What the Talmud Really Says About Jesus

Re: What the Talmud Really Says About Jesus



it would be an interesting book to leaf through. for now, wikipedia tells a different story. whichever one is closer to the truth:

What the New Testament says about Jesus is even worse. Revelation reveals or identifies Jesus as Lucifer.

i can't say i agree with the conclusion, but you never know?
oh i love the "jesus is lucifer" guy on youtube, but he's way off on some of his ideas.

the morning star is venus for instance, he seems to think it's the sun. i mean it's one thing to say you think jesus is lucifer, it's another to reach that conclusion based on repeatedly mixing up two different things based on something you read elsewhere. he's working with symbols, that's great- but even if you interpret them your own way, you do need to keep track of them.

Where pray tell did you find this revelation in Revelation??

Welcome to talk's Luciferian theory.

My own guess, based on how history played itself out, is the less than complimentary references to Jesus in the Talmud might have been made to prevent Jewish converts to Christianity.

However, once it was obvious that Jews were just not going to convert in great numbers, the references were put aside.

But, if the poster would give his spin/slant on this posting, it would give the reader a better idea of whether this posting is of any import, beyond the Jew/Christian titillation effect?

By the way, I didn't know Judaism believed in a Heaven and Hell in the Christian tradition. I thought they just believed in Resurrection at the end of time?

a lot of religious traditions have come out of judaism, forming into several other religions. this makes a lot more sense when you realize there are many things christians might consider core beliefs that are anything but concrete in judaism.

heaven and hell are good examples. the idea that creationism must follow from accepting genesis may be nonsensical from a jewish perspective, "midrash" is a way of reading scripture from different angles and meaning. you're meant to, it's not supposed to be black and white.

rabbinically things often come from the other end, the laws are very black and white, as it is to not be polytheist. also, many jews consider pantheism to be incompatible with judaism. but from the beginning judaism has been a religion that evolved and changed in this aspect and many others.

the jewish perspective regarding the afterlife varies greatly, but there is enough to form the basis of a heaven, it's just not a major focus of the religion, instead the messianic age is very important.

the persian mythology that was picked up along missionary travels became the hell of christianity, "sheol" in judaism from what i've learned about it is far more like the "infinite perspective vortex" in douglas adams's hitchiker's "trilogy." i'm sure i'm oversimplifying it, but if you've lived as a decent human being, it's not hell at all. either way, it's a form of complete awareness.

the original Canaanite version" of the Biblical passage Isaiah 14:12-14:
How hast thou fallen from heaven, Helel's son Shaher!
Thou didst say in thy heart, I will ascend to Heaven.
Above the circumpolar stars I will raise my throne
And I will dwell on the Mount of Council in the back of the North
I will mount on the back of a cloud.
I will be like unto Elyon.
Godwin says, "This ancient epic was recorded seven centuries before Christ in a Canaanite scripture. Five centuries later a Hebrew scribe copied it almost verbatim . . ."

How hast thou fallen from heaven, Helel's son Shaher!
Thou didst say in thy heart, I will ascend to Heaven.
Above the circumpolar stars I will raise my throne
And I will dwell on the Mount of Council in the back of the North
I will mount on the back of a cloud.
I will be like unto Elyon.
Godwin says, "This ancient epic was recorded seven centuries before Christ in a Canaanite scripture. Five centuries later a Hebrew scribe copied it almost verbatim . . ." The source is not here given, there is no index, and there is no bibliography. However, unlike many of these Angel dictionaries, this one seems well researched otherwise, with sources often noted. On pg. 116, there is a note under the subtitle "The Nephilim," which states, "Helel: Son of the Canaanite Shaher who is often identified with Lucifer himself.




Great efforts have been made by Humanist scholarship in attempting to identify the factors that played a role in the evolution of Hebrew religious belief resulting in a Monotheistic concept of God. The quest still continues today, no one has been able to present a theory which merits a scholarly consensus as to the origins of Monotheism in Israel, especially as she existed in a world that embraced Polytheism.


I am of the persuasion that Israel developed her Monotheistic concept of God in the course of the 8th-6th centuries BCE. True Monotheism, embraced by ALL Jews, however, did not come about until sometime after Ezra's arrival in Jerusalem. His Torah and Nehemiah's activities along with Persian Imperial support for the Torah, swept away whatever residual Polytheism there was, and one way only was now acceptable for honoring God. Ezra did not "invent" Monotheism, it was apparently a long time evolving and it evidently met fierce resistance from a peoples who desired to honor their God in the same manner that their ancestors had. It is my understanding that Israel's "original" God in the Late BronzeAge period was married to a goddess, the Queen of Heaven, he had children, the gods, and he was also the father of mankind; His royal symbol was the bull or bull-calf, he being called "Bull-El" in the Ugaritic myths (13th/12th centuries BCE), suggests to me that Yahweh-Elohim (called El in the Bible) WAS THE GOLDEN CALF.





HEBREW HENOTHEISM
For the most update resources on this question, see Mark Smith's The Early History of God (Harper & Row, 1990) and The Triumph of Elohim, ed. Diana V. Edelman (Eerdmans, 1995).

God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment.
- Ps. 82:1
It seems clear enough...that Moses was not a monotheist. Yet, to call him a polytheist seems inaccurate too. We can conclude that Moses stood somewhere between totemism and monotheism. A term to describe this position is henotheism. - H. Keith Beebe1

The Israelite tribes were heirs to a religious tradition which can only have been polytheistic.

- Yehezkel Kaufmann2
The Principle of Theistic Evolution is derived from the fact that some of the world's religions have developed through stages from polytheism to a monotheism. We can see this most clearly in the Vedic tradition were the many gods of the Vedas eventually reduce to the triune deity of Brahman, Vishnu, and Shiva with sectarian trinities found in the worship of Krishna, Shiva, and the Hindu Goddess. (Click here for more.) It is clear, however, that our principle is not a law, for scholars have now noted a theistic devolution in the return to polytheism in the originally monotheistic Zoroastrianism. One of the transitional stages from polytheism to monotheism has been called "henotheism, a situation in which there are many gods but one God prevails as the king of gods or the God of gods. The Vedas contain a form in henotheism with Varuna standing out as the ultimate ruler and judge - the one who infuses grace, forgives and punishes sin.

As a descriptive study in the history of religion, this article makes no judgment about whether monotheism is better than polytheism. Observers of the practice of Hindu polytheism could say that the recognition of many gods leads to greater religious tolerance. Monotheistic gods also tend to be more remote and less accessible to the life of faith. One might also argue that the exclusive worship of one God leads to intolerance of other religions. Just as biological evolution has not necessarily led to the best species, theistic evolution has not necessarily led to the best theology.

The final editors of the Hebrew canon were fervent monotheists, but a remnant of the polytheistic basis of the pre-Mosaic religion can still be detected. Albrecht Alt has shown that divine titles such as 'El Bet' el (Gen. 31:13; 35:7); 'El 'Olam (Gen. 21:33); and 'El Ro'i (Gen. 16:13); 'El 'Elyon (Gen. 14:18); and 'El Saddai (Gen. 17:1); all later taken to be one God (Yahweh) after Moses, were all originally separate gods worshipped by the early Hebrews.3 The Catholic scholar Bruce Vawter concurs with Alt. According to Vawter, none of the available English translations does justice to the original Hebrew of Genesis 31:13, which quite simply reads "I am the god Bethel" ('El Bet'el), who was a member of the Canaanite pantheon along with the rest of the above.4 The original meaning is therefore quite different from the traditional understanding: this god at Bethel is not the universal Lord who appeared at Bethel but just one god among many - a local deity of a specific place.

In the mutual swearing of Jacob and Laban (Gen. 31:51f) it is clear that two distinct gods are referred to.5 The work of later editors is clearly evident in this passage. As Alt states: "Was it not plain paganism for the ancestor of Israel and one of his relations to swear by two different gods? This dangerous sentence had to be rendered harmless by an addition or alternation."6 In Judges 11:24 Jepthah recognizes the authority of the god Chemosh, at least for the Ammonites in their own land.

The popular notion that Moses was the original monotheist is a thesis that has very little support. As we shall soon see, Moses probably was not even a monotheist, but even if he was, there was monotheism in Egypt a generation before Moses, most likely under the heretic king Akhenaten of the 14th century B.C.E. In his insistence on the worship of Yahweh alone, Moses was a henotheist, i.e., he believed that Yahweh was the greatest among the gods, the king of gods.

The traditional belief that Yahweh revealed himself solely to Moses, and that no people except the Hebrews worshipped Yahweh, is also becoming more tenuous. Several scholars have pointed out evidence of Yahweh worship among several pre-Mosaic eastern cultures.7 For example, the controversial tablets at Ebla, dating back into the 3rd millennium B.C.E., speak of a god by the name of "Ya," who is linked to the Yahweh of Moses by some Ebla scholars.8

Contrary to popular understanding, the First Commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," does not deny the existence of other deities. In his commentary on Deuteronomy Anthony Phillips maintains that "there is here no thought of monotheism. The commandment does not seek to repudiate the existence of other gods, but to prevent Israel from having anything to do with them."9 The ontological status of other gods besides Yahweh can be explicitly seen in Deut. 32:8, where we find Yahweh setting the boundaries of nations according to the "number of the sons of God." The RSV follows the Septuagint text, which has been reinforced by the copy of Deuteronomy found among the Dead Sea Scrolls in Cave 4 at Qumran.

The ninth century Masoretic text replaces "sons of God" with "sons of Israel," which some modern English versions follow. It does look like the Masoretes changed the text so as to avoid dangerous polytheistic implications. Furthermore, "Son of Israel" makes absolutely no sense in Deut. 32:8. The people of Israel were Yahweh's "portion" while the sons of God "were divine beings or angels to whom God had delegated authority over the nations. Their existence is not denied but rather accommodated to the overall authority of Yahweh to whom they are subservient."10 As Anthony Phillips states: "The poet, drawing on Canaanite mythology, identifies Yahweh with the pre-Davidic god 'Elyon."11 As Deut. 32:8 has been taken by some to be a very old passage, Gerald Cooke and others speculate that in the earliest times Yahweh was not the head of the gods, but simply one of the "sons of God" in the sense of b?'n?' 'Elyon. In Deut. 32:8 Yahweh appears to be different from 'Elyon, because of the definite third person reference, which "easily gives the impression that Yahweh like the sons of God received his portion, allotment from 'Elyon."12

Theodore C. Vriezen explains the advantage of henotheism: "This idea of beings surrounding God by no means detracts from the uniqueness of God; on the contrary, these divine beings rather emphasize his uniqueness; he is the God of gods, their God, too; and they praise his holiness. Far from clashing with monotheism, this conception lays the greatest stress on the majesty of Yahweh. Yahweh is a unique God, but he is not alone."13 Complementing Vriezen's point is the fact that the other deities are never named, except for perhaps the case of Satan in Job.

A divine pluralism can also be seen in the Hebrew word for deity, 'elohîm, which is a plural form of 'Eloah, which is a form of 'El, the general word for God in the Semitic world. There are some scholars who argue that 'elohîm in reference to Yahweh must be a grammatical plurality only. For them 'elohîm is an abstract plural with a singular meaning. Such a grammatical form would emphasize the majesty of the Almighty. In his study of the "Great Isaiah Scroll" at Qumran, William Brownlee of Claremont has shown the radical extent of the use of this "plural of majesty": even Yahweh's quiver (Is. 49:2) and a single hand are in the plural.14

There is, however, a significant exception, noted long ago by the Hebrew grammarian Gensenius. When 'elohim is referred to pronominally, as in "let us make man in our image" (Gen. 1:26), then the majestic plural is not applicable.15 Furthermore, the priestly writers use singular verbs for the deity in adjacent passages; hence the use of the plural at 1:26 must be for good reason.16 Canaanite parallels show that the head god uses the first person plural in addressing his divine assembly. It is obvious that this passage reveals a henotheistic situation in which Yahweh is consulting with lesser deities around him.

The use of 'elohîm as divine beings definitely separate from Yahweh (e.g., Gen. 6, Ps. 82) proves conclusively that this divine pluralism is not just a grammatical one. Henotheism is seen in the fact that Yahweh is referred to as 'El 'elim (God of gods, Dan. 11:36) or in the use of the definite article ha 'elohîm (the God) for Yahweh, or b?'n?' 'elohîm (the sons of God) for the other gods (Gen. 6:2; Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7).With regard to these divine "sons," Cooke states: "These are not 'sons' of Yahweh in a filial sense...the 'sons of (the) God(s)' are those who are of the realm of the gods, who partake of divinity."17 Gensenius agrees that b?'n?' 'elohîm "properly means not sons of god(s), but beings of the class of 'elohîm of 'elim...."18

Some Christian commentators have taken the ontological pluralism of 'elohîm as definite proof of the Trinity. Genesis 18, where three mysterious visitors come to Abraham, has been used to support this view.19 But rather than imposing a Christian view developed two millennia later on the Hebrews, the proper hermeneutic strategy would be to place it in the context of the religions of the ancient Near East.

Theodore Gaster has done just this and discovered that the story has basic similarities with the polytheistic folklore motif of "hospitality rewarded." Gaster explains: "The classic parallel is the tale, told by Ovid and Hyginus of how Jupiter, Neptune, and Mercury (i.e., three visitors, as in the biblical narrative), while traveling through Boeotia, came in disguise to Hyrieus, a childless peasant of Tanagra, and in return for his hospitality, granted him the boon of a son.20 This story goes back at least as far as Pindar (518-438 B.C.E.)

Max Weber also contends that the theological basis for Gen. 18 is probably polytheistic: "The grammatical forms in Abraham's address to the divine epiphany of the three men would seem to make it probable that the singular of the address did not preclude the possibility of polytheistic conceptions."21 The trinitarian hypothesis is vitiated by at least four considerations: (1) the triunity of Yahweh is definitely weakened when two of the divine beings depart for Sodom (18:22), and Yahweh and Abraham are left behind negotiating the fate of the Sodomites; (2) it is clear that the divine plurality is more than three, if the other 'elohîm are the deities of the other nations; (3) even if there were only three gods, this is clearly tritheism and not one divine being with three persons; and (4) the persons of the Trinity are definitely not conceived as a divine council with God the Father as the supreme executive.

The 'Elohîm as Angels
The fact that the two divine beings that go to Sodom are called "angels" have led traditional commentators to mitigate the implied polytheism by the qualification that these beings were not true gods, but created angels. This interpretation is discounted by Albright, Weber, Gaster, Speiser, and others.22 The Bible makes a clear distinction between an angel (Heb. malakh; Gk., aggelos) and a god or God ('elohîm; theos). Revelation 19:10 and 22:8,9 are explicit in their injunction that angels are "fellow servants" and not gods that are to be worshipped. The 'elohîm are not created beings because they are with Yahweh from the beginning and are involved in creation itself (Gen. 1:26; Job 38:7). In a letter to me, Brownlee concedes that there is no mention of the creation of angels, but does point out that yahweh saba'ot does mean "Creator of [heavenly] armies." But it is clear, especially in Job, that the Lord's host (=army) is made up of astral deities not angels.23 But the word "creator" here does imply that the beings are created, eliminating an essential divine attribute (at least for philosophical theology). In Vedic hedonism the lesser gods are also many times referred to as created beings. In Job, Satan is one of the subordinate gods, a son of God, and is referred to elsewhere (Is. 14:12) as the "Day Star" (helal) and "son of Dawn" (shahar), both members of the Canaanite pantheon. Scholar Marvin H. Pope states that "these are lesser members of the ancient pagan pantheon who are retained in later monotheistic theology as angels."24

The interchange of God and angels in the Hebrew Scriptures reflect an early conception of the nature of angels before the influx of Persian angelology during and after the Babylonian captivity. For the early Hebrews, an angelic figure was a temporary disguise for Yahweh. "Angels" functioned as mediators across the great difference between Yahweh and mortals.25 Therefore, the "angel" that appears to Hagar (Gen. 16:7); the "angels" at the Oaks of Mamre and Sodom; the "angel" that wrestled with Jacob; and the "angel" that was "commander of the army of the Lord" (Jos. 5:14) are all divine manifestations of either Yahweh or one of the subordinate deities.

This theory of early Hebrew angelology would also preclude a claim that these "men" that appear as Yahweh foreshadow in any way the Incarnation. Outside of Is. 9:6, which has been taken by many as "divinity in might" only, there is no explicit concept of a man-God or a sustained doctrine of the Incarnation in the Hebrew Scriptures. The idea of the man-God most likely inspired by the Greco-Roman state cults and the Hellenistic mystery religions. The idea is not only alien but blasphemous to the Hebrew mind.

The remnants of the original polytheistic base of ancient Judaism are found more often in the nonprophetic works like the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and Job. Psalm 82 is an important text as evidence for Hebraic henotheism. (The following is the RSV translation with Julian Morgenstern's alternative reading for vv. 6-7):
1. (a) God ('elohîm has taken his place in the divine council ('adat'el). (b) In the midst of the gods ('elohîm) he holds judgment:
2. "How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?
3. Give justice to the weak and fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.
4. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked."
5. They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness;
6. I say, "You are gods ('elohîm), sons of the Most High (b?'n?' 'Elyon), all of you;
7. Nevertheless, you shall die like men, and fall like any prince."
8. "I thought you were gods, Sons of Elyon, all of you;
9. You shall become mortal (temutun) like men, And as one of the sarim shall you fall.]
10. Arise, O God ('elohîm), judge the earth; for to thee belong all the nations!

Traditional interpretations of this psalm have insisted that the 'elohîm are really judges and not divine beings. But if the 'adat'el is an assembly of rulers, then 'elohîm in 1(b) would have no meaning. The great Ugaritic scholar Mitchell Dahood has shown that the phrase 'adat'el undoubtedly comes from the Ugaritic 'dt il, which is the "council of El" of Canaanite mythology.26 Ziony Zevit maintains that Ps. 82 is yet another Canaanite hymn that has been Yahwinized and because of that the text, as other Psalms borrowed from Ugarit, manifests corruption and confusion (26a).

Setting the stage in 1939 for the most careful scholarship on this psalm, Julian Morgenstern states that it cannot Abe denied that the fundamental meaning of 'elohîm is "gods," and that only by a long stretch of the imagination and rather devious and uncertain hermeneutics can the meaning "rulers," "kings," or "judges" be ascribed to it".27 The major problem with these latter meanings is that 'elohîm is never used in this way in any other passage. In 1 Sam. 28:13 the "spirit" of the deceased Samuel is called an 'elohîm, but as commentators comment: "The word god here means a being from another [spiritual] world."28 Some take the 'elohîm of Ex. 21:6 and 22:8 as "judges," but reputable Catholic scholars maintain that these messages too reveal an ancient polytheistic residue.29

The most troublesome aspect of Ps. 82 is Yahweh's judgment on the other gods. Following the implications of Deut. 32:8, these 'elohîm must be seen as the gods of the other nations, which obviously in the eyes of Yahweh have not been ruling very well. The Hebrews knew Yahweh as occasionally temperamental, suspicious, and erratic. As Dahood says in regard to Job 4:18, 15:15, "Even his holy ones he distrusts, the heavens are not pure in his sight."30 Yahweh's judgment for the other gods' misadministration is a harsh one: they must die like men. The traditionalists have taken this verse as proof that the 'elohîm cannot possibly be gods. But Morgenstern has shown that the Hebrew verb temutun compares favorably with other passages (e.g., Gen. 2:17; 3:3,4; 2 Sam. 14:14) where the meaning is most clearly "to become mortal." Cooke concurs: "The statement that those who are gods shall nevertheless die like men appears to us to be an undeniable indication of the divine status of those who are so addressed; their (former) immortality is clearly presupposed."31

Other psalms refer to Yahweh's divine council and provide further support for our thesis. The "sons of god" (b?'n?' 'elim) of Ps. 29:1 are again taken by conservatives as referring to judges or rulers. But Cooke counters that "the reference to divine beings here would seem to be beyond question" and that "it seems highly probable that we are dealing in Ps. 29 with an Israelite adaptation of a Canaanite hymn which has its setting in a polytheistic conception of a divine pantheon."32 Lesser divine beings who are praising the king of gods, are also found in Pss. 68 and 89: "O Kings of the earth, sing, O gods, sing praises to the Lord" (32); and "for who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Whom among the heavenly beings (b?'n?' 'elim) is like the Lord, a God feared in the council of the holy ones, great and terrible above all that are round about him?" Cooke cites an Ugaritic inscription which has the linguistic prototype of b?'n?' 'elim as comprising the "assembly of the sons of El."33

On our theory, pure monotheism did not come to the Hebrew scriptures until the writings of Deutero-Isaiah, i.e., during and after the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century B.C.E. Indications of monotheism before Deutero-Isaiah must then be the work of later monotheistic editors. We have seen how later scribes did not hesitate to change passages (Deut. 32:8; Gen. 31:53) which had explicit polytheistic implications. It is significant to note that the monotheistic passages in Isaiah (like 45:21, 22; 46:90) come after Cyrus the Great has been named the Lord's Messiah, "anointed one," in 45:1. Cyrus was a Zoroastrian, one who worshipped the single, supreme God Ahura Mazda. Many scholars believe that Zoroastrianism was the world's first truly monotheistic religion and that Hebrew religion was influenced profoundly by the fact that the new state of Israel was a small province in a great Persian empire.

Let us conclude this chapter on Hebrew henotheism with a quotation from Oesterly: "The final compilation of the Psalter undoubtedly comes from an age when the religion of Israel was fundamentally, and even aggressively, monotheistic. But there survive phrases which imply a polytheistic outlook. While Yahweh is the supreme God, and the only God to receive the highest honors, others are admitted as valid deities, though of lower rank and inferior quality. The position recalls the kathenotheism which appears in many of the hymns of the Rig-Veda."34
ENDNOTES
1. Beebe, The Old Testament, p. 160.
2. The Religion of Israel, p. 7.
3. Albrecht Alt, Essays on Old Testament History and Religion, trans. R. A. Wilson (New York: Doubleday, 1967), pp. 10-11. The god Yahweh simply does not appear in the oldest parts of the Old Testament except in the dialogues of Job. Yahweh does appear once here but other Mss. have 'eloah instead. See the Anchor Job, p. xxxix.
4. Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading (New York: Doubleday, 1977), pp. 313-4.
5. See Otto van Rad, Genesis: A Commentary (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), p. 308. Von Rad believes that two gods are clearly distinguished and that this represents two "over-lapping cultic circles."
6. Alt, op. cit., p. 22. He continues: "The easiest solution appears in the Greek translation which changes the predicate into the singular: `The God of Abraham and the God of Nahor shall be a judge between us,' so that the reader would naturally conclude that the two subjects were identical. The Hebrew Masoretic tradition went about it differently, not daring to alter the original plural of the predicate, but attempting to put a singular sense on the two subjects by the apposition 'God of their fathers'; the weakness is simply that the addition fits clumsily into the sentence, does not agree with the plural predicate, and above all does not fit the idea in the speech of judging 'between.'" Alt is again supported by Vawter, On Genesis, p. 343. E. A. Speiser also agrees that the phrase "God of their fathers" is "an obvious marginal gloss." Significantly, it does not appear in the Septuagint. See Speiser's Genesis: The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1964), p. 243.
7. See F. M. Cross' article in Harvard Theologcal Review 55 (1962), pp. 255-59. Cyrus Gordon observes that "Yahweh" occurs in Amorite names of Mesopotamia; that "yw" may stand for the same divine name in Ugarit; and that Yahweh was known in Syria (The Ancient Near East [New York: Norton, 34d ed. revised, 1965], p. 38f). See also M. J. Field, Angels and Ministers of Grace (New York: Wang & Hill, 1971), p. 29.
8. Giovanni Pettinato, the original epigrapher of the Ebla mission (now deposed), argues that "Ya" or "Yaw" does not appear as a divine name in the Ebla tablets. Pettinato has found the word "Ya-ra-mu" ("Ya is exalted") in the tablets, thereby disproving the claim of Alphonso Archi, the current epigrapher for Ebla, that "ya" appears only as a diminutive ending. Pettinato also notes significant name changes in the very latest period of the Ebla civiliation, e.g., from Mika-il to Mika-ya. This is very similar to later Hebrew practices, and also appears to reveal the rise of Ya worship at Ebla. For a summary of this very exciting debate, see Biblical Archaeology Review 6:6 (1980), pp. 38-43.
9. Anthony Phillips, Deuteronomy: The Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), p. 219.
10. The Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1952), Vol. 2, p. 529.
11. Phillips, op. cit., p. 216.
12. Gerald Cooke, "The Sons of (the) God(s)," Zeitschrift für Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (1964), p. 33. D. N. Freedman says that "Deut. 32:8-9 is very archaic, perhaps one of the most archaic pieces of theology in the post-Patriarchal period" (letter to R. C. Boling, author of Judges: The Anchor Bible [New York: Doubleday, 1975], p. 27f.). Freedman, F. M. Cross, and Otto Eissfeldt all agree that the original meaning was that Yahweh was one of the subordinate deities with `Elyon as the king of gods. See Cross, op. cit. Another interesting Canaanite parallel is the fact that the sons of 'El numbered seventy and that is about the number mentioned in the table of nations in Gen. 10.
13. Theodore C. Vriezen, An Outline of Old Testament Theology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), p. 180.
14. William H. Brownlee, The Meaning of the Qumram Scrolls for the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 170-172.
15. Gensenius' Hebrew Grammar, ed. E. Kautzsch (Oxford, 1909), p. 399. See also Cooke, p. 23.
16. See B. W. Anderson, "God, names of," Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible.
17. Cooke, op. cit., p. 24.
18. Gensenius, op. cit., p. 418.
19. T. H. Gaster, Myth, Legend, and Custom in the Old Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), Vol. I, p. 156.
20. Max Weber, Ancient Judaism (Glencove: Free Press, 1952), p. 152.
21. Albright, From the Stone Age..., p. 298; Weber, p. 153; Gaster, Vol. II, p. 785.
22. See Marvin Pope's The Anchor Bible: Job (New York: Doubleday, 34d ed., 1973), pp. 116, 181. It is clear that astral deities are fighting on Yahweh's side during the invasion of Canaan (Jdgs. 5:20). Angels are not mentioned as created beings until late apocalyptic works like II Esdras (6:3), but even then stars are equated with the "fallen" gods of Heaven in I Enoch 86:1-6 and 3 Maccabbees 2:4. See E. Theodore Mullen, Jr., The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), p. 243.
23. Pope, op. cit., p. 9.
24. See Speiser, op. cit., p. 118.
25. As Mitchell Dahood states: "In biblical literature...no claims are made for the king's [Messiah's] divinity" (The Anchor Bible: Psalms [New York: Doubleday, 1966], Vol. 1, p. 12).
26. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 269.
26a. Ziony Zevit, Israelite Religions: A Parallatic Synthesis (New York: Continuum, 2001), Conclusion.
27. Julian Morgenstern, "The Mythological Background of Ps. 82," Hebrew Union College Annual 14 (1939), p. 38. The conservative approach to Ps. 82 based on the alleged authorship of Asaph is quite tenuous. First, most scholars, even some conservatives like the editors of A Commentary on the Old and New Testament, eds. Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976) reject this attribution (p. 256). Asaph is supposed to be the author of Pss. 74, 79, and 83, but these have been judged to be some of the latest additions to the Psalter. Just as there were biblical writers and editors who took the name "Isaiah" or "John," so was there probably a guild of singers and hymn writers who took the name Asaph. William Oesterly speculates that the Asaph collection was not completed until about 150 B.C.E. See his The Psalms (New York: Macmillan, 1939), Vol. I, pp. 4, 72.
28. Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. May and Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 833.
29. Jerome Biblical Commentary, eds. Brown, Fitzmeyer, and Murphy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968), p. 60.
30. Dahood, Vol. II, p. 313.
31. Cooke, op. cit., p. 31.
32. Ibid., p. 25.
33. Ibid., p. 27.
34. Oesterly, op. cit., p. 2.


"Now it was from this very creed of Zoroaster that the Jews derived all the angelology of their religion...the belief in a future state; of rewards and punishments, ...the soul's immortality, and the Last Judgment - all of them essential parts of the Zoroastrian scheme." From The Gnostics and Their Remains (London 1887) by King and Moore quoted at 607a in Peake's Bible Commentary
FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA : "First, the figure of Satan, originally a servant of God, appointed by Him as His prosecutor, came more and more to resemble Ahriman, the enemy of God. Secondly, the figure of the Messiah, originally a future King of Israel who would save his people from oppression, evolved, in Deutero-Isaiah for instance, into a universal Savior very similar to the Iranian Saoshyant. Other points of comparison between Iran and Israel include the doctrine of the millennia; the Last Judgment; the heavenly book in which human actions are inscribed; the Resurrection; the final transformation of the earth; paradise on earth or in heaven; and hell." by J. Duchesne-Guillemin, University of Liege, Belgium

MONOTHEISM
Fundamentally the Jews were polytheists. But whatever its date, the idea of the covenant tells us that the Israelites were not yet monotheists, since it only made sense in a polytheistic setting. God stated that there are many gods: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"(Exodus 20:3). The full monotheistic conception of God came later (Isaiah 43:10-13, Jer 10:1-16). The second Isaiah juxtaposes the great Persian King Cyrus with the first monotheistic declarations in the Bible. The second Isaiah is the first expression of universalism which has no antecedent in the Bible, according to the Anchor Bible note at Isaiah 45. He also first introduces the idea of false gods - a fundamental and indispensable criteria for monotheism. A universal God determines that only one is worshiped; a tribal god, of necessity, implies polytheism since there are other tribes. Before the exile, God was a vengeful, bloodthirsty, and jealous anthropomorphic tribal God of fear. After the exile, He became a good, perfect, remote, and universal God of love: identical to Ahura-Mazda. It needed the subsequent missions of Nehemiah and Ezra backed by the Achaemenian Imperial Government's authority to make the Jews ruefully conform to the new ideal of monotheism.
EZRA, THE SUBVERTER OF JUDAISM
In 397 B.C. Ezra, a courtier of the Persian king, was sent from Babylon "to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances" (Ezra 7:10). Ezra had been born and educated as a divine reader in Babylon and was sent by Artaxerxes to see if the people of Judea "be agreeable to the law of God". There are explicit indications of widespread religious conversion in Ezra 6:19-21 and Nehemiah 10:28-29, but why would Jews have to convert to Judaism? Nehemiah, chapter 8, discusses an event where Ezra read from the book of law which neither Hebrew speakers nor Aramaic speakers could understand - the words had to be translated by priests. What strange language could Ezra have been reading, Avestan maybe? Ezra's major reform was the prohibition of foreign wives. Although marrying foreign wives had always been the most favored Jewish practice, such marriages violate Zoroastrian law (e.g. Denkard, Book 3, ch 80). The alien nature of other laws to the Jews shows itself in the distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus and Ezekial which was derived from the Vendidad, a Zoroastrian holy book, where alone it is explained. The purification rituals are identical in the Pentateuch and the older Vendidad. Von Gall in Brasileia tou Theou, 1926, gives a detailed catalog of Jewish laws taken from the Persians. Ezra also introduced the new festival of booths in the seventh month, which is of course the Zoroastrian holiday of Ayathrem. Finally, in about 400 B.C. the Old Testament was put in written form when Jerusalem was still under the power of the Persians.
SADDUCEES VS PHARISEES
The Jews greatly resisted the imposition of Zoroastrianism charading as Judaism. The construction of the temple designed by the great Persian king Cyrus for the Jews was delayed by both political and physical means. "The true Israelis" built their own temple on MT. Gerizim and wrote Jerusalem out of their Pentateuch. So, whatever the Persian governors and priests were doing in Jersusalem in the name of Judaism, it caused a great schism. The Sadducees, the 'purists', made up over 97% of the population and believed in "no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit" (Acts 23:8) - in a word, no Persian ideas. The Pharisees or Persian faction - Pharisee, Parsee, Farsi - never numbered very high, not more than 6,000, although only Pharisaism survived the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
CHRISTIANITY AS A MITHRIC CULT
In addition, Christianity adopted these doctrines from Zoroastrianism: baptism, communion - the haoma ceremony, guardian angels, the heavenly journey of the soul, worship on Sunday, the celebration of Mithras' birthday on December 25th, celibate priests that mediate between man and God, the Trinity, Zvarnah - the idea that emanations from the sun are collected in the head and radiate in the form of nimbus and rays, and asha-arta, "the true prayer". Centuries later in Greece this became Logos or "true sentence" and like in Persia it was associated with fire. Mithraism is widely considered to be a syncretistic religion, that is: a combination of Persian, Babylonian and Greek influences. However, the Greek influence seems to be limited to the identification in Greece of Mithras with the Greek god Perseus. The Babylonian influence seems to have been limited to astrology. Perhaps, though, the Persian interest in astrology has been overlooked. Zoroastrians worshipped at alters on hills and had a whole class of professional Magi or priests who had lots of time on their hands to do astrological research. Rather than a syncretistic religion, it would be more proper to call Mithraism a Zoroastrian subcult. The center of the Mithric cult was in Tarsus in Cilicia, Southeast Turkey. This is whence Paul, the founder of the Christian church, came from as a young man. Paul's insight on the road to Damascus was that instead of treating Jesus as a false savior, he could be identified as the true savior if combined with the new idea of "the second coming". That would cure the embarrassing fact that nothing had come of Jesus' time on earth. The rest was simple, Paul identified Jesus with Mithras and taught a modified Mithraism. That got Paul branded as a heretic by the true church and James the brother of Jesus. Eventually it cost Paul his life. However, the Mithric ideas were so generally attractive that they eventually won out.

SOME REFERENCES
1. Peake's Commentary on the Bible, Matthew Black and H.H. Rowley, ed., Revised edition, NY:Nelson 1982, section 607.
2. Encyclopedia America, Danbury, CT, 1988, vol 29, pp. 813-815, article by J. Duchesne-Guillemin.
3. Zarathustra, Philo, The Achaemenids and Israel, Lawrence Mills, Leipzig, 1903. Lawrence Mills was the brilliant American professor at Cambridge who not only translated much of the Avesta but published several books, including Our Own Religion in Ancient Persia, Chicago 1913, giving comprehensive examples of Persian words and ideas in the Bible. They have been reprinted.
4. The Mysteries of Mithra, Franz Cumont, Chicago, 1903, also in Dover Books reprint.



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Monday, January 02, 2006



The Secrets of ZoroastrianismBy: Mark WilleyAbout 1400 BCE[1] a forty year-old hermit from northeast Iran, named Zoroaster, came down from his mountain to preach a new religion. Zoroaster had been visited by the god Ahura-Mazda who proclaimed that he was the only god in the universe. Unlike most gods, Ahura Mazda was all good, all knowing and all powerful as well as being invisible. In fact, he was so perfect that he needed mediators like angels between himself and the world. Ahura-Mazda struggled against "The Lie" which was not just words but actions represented by Ahriman and his devils. Zoroaster taught that when people died they crossed the Shivat bridge, a sifting bridge in which the bad people fell off into hell and where the good people crossed to find a golden maiden who lead them into the light of heaven where their primary purpose was singing. In contrast the Jews believed in Sheol, a pit beneath the earth where people went when they died. The major myth of the Zoroastrians was that a virgin would bear the Saoshant, a man who would save the world. A book of judgment recorded the acts of people on earth, who after a millennium would face judgment day and be resurrected to an earthly paradise. In contrast, the Jewish idea of savior was that he was a future king, a political messiah rather than a transcendent messiah. "The whole eschatological scheme, however, of the Last Judgment, rewards and punishments, etc., within which immortality is achieved, is manifestly Zoroastrian in origin and inspiration."[2] After Zoroaster died, his religion became corrupted by the Magi, or celibate priesthood who took over his religion and mediated between man and Ahura-Mazda. This priesthood introduced many pre-Zoroastrian gods into the religion. Ahura-Mazda, the sun god Mithras, and the most important archangel, Spenta Mainyu (holy spirit), formed a holy trinity. However, as Herodotus reports in his first book paragraph 131 the Persians had no images of their gods and considered the use of them as a sign of folly. By contrast the Jewish Temple of Solomon was filled with various gods (Ezek 8:10). The rite of Zoroastrian initiation was baptism, by either blood, urine, or water.[3] In contrast the Jewish rite of initiation was Egyptian custom of circumcision. The Zoroastrian doctrine of Zvarnah is the idea that emanations from the sun are collected in the head and radiate in the form of nimbus and rays. Zoroastrians celebrated the birthday of Mithras on December 25th. The primary ritual of Zoroastrianism was the homa ceremony. "The Homa ceremony consisted in the extraction of the juice of the Homa plant by the priests during the recitation of prayers, the formal presentation of the liquor extracted to the sacrificial fire, the consumption of a small portion of it by one of the officiating priests, and the division of the remainder among the worshippers. As the juice was drunk immediately after extraction and before fermentation had set in, it was not intoxicating. The ceremony seems to have been regarded, in part, as having a mystic force, securing the favor of heaven; in part, as exerting a beneficial effect upon the body of the worshipper through the curative power inherent in the Homa plant. The animals which might be sacrificed were the horse, the ox, the sheep, and the goat, the horse being the favorite. A priest always performed the sacrifice, slaying the animal, and showing the flesh to the sacred fire by way of consecration, after which it was eaten at a solemn feast by the priest and the people."[4] The universal law of Zoroastrianism was asha-arta (in Vedic India, rta) "the true prayer". Centuries later in Greece this became Logos, or "true sentence" and like in Persia it was associated with fire. Belief was the basis of Zoroastrianism. If one said the true prayer, one would have everlasting life. In contrast, Judaism emphasized good works. The Subversion of JudaismIn 539 B.C. the great Persian king Cyrus conquered Babylon. His government was a Zoroastrian theocracy. Cyrus had a history of pretending to adopt a religion and then subverting it. In Egypt he claimed to be a god on earth. In Babylon his first act was to worship Marduk, claiming Marduk had sought a righteous prince and Cyrus was he. Later Cyrus mocked Marduk and had his image carted off. Likewise he subverted Baal, worshipping him at first, then appointing Baal's priests and finally destroying Baal's monuments and temples. Cyrus repatriated certain grateful Jewish proteges in 532 B.C. The Persian Kings restored them to their land; and designed and helped them build a Zoroastrian-style temple which was completed 516 B.C. after prolonged resistance from native Jews. In 350 B.C. a large number of Jews were exiled from Judea because of opposition to the Persian theocracy. Here was the overwhelming influence of a mighty state religion in a great empire in which the Jews were subjects. Jews were commanded to obey Cyrus in Isaiah 44 and 45. Not only did the Persian kings select the Jewish high priests, Persian Magi even masqueraded as Jewish Priests (Isaiah 66:21). The Pharisees had all the positions of power, gave the law, and wrote the holy books. Some Jews like Ezra and Daniel (Daniel 6:1-2) were paid agents of the Persians. "It needed the subsequent missions of Nehemiah and Ezra backed by the Achaemenian Imperial Government's authority to make them ruefully conform to the new ideals of monotheism and nationalism that had been conceived in adversity by the diaspora in Babylonia."[5] This interest by the Persian kings in the religion of his subjects was not limited to Jews. They seemed to put great importance on all of his subjects conforming to their religion - perhaps they regarded it as a glue to empire, perhaps they were religious fanatics. The Persians subverted Jewish theology, history, law, and even their language. Polytheism vs Monotheism"The official Jewish thesis that they have been what they are now since a Mosaic Age, before the Israelites' settlement in Palestine in the 13th century B.C. is not only irreconcilable with the historical evidence; it makes the course of Israelite and Jewish history since that date unintelligible."[6] The reason for the thesis is that it avoids the unexplainable problem of why God would chose to reveal himself differently at different periods and also makes the Jewish religion appear perfect and full-formed. For its first 1500 years Judaism was self- professed polytheism and the historical and scriptural evidence is massive on this point. The word "Elohim" is polytheistic, as is Genesis 1:26 "let us make a man." In Genesis 3:22 God says: "Behold, the man is become as one of us...". "Yahweh takes his stand in the Council of El to deliver judgments against the gods... I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. (Psalm 82)" "Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods (Ex 15:11)?" "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them" (Ex 18:11). Leviticus chapter 20 is anti-Moloch. The teraphim of Yahweh worshippers were called "my gods" and are mentioned in Genesis 31:19 35:2,4; Judges 17:5; I Sam. 19:13,16. The early Jews worshipped their ancestors. When the Jews entered the land of Canaan and practiced agriculture they had less use for a warrior God and more use for fertility gods like Baal (also a storm god) and fertility goddesses like Anat, Ishtar and Asherah. 1 Kings 12:28 and Ezekial 8:10 give examples of Jewish animal worship. Tammuz was accepted as a god. "... there thou shalt serve other gods, which neither thou or thy fathers have known, even wood and stone" (Deut 28:64-8). "Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;" (Deut 6:14 - proving that Deut 6:4, the shema, wasn't monotheistic). "Great is our God above all gods" (II Chron 2:5). At whatever period of Jewish history one looks, from before the flood, to just after, Abraham's time, Jacob's time, the exile in Egypt, the time of Judges, or the time of Kings, the Jews were always polytheists. Joshua 24:14 says "put away the gods your fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt." God could not even find ten who feared Him in Sodom and Gemorrah (Gen 18:32). In Gerar or Beersheba, Abraham thought the fear of God was surely not in that place (Gen 20:11). Abraham himself worshipped various forms of El. Isaac worshipped Pahad (Gen 31:42, 53). Jacob worshipped Abir (Gen 49:24). Jacob's family was polytheistic: "Rachel had stolen the images that were her fathers" (Gen 31:19); "And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods which were in their hand..."(Gen 35:4). Then as Joshua says, the Jews were polytheists in Egypt. They were polytheists when they danced naked in front of the golden calf at Mount Sinai. They were polytheists when Moses made his graven image of a serpent (see Numbers 21:9, 2 Kings 18:4). There are countless traces of serpent worship in Israel (Cambridge Ancient History, NY 1924, vol iii, page 428). Before entering Israel, Joshua had to ask his followers to put away their gods: Joshua 24:2 - "and they served other gods"; Joshua 24:20 "If ye forsake the Lord and serve other gods...". The period of the judges was rampant with polytheism: Judges 6:25, 11:24, 17:5, which can be summed up as: "And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the Lord;" (Judges 13:1). The kings were just as bad, starting with Saul. "It repenteth me that I have set Saul up to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments" (I Samuel 15:11). Solomon's Temple had two forty-foot pillars representing the fertility cult of Asherah, considered the wife of Yahweh. Down to Hezekiah's time in 705 B.C., Moses' brazen serpent Nehushtan was side by side with Yahweh's ark in the temple (II Kings 18:4). In Josiah's time 621 B.C. Yahweh shared his temple with Baal, Asherah, and the heavenly bodies, e.g. the sun (II Kings 23:4-7, 11). King Jeroboam set up two cultic bulls. Manasseh built alters to the sun, moon and stars in the temple (II Kings 21:3-5). King Ahab worshiped heifers a century after Solomon (Josephus 8:13) and his wife Jezabel was a devotee of Melkart. Just before the exile Joshiah attacked various practices of Baal; the sun, moon and stars; Moloch; Chemosh; and Milcom (II Kings 23). "For they served idols" (II Kings 17:12). Jeremiah protested against Baal and Moloch (Jer 2:28 and 32:35). One must be extremely careful in interpreting statements made about a tribal god because by his nature there is only one of him. Monolatry is the idea of one god for each national group. Henotheism is the worship of a god as supreme but explicit admission of other gods. Henotheistic or monolatrous statements can be misinterpreted to seem monotheistic. One must discount monotheistic-sounding phrases of the Jews and more heavily weigh evidences of polytheism, because of the likelihood of confusing monolatrous or henotheistic with monotheistic statements. Also, the books of the Old Testament were edited and perhaps written by monotheists at a later time and must be scrutinized in that light. "The Priestly source of the Pentatuech wrote the traditional ancestral laws, suppressing all references to superhuman agencies other than Yahweh..."(Monotheism vol 10, page 527, The Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, ed., NY:MacMillan, 1987). "Monotheistic statements were inserted when these writings took final shape" according to Bernhard Lang in his 1985 book Monotheism. The Jews before Isaiah seldom thought of Yahweh as the god of all tribes, even of all Hebrews. Baalzebub was the god of Ekron, Milcom was the god of Ammon, Chemosh was the god of the Moabites. Since the Jews were neither a political nor racial group, a minimum requirement of membership was that they worship the tribal God Yahweh as one of their gods. The only tie they had was religion. Yahweh was their glue and if they ceased giving him co-equal attention, then they would be Jews no more. That is the critical importance of the covenant and first commandment. The priests perfectly understood this - see Deut 4:25-28. Fundamentally the Jews were polytheists. "But whatever its date, the idea of the covenant tells us that the Israelites were not yet monotheists, since it only made sense in a polytheistic setting."[7] The God of Moses states in His first commandment that there are many gods: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me"(Exodus 20:3).[8] Monotheism is inconsistent with the Word of God in His fundamental commandment. To put that another way, if there were only one God the first commandment would be nonsense. "The full monotheistic conception of God came later (Isaiah 43:10-13, Jer 10:1-16)."[9] Monotheism was first introduced to the Jews at the time of Cyrus by the second Isaiah who also reports the Lord saying in 45:5-7, "I am the Lord and there is none else, there is no God beside me...I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil." Note that this dualism is very Zoroastrian. It is of supreme significance that Isaiah says: here is your new ruler and here is your new rule. Isaiah calls Cyrus the divinely appointed shepherd/ruler in chapter 44 and the "anointed/messiah" in chapter 45 and juxtaposes Cyrus with the first monotheistic declarations in the Bible. The second Isaiah is the first expression of universalism which "has no antecedent" in the Bible according to the Anchor Bible note at Isaiah 45. He also first introduces the idea of false gods - a fundamental criteria for monotheism. The nature of God was radically altered in the exile. The nature of what one worships is more important than the exclusivity of what one worships. The nature of God can also determine how many one worships, for example a universal God determines that you only worship one. Notice that a tribal god, of necessity, implies polytheism since there are other tribes. A universal god necessitates monotheism. Judaism has a tension between Jewish nationalism and monotheism which cannot be reconciled. Because monotheism was grafted onto a polytheistic religion, it resulted in a fatal contradiction between a chosen people with their peculiar local god and the omnipotent God with a world-wide mission. A tribal god is inconsistent with a universal God. Before the exile God was a vengeful, bloodthirsty, and jealous anthropomorphic tribal God of fear. After the exile, He became good, perfect, and so removed from the world that He needed mediators. God was no longer Abraham's El Shaddai, the God of the mountain; nor Moses' tribal god, Yahweh; but He was now the perfect and universal Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda. Histoey and MythologyThe myths and religious ideas of Genesis are nothing but borrowings from Zoroastrianism according to Dr. Friedrich Spiegal in Avesta die Heiligen Schriften der Persens (Wien 1853). Persian influence on post-exilic history was extreme. The post-exilic prophets acted as spokesmen for the Persian kings. Ezra and the others not only dated events by Persian reigns, but recorded the kings' edicts. In the Exilic books the name of Cyrus occurs 14 times, Darius 13 times, Xerxes 7 times and Artaxerxes about the same. There is no other religious book in the world that so honored foreign princes. The total subordination can be shown in the extraordinary statements made about Persian officials in the Bible. Artaxerxes was requested to mediate Jewish prayers. Haggai in chapter 2:23 quotes God as calling Zerubbabel, the Persian governor of Judah, his "chosen one". Darius is revered second only to Cyrus and in Isaiah 45:1 Cyrus is called the "Anointed of the Lord," or "Messiah," or "Christ". There are more than one hundred Persian words in the Old Testament. Section after section of the Bible dates from the reigns of the Persian kings. At least Ezra, Nehemiah and Daniel were written originally in Aramaic, an official language of the Persian Empire, but possibly all the books of the Old Testament were. LAW The official version of how the Jews got their present code of laws is that a long-lost document of Moses' was found and original laws were "reintroduced". "At the present time, the Pentatuech contains a vast body of elaborate law, but this is almost all the work of priests in the exilic and post-exilic period of Israel's history."[10] These laws took centuries to produce, and therefore had to have been practised widely and long, but they were never practiced by the Jews. The impossibility of Moses writing a document of God's law and then ignoring it and centuries of priests also ignoring it is absurd. The fact that this transparent ruse had just been tried by Josiah a few years previously completely destroys the myth. Josiah's "newly discovered" laws of Moses were believed by the educated of the time to be the secret creation of High Priest Hilkiah, secretary Shapan, and the prophetess Huldah.[11] What language could they have been written in, since Moses wouldn't have known the canaanite language of Hebrew? A point should be made that Ezra's laws were not only different but more numerous than Joshiah's by a factor of fourteen. Ezra's laws are the missing parts of the Avesta - the Zoroastrian holy book. Only the threats of infinite punishment or reward could sustain such burdensome laws. Not to mention that one wouldn't have time to follow all these laws if one were a polytheist. It is not surprising that the Persians would introduced monotheism and a universal God to the Jews would also introduce the laws of that God. We know exactly when and by whom these laws were introduced. In 397 B.C. Ezra, a courtier of the Persian king, was sent from Babylon "to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances" (Ezra 7:10). Ezra had been born and educated in Babylon and was well acquainted with Artaxerxes, who personally appointed him high priest and judge over Israel. Ezra, a foreign paid agent of a monotheistic Zoroastrian king, introduced a huge body of new laws to the Jews. The extraordinary document of his appointment is in Ezra (7:12-26) and Josephus Book 40, chapter 5, and is addressed to "Ezra the priest and reader of the divine law". Ezra was sent to see if the people of Judea "be agreeable to the law of God". There is certainly no hint in that command that the Jews had previously been exposed to these laws before. As a monotheist, when Artaxerxes referred to the law of God, he referred to the divine law of Ahura-Mazda. Artaxerxes promised Ezra unlimited resources from his treasury, all the silver and gold that Ezra could get from the priests of Babylon, and access to the treasuries of Syria and Phoenicia. Ezra was a highly respected reader of the divine law in Babylon, a divine law unknown to the Jews and agreeable to Artaxerxes. Artaxerxes spared no expense to surprise the Jews with these laws. These laws took seven days to read. Ezra expounded these Persian laws in the new "Book of the Law of Moses" in 397 B.C. The thesis of this "just discovered" book was that God had spent forty days with Moses on Mount Sinai giving him patterns for clothes, tongs, basins, and snuffers. These "just discovered" laws were found in a foreign country, where Moses had never been and could not have hid them. It was different from the "just discovered laws" of Moses that Josiah had found a few years previously. Even on their own terms, at least one or the other of these books had to be a fraud. Ironically, Ezra's book depicted an anti-anthropomorphic God, completely contrary to the experience of Moses himself. The alien nature of the laws shows itself in the distinction between clean and unclean animals in Leviticus and Ezekial which was derived from the Vendidad, where alone it is explained. The purification rituals are identical in th Pentatuech and the older Vendidad. Both books have a strange mix of ethical and natural rules side-by-side. Under Ezra's leadership the Torah in its entirety was made sovereign in the state of Judea. PHARISEES VS. SADDUCEES After Alexander conquered Jerusalem in 332 B.C. the direct Persian influence ended. From this time to 73 A.D. the Jews were given freedom of religion except for a brief Hellenizing period from 198 B.C. to 165 B.C. A council of Jews, called the Sanhedrin, was established to resolve religious issues. It was constituted of the two major parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Down to the time of Jesus, the Sadducees, who called themselves "purists", believed in "no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit" - Acts 23:8. They believed exclusively in the original law of Moses and rejected the laws of the Pharisees: see Josephus in Book XIII Chapter XI. Their god was a national god. The Sadduccees were the vast majority of Jews. The politically connected Pharisees were the Persian faction. The word "Pharisee"; as well as "Parsee", Persians in India; and "Farsi" or "Pharsee" (Persian), are all derived from the name of the Persian town or region of Fars. The connotation given Pharisee was separated from the people of the land, the am ha-aretz. The people of the land were never in exile and therefore practiced true Judaism. There was mutual hostility between the Pharisees and the am ha-aretz. The Pharisees may not even have been Jews but Persian Magi, if Isaiah 66:21 means anything. That would explain "separated" as well as the mutual hostility with the true Jews. The Pharisees never numbered more than 6000 according to Josephus. "Now it was from this very creed (of Zoroaster) that the Jews derived all the angelology of their religion...the belief in a future state; of rewards and punishments, the latter carried on in a fiery lake;...the soul's immortality, and the Last Judgment-all of them essential parts of the Zoroastrian scheme, and recognized by Josephus as the fundamental doctrines of the Judaism of his own times."[12] Only Pharisaism survived the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 A.D. "Present-day Judaism is Pharisaic Judaism."[13] It was able to survive because of its Zoroastrian pacifism. Only the traitorous act of Rabbi Johann ben Zakkai's concordat with the Romans which allowed him to leave his fellow Jews to their deaths and remove himself to Jamnia kept Pharisaic Judaism alive. Table of Jewish beliefs subverted by Zoroastrianism Jewish ZoroastrianPolytheism Monotheism human-like tribal god Perfect universal God no after-life Immortality and Paradise Political Messiah Transcendent Messiah no angels or demons angels and demons, holy spirit few primitive laws complicated code of moral and secular law. The only ritual not subverted by the Pharisees was the practice of circumcision. "The Jewish rite did not assume its present form until so late a period as that of the Maccabees (167 B.C.)."[14] Before that time the operation was imperceptible and that may be why the Persians didn't change it. Christ vs ChristianityChristianity is the teaching of Paul and most of the books of the New Testament were written by Paul. Paul was a Pharisee (Acts 23:6). In Matthew 23 Jesus offers his opinion of Pharisees: "The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses' seat...and love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi." Jesus addresses the Pharisees as fools and blind and here is how he addresses them in verses 28 and 33: "Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity...Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can you escape the damnation of hell?" Likewise the disciples believed Paul was not one of them (Acts 9:26). In the conference at Jerusalem, Paul was judged a heretic on circumcision (Acts 15:1-2) and meat offered to idols (Acts 15:29). In Galations 2:11-13, Peter came to Antioch to correct Paul's heresies on the social relations between Jewish and Gentile Christians without success. James, the brother of Christ, and the elders of the true church accused Paul as follows: "thou teachest all Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs (Acts 21:21)." They made Paul perform a cleansing ritual for seven days (Acts 21:26-27), but still he was almost killed by Christians (Acts 21:31). He was put on trial before the Sanhedrin for heresy (Acts 23). Later Paul was tried before the Romans who killed him on the basis of three charges: that Paul was a pestilent (troublesome) fellow, Paul led a heretical sect, and that he tried to profane the temple. Modern Christian dogma is essentially Paul's heresy, which is the Mithric cult under a different label. Mithraism was a syncretic cult of Babylonian astrology and Zoroastrian mysticism identified with the Greek god Perseus who was above Taurus in the Constellations. Mithraism came from Tarsus in Cilicina according to Plutarch, at the same time and place Paul did. The Christian church adopted the holy day of the Zoroastrian sun-god Mithras which was Sunday. Jesus always observed Saturday as the holy day. Catholic church organization is an exact copy of the Zoroastrian celibate hierarchy of priests, called Magi. The Magi intervened between the people and their god. Magi even wore miters or pointed hats as do the bishops of Rome. The idea that priests should intervene between people and God is exactly contrary to what Jesus taught. Matthew 6.6: "But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thy hast shut thy door, pray to thy father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." In the same chapter he recommends alms-giving and fasting in secret. Jesus clearly advocated direct communion with God. Paul proselytized gentiles. Jesus didn't preach to Gentiles and ordered his apostles not to (Matthew 10:5-6, 15:24): "I am not sent to but the lost sheep of Israel." All of Jesus' teachings were Jewish. He taught good works as the purpose of life: "love your neighbor as yourself" and "follow the commandments" (Matthew 19:17). Paul, on the contrary, taught Logos or 'belief' as the basis of action. Logos is unknown in the first three gospels; which are gospels of deed, character and self-denial. Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah, but Paul claimed it for him repeatedly. "While there was a considerable range of meanings in which the term Messiah could be understood, it is quite evident that Jesus did not identify himself with any of them."[15] Paul claimed and the Christian church claims that Jesus was the Messiah. We could list endlessly the various creeds and beliefs of Christianity that Jesus never taught, for example The Encyclopedia Americana says that Christianity owes many features to Iran over and above those inherited through Judaism: e.g. guardian angels and the heavenly journey of the soul.16 Christianity in its Angeliology, Demonology, Sot

Isaiah 14:12 (KJV with Hebrew)
"How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Helel, son of Shahar!
how art thou cut down to the ground,

Helel, or Day Star, is a Canaanite god. Shahar is another Canaanite god

In his fallen state, Helal was known as Azazel, the earth-bound demon to whom the Israelites gave as a yearly sacrifice on the Day of Atonement a "scapegoat" that was sent into the wilderness for Azazel after another goat had been sacrificed before the mercy seat of Yahweh:

Leviticus 16:5,7-10
"[Aaron] shall take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering . . . and Aaron shall cast lots on the two goats, one lot for Yahweh and the other lot for Azazel. Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for Yahweh, and offer it as a sin offering; but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before Yahweh to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel"

Isaiah 14:12-15
"How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn [i.e., Helal, son of the god Shahar]!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
`I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of El; I will sit on the Mount of Assembly on the heights of Zaphon [the sacred mountain of El where the Assembly of the Gods met in council].
But you are brought down to Sheol, to the depths of the Pit"

Mt. Saphon, also known as Mt. Casius, is located just north of Ugarit, a Canaanite city located in northern Palestine during the 13th and 14th centuries BCE about half a mile inland near the tip of Cyprus.

This site gives you information regarding the Ras Shamra Ugarit polytheistic religion from which the Jews copied from or were part of. The Old Testament contains evidence of a polytheistic past where references were kept as the guardians of the monotheistic tradition may have forgotten what they were as the Jews moved from polytheism to monotheism from the time of the Captivity in Babylon.

The names of Helel, or Helal, Azazel, Shahar and Mt. Zaphon, the site of Baal, in the Old Testament shows Judaism emerged from the Ugaritic polytheistic religion or copied the legends, prophecies and gods from the Ras Shamra Ugaritic religion.

Here is an example of the Bible where you can twist it to your liking. Bible thumpers have selected verses to interpret their prejudices for ages.
I like Christians but I have worries about the Bible Thumpers so below is for those Thumpers.

Reference: King James Version

Isaiah 14:
12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!
13 For thou hast said in thine heart,
a) I will ascend into heaven,
b) I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:
c) I will sit also upon the mount of the Congregation, in the sides of the north:
14 d)I will ascend above the heights of the clouds:
e)I will be like the most High.


COMPARISON:

OLD TESTAMENT
1) Isaiah 14:12
How art thou fallen from heaven
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
(Note: Lucifer is Latin for bright.)

NEW TESTAMENT
Revelation 22:16
I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star. (How arrogant, naming himself after such a lustrous heavenly body!)

OLD TESTAMENT
2) Isaiah 14:13 I will ascend into heaven


NEW TESTAMENT
Luke 24:51
And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. Mark 16:19
So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.

OLD TESTAMENT
3) Isaiah 14:13
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God:

The stars of God are the Israelites. (See Numbers 24:17 "...there shall come a Star out of Jacob,...")

Genesis 15:5
And he brought him forth abroad, and said,
Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him,
So shall thy seed be.

Deuteronomy 10:22
Thy fathers went down into Egypt with threescore and ten persons, and now the LORD thy God hath made thee as the stars of heaven for multitude.

NEW TESTAMENT
Matthew 19:28
And Jesus said unto them,
Verily I say unto you,
That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his the glory, ye also shall sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.

OLD TESTAMENT
4) Isaiah 14:13
I will sit also upon the mount of the Congregation, in the sides of the north.
[Note:
a) Mt. Ophel, just south of the Temple Mount, has been identified as Mt. Zion. Jesus as a child sat in the Temple.
b) Location of the Last Supper is just north of (Mt. Zion?)]

Psalm 48:2
Beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion, on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.

NEW TESTAMENT
Luke 2:46
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.

Matthew 26:20
Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

Luke 22:14
And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.

5) Isaiah 14:14
I will be like the most High.

God says He is the first and the last in the following passages:-

OLD TESTAMENT
Isaiah 41:4
Who hath wrought and done it, calling the generations from the beginning? I the LORD, the first, and with the last; I am he.

Isaiah 44:6
Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of Hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.

NEW TESTAMENT
Jesus says that he is the first and the last in the following passages:-

Revelation 1:11
Saying, I am the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and untoLaodicea.

Revelation 1:17
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:

Revelation 22:13
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

God's garments are sprinkled with blood in the following passage:-

OLD TESTAMENT
Isaiah 63:3
I have trodden the wine press alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.

Jesus' garment is dipped in blood in the following passage:-

NEW TESTAMENT
Revelation 19:13
And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

OLD TESTAMENT
In Isaiah, new heavens and new earth are mentioned in the following passage:-

Isaiah 66:22
For as the new heavens and new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith the LORD, so shall your seed and your name remain.

NEW TESTAMENT
In Revelation, a new heaven and a new earth are mentioned in the following passage:-

Revelation 21:1
And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away: and there was no more sea.

OLD TESTAMENT
God is the bridegroom of His people in the following:-

Isaiah 62:5
For as a young man marrieth a virgin, so shall thy sons marry thee: and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.

NEW TESTAMENT
Jesus is the bridegroom of his followers in the following:-

Matthew 9:15
And Jesus said unto them, Can the chilren of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and shall they fast.

Mark 2:19.
And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
20. But the days will come, while the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

Luke 5:34.
And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the bridegroom fast, while the bridegroom is with them?
35. But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.

Revelation 19:7.
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
9. And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.

Revelation 20:9.
And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb's wife.

Isaiah 14:19
"But thou art cast out of thy grave like an abominable branch,..."
Note: The image of Jesus on the cross confirms it for there is no gravesite of him.

Jesus fits the descriptions of Lucifer almost to a T.
So is Jesus God or Lucifer?

y'know talk, i might be interested above most things in how judaism originally came to be. in other words, i'd love to take the time to read everything you just posted. it might help. zoroaster in particular is fascinating stuff.

i'm not as certain what period of time a post that long is going to stay on this board, if they stay, then i'm posting this for nothing, but i think the links to that material would have been more useful all in all- if they're available.

In my opinion, I believe, many Jews today believe there is only one Hollywood, one Las Vegas, one Miami Beach, and of course one "best" bagel store in anyone's neighborhood.

It's polyconsumerism on the macro level, and monoconsumerism on the micro level. Many Christians, I believe, have these same beliefs.

not making it up
i think the word "one" is ordinarily misused when the best word to use would be "oneness"

one means "there are many of these, but only this fraction would be suitable for our purposes." oneness means "there may be many of these, but they are part of a larger whole." funny how basically the same word can refer either to exclusivity or inclusivity?

but a bagel, oy, what a symbol!

i forget the hasidic reason why a jewish bagel would be better symbolically if it had a line through it. maybe because then it would represent ayin! no, that wasn't it.

then again, a bagel does have a line through it, but it goes through the other way.

In true Biblical context Judiasm was a religion which found it difficult to remain separate from its contemporary neighbors. Same has been true of Christiandom. The Bible record mentions this several times. Here are two instances:

(Deuteronomy 7:3) And you must form no marriage alliance with them. Your daughter you must not give to his son, and his daughter you must not take for your son.

(2 Corinthians 6:17-18) "?'Therefore get out from among them, and separate yourselves,' says Jehovah, ?'and quit touching the unclean thing'"; "?'and I will take YOU in.'" 18 "?'And I shall be a father to YOU, and YOU will be sons and daughters to me,' says Jehovah the Almighty."

As the Bible shows, those who claim to serve God, but are unfaithful and enter into relations with the political powers, are viewed by God as follows:"Adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God."?-Jas. 4:4

In spite of this clear admonition, apostate Christians of the second century took on the trappings of the pagan Roman religion. They moved away from their pure Biblical origins and instead clothed themselves with pagan Roman garb and titles and became imbued with Greek philosophy. Professor Wolfson of Harvard University explains in The Crucible of Christianity that in the second century, there was a great influx into Christianity of "philosophically trained gentiles." These admired the wisdom of the Greeks and thought they saw similarities between Greek philosophy and teachings of the Scriptures.

Wolfson continues: "Sometimes they variously express themselves to the effect that philosophy is God's special gift to the Greeks by way of human reason as Scripture is to the Jews by way of direct revelation." He continues: "The Fathers of the Church . . . entered upon their systematic undertaking to show how, behind the homely language in which Scripture likes to express itself, there are hidden the teachings of the philosophers couched in the obscure technical terms coined in their Academy, Lyceum, and Porch [centers for philosophical discussion]."

The "mixed crowd" (Numbers 11:4) of others who left Egypt with the Jews seems to have influenced or put that kind of a spin on it.

Calf worship was the first form of idolatry mentioned in the Bible to which the Israelites succumbed after the Exodus from Egypt. While Moses was in the mountain receiving God's law, the people became impatient and approached Aaron with the request that he make a god for them. From the gold earrings contributed by the Israelites, Aaron formed a molten statue of a calf, undoubtedly a young bull. (Ps 106:19, 20) It was regarded as representing Jehovah, and the festival held the following day was designated "a festival to Jehovah." The Israelites sacrificed to the golden calf, bowed before it, ate, drank, and enjoyed themselves in song and dance.?-Ex 32:1-8, 18, 19; Ne 9:18.

Idolatrous Egyptian worship, which associated gods with cows, bulls, and other animals, likely had influenced the Israelites to a great extent, causing them to adopt calf worship so soon after being liberated from Egypt. This is confirmed by Stephen's words: "In their hearts they turned back to Egypt, saying to Aaron, ?'Make gods for us to go ahead of us. . . . ' So they made a calf in those days and brought up a sacrifice to the idol and began to enjoy themselves in the works of their hands."?-Ac 7:39-41.

Here is how Jehovah, through Moses, felt about the matter:

(Exodus 32:30-35) And it came about on the very next day that Moses proceeded to say to the people: "YOU?-YOU have sinned with a great sin, and now I shall go up to Jehovah. Perhaps I can make amends for YOUR sin." 31 So Moses returned to Jehovah and said: "Ah, but this people has sinned with a great sin, in that they made a god of gold for themselves! 32 But now if you will pardon their sin,?-and if not, wipe me out, please, from your book that you have written." 33 However, Jehovah said to Moses: "Whoever has sinned against me, I shall wipe him out of my book. 34 And now, come, lead the people to where I have spoken to you of. Look! My angel will go ahead of you, and on the day of my bringing punishment I shall certainly bring punishment upon them for their sin." 35 And Jehovah began plaguing the people because they had made the calf, which Aaron had made.

Judaism today has a few branches beyond the Orthodox. Reform Jews have a whole different spin on the world. Quoting the bible is just so exasperating to anyone that believes a religion can grow, with or without prophets.

It's 2007 and next year it's 2008.

People have been exasperated by Bible preachers at least since Noah's day. They got over it.

I henceforth will make it my aim not to exasperate anyone any more than anyone else might exasperate someone else on this forum.

"A religion can grow."

That has a very positive connotation but is perhaps more positive than 2007 has shown and that 2008 will prove to show. Religion today is like a storm tossed ship heading for the rocks, and the lighthouse isn't in sight.

i am glad- no, thrilled foofie, to see you imply (no?) that judaism can continue to evolve. from the point of view of the jews i enjoy speaking with the most (no group in mind, more like a particular quality of them) it can and must. (i'm not talking about herschel but i like him too)

none of this makes history any less important, on the contrary, reengaging in the history of judaism is key to renewal, and certainly important to understanding the religions that came out of judaism.

Religion is man made. It is one mans will over another. Religion has no just consequence.

---------------

The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
(Excerpt from Chapter 9)

"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/warPrayer.html

Time will tell.