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[First posted in 2012;  here’s the original Introduction:  This glimpse into the times of John the Baptist/Herod/Jesus/Paul is from A History of the Jews by Christian historian Paul Johnson.

We have earlier introduced this book as MUST READ, if only to maintain a balance in points of view and belief systems we present in this website;  how else do we learn to be discerning if we are exposed only to one side? This historian reconstructed as best he could the intertwining lives of these NT figures, culled from scarce historical sources and unfortunately, for lack of more reliable information, he inevitably relies on the NT. Make sure you read to the very last sentence of this post.  

Actually we don’t agree with that statement; our view is this:  

Jesus a Torah observant Jew

would have preached the Torah;  

whatever myths revolved around him

after his crucifixion

spun out into a new religion,

and from Paul of Tarsus

comes the main doctrines of Christianity.  

This excerpt is from Part II titled “Judaism.”  Reformatted and highlighted for this post, images added.—Admin1.]

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  John the Baptist lived and worked for the most part in Galilee and the Peraea, territory which was now overwhelmingly Jewish but which had been annexed to Judaea by fire and sword — and often forcible conversion –in Maccabee times.  It was an area both of fierce orthodoxy and diverse heterodoxy, and of religious and political ferment.  Much of it had been devastated in the rising immediately after Herod’s death and in 6 AD; and the great man’s son, Herod Antipas, whom the Romans made governor, tried to rebuilt it by planting new cities on Greek lines.  Between 17 and 22 AD he created a new administrative center at Tiberias on Lake Galilee, and to people it he forced Jews from the surrounding countryside to give up their farms and live there  He drafted in the poor and ex-slaves too.  It thus became a curious anomaly: the only Greek city with a majority of Jews. Antipas attracted criticism for other reasons.  His Judaism was suspect because he had a Samaritan mother; and he broke Mosaic Law by marrying his brother’s wife.  It was John the Baptist’s preaching against this sin which led to his imprisonment and execution.  According to Josephus [Jewish historian] Antipas felt that the Baptist’s following was growing so formidable that it was bound to end in revolt.

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The Baptist was a believer in what the Jews called the Messiah.  His mission centered on two books — Isaiah and Enoch.  He was not a hermit, a separatist or an excluder.  On the contrary:  he preached to all Jews that the day of reckoning was coming.  All must confess their sins, repent and receive baptism by water as a symbol of atonement, and so prepared themselves for the Last Judgment. His task was to respond to the injunction in Isaiah, ‘Clear ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord,’ and to proclaim the coming of the end of days and the advent of the Messiah, who would be the Son of Man as described by Enoch.  According to the New Testament, the Baptist was related to Jesus of Nazareth, baptized him and identified him as the Son of Man; and it was shortly after the Baptist’s execution that Jesus began his own mission.  What was this mission, and who did Jesus think he was?

The Jewish doctrine of the Messiah had its origins in the belief that King David had been anointed by the Lord, so that he and his descendants would reign over Israel to the end of time and would exercise dominion over alien peoples.  After the fall of the kingdom, this belief had been transformed into a prophetic expectation that the rule of the House of David would be miraculously restored.  On top of this was grafted the Isaiac description of this future king as the dispenser of justice, and this was perhaps the most important element in the belief because Isaiah seems to have been the most widely read and admired, as it was certainly the most beautifully written, of all the Bible books.  During the second and first centuries BC, this justice-dispensing reincarnation of the Davidic ruler fitted neatly into the notions, in the Book of Daniel, the Book of Enoch and other apocalyptic works, of an end of days and the Four Last Things—death, judgment, hell and heaven.  It was at this comparatively late stage that the divinely chosen and charismatic figure was first called the Messiah or “the anointed [king]’.  The word was originally Hebrew, then Aramaic, and simply transliterated into Greek as messias; but the Greek word for ‘the anointed’ is christos, and it is significant that it was the Greek, not the Hebraic, title which was attached to Jesus.

The messianic doctrine, being of complex and even contradictory origins, created great confusion in the minds of the Jews.  But most of them seem to have assumed that the Messiah would be a political-military leader and that his coming would inaugurate a physical, earthly state.  There is an important passage in the Acts of the Apostles describing how Gamaliel the Elder, grandson of Hillel, and at one time president of the Sanhedrin, dissuaded the Jewish authorities from punishing the early Christians, but arguing that the authenticity of their Messiah would be demonstrated by the success of their movement.  There had been, he said, the case of Theudas, ‘boasting himself to be somebody’, but he had been killed, ‘and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered and bought to nought’.  Then there had been Judas of Galilee, ‘in the days of the taxing’, and ‘he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed’.  The Christians, he said, should be left alone because, if their mission lacked divine sanction ‘it will come to nought’.

The other Jewish elders were persuaded by Gamaliel’s argument, for they too thought in terms of an uprising designed to alter the government.  When Herod the Great heard that the Messiah or Christ was born, he reacted with violence as if to a threat to his dynasty.  Any Jew who listened to a man making messianic claims would take it for granted he had some kind of political and military programme.  The Roman government, the Jewish Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and even the Pharisees assumed that a Messiah would make changes int he existing order, of which they were all part. The poor people of Judaea and Galilee would also believe that a Messiah preaching fundamental changes would be talking not, or not only, in spiritual and metaphysical terms, but of the realities of power — government, taxes, justice.

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Now it is obvious from the evidence we have that Jesus of Nazareth conformed to none of these messianic patterns.  He was not a Jewish nationalist.  On the contrary, he was a Jewish universalist.  Like the Baptist, he was influenced by the teachings of the pacific elements of the Essenes. But like the Baptist he believed that the programme of repentance and rebirth should be carried to the multitude, as was forseen in Chapter 53 of Isaiah.  It was not the job of the teacher of righteousness to hide in the desert or in caves; or to sit in the seats of the mighty either, like the Sanhedrin.  It was his mission to preach to all, and in a spirit of humility before God who might demand the extremities of suffering.  The person of whom Isaiah wrote had to be the ‘tender plant’, the ‘despised and rejected of men’, the ‘man of sorrows’, who would be ‘wounded for our iniquities, bruised for our transgression’, ‘oppressed and afflicted and yet he opened not his mouth’.  This ‘suffering servant’ of God would be ‘taken from prison and from judgment’, ‘brought as a lamb to the slaughter’, be buried with the wicked and ‘numbered with the transgressors’.  this Messiah was not a mob leader or democrat or guerilla chieftain, let alone a future earthly king and world sovereign.  He was, rather, a theologian and sacrificial victim, a teacher by his word and example, and by his life and death.

If Jesus was a theologian, what was and whence came his theology?  His background was the heterodox Judaism and increasing Hellenization of Galilee.  His father, a carpenter, died before Jesus was baptized, in 28/29 AD.  In the Greek New Testament Joseph bore a Hebrew name, but Jesus’ mother was called Mary, a Greek form of Miriam.  Two of Jesus brothers, Judah and Simon, had Hebrew names but two others, James (in Hebrew Jacob) and Joses (in Hebrew Joseph), did not; and Jesus was the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua.  The family claimed descent from David, and it may have been predominantly conformist, since the New Testament hints at family tensions created by Jesus’ teaching.  After his death, however, the family accepted his mission.  His brother James became the head of the sect in Jerusalem and, after James’ martyrdom by the Sadducees, Jesus’ cousin Simon succeeded; the grandsons of his brother judah were leaders of the Galilean Christian community in the reign of Trajan.

The evidence we possess shows that, though Jesus was influenced by Essene teaching and may have spent some time living with them, and though he was personally connected with the Baptist sect, he was in essentials one of the Hakamim, the pious Jews who moved in the world.  He was closer to the Pharisees than to any other group.  This statement is liable to be misleading, since Jesus openly criticized the Pharisees, especially for ‘hypocrisy’.  But on close examination, Jesus’ condemnation is by no means so severe or so inclusive as the Gospel narrative in which it is enclosed implies; and in essence it is similar to criticisms levelled at the Pharisees by the Essenes, and by the later rabbinical sages, who drew a sharp distinction between the Hakamim, whom they saw as their forerunners, and the ‘false Pharisees’, whom they regarded as enemies of true Judaism.

The truth seems to be that Jesus was part of a rapidly developing argument within the pious Jewish community, which included Pharisees of various tendencies.  The aim of the Hakamim movement was to promote holiness and make it general.  How was this to be done?  The argument centered around two issues;  the centrality and indispensability of the Temple, and the observance of the Law.  On the first point, Jesus clearly sided with those who regarded the Temple as an obstacle to the general spread of holiness, since the concentration on the physical building, with its hierarchies, privileges (mostly hereditary) and wealth, was a form of separation from the people—a wall built against them.  Jesus used the Temple as a preaching forum; but so had others who had opposed it, notably Isaiah and Jeremiah.  The idea that the Jews could do without the Temple was not new.  On the contrary, it was very old, and it could be argued that the true Jewish religion, long before the Temple was built, was universalistic and unlocated.  Jesus, like many other pious Jews, saw holiness spreading to the whole people through the elementary schools and synagogues.  But he went further than most of them by regarding the Temple as a source of evil and predicting its destruction, and by treating the Temple authorities and the whole central system of Judaic administration and law with silent contempt.

On the second issue, the degree to which the Law must be obeyed, the original argument between the Sadducees, who admitted only the written Pentateuch, and the Pharisees, who taught the Oral Law, had by Jesus’ time been supplemented by a further argument among the Hakamim and Pharisees.  One school, led by Shammai the Elder (c. 50 BC-c. 30 AD), took a rigorist view especially on matters of cleanliness and uncleanliness, an explosive area since it militated strongly against the ability of ordinary, poor people to achieve holiness.  The rigorism of the Shammai school, indeed, was eventually to take his descendants and followers out of the rabbinical-Judaic tradition altogether, and they vanished like the Sadducees themselves.  On the other hand there was the school of Hillel the Elder, Shammai’s contemporary.  He came from the diaspora and was later referred to as ‘Hillel the Babylonian.’  He brought with him more humane and universalistic notions of Torah interpretation.  To Shammai, the essence of the Torah lay in its detail; unless you got the detail exactly right, the system became meaningless and could not stand.  To Hillel, the essence of the Torah was its spirit:  if you got the spirit right, the detail could take care of itself.  Tradition contrasted Shammai’s anger and pedantry with Hillel’s humility and humanity, but what was remembered best of all was Hillel’s anxiety to make obeying the law possible for all Jews and for converts.  To a pagan who said he would become a Jew if he could be taught the Torah while standing on one foot, Hillel is said to have replied, ‘What is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor; this is the entire Torah.  All the rest is commentary –go and study it.’

Jesus was a member of Hillel’s school, and may have sat under him, for Hillel had many pupils.  He repeated this famous saying of Hillel’s and it is possible that he used other dicta, for Hillel was a famous aphorist.  But of course, taken literally, Hillel’s saying about the Torah is false.  Doing as you would be done by is not the entire Torah.  The Torah is only in part an ethical code.  It is also, and in its essence, a series of absolutist divine commands which cover a vast variety of activities many of which have no bearing at all on relations between men.  It is not true that ‘all the rest is commentary’.  If it had been, other peoples, and the Greeks in particular, would have had far less difficulty in accepting it.  ‘All the rest’, from circumcision, to diet, to the rules of contact and cleanliness, far from being commentary were injunctions of great antiquity which constituted the great barriers between the pious Jews and the rest of humanity.  Therein lay the great obstacle, not merely in universalizing Judaism but even in making its practice possible for all Jews.

Jesus’ teaching career saw him translate Hillel’s aphorism into a system of moral theology and, in doing so, strip the law of all but its moral and ethical elements.  It was not that Jesus was lax.  Quite the contrary.  In some respects he was stricter than many sages.  He would not, for instance, admit divorce, a teaching which was later to become, and still remains today, enormously important.  But, just as Jesus would not accept the Temple when it came between God and man’s pursuit of holiness, so he dismissed the Law when it impeded, rather than assisted, the road to God.

Jesus’ rigorism in taking Hillel’s teaching to its logical conclusion led him to cease to be an orthodox sage in any sense which had meaning and, indeed, cease to be a Jew.  He created religion which was sui generis, and it is accurately called Christianity.  He incorporated in his ethical Judaism  an impressive composite of the eschatology he found in Isaiah, Daniel and Enoch, as well as what he found useful in the Essenes and the Baptist, so that he was able to present a clear perspective of death, judgment and the afterlife.  And he offered this new theology to everyone within reach of his mission: pious Jews, the am ha-arez, the Samaritans, the unclean, the gentiles even.  But, like many religious innovators, he had a public doctrine for the masses and a confidential one for his immediate followers.  The latter centered on what would happen to him as a person, in life and in death, and therein lay his claim to be the Messiah —not just the Suffering Servant, but someone of far greater significance.

The more one examines the teachings and activities of Jesus, the more obvious it appears that they struck at Judaism in a number of fatal respects, which made his arrest and trial by the Jewish authorities inevitable.  His hostility to the Temple was unacceptable even to liberal Pharisees, who accorded Temple worship some kind of centrality.  His rejection of the Law was fundamental.  Mark relates that, having ‘called all the people unto him’, Jesus stated solemnly: ‘There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.’ This was to deny the relevance and instrumentality of the Law in the process of salvation and justification. He was asserting that man could have a direct relationship with God, even if he were poor, ignorant and sinful; and, conversely, it was not man’s obedience to the Torah which creates God’s response, but the grace of God to men, at any rate those who have faith in him, which makes them keep his commandments.

  To most learned Jews, this was false doctrine because Jesus was dismissing the Torah as irrelevant and insisting that, for the approaching Last Judgment, what was needed for salvation was not obedience to the Law but faith.  If Jesus had stuck to the provinces no harm would have come to him.  By arriving at Jerusalem with a following, and teaching openly, he invited arrest and trial, particularly in view of his attitude to the Temple — an it was on this that his enemies concentrated. [Source: E. Bamel (ed.), The Trial of Jesus, esp. ‘The Problem of the Historicity of the Sanhedrin Trial’.]  False teachers were normally banished to a remote district.  But Jesus, by his behavior at his trial, made himself liable to far more serious punishment.  Chapter 17 of Deuteronomy, especially vs. 8 to 12, appears to state that in matters of legal and religious controversy, a full inquiry should be conducted and a majority verdict reached, and if any of those involved refuses to accept the decision, he shall be put to death.  In a people as argumentative and strong-minded as the Jews, living under the rule of law, this provision, known as the offense of the “rebellious elder’, was considered essential to hold society together.  Jesus was a learned man; that was why Judas, just before his arrest, called him ‘rabbi’.  Hence, when brought before the Sanhedrin – or whatever court it was – he appeared as a rebellious elder; and by refusing to plead, he put himself in contempt of court and so convicted himself of the crime by his silence.  No doubt it was the Temple priests and the Shammaite Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees, who felt most menaced by Jesus’ doctrine and wanted him put to death in accordance with scripture.  But Jesus could not have been guilty of the crime, at any rate as it was later defined by Maimonides in his Judaic code.  In any case it was not clear that the Jews had the right to carry out the death sentence.  To dispose of these doubts, Jesus was sent to the Roman procurator Pilate as a state criminal. There was no evidence against him at all on this charge, other than the supposition that men claiming to be the Messiah sooner or later rose in rebellion — Messiah-claimants were usually packed off to the Roman authorities if they became troublesome enough.  So Pilate was reluctant to convict but did so for political reasons.  Hence Jesus was not stoned to death under Jewish law, but crucified by Rome. The circumstances attending Jesus’ trial or trials appear to be irregular, as described in the New Testament gospels. But then we possess little information about other trials at this time, and all seem irregular.

What mattered was not the circumstance of his death but the fact that he was widely and obstinately believed, by an expanding circle of people, to have risen again.  This gave enormous importance not just to his moral and ethical teaching but to his claim to be the Suffering Servant and his special eschatology.  Jesus’ immediate disciples grasped the importance of his death and resurrection as a ‘new testament’ or witness to God’s plan, the basis on which every individual could make a new covenant with God.  But all they were capable of doing to further this gospel was to repeat Jesus’ sayings and recount his life-story.

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ENTER PAUL

The real evangelical work was carried out by Paul of Tarsus, a diaspora Jew from Cilicia, whose family came from Galilee, and who returned to Palestine and studied under Gamaliel the Elder.  He possessed the Pharasaic training to understand Jesus’ theology, and he began to explain it —once he was convinced that the resurrection was a fact and Jesus’ claims to be the Christ true.  It is often argued that Paul ‘invented’ Christianity by taking the ethical teachings of Christ and investing them in a new theology which drew on the intellectual concepts of the Hellenistic diaspora.

•  His distinction between ‘the flesh and ‘the spirit’ has been compared to Philo’s body-soul dichotomy. [See E.R. Goodenough, ‘Paul and the Hellenization of Christianity’, in J. Neusner (ed.) Religions in Antiquity.]]
• It is also maintained that by ‘Christ’ Paul had in mind something like Philo’s ‘logos’.  But Philo was dealing in abstractions.  For Paul, Christ was a reality.[Samuel Sandmel, Judaism and Christian Beginnings]. By body and soul, Philo meant the internal struggle within man’s nature. By spirit and flesh, Paul was referring to the external world —man was flesh, the spirit was God — or Christ. [E.P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism]

The truth seems to be that both Jesus and Paul had their roots in Palestinian Judaism. Neither was introducing concepts from the Hellenistic diaspora.  Both were preaching a new theology, and it was essentially the same theology.  Jesus prophesied a new testament by the shedding of his blood ‘for many’ and his resurrection. Paul taught that the prophecy had been accomplished, that the Christ had become incarnate in Jesus, and that a New Covenant had thereby come into existence and was offered to those who had faith in it.

Neither Jesus nor Paul denied the moral or ethical value of the Law.  They merely removed the essence of it from its historical context, which both saw as outmoded.  It is a crude oversimplification to say that Paul preached salvation by grace as opposed to salvation by works (that is, keeping the Law.)  What Paul said was that good works were the condition of remaining eligible for the New Covenant, but they do not in themselves suffice salvation, which is obtained by grace.  Both Jesus and Paul were true Jews in that they saw religion as a historical procession of events.  They ceased to be Jews when they added a new event.  As Paul said, when Christ became incarnate in Jesus, the basis of the Torah was nullified.  At one time, the original Jewish covenant was the means whereby grace was secured.  That, said Paul, was no longer true.  God’s plan had changed.  The mechanism of salvation was now the New Testament, faith in Christ.  The covenantal promises to Abraham no longer applied to his present descendants, but to Christians.  And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. What Jesus challenged, and Paul specifically denied, was the fundamental salvation-process of Judaism:  the election, the covenant, the Law.  They were inoperative, superseded, finished.

   A complex theological process can be summed up simply:

 Jesus invented Christianity,

and Paul preached it.

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[First posted in 2012 when we started this website. James Tabor in Restoring Abrahamic Faith], gives his analysis of where Christianity deviates from the foundational teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures.   Chapter 5 is titled “Turning to God” —a fitting finale to his thesis on returning to the simplicity of Abrahamic faith.

 A Christian reading this might think, “but that is what I have done all my life, turned to God!” Well, we have repeatedly emphasized in this website that many God-seekers call on ‘God’ or the God of their religion.  Pause and reflect on what this chapter posits,  just as we did at the fork on the road we faced while traveling the ‘religious’ pathway’ all our life —called Christianity.  We had to ask ourselves:

“Who is my God” 

“What is His Name?”

“Is my God the One True God?”

“How do I know?”

“What is the source and basis of my belief?”  

Reformatting and highlights added.–Admin1]

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Christianity, while claiming to be thoroughly Biblical, nonetheless represents a fundamental departure from the HEBREW FAITH in these areas.  Note how evangelist Billy Graham sums up his understanding of the uniqueness of Christianity:

“Christ was unique first of all in his person.  The Bible’s consistent testimony is that Jesus was not like any other person who has ever lived—because he was God in human flesh.  Yes, that’s hard to understand.  But the Bible tells us that God loves us, and he expressed that love to us by coming down to earth.  God took upon himself human flesh, walking on this earth to show his love and concern for us.  Christ is unique also because of his mission.  Yes, he did some of the things other religious leaders have done.  But Christ came primarily to bring salvation and he did this by becoming the complete and final sacrifice for our sins through his death on the cross.  Christ died for us and rose again to give us eternal life and to come into our lives right now to change us.  My prayer is that you would understand who Christ is and what he has done for you — and then that you would open your heart to him and become a Christian.  Turn to Christ today. [Source;  a syndicated daily newspaper column.]

From the perspective of the Hebrew Bible, this typical expression of popular Christianity is off the mark at every point.  

• First, it compromises the fundamental idea of the ONE GOD, which Jesus himself constantly affirmed, and it imports the pagan idea of the God-Man coming to earth.  
• Second, it ignores the vital, dynamic, Biblical concept of the Kingdom of God on earth,  which Jesus and the Prophets always associate with the messianic mission.  The result is that “salvation” is reduced to an individual attempt to “save one’s soul” and escape this world for heaven.  
• Finally, it tells people to “turn to Christ,” compromising the clear Biblical teaching that we are to turn to YHVH God alone.

The Bible says that Abraham put his faith in YHVH God, kept His laws, commandments, and ordinances, and taught that WAY to his children (Genesis 15:6; 26;5; 18:19).  He relied on YHVH’s promises that his descendants would become a great nation in the land of Israel and ultimately bless the entire earth. He is the “father of all the faithful,” that is, those who share his Faith.

 Each of these fundamental elements of BIBLICAL FAITH stands in sharp contrast to what Billy Graham presents here.  Dr. Graham’s message ignores the great doctrines of the ONE GOD, the revelation of the TORAH, the centrality of Israel, and God’s messianic PLAN for the Kingdom of God to be realized on this earth and not in heaven.  I am sure that Dr. Graham would immediately respond that he does believe such things.  But the point here is a simple one:  All the fundamentals of the ABRAHAMIC FAITH are missing from his summary of what he considers most vital to Christianity.  And yet, the substance of Dr. Graham’s summary is the lifeblood of the evangelical Christian message.

Traditional Christianity, in all of its forms, Roman and Greek Catholic, as well as Protestant, is far removed from ABRAHAMIC FAITH.  By the end of the first century C.E., the battle was largely lost.  Those original followers of Jesus, who remained faithful to TORAH and Prophets, had become almost completely marginalized.  What emerged, particularly by the third century C.E., was a new, almost wholly pagan, Hellenistic, quasi-Gnostic, anti-Jewish amalgamation.  Although Christianity held on to the so-called “Old Testament,” fundamentally a great apostasy, or “falling away” occurred.  

There are three great pillars of BIBLICAL FAITH: God, TORAH, and Israel.  Christianity repudiated all three.  It is no surprise, accordingly, that Jews repudiated Christianity.  How could they do otherwise?

The clear teaching of the TORAH and Prophets of the ONE Creator God was recast in various ways, whether as the Trinitarian idea of God in three Persons with Jesus declared to be YHVH born in the flesh or the adoptionist notion that the human Jesus became God.  Surely no one would maintain that Noah, Abraham, Moses or any of the Prophets had such ideas, and our most reliable sources on the historical Jesus indicate that he would have repudiated such views as well.  As we have seen earlier, Jesus affirmed the Shema and rebuked those who called him “good.”  One must go to ancient Greek, Egyptian, or ancient Babylonian traditions for tales about human beings fathered by gods, or of mortals assuming the status of divinity.  There is not the slightest hint of the God-Man idea in the texts of the Hebrew Bible. 

The TORAH, declared to be the definitive revelation of God according to the Hebrew Bible, was pronounced “null and void,” abrogated, obsolete.  David had written,

 Oh how I love Your TORAH, it is my meditation all the day, 

and millions of Christians were taught to actually despise the TORAH as an inferior “Jewish” stage of primitive religion.  It was characterized as harsh, restrictive, and lacking in spirituality.  

Jesus had declared that not a letter of TORAH would be abrogated, and not even the least of the commandments (mitzvot) would pass away, but his words were either ignored or reinterpreted. Christians who did continue to observe the Sabbath Day, the Holy Days, or follow the dietary laws were condemned as “Judaizers” and put out of the Church.  The “Old Testament” was relegated to inferior status, and in popular Christian thinking, the “loving Heavenly Father” was contrasted to the harsh and fiery Jewish God YHVH.  Christians largely lost touch with the Hebrew language, Hebrew modes of thought, and any connection with the rich history of the Jewish interpretation of Scripture.

The people of Israel, known to the Church as “the Jews,” were totally displaced and replaced with the doctrine of the new “spiritual Israel,” the largely Gentile Christian Church.  All the promises of the Prophets about God’s PLAN for the Restoration of Israel were now applied allegorically to the Christians.  The Jews were seen as a despised, pitiful, God-forsaken race, possessing no spirituality, and hopelessly damned for their rejection of Christ.  The teaching about the Kingdom of God on earth, so tightly bound together in Scripture with the fortunes of Israel, was made into a dualistic, Hellenistic, “hope of heaven” after death.

As time went on, Christianity took up every pagan way with a vengeance:  holidays, customs, dress, habits, rituals, polity, and superstitions.  The list is endless.  Jesus the Nazarene, the observant Jew, was transformed into “Christ,” the Hellenistic, Serapis-like Savior God with long hair and effeminate features.  The mikvah , or ritual immersion, became “baptism,” a mystical initiation into the cosmic body of Christ.  The kiddush,  a blessing of wine and bread to begin a meal, became the Mass—eating the body and blood of God.  Churches became indistinguishable from the idolatrous temples of Greco-Roman culture.  The Spring fertility festival became Easter; the Winter Solstice celebration became Christmas; and the Sabbath became Sunday.  God’s Holy Days, such as Passover and Pentecost, were negatively labeled as “Jewish.”  The host of quasi-deified “Saints” began to function much like a pagan panoply of ancient gods who could be supplicated for various needs and requests.

By TORAH standards Christianity in its full Roman/Greek dress represented a kind of “new Babylon,” as Alexander Hislop’s classic work, The Two Babylons has documented. 

The Evangelical Christians, through their Biblical orientation, made a partial return to a more BIBLICAL FAITH.  The Reformers (Huss, Luther, Zwingli) rejected many of the more pagan elements of the Roman and Greek Catholic tradition.  However, they did not advocate a full return to the ancient HEBREW FAITH of Jesus and his early Jewish followers.  Most Protestant churches continue to affirm the Trinity, with Jesus worshipped as God.  Indeed, they often make the confession of the “Deity of Christ” the test of the faith.  They hold that the “Old Testament,” or TORAH, as a spiritual way of life has been replaced by the New, even while remaining “inspired” Scripture.  Yet if one tried to actually follow the TORAH, as a spiritual way of life, he or she would be seen as “Judaizing” or trying to “earn salvation by the Law.”  Many would maintain that the Church has replaced “physical” Israel, and that Jews who do not believe in Christ are damned to Hell.

The message of the Kingdom of God on earth is largely lost, replaced a Hellenistic dualistic message of escape to heaven.  Salvation has come to mean saving your soul, and as many other souls as you can, as quickly as you can.  All who “receive Christ,” which means asking him to come into your heart as personal Lord and Savior, have instant eternal life.  Those who “reject Christ” are eternally doomed in Hell.  The figure of Christ and what one believes about him, becomes the one great question of life —Was he God in the flesh who died for sins to bring salvation to those who believe in him?

There are many segments and pockets of the evangelical Christian spectrum that have gone further in a return to the ancient Hebrew roots of Christianity.  Some have rejected, or seriously modified, the “Jesus as God” doctrine, but they are usually labeled as heretical and dangerous by the mainstream. [See Anthony Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound (Latham, MD: University Press of America , 1998).

Others affirm that God’s promises to “physical” Israel continue to be valid, and accordingly, rejoice in the return of the Jews to Israel in this century, heralding it as the beginnings of the Restoration spoken of by the Prophets.  A few are beginning to seriously explore the Hebraic, Judaic, roots of early Christianity and are trying to recover, both in faith and practice, some of those lost and forgotten practices and perspectives.

 . . . Were Jesus to return to our culture as an ordinary human, transported from the first century, would he feel more comfortable in a Sunday morning Southern Baptist worship service, a Roman Catholic mass, or at a Jewish Synagogue on the Sabbath?   . . . the answer is obvious.

In the final analysis there is only one fundamental flaw of Christianity.  It has cast all its doctrines in terms of the “other world.”  At the heart of it all is the heavenly Divine Christ who deals with “spiritual” Israel, and seeks to save souls for eternal life in heaven.  BIBLICAL FAITH has a heavenly dimension, but it is always cast in the opposite direction.

 The whole perspective and goal is that God’s will be done on earth, and that HIS PLAN be realized in history.  

His WAY is a way of life here and now, not a preparation for death.  

[Footnote:  For a general very reliable introduction to Judaism, which stresses this objective, (read) Herman Wouk, This Is My God.]

 As Moses told ancient Israel 3500 years ago:  

For this commandment that I command you today is not too wondrous (i.e., hard, difficult) for you, nor is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, “Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear and do it?” . . . But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.  See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil . . . therefore choose life that you and your descendants may live (Deuteronomy 30:11-19).

It is noteworthy that the Christian Holy Bible ends with what is called the “Old Testament” in contrast to the last line of the Hebrew Bible.  Both the “Old Testament” and the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, contain precisely the same books but arranged in a different order.  The Christian “Old Testament” ends with the book of Malachi, whose last words are:  

Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of YHVH comes.  And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts ochildren to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Malachi 4:5-6).

In contrast the Hebrew Bible ends with one of the latest books of the canon, 1 & 2 Chronicles (which were counted as a single “book”).  The last verse is quoting the Persian King Cyrus (Hebrew Koresh), whom YHVH calls “His messiah” or anointed one (Isaiah 45:1).  The final words simply invite all who will return to the land:  

Whoever is among you of all his people,

may YHVH his God be with him.

 LET HIM GO UP.

There is a world of difference in meaning between these two endings.  One puts us on the edge of our “apocalyptic chairs,” waiting for the next event to unfold in God’s prophetic PLAN, while the other bids us to act with practicality and intentionality, and throw ourselves into participation in the PLAN.  It is a practical and immediate call, as if the dramatic and the apocalyptic might depend first on us carrying out the practical task “at hand.”  For as Moses said in his final words about the TEACHING, 

It is not in heaven.

This is indeed a fitting ending for a book on Restoring Abrahamic Faith, since Abram of old was told to leave his homeland and “go up” to the Promised Land, sight unseen.  He had no dramatic signs from heaven, no miracles and wonders along the way, and according to the narrative in Genesis, the VOICE that called him at age 75 he did not hear again until he was age 99.  Yes, that is truly ABRAHAMIC FAITH—strong, practical, immediate, and steadfast.  May it serve to inspire all those “children of Abraham,” in flesh and in spirit, even in our time: 

“Let him go up.”

[First posted in 2012.  Heard enough “sermons” every Sunday at church?  Here’s more—-a  ‘Sinai6000 sermon,’  re-examining the original Revelation on Sinai by YHWH and the Gospel revision by the “God” we,  as former Messianics, called “Yeshua YHWH”.  Torah translation is from Everett Fox’s The Five Books of Moses.—Admin1]

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Quite a provocative title for a controversial discourse!  Actually it should be retitled “The Revelation on Sinai vs. The Sermon on the Mount,”  because there is a vast difference between a ‘revelation’ and a ‘sermon’.  

Anyone can preach a ‘sermon’ — a ‘churchy’ word,  loose dictionary definition:

—a talk on a religious or moral subject,

especially one given during a church service

and based on a passage from the Bible.

However,  only God can issue ‘divine revelation’, reveal Himself and His Will initially to Israel, though intended for all humankind.

But why “vs.” and not “vis-a-vis”? Are the two not compatible in message and speaker?

Here’s a logical deduction from a long-time study of the New Testament:

What was originally given on Sinai to the Israelites by YHWH, [supposedly the “Father” in the NT Trinitarian version of God] 

• is supplanted by the teachings of Jesus [supposedly the “Son” in the Trinitarian version of God]
• who delivers the final word or re-interpretation of that Sinai revelation;
• hence the necessity to produce a sequel to the “Old” Testament 
• to set the record straight on all these “new” teachings 
• in a “New” Testament,
• because the “Old” is . . . well . . . old, as in “obsolete”, as in not applicable to “new” testament believers and the “new” Israel.

If the 12 tribes of Israel did not get it the first time around, the 12 apostles were expected to get it the second time around.

The Trinitarian Godhead must have thought it best to retell the Torah through their 2nd Person, the active one who could assume human flesh and not appear so fearsome because he really managed to look just like one of us.  Admirably, he didn’t choose the shortcut by suddenly appearing as a full-grown human which he could have easily done; rather, he opted for the longer route of being born as a helpless infant and growing up unknown until he appeared as an adult to finally carry out the divine plan. Evidently, he really wanted to experience what it was like to be ‘human’!

The early church fathers would debate on how he did this—

• a divine sperm from the Holy Spirit fertilized an egg of a female virgin, one with no original sin;
• or simply implant into a virgin’s womb the completed divine fertilized egg-sperm.

No matter how, what’s important is God is dwelling among men,  “Emmanuel”, God with us.   This time he appears as a man, not as a ‘burning bush’ or a  ‘pillar of fire by night’ and ‘Shekinah glory cloud by day’, or an invisible presence in the Ark of the Covenant.

What a brilliant disguise for the Son-God indeed, so convincingly a man, that nobody mistook him at all for YHWH. The Trinity had to change tactics from the first revelation on the desert mount. Why? Because Israel’s history showed their failure to carry out their divinely-ordained assignment, but that requires another article so let’s just focus on a simpler answer.  

Recall that in the book of Exodus, the Israelites could hardly bear to listen to the thundering voice of YHWH from Mount Sinai, so that they prevailed upon Moses to spare them and just act as their mediator:  

[EF] Exodus 20:15-17 

So according to the New Testament storyline, a few millennia later, YHWH metamorphosed into a man named Jesus who executes ‘plan B’ at the appointed time, first by teaching and preaching in Galilee and Judea.  Multitudes followed him around.  His inner circle of apostles assisted him, listened to his parables, witnessed his miracles, marveled at his interaction with demonic spirits. If a group of people could have memorized his teachings and more importantly, understood them, it would have been the 12.

Unfortunately and with much disappointment,  it appears few [if any] really understood the ‘good news’ during the Son’s teaching ministry, for how could anyone understand that spiritual victory could result from the Son-God’s physical death?  It’s mind-boggling and difficult to process even to this day.

Not until Pentecost did they begin to understand, but only when the Holy Spirit appeared as the final installment in the presentation of the Trinitarian Godhead.  After that eureka experience and what is called the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God could enter everybody’s heart—well, not everybody—only those who believe in the Christian gospel and receive Jesus as Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit is said to open up one’s understanding of the Scriptures so that without his indwelling presence, we can NEVER understand the Bible.   If so, then we—Sinaites–are now perceived as not understanding the New Testament because we’re no longer believers in Jesus as God; we’ve lost the Spirit, and therefore are without spiritual illumination and are as blind as the Jews who never accepted Jesus as God, just as Paul alleged in his book titled Romans.

But is that what is declared in the Tanach/TNK?

The One and Only God YHWH is so much simpler to understand: basically He says —

• here are the do’s and don’ts,
• you can do it and be blessed and be a blessing to others! 
• If you don’t, there are consequences,
  • for you
  • and unfortunately, for others you affect adversely.

[EF]  Deuteronomy 30:11-14  

11  For the commandment that I command you this day:  

it is not too extraordinary for you,

it is not too far away!  

12  It is not in the heavens,

(for you) to say:

Who will go up for us to the heavens and get it for us

and have us hear it, that we may observe it?  

13  And it is not across the sea,

(for you) to say:  

Who will cross for us, across the sea, and get it for us

and have us hear it, that we may observe it?  

14  Rather, near to you is the word, exceedingly,

in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it!

Now to the Sermon on the Mount.

Supposedly the same sermon or a version of it also appears in Luke, a sermon delivered on the plain.  Bible interpreters think it’s the same sermon, except that the multitudes were seated on the mountain slope while Jesus preached on the plain instead of the other way around.  Also, they say that the Sermon which is the longest piece of teaching from Jesus simply summarizes his best-known teachings.  Whatever . . . let’s not get lost in technicalities.

The Sinai revelation gave many details; out of the total 613 commandments [as of first and only count by a Jewish Torah scholar], we can focus on the 10 which is universally known and in which the essence of God’s will is clearly stated:

• Love God above all
• and love thy neighbor.   

Jesus reiterated the shortened version.

To his credit, he also taught the first four commandments well — he always acceded to the Father;

• he told Satan

For it is written,

‘You shall worship the LORD your God

and Him only you shall serve.’  

• He taught his disciples to address their prayers to the Father, and not to himself.  
• He understood the ‘weightier matters of the law’, giving samples like meeting another person in dire need is more urgent even if it conflicts with Sabbath observance.  
• He was right in declaring that not one iota of the Torah will be changed because that was declared as early as the end of the 40 years wandering in the wilderness, just before the Israelites enter the promised land.  

[EF]  Deuteronomy 4:2:  

1  And now, O Israel, hearken to the laws and the regulations

that I am teaching you to observe,

in order that you may live

and enter and take-possession of the land that YHWH, the God of your fathers, is giving to you.  

2  You are not to add to the word that I am commanding you,

and you are not to subtract from it,

in keeping the commandments of YHWH your God that I am commanding you.

Image from fineartamerica.com

Was Jesus guilty of “adding” to God’s word?  

Well . . . if these were really his words, then what do you think?  You have heard it said  . . . . but I say unto you . . . When there’s a “but” what does it mean?  That there is some revision to the original?  So let’s look at 3 samples of those revisions in Matthew.

Men have struggled with Jesus’ stricter re-interpretation.

•  In the case of adultery, for instance, temptation is all around, especially these days when all states of undress among the female population are difficult to avoid looking at.  And yet Jesus said “if you as much as look . . .” you’re already in sin.  
  • Go back to what Adonai Elohim told Cain in Genesis —sin is crouching at your door but you can overcome it.  We have impulses that are part of being human, male, female —if they are prohibited, then we do not have to act on them!  It is when we act on them that we sin.  Granting, thoughts and feelings that should not be there could lead to the next level if we entertain them, but until we  give in to them, we have not sinned!

• Being angry is part of our lives — certain things, situations and people exasperate us. We bear grudges and act badly toward others, that is not good for us nor the others.  Anger could lead to rage and on to inflicting harm on the object of our anger, but until we commit that murder, we have not sinned.  Anger has to be curbed, of course.

• As for “love your neighbor” and “hate your enemy”, notice that our color coding is an indicator of source: OT and NT. Why have we left “hate your enemy” in red? Because the Hebrew Scriptures which is supposedly the foundation of the re-titled Christian version “Old Testament” has this to say about neighbor:

Leviticus 19

• The New Testament has many good things to teach—such as do not let the sun go down on your anger but that is not just in the new, it originated in Tanach, from the God who taught His chosen people how to act kindly and mercifully toward one another.  As early as Cain and Abel, the answer is YES to Cain’s “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  And that encapsulates much of Torah teaching about horizontal relationships.

• As for turning the other cheek when someone slaps you, what does that accomplish? We are to stand up against abusers, not encourage them to further abuse us!  Such destructive character traits will not be curbed with passive response. Abusive husbands never change when battered wives keep offering the other cheek! At some point, the violence escalates and wives and their children eventually have to flee for their lives.

It is puzzling that while Jesus requires a higher standard in the observance of the commandments, Paul negates the commandments altogether with his teaching that under the new covenant, we are under “grace” and not “law.”  There is more to this than can be discussed here, so we will reserve those discussions for “According to Paul . . .#2.”   

    NSB@S6K

[First posted in 2012.  Jesus we know, but who is “Horus”?   This article is from near death.com/experiences/origen046.html;  it will probably be dismissed by some as a ‘questionable’ source.  We post it along with all the other articles on this website which challenge the divinity claims that founders of Christianity have imposed upon the historical Jesus.  This article discusses too many uncanny similarities in the life of Jesus and some pagan deities for them to be mere coincidences, perhaps they’re contrived?  But which is which?  Between Christian history, recurring pagan myths, and the original revelation of the True God YHWH on Sinai,  one’s belief in the Christian version of God based on Christian doctrines and scriptures might be shaken enough for one to check out the foundations of that religion that claims its source in Abrahamic faith.  This is the path the Sinaite has taken and look where it has brought us?

Update 2018:  A counterbalance to any claim adds to our understanding of how–in this day and age– we can check out almost every topic that makes a claim.  So, for another side to the data presented in this post, please check out this site:  https://www.ancient.eu/Horus/—Admin1]

Image from www.eyeofhorus.biz

Jesus as a Reincarnation of Horus

Jesus was referred to as the chief cornerstone (i.e., capstone) – a reference to an Egyptian pyramid. The chief cornerstone of the pyramid is the same symbol for Horus, the Egyptian god and savior. Like the Egyptian Pharoah, Jesus was called a Shepherd who rules the nations with a staff. Horus was a popular Egyptian god who was the son of Osiris and Isis. Osiris and Horus were both solar deities. Osiris was the setting sun, Horus the rising sun. Jesus is the rising Son and the morning star. The Pharoah was considered to be an incarnation of Horus (also known as “Amen-Ra,” the sun god). In the same way, Jesus is considered to be the incarnation of his heavenly Father. Horus was the lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. Horus had an adversary named “Set”. Jesus’ adversary was “Satan”.

The story of Horus can be found in “The Egyptian Book of the Dead (also known as the “Papyrus of Ani”) written over 3,000 years before the birth of Christ.

Identical Life Experiences

1. It is written that both Horus and Jesus existed before their incarnations.
2. Horus was born of the virgin Isis on December 25th in a cave/manger.
3. Horus’ birth was announced by a star in the East and attended by three wise men.
4. The infant Horus was carried out of Egypt to escape the wrath of Typhon. The infant Jesus was carried into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. Concerning the infant Jesus, the New Testament states the following prophecy: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” (Matt. 2:15)
5. He was a child teacher in the temple and was baptized by Anup the Baptizer when he was thirty years old.
6. He had twelve disciples and performed miracles such as feeding bread to the multitude and walking on water.
7. He raised one man, El-Azar-us, from the dead.
8. He transfigured on a mount.
9. He also had titles such as the “way, the truth, the light, the Messiah, God’s anointed Son, the Son of Man, the good shepherd, the lamb of God, the Word, the Morning Star, the light of the world.
10. He was “the Fisher,” and was associated with the lamb, lion and fish (“Ichthys”).
11. Horus’s personal epithet was “Iusa,” the “ever-becoming son” of “Ptah,” the “Father.”
12. Horus was called “KRST,” or “Anointed One.
13. He was crucified, buried in a tomb and resurrected.
14. The adoration of the Virgin and Child is connected with both the adoration of Isis and the infant Horus and the adoration of Mary and infant Jesus. In the catacombs at Rome are pictures of the baby Horus being held by the virgin mother Isis, the original “Madonna and Child.”
15. Concerning the writing of the Gnostics, C. W. King, a noted English author, says: “To this period belongs a beautiful sard in my collection, representing Serapis,…whilst before him stands Isis, holding in one hand the sistrum, in the other a wheatsheaf, with the legend: ‘Immaculate is our lady Isis,’ the very term applied afterwards to that personage who succeeded to her form, her symbols, rites, and ceremonies” (Gnostics and Their Remains, p. 71).
16. Osiris, Isis, and Horus are the principal trinity of the Egyptian religions. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit is the Christian trinity. Dr. Inman affirms the Egyptian roots of the Christian trinity “The Christian trinity is of Egyptian origin, and is as surely a pagan doctrine as the belief in heaven and hell, the existence of a devil, of archangels, angels, spirits and saints, martyrs and virgins, intercessors in heaven, gods and demigods, and other forms of faith which deface the greater part of modern religions” (Ancient Pagan and Modem Christian Symbolism, p. 13).
17. Dr. Draper says: “For thirty centuries the Egyptians had been familiar with the conception of a triune God. There was hardly a city of any note without its particular triads. Here it was Amum, Maut, and Khonso; there Osiris, Isis, and Horus” (Intellectual Development, Vol. I, p. 191).
18. Dr. Draper stated: “Views of the Trinity, in accordance with Egyptian tradition, were established. Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image standing on the crescent moon reappeared. The well-known effigy of that goddess, with the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful artistic creations of the Madonna and Child.” (Conflict, p. 48).
19. Mrs. Besant believes that Christianity has its main roots in Egypt: “It grew out of Egypt; its gospels came from thence [Alexandria]; its ceremonies were learned there; its Virgin is Isis; its Christ, Osiris and Horus.”
20. There are two stories connected with Horus that is analogous to stories found in the Old Testament. The hiding of the infant Horus in a marsh by his mother undoubtedly parallels the story of the hiding of the infant Moses in a marsh by his mother. When Horus died, Isis implored Ra, the sun, to restore him to life. Ra stopped his ship in mid-heaven and sent down Thoth, the moon, to bring him back to life. The stopping of the sun and moon by Isis recalls the myth of the stopping of the sun and moon by Joshua.

“Osiris, I am your son, come to glorify your soul, and to give you even more power.” – Horus, (Book of the Dead, Ch. 173)

“Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him.

If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.” – Jesus, (John 13:31-32)