming in the
flesh, His redeeming us with His Passion and Blood, and His coming
again to judge the living and the dead. What we, as members of the
Church, bring to the world is not of our own doing; it is relaying the
Gospel to the world, the faith required for which being entirely matter
of our cooperating with His gift of grace. Humility is a key
virtue, the key virtue, and our elected-ness ('chosen-ness") is
a gift we receive fully only when dying to ourselves and taking on the
yoke of Christ, which is a burden of charity, service, and self-denial.
Further, this gift of grace is open to all, no matter their race, no
matter who their parents are. As the old song goes, "Red and yellow,
black and white, they are precious in His sight! Jesus loves the little
children of the world!"
Jewish religion, on the other hand, sees Jews themselves as the source
of the light they are to bear to the world. Mordechai Nisan, a lecturer
at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, published an article in Kivvunim,
the journal of the World Zionist Congress, proclaiming
While it is true
that the Jews are a particular people, they nonetheless are designated
as a 'light unto the nations.' This function is imposed on the Jews who
strive to be a living aristocracy among the nations, a nation
that has deeper historical roots, greater spiritual obligation, higher
moral standards, and more powerful intellectual capacities than
others. This vision which diverges from the widely accepted
egalitarianism approach, is not at all based on an arbitrary
hostility towards non-Jews, but rather on a fundamental existential
understanding of the quality of Jewish peoplehood." [emphasis
mine]
Norman Cantor, a
New York University professor, writes on his dedication page for "The
Jewish Experience" that a "world without Jews is a world devoid of
humanity," and goes on to say that Jews are "a uniquely superior group
with an indomitable drive for creativity and accomplishment...the time
may be coming when the genetic superiority of Jews can be calmly
discussed."
Rabbi Yitzhak Ginsburg and Rabbi Yaacov Perrin declare, respectively,
"We have to recognize that Jewish blood and the blood of a goy are not
the same thing" (NY Times, June 6, 1989) and "One million Arabs are not
worth a Jewish fingernail." (NY Daily News, Feb. 28, 1994). And this is
how the "Lubavitcher Rebbe," Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (see Part II of this series), describes the difference
between Jews and non-Jews:
We do not have a
case of profound change in which a person is merely on a superior
level. Rather we have a case of…a totally different species…. The body
of a Jewish person is of a totally different quality from the body of
of all nations of the world…. The difference of the inner quality [of
the body]…is so great that the bodies would be considered as completely
different species. This is the reason why the Talmud states that there
is an halachic difference [a legal difference] in attitude about the
bodies of non-Jews: “their bodies are in vain”…. An even greater
difference exists in regard to the soul. Two contrary types of soul
exist, a non-Jewish soul comes from three satanic spheres, while the
Jewish soul stems from holiness. [Shahak and Mezvinsky 1999, 59–60].
These casual
equations of "Jewry" with humanity itself (or, rather, a Nazi-like
"super-humanity" or "ubermensch"), and evidence of belief in Jewish
"racial" superiority are recurrent themes in Jewish writing, showing
themselves over and over again because they spring from Mishna and the
Talmud.
The Talmud
Most people, including
the average Jew, have no idea what the Talmud teaches.
Dispensationalist Protestants are taught that the "evil Catholic
Church" burned copies of the Talmud in the Middle Ages (true) for no
good reason (false), just to torment the poor Jews (false) who are
still God's "Chosen People" (false). The average Jew today, who is
secular, sees history the same way, and regards the Talmud as, at most,
a collection of writings put together by the wisest rabbis for the
edification of his superstitious ancestors. That average, secular Jew,
though, has very little knowleldge of what the Talmud teaches.
But religious Jews see it as their holiest collection of writings,
holier than Torah (the first five Books of the Old Testament) and the
rest of Tanach (Old Testament). The Talmud itself makes this clear:
Erubin 21b: "My
son, be more careful in the observance of the words of the Scribes than
in the words of the Torah"
It is used as
the lens through which Jews read Torah, even though it negates Torah.
Rabbi Yehiel ben Joseph said:
"Further,
without the Talmud, we would not be able to understand passages in the
Bible... God has handed this authority to the sages and tradition is a
necessity as well as scripture. The Sages also made enactments of their
own... anyone who does not study the Talmud cannot understand
Scripture."
The Rabbi is
wrong; God did not hand authority to the "Sages"; He handed it to the
Old Testament priests:
Malachi 2-7:
"For the priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should
seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the Lord of
hosts."
.. and when the
Messiah came, He passed that authority on to the New Covenant priests,
giving the Apostles, with Peter as the Chief Apostle, the power of
binding and loosing (John 20:21-23) and, to Peter alone, the Keys of
the Kingdom (Matthew 16:15-19). The Temple was torn down, Old Testament
sacrifices ceased, having culminated in the Sacrifice at Calvary, and
the priesthood of the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the
priesthood of the New.
So, what does this most authoritative book in all of (modern) Judaism
contain? To be frank, it is a source of the grossest sort of racism,
vulgarity, encouragement of criminal behavior against the out-group
(i.e., Gentiles, the "goyim"), and blasphemy possible.
The ex-Rabbi Drach, a 19th c. convert to Catholicism, honored by Popes
Leo XII, Pius VIII and Gregory XVI, tells us about it:
For a long time
it was my professional duty to teach the Talmud and explain its
doctrines, after having attended special courses for many years under
the most renowned of contemporary Jewish Doctors.... The judicious
reader of the Talmud is often saddened by the presence of many of those
strange aberrations into which the human mind falls when bereft of the
true faith, and very frequently rabbinical cynicism makes him blush
with shame. The Christian is horrified by the insane and atrocious
calumnies which the impious hatred of the Pharisees hurls at everything
he holds sacred ... In the Ghemara there are at least a hundred
passages which are insulting to the memory of Our Adorable Savior, the
more-than-angelic purity of His Holy Mother, the Immaculate Queen of
Heaven, as well as the moral character of the Christian, whom the
Talmud represents as practicing the most abominable vices.
Jane Rachel
Litman writes that, when faced with the teachings of the ancient
rabbis, some Jews respond with out and out denial. She describes a
class she taught on Talmud:
The background
sound in the small library is muted but intense. Pairs of scholars lean
over their talmudic texts whispering energetically, trying to puzzle
out the meaning of the particular sugya, passage. The teacher directs
them back toward the group and asks for questions.
One student raises a hand: "I don't understand verse 5:4 of the
tractate Niddah. What does the phrase 'it is like a finger in eye'
mean?"
The teacher responds, "This refers to the hymen of a girl younger than
three years old. The Sages believed that in the case of toddler rape,
the hymen would fully grow back by the time the girl reached adulthood
and married. Therfore, though violated, she would still technically be
counted as a virgin and could marry a priest. It's an analogy: poking
your finger in the eye is uncomortable, but causes no lasting harm."
There is a collective gasp of breath among students. Their dismay is
palpable. They do not like this particular talmudic text or the men
behind it. But its authors, the talmudic rabbis, hardly wrote it with
this particular group of students in mind -- mostly thirty- and
forty-year old women in suburban Philadelphia taking a four-week class
titled 'Women in Jewish Law' at their Reform synagogue.
The questioner perists. 'I don't understand. Are you saying this refers
to the rape of a three year-old girl?'
"Or younger," the teacher responds dryly.
"I don't see how it says anything about rape and hymens. You must be
mistaken. I don't believe the rabbis are talking about rape at all. I
think this statement has nothing to do with the rest of the passage."
The teacher (I'll admit now that it was me, a second-year rabbinic
student) responds, "Well, that's the common understanding. What do you
think it means?" The woman is clearly agitated, "I don't know, but I do
know that it couldn't be about child rape." This is week three of the
class. The woman does not return for week four. Denial. 2
Any decent Jew would
go into denial momentarily upon discovering that the holiest book of
his religion taught:
Sanhedrin 58b.
If a heathen (Gentile) hits a Jew, the Gentile must be killed, hitting
a Jew is the same as hitting God.
Sanhedrin 54b. A Jewish man may marry a female child who has reached
the age of three years and one day and may consummate that marriage
Sanhedrin 57a. A Jew need not pay a Gentile ("Cuthean") the wages owed
him for work.
Sanhedrin 57a. When a Jew murders a Gentile ("Cuthean"), there will be
no death penalty, and what a Jew steals from a Gentile he may keep.
Yebamoth 98a. Gentiles, "whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and
whose issue is like the issue of horses," have children who are legally
fatherless.
Abodah Zarah 22a-22b. Gentiles can't be trusted with cows because they
do immoral things with them, and they sexually prefer the cattle of
Israelites to their own wives.
Shabbath 116a. Jews should destroy Christian books [ironically].
Minor Tractates. Soferim 15, Rule 10. Even the best of the Gentiles
should be killed (Tob shebe goyyim harog).
Yebamoth 63a. Adam had sexual intercourse with all the animals in the
Garden of Eden.
Baba Mezia 59b. God admits a rabbi won a debate against Him.
The reaction of
the Talmud class students above isn't only a Jewish one, however; when
I was first confronted with the Talmud, I, too, didn't believe -- did
not want to believe -- what I was learning. I wrote to
different Jews, asking about those Talmud quotes the racists bandy
about -- especially the ones that accuse the Jewish religion of
anti-Christian blasphemy. Examples:
Sanhedrin 43a.
Jesus was executed because he practiced sorcery.
Gittin 57a. Jesus is boiling in "hot excrement."
Sanhedrin 43a. On the eve of the Passover, Yeshu [i.e., Jesus. Spelling
His name as "Yeshu" means "May His Name Be Blotted Out"] was hanged. Do
you suppose that he was one for whom a defense could be made? Was he
not an enticer (Mesith)?"
Sanhedrin 106a. Jesus' mother was a whore: "She who was the descendant
of princes and governors played the harlot with carpenters."
Footnote to Shabbath 104b. Jesus' mother, "Miriam the hairdresser," had
sex with many men.
When I asked
Jews about these quotes, I was given different answers. I heard
everything from an angry, defensive "no, there is no such thing in the
Talmud" to "there are words like that but they mean something else" to
"those passages refer to a different Jesus and Mary," to (seriously)
"you don't want to know." And, of course, throughout it all, I was
accused of being an "anti-semite" for even asking the questions.
Then I wrote to a Messianic Jew who sent me the following letter (his
name withheld):
While it is true
that there are many opinions and views on Jesus in the Talmud and in
many other reputed rabbinic sources, most Jews would tell you that the
Talmud either doesn't mention Jesus at all, or that he is portrayed not
in a bad way but as someone who didn't deserve either to be loved or
hated by Jews. They would claim that whatever the gentiles say
concerning the contempt against Jesus in the Talmud are just
inventions, misunderstandings, or mistranslations. They may even label
any person who presents evidence of the insultative character of the
Talmud towards Jesus --a "Jew-hater" or an "anti-semite".
Many Jewish apologetes argue that the Talmud never spoke badly about
Jesus of Nazareth, but about a "different" Jesus. They go as far as to
say that there was a "Jesus of Nazareth" whose mother was called Mary
and had disciples with the same names of those of the Christian Jesus,
but that this particular "Jesus" was a disciple of a rabbi called
Yehoshua ben Perachia who lived about 100 years before the Christian
Jesus (...too much of a coincidence I think...). According to some
Talmudic sources this other "Jesus" was a wicked man who commited
idolatry, witchcraft, and led Israel astray; therefore he deserved to
be executed by order of the bet-din (rabbinic judicial court), and
after he was dead, he was condemned to go to hell and been punished in
boiling excrement.
But a closer look at the sources clearly show that all those arguments
are a cheap effort to disguise what the Talmud REALLY say about Jesus.
The problem is that most non-Jews are not familiar either with the
language in which the original sources were written, or they don't have
access to the sources themselves. In my particular case I have most of
the sources with me and also I am able to read them in their original
languages (Hebrew and Aramaic), so I speak with confidence that
whatever I say on this regard can be supported with the evidence. Here
I give you some titles in English that can help you to understand this
most interesting matter.
- Christ in the
Talmud, Midrash, Zohar (by Gustaf Dalman - Arno Press, 1973)
- Christianity in
Talmud and Midrash (by Travers Herford - Ktav Publishing House, 1975)
- Jewish Polemics
Against Christianity in the Middle Ages (Daniel J. Lasker - Ktav
Publishing,1977)
- Das Leben Jesu
Nach Judischen Quellen (Samuel Krauss - S. Calvary & Co, 1902) this
book is in German, but it has many Hebrew texts taken directly from
talmudic and other rabbinic sources
- The Jewish
People and Jesus Christ - A Study in the Relationship Between the
Jewish People and Jesus Christ (by Jakob Jocz, Ph.D. - S.P.C.K., 1949)
- The Censorship
of Hebrew Books (by William Popper - Ktav Publishing,1969)
- Censorship and
Freedrom of Expression in Jewish History (by Moshe Carmilly Weinberger
- Yeshiva University Press, 1977)
- Judaism on Trial
- Jewish-Christian Disputation in the Middle Ages (by Hyam Maccoby -
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982)
And this is why
those "dastardly, anti-semitic medieval Popes" burned the Talmud
(never mind that modern Jews burned the New Testament in Israel on
March 23, 1980 (Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion).
In reaction to this reasonable censorship meant to protect the
Christian order of society, stop blasphemy of Our Lord, and protect the
"goyim" from Jewish racism, Jewish rabbis began a censorship of their
own, publishing edited versions of the Talmud that might fall into
Christian hands, and other versions for their own eyes only. Some would
publish the racist and blasphemous selections separately while
presenting the edited versions to Christians as "the Talmud." Even now,
in order to read the Talmud, one should either learn Hebrew or rely on
trustworthy, Christian Hebrew-speakers who have access to the unedited
versions, as most vernacular editions are heavily expurgated.
(See Chapter 5 of Israel Shahak's "Jewish History,
Jewish Religion: The Weight of 2,000 Years"
for more on Jewish
anti-Christianism and "anti-goyism" in general)
The lesson from
all this must be understood, and understood very clearly and deeply:
even though the Old Testament religion is usually referred to as
"Judaism," the Old Testament religion is a vastly different religion
than what we know today as modern Judaism. The latter merely has some
things in common with the Old Testament religion because it is a broken
branch thereof, in the same way that Protestantism accepts the Creed
(for the most part) but changes its definitions and rejects the
fullness of Christianity as passed down to us by those who've been
given priestly authority in the New Covenant.
... and with the
destruction of the Temple the Sadducees disappeared altogether, leaving
the regulation of all Jewish affairs in the hands of the Pharisees.
Henceforth Jewish life was regulated by the teachings of the Pharisees;
the whole history of Judaism was reconstructed
from the Pharisaic point of view, and a new aspect was given to the
Sanhedrin of the past. A new chain of tradition supplanted the
older, priestly tradition. Pharisaism shaped the character of
Judaism and the life and thought of the Jew for all the future. (Jewish
Encyclopedia. Emphasis mine.)
This has been
affirmed over and over again by honest scholars. Rabbi Stephen S. Wise,
Chief Rabbi of the United States, wrote
The return from
Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of
Hebrewism, and the beginning of Judaism.
The Old
Testament religion, fulfilled in Christianity, became, for Jews,
Pharisaism. Then, as Rabbi Louis
Finkelstein wrote
Pharisaism
became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval
Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of
name, inevitable adaption of custom, and adjustment of Law, the spirit
of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered. (Volume 1 of The
Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith)
Note that he
says that it is "the spirit of the ancient Pharisee" that survives, not
the spirit of the Old Testament priests who were the ones who had true
authority at that time, and whose authority passed on to Christian
priests, not to Pharisaic rabbis, the very group Lord Christ took to
task for their casuistry. Rabbi Ben Zion
Bokser summed things up most succinctly when he wrote simply, "Judaism
is not the religion of the Bible." (Judaism and the Christian
Predicament, 1966, p.159)
During the Babylonian Captivity, the Old Testament religion became
further corrupted by pagan Babylonian-Chaldean practices -- by magic,
forbidden forms of astrology, numerology,
ideas of reincarnation, and
ritual designed to
draw on preternatural forces
(commonly, but mistakenly, referred to as
"supernatural forces"). I say "further corrupted" because the Old
Testament religion was constantly tested by apostasy -- even by Solomon
who built temples to pagan gods. These corruptions gave rise to
Pharisaism and its oral Talmud (Mishnah) and oral Kabbalah, which were
written down ca A.D. 450 and the 14th c. respectively 3. Luke, in Acts 7:43 writes:
Yea, ye took up
the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures
which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond
Babylon.
These occultic
dabblings were spoken of as far back as Amos, too, who wrote of the
apostasy in verse 5:26:
But ye have
borne the tabernacle of your Moloch and Chiun your images, the star of
your god, which ye made to yourselves. [Remphan = Rephan or Raephan in
the LLX = Moloch = Saturn]
The promises of
universal dominion which the faithful practitioners of the Old
Testament religion saw as a fruit only of obedience to God, the
Pharisees interpreted as a license for domination to be imposed on the
material world by the Jews who see the Law only through the
Mishnah/Talmud and who see themselves as genetically, intellectually,
and morally superior to the "goyim." They did not and do not look for
the dominion of the God of Moses, Abraham, and Isaac -- the Triune God,
as the fullness of revelation tells us -- in a spiritual sense and with
His dominion to be reflected in the social order by people and
governments obedient to the true Messiah; they looked instead for a worldy
king who would bring on the earthly reign of the Pharisees
under him, and who see the Talmud rather than Torah as the basis of
their rule. This is why the Pharisees, looking for a temporal messiah,
missed the true Messiah and put Him to death.
(See Chapter 3 of Israel Shahak's "Jewish
History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of 2,000 Years"
for more on
the differences between Biblical, Old Testament Judaism and the modern
religion called "Judaism")
But there is so
much more to this "other side of the story"...
Footnotes:
1 Let's clear the "race thing" up
once and for all. There are obviously racial differences among
general populations of people who've historically come from various
places of the world, i.e., some people are brown-colored, some are
white, some are reddish-brown, etc., and temperament, intelligence,
propensity for alcoholism, even the ability to metabolize alcholol,
etc. have some genetic influence. A group whose people have lived in
area X under conditions Y and Z for thousands of years, mating with
people from that same area, will pass on their successful genetic
characteristics to their children to the exclusion of passing on traits
from other populations. Though it is politically incorrect to speak of
racial differences at all, that they exist or don't exist is not a
matter of bigotry, but a simple question of fact, a question answerable
by the evidence of our senses, by science. One race, as a group,
might have characteristics X, Y, and Z, while another has the
characteristics A, B, and C (with, as always when speaking generally,
the existence of outliers being a given). Those differences may, or may
not, affect how harmoniously different groups can live together in a
finite area -- but all people are created
in the image of God and all are called to recover their
likeness to Him through Baptism and metanoia, etc. Any
talk of race that posits that one racial group is more or less
ontologically superior to another, is more or less beloved by God than
another, is more or less deserving of charity than another is evil and
has no place in Catholic thinking.
Note, too, that there is an older sense of the word "race" which used
to be used with
regard to ethnic groups. Older literature might refer to "the
English race" or "the Irish race" -- i.e., "race" is sometimes used to
mean "a class or kind of people unified by community of interests,
habits, or characteristics" (Merriam-Webster).
2 Litman, Jane Rachel. Working
with Words of Torah. Shma, April 2001
3
There are actually two Talmuds, one being the Babylonian
Talmud, also called the Bavli, which was compiled ca. A.D.
430-560, the other being the Palestianian Talmud, also called the Yerushalmi
and codified ca. A.D. 400. When Jews speak of "the Talmud," they refer
to the Babylonian Talmud, and it is to this Talmud that I refer in this
paper. "Kabbalah" means "tradition," and it was to these "traditions of
men" Christ and Paul were referring in verses such as Mark 7:8 and
Colossians 2:8, not to priestly authority and Sacred Tradition which we
are admonished to follow in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 2 Thessalonians 3:6,
etc.
|
|
