What did Jesus actually teach?

Why do I ask this question? The best source to what Jesus said is the New Testament. At least seven of the Pauline Epistles are authentic and the Gospels were not written very long after Jesus. There are some texts, which are not in the canon of the New Testament but may contain authentic teachings of Jesus, like the Gospel of Thomas, but these teachings are almost the same as in the Gospels. The Church tradition and legends of apostles reflect the same teachings. Gnostics with their heretic doctrines came 100-200 years later. I think it is quite correct to say that the teachings of Christianity have not changed from the time of Paul and that Jesus must have said many or most of those words the New Testament attributes to him.

So, where do I see the problem?

I have started to suspect that while the words Jesus actually said were indeed the words he is thought to have said, they did not mean what Paul thought they meant. There was and still is a misunderstanding of what was meant.

First we have to notice that Christianity is an interpretation of the Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism.  Christianity is the oldest still practiced interpretation of this religion, the New Testament being written in the 1st century AD. Present day Judaism is based on Talmud and is a newer interpretation of the Old Testament, completed in the 5th century AD. The fourth was Gnosticism, still practiced as Mandaeism. Islam is the fourth interpretation of the Old Testament from the 7th century AD. It is natural to expect that the first interpretation was closest to the one which originally was meant, and the other explanations were created because there were some problems in the first one.

Christianity is very old even comparing to Asian religions. Most Asian religions differ from Abrahamic religions in the sense that there is no single canonic script, the sacred scripts were memorized and not written down, but the most important scripts of the present form of the religion are usually not older than the New Testament. The main scripts of Hinduism, Mahabharata (final form in the 4th Century AD) and Ramayana (maybe from the 6th or 10th Century AD) are younger. The most important scripture of Taoism, Zhuangzi, is from 300 AD and the present canon Daozang from the Middle Ages. The oldest scripts of Buddhism are from 200 BC, but most are younger than 1st Century AD. Jain scriptures were written in the 5th Century AD. Zoroastrism is one of the oldest religions, but its holy scriptures are not equally old: Avesta is very old but it was not written down while Pahlavi texts are medieval. Kojiki, the holy script of Shintoism, was compiled from oral tradition in 712 AD. Finally there maybe one religion, which in its present form is older than Christianity: that is Confucianism. It is interesting to notice that some Confucian key concepts may be based on star constellations around the celestial North Pole. I am sure that by a more careful search there would be more, but my point is only that Christianity is quite old as a religion and older than most. The roots of most of the modern religions do not go deeper than 1000 BC, usually the founder lived 700-500 BC.

There are older elements in most religions. Such elements have roots in astrology, shamanism, fertility cults and myths. As Christianity has so old scriptures, we should expect to see quite old concepts in the religion, but they are not there. That is strange. Where are astrology and world ages? Where are fertility rites? Where are shamanistic concepts? A sacrifice there is: the death on the cross. That is an old concept, but otherwise Christianity seems surprisingly modern to be so old. Like if it was a religion from Roman times and not the natural interpretation of the religion of the Old Testament from some 600 BC.

So, I intend to present heretic interpretations of the words of Jesus without being able to prove them as if such a proof existed, it would have been found already. Before going to this exercise, I want to make a disclaimer: I am not really a heretic. I consider myself as Christian in same sense as other people like me are Christians. That is, I accept the moral rule that one should try to do good rather than bad. I also do not agree that everything that exists is necessarily material. Indeed, I suspect that there exists something more real than the material world and even claim that humans and higher animals are not exactly automatons. That being said, I do not share the belief that the world lasts for six thousand years after which comes one thousand years and then a new round. I also do not believe in real miracles, while I am sure that in old times there were people called magicians, witches and miracle makers and they practiced magic. So, I believe pretty much the same as most Christians, I just do not think that Jesus meant with his words what we think he meant. The word must be understood in the context of the time.

The “good message” of Jesus was that the messiah had come and the end of the times would be very soon. Early Christians expected that the end of the times would happen in the 1st century. The messiah would come second time and judge the world. The terrible day of God’s judgment was close. This was the first interpretation of the Old Testament: all scripture talks about messiah and the coming of the Judgment Day. That is when prophesies will be fulfilled. That is the day to which Jews should be preparing. In this interpretation the end of the times would happen soon after Jesus. Jesus was sacrificed for redemption of the sins of the people so that God’s wrath would not torment them in the Judgment Day.

It is often said that the Jews discarded the mission of Jesus in the 1st century, but judging from history, exactly the opposite happened. Jews fully accepted the interpretation that the messiah was to come in their time. They fought a war against Romans and lost. The Temple was destroyed and many taken as slaves. They still tried twice and lost both wars. Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem.

The Judgment Day was therefore the First Jewish War 66-73 AD. God was not in the side of the Jews. Here what Talmud says of this interpretation of the Old Testament:

“It has been taught; R. Nathan said: This verse pierces and descends to the very abyss: For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though he tarry, wait for him; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. Not as our Masters, who interpreted the verse, until a time and times and the dividing of time; nor as R. Simlai who expounded, Thou feedest them with the bread of tears; and givest them tears to drink a third time; nor as R. Akiba who expounded, Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth:  but the first dynasty [sc. the Hasmonean] shall last seventy years, the second [the Herodian], fifty two, and the reign of Bar Koziba two and a half years. Talmud, Sanhedrin 97b.

The passage talks of three episodes when Jews believed the messiah had come.

Rabbi Akiba lived at the time of Simon Bar Kockhba (referred to as Bar Koziba) and declared him the messiah. Our Masters must refer to the Hasmonean time. The Masters were the kings and high priests of Israel. According to the passage they interpreted Daniel’s prophesy time, times and half a time. In the seventy-weeks prophesy Daniel refers to the high priest Onias III, who was murdered in 171 BC, probably Talmud means this interpretation of the messiah. Onias III was the suffering prophet messiah, not the king messiah. These two episodes being explained, it follows that Rabbi Simlai refers to the Herodian time. Talmud Sanhedrin 98a has something more to add: “Rabbi Simlai said in the name of Rabbi Elazar the son of Rabbi Shimon: The son of David will not come until all the judges and officers are wiped out from Israel, and the last vestiges of Jewish self-rule disappear.” The reference is probably to Rabbi Eleazar ben Shimon who, like Rabbi Simlai, lived in the 3rd century AD. There is no reference to a specific messiah, but to the destruction of Israel in the First Roman-Jewish war. I interpret this to mean that the king messiah was expected but did not come. Any leader of the First Roman-Jewish war, like John of Giscala and Simon bar Giora, could have been a king messiah, but they lost the war.

Yet there had to be a messiah. The symmetry in Sanhedrin 97b implies that if there was a messiah in the Hasmonian and Bar Koziba times, there must have been a messiah in Herodian times. Jews waited for two messiahs: the prophet messiah (the suffering servant of God) and the king messiah. Onias III was a prophet messiah. None of the Hasmonian kings passed as the king messiah: prophesies were not fulfilled. This is why Sanhedrin 97b discards that interpretation. Bar Kochba tried to the king messiah, but Sanhedrin 97b discards him. There was no largely accepted king messiah during the First Jewish War. Thus, there had to be a prophet messiah before the war.  We would justly expect Talmud to have some thing to say of this prophet messiah. Talmud makes some highly un-favorable comments of Jesus but not of any other prophet of this time. We can assume that the prophet messiah was Jesus.

Against this view can be said that Jewish Christians never numbered more than 1000 individuals counting children, and that Josephus though mentioning both Jacob, the brother of Jesus, and Jesus, never comments on Christians as a power in the war, or before the war. Both comments are true, but they only reflect the mission of Jesus. The disciples of Jesus were called to spread the good message. Not many were needed for this. Only one sacrifice was required for the redemption of the sins of the people. There could be martyrs, who died as Jesus. They died as sacrifices and went to Heaven, but their sacrifice was not needed. The Jewish people were asked to discard their sinful life and to live according to the Jewish law. The mission was not to convert the people to Christianity.

After the Temple was destroyed and the Old Testament sacrifices could not be made, Pharisees, the only sect Romans accepted, compiled a new interpretation of the Old Testament as Mishnah, which later was perfected to Talmud. As Sanhedrin 97b shows, the rabbis rejected the explanations of R. Simlai, R. Akiba and the Hasmoneans. Jews still wait for the messiah and do not agree that the prophet messiah has already come. Indeed, not much is spoken of the prophet messiah in Judaism. Talmud teaches that Jesus tried to mislead the people and now sits in Hell in boiling excrement.

We can follow the trace of Rabbi Simlai to another form of Judaism which accepted Jesus as the messiah prophet. The reference in Sanhedrin 98a is to Eleazer ben Shimon, the son of Shimon bar Yochai, the rabbi, who leads the discussion in Zohar. Zohar, the most important book of Kabbalah, was most probably composed in Spain in the 13th century AD. There is a strong claim that the author was Moses De Leon, whose father seems to have been a Ba’al Shem, a magician using the name of God in spells. This may be so, but Zohar is not a complete break with tradition, just a new compilation. There was cabbalism long before the 13th century as an element of Jewish magic. Oldest known Jewish magic spells go to 200 AD and the Acts of the Apostles mentions Jewish witch books and a Samarian witch. Before Jesus there was Honi the Circle-drawer, a rain maker. Judaism has always included magic.

Similarities between Kabbalah and Christianity were noticed in the 17th century and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth translated a set of cabbalistic writings into Latin as Kabbala Denudata (1678). The basic similarity is Tipheret, the central Sephirot in the cabbalistic tree of life. Adam Kadmon with outstretched hands is drawn to the Sephirot so that Tipheret is at the place of the breast or heart of Adam Kadmon. It is not accidental that Adam Kadmon resembles the crucified, since the Tipheret rite has a sacrifice. The rite also includes the union of Father and Mother, Severity and Mercy, referring to the other ancient rite: sacred sex.

These two elements recur in Jewish Messianism: a human sacrifice and sexual licentiousness. Sexual licentiousness was one of the main charges against Frankists of the 18th century: they had the rite of the night when the lights were put out when the believers had sex with anyone near. The sacrifice is naturally the ritual murder. Jews were incorrectly accused of ritual murders as it is not an element in rabbinic Judaism. It is a rite only in cabbalism of the old type. A symbolic ritual murder is a rite in Christianity: there is symbolic drinking of the blood of messiah in Eucharist and there is remembrance of the sacrifice of the messiah as the Passover lamb for redemption of the sins. The blood is symbolic in Christianity, while the sacrifice was real but it is only remembered in the rite. In Christianity sacred sex is symbolic Christian love, while in Frankism it was sex. It is easy to understand that in some other variant of these beliefs both the blood and the sacrifice can be real. There has to be blood since according to scripture, redemption is in blood, but drinking blood can be symbolic as in Christianity. The messiah must perform miracles as the scripture gives a list of miracles he must do. With the same logic, the miracles must be made but they can be symbolic.

It looks like the original interpretation of the Old Testament was never fully discarded in the Jewish community, even though it is refuted in Talmud.

Where does this original interpretation come from?

Firstly, there is a six thousand year plan in the Old Testament. It is hidden in the years of the patriarchs. Secondly, there is the concept that the soul is in blood and that redemption of sins requires a blood sacrifice. This was the basis of the Temple. The Temple was for offering sacrifices and the priestly class for performing them. Where is the sacred sex?

Divine sex is implicit in many of the stories of the Old Testament. There are often women, who cannot have a child but by God’s help they get pregnant. This looks like a fertility rite and in the Frankist movement it was be performed as the night when lights are turned out. This element is in Christianity in the virginity of Mary: the messiah is the child of God. As sacred sex is a part of the Tipheret rite, we need not doubt that this element is very old and not invented. It must be somewhere in the Old Testament and not only in mistranslated words of Isaiah saying that a virgin or a young woman bears a child.

Old Testament prophets tell in many of child sacrifices in high places and of rites under trees, which can only mean sex rites. Both were essential parts of Israelite religion before the reforms which forbid them and tried to change worship to the temple sacrificial cult in Jerusalem. Prophets condemned these practices. Did they disappear?

If Messianic movements would not have sex rites and ritual sacrifices, we might believe that these practices disappeared, but as Christianity has a sacrifice and symbolic drinking of blood and Frankism had sex rites, both practices must be sanctified somewhere in the Old Testament and explained in a hidden way. One way to hide teachings is by strange stories. A strange story cannot be understood without an explanation; remember that Peter says that no-one understands scripture without a teacher. When an explanation is given, the story being found in the scripture confirms that the teaching is true. By this logic, hidden teaching may be found from strange stories. Such stories always allow many explanations, which naturally is intentional as the teaching is secret.

Fortunately there is a method: if there is some important element in the religion, there must be some place in the scripture which confirms it. There are two elements: the sex rite and the ritual sacrifice. Are there strange stories which may refer to them? The most important teachings are in the books of Moses, in the stories, which actually are not mythical but constructed to have a teaching. The important secret doctrines are not encrypted in Hebrew letters. They are concealed in the meaning of the text.

There is the story where Rebecca, Jacob’s favorite wife, steals the home gods of his father, sits on them and says that she has menstruation. Why Rebecca steals old gods and Jacob allows it? This story has some hidden meaning. It may refer to the sex rite. There is also a story of Jacob’s wives involving mandrakes: fertility magic could have been a part of the rite. As mandrake contains atropine, mandrakes may have been used as a drug for inducing deep sleep in a selected virgin, not only as a fertility charm.

The story of Moses in the inn tells how Moses tries to kill his child but instead of killing he circumcises his child and there is blood. This is often taken to mean that circumcision is replacing the ritual sacrifice of the first born, but it cannot be so: if so, circumcised Jesus would have been sacrificed. I think this is a story of the ritual sacrifice, I just cannot explain what it means. I am sure that somewhere in the Old Testament is an explanation which resolves the contradictory teachings: in the books of Moses God commands the people to sacrifice their first born sons, but the words of prophets forbid Israelites killing their own children. Christianity solves this problem by having Jesus sacrificed in the place of other people. That is not only in the place of the first born sons, but the whole nation was guilty of the sin of not sacrificing the first born sons.

The hidden teaching of Adam Kadmon must also be in the Old Testament. Some early Gnostic or Jewish Christian group had a teaching of Jesus and his sister, both miles high. This is cabbalistic: it is Adam Kadmon and his bride. Saint Paul connects Jesus to Adam Kadmon in claiming that Jesus was Adam. Jesus was before the world was, that is Adam Kadmon. So, Adam Kadmon of Tipheret is made in the image of God and is indeed a God, the Son of God. There is a trinity: the three highest Sephirots, but there is also a lower trinity: Geburan, Chesed, Tipheret, that is Father, Mother and Son, or Severity, Mercy and Beauty. These concepts probably are from the Hellenistic time and rather Gnostic in character. The messiah was expected to be reborn on the Earth. Some important people were expected to be reborn on the Earth, like Prophet Elias. It is a kind of soul reincarnation doctrine implicit in the Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity but explicit in cabbalism.

The destruction of the world at the end of the times is an essential part of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Indeed, in Islam there are two issues you must believe. One is Allah and the second is the end of the times. Believe in Mohammed being the last prophet is not on the level with these two. In Christianity the oldest fragments that have been found are from the Book of Revelation, the book of the end of the times. In the end raises the Anti-Christ. In Islam the same story is told so that al-Masih ad-Dajjal, the wrong prophet with his Jewish army, rises in the end. Mahdi and Isa (Jesus) fight against ad-Dajjal. Mahdi dies. Isa conquers ad-Dajjal. The Jewish version is somewhat different: Messiah arises, destroys the non-Jews and the Jews rule the world. Everybody believes there will be a persecution of the believers; they just disagree who are the believers.

This was also the situation in the 1st century AD. There were two groups of followers of Jesus: Jewish Christians lead by James, Peter and John and the Hellenic Christians, converted originally by Philip. Saint Paul still as Saul probably persecuted the Hellenic Christians, but later joined them. Jews persecuted Hellenic Christians and seem to have left Jewish Christians largely in peace. Not completely though, since James, brother of John, was beheaded by Herod Agrippa and James brother of Jesus was stoned to death by a high priest. Both were killed by the Sadducee establishment, not by the Pharisees. Pharisees probably did not have anything against Jewish Christians as they kept the law, while Hellenic Christians were Jews, who had discarded the law. That was a crime. Anybody who taught a Jew to disobey the law was committing a crime. Unsurprisingly, Jews persecuted Paul, who discarded the Jewish law.

In Messianic movements the messiah can change the law, or even cancel it all. What was good can become bad and what was bad can become good. It is so in Christianity and it was so in Sabbatean and Frankist movements. Where is this teaching in the Old Testament? There are many cases when the younger son is put ahead of the older son. That is a common element in Canaan myths and may be related to the sacrifice of the oldest son. But it is not cancellation of the law. This teaching must be in the books of Moses, since prophets are only a secondary source to important issues.

The teaching can be found if we first find the ends of the times: the laws are changed at the end of the times. The term “times” means a period of 1000 or 2000 years. That is the rule in the 6000 year theory. The time of Jesus was the end of the times. Kind David ruled about 1000 BC. That is one “times” ago. We have to assume that Abraham lived at the start of a new “times”. The end of the previous “times” was the destruction of Sodoma and Gomorra. Strangely enough Abraham was alive at that time, probably not as the same person. So, Sodoma and Gomorra had to be about 2000 BC. Then Noah was about 3000 BC. Before Noah there was no law, so world was created around 5000 BC. First came a 2000 year period without law. It was started by Enos and around 4000 BC was Enoch. Both made a covenant with God. So Adam was still before these two. The 2000 years of law started with Noah. In the middle came Abraham. Both Noah and Abraham made a covenant with God and both introduced a new law. After this 2000 years had passed came the 2000 years of Messiah. It was started by David, the anointed king, and in the middle came Jesus, the prophet. David was not allowed to build the temple, but Salomon built it, so the times were a bit shifted. Building the temple changed the law: from now on there were the sacrifices and not ritual killing of sons. Naturally the temple was a new covenant: God promised to live there. So when Jesus came there was the end of 1000 years, the end of times. There had to be a new covenant and a new law would be given. It is perfectly in line with the Old Testament.

This was also the understanding of Shabbatai Zvi and Jacob Frank: the messiah can change the law. Both were cabbalists. Where is this concept in Kabbalah? The 6000 year model is in Talmud and thus it does not need to be in Kabbalah, but there is a general rule that messianic writers always think that they live close to the end of times. Zohar was written in the 13th century AD. Had the writer (probably Moses de Leon) used either the rabbinic calculation of the times, where one “times” ended 440 AD, or the calculation from Jesus’ times when one “times” ended in around 70 AD, he would not have lived close to the end of the times. The writer of Zohar had to find a different way to select the times. I think he chose the calculation where the Exodus from Egypt was at the end of the times. The traditional Jewish date for Exodus is 2448 years after the creation (3761 BC), so it is 1313 BC. That is close enough: the writer of Zohar might have thought that a new exodus was coming rather soon.

Why I think so? It is because the Greater Synod and the Lesser Synod of extended Zohar both start with the kings of Edom. These kings were destroyed in the conquest after the Exodus. The model for the end of the times in Zohar seems to be the Exodus, which implies destroying the existing kingdoms and settling to the Promised Land.

The calculation where the “times” ends around 70 AD has a different character: Noah set out to settle the world. Abraham moved from Ur to a new country. David conquered new lands. To this series fits that Christianity was spread to the world. Notice that in this calculation Jesus was in the middle of the Messianic 2000 years. The Messianic era ended around 1070 AD. This time is very close to the First Crusade. It also makes it understandable why the first ritual murder changes were in this time (in England) and why a Jew, who had converted to Christianity, explained that the ritual murders are necessary for the new exodus.

There is still a third way of selecting the “times”. Koran requires believing in the end of the times, in the Judgment Day. Koran states that for Christians Jesus was the son of God while Jews consider Ezra as the son of God. Jews do not consider Ezra as to Son of God, but the reference is to the messiah. Ezra was the messiah of the exodus from Persia. The messiah is also the son of God. The exodus from Persia can be roughly dated to 440 BC. The end of the times would have been 1000 years later, roughly 560 AD. Around this time Europe had a summer without the sun, maybe caused by a meteorite or a volcano.  There were other terrifying signs and Christians waited for the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. Jews joined Parthia in a war against the East-Roman Empire and took Jerusalem 613 AD. Heraclius conquered Parthians and Jews and required the Jews to either convert to Christianity of to leave. These events are remembered by Jews as the apocalypse. Mohammed created a new religion. Mohammed probably viewed his time as being soon after the end of the times, starting the new era. The next end of times would have been around 1560 AD and Jewish cabbalists were predicting the coming of the messiah in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank belong to this tradition.

 

 

Let us leave these archaic elements and move to the Christian teachings.

A basic difference between Christianity and Judaism is that in Christianity all people are your neighbors while in Judaism only Jews are your neighbors and non-Jews are enemies. The Christian view differs from the Old Testament spirit, which considers Israelites as the Promised People. Saint Paul explained that God has chosen a new Promised People, but even he thinks it cannot be so and suggests that Jews will accept Jesus in the end of the times.

Did Jesus mean that all non-Jews should be treated as neighbors?

Jesus did teach that the disciples should not resist evil and should turn the other cheek. This is not the teaching of who are your neighbors. It is a teaching for the lamb which is to be sacrificed. A sacrificed animal goes to Heaven if it is completely innocent. This must be so because God has justice and the innocent animal has been killed in an evil way. It is exactly for this reason that the animal is sacrificed: its task is to take the prayers to God. There is no gain in sacrificing creatures, which are not innocent. The sacrificed animal must be perfect as God is perfect. For instance, the animal cannot have any fault. It would be dangerous to sacrifice a faulty or evil animal: it would go to Hell and present the prayers to Satan. To be perfect, the sacrificial lamb must go to its death voluntarily. It must not oppose the evil deed. That is why sacrificed animals were sometimes drugged. The same rules apply to human sacrifices.

Now we understand why Saint Paul hoped to be sacrificed. It was the only way for non-Jews, since they did not belong to the Promised People. Let us add that according to Judaism a Jew will go to Heaven no matter if he is good or bad. It is very possible that Paul was not originally a Jew but an Edomite, a member of the Herodos family.

A lamb must be perfect as God is perfect, but God will revenge the sufferings of the lamb in a terrifying way. There is nothing nice in this revengeful doctrine. For Pauline Christians the new religion was a suicidal cult.

What then is the teaching of neighbors? It is just that those who help Jews will be considered neighbors. Jesus says that a neighbor is the one who does good to you. Helping Jews to hide may give a non-Jew a tree in a park. Jesus tells that his salvation is for the Children of Israel, though he allowed a dog to eat the scraps that had fallen. Jesus wanted to call Samaritans to union with Jews. Samaritans were considered half-Jews. There is no indication that Jesus during his earthly mission wanted all non-Jews to be treated as neighbors. The Gospels tell that Jesus healed a child of a Roman officer, but the story is just to make a theological point. Had Jesus done this kind deed, he would not have been crucified by Romans.

If Jesus did not teach that all non-Jews are neighbors to Jews in his preaching years, then did he teach so after resurrection? At the end of all three synoptic Gospels is the command to preach the Gospel to all peoples of the world, but at the end of the Gospel of John is a puzzle where Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him and appoints Peter as the shepherd of his followers. From Pauline Epistles we can be sure that Peter, Jacob, the brother of Jesus, and John were the leaders of the Jerusalem Church after Jesus had died. These leaders did not preach the Gospel to Gentiles. If Jesus has commanded them to preach the good news to all peoples, they would have done so. What seems to be intended is to preach the Gospel to Jews of all nations.

What about paying taxes to Romans? Jesus refuses to touch the money where is the image of the Caesar, who claims to be a god. Do not make graven images, do not keep other gods. Jesus had to give the money to Romans. It has nothing to do with the right of Rome to tax Jews.

There is a story of Jesus saving an adulterous woman. Jesus challenged the one who has no sin to throw the first stone and as nobody appeared, he also did not condemn the woman himself. Is this not mercy? It is not. Jesus as the messiah could have changed the punishment of adultery but he did not. Jesus was to come again to punish people for their sins in a terrible way, so he had no mercy for sinners. What this story teaches is that do not judge because as you judge with the same measure you will be judged. The punishment for the woman was just as it was in the law, but the Judgment Day was coming soon and who judged others for their crimes would be judged for his crimes.

A command not to judge is similar to the command not to vow. Jesus told not to vow by anything because a human is not the master of anything he vows by, that is, the human is playing God. This command is similar to the Islamic ban on painting alive creatures: in the Judgment Day the artist will be asked to make his creatures alive, which he cannot do and he will be punished for playing God.

Jesus went to sinners and poor and said that not the healthy need curing but the ill. In the story of the prodigal son the father is more happy because of a lost soul is found than of the other son, who always did right, the same message is in the shepherd, who leaves the other sheep and goes looking for the lost one. Does any of this show mercy? No. The punishment in the Judgment Day comes to the whole nation because of the sins of the nation. It is the sinners of the nation who do the sins, not the righteous ones. The righteous ones deserve no prize since they have done only what all should have done. It was necessary for the messiah to reach out for the sinners in order to avoid the punishment for all. The sinners were called to live according to the Jewish law.

Did Jesus predict the destruction of the temple or is it an addition made after 70 AD? I am sure he predicted it. The war was known to be coming, it was the Judgment Day. Josephus tells that the Romans burnt the temple, but he also tells that rebels were the first to put to fire forecourts of the temple. Jesus was not a Sadducee. He is very negative of both Sadducees and Pharisees. It strongly hints that Jesus was an Essene messiah. Essene leaders were Sadducee priests, maybe from the Onias-family tradition, not the corrupted priests, who ruled over the temple. Essene leaders wanted the temple of Jerusalem destroyed. Prophesies of Daniel and Zechariah can be understood as predicting the destruction of the temple. Jesus was from this tradition.

There was to be popular uprising against the Romans. It was to start when a comet would appear in the sky, as it did in 66 AD. Jews would lose the first stage of the war: the Sadducee and Herodian elite would be crushed, the corrupted Herodian temple destroyed, many taken to slavery, but Nero would commit suicide, a friendly emperor would raise to power in Rome, a king messiah of Israel would appear and the nation would gain not only independence but positions of influence in Rome. It did not go as intended. Josephus and the Pharisees declared Vespasian as the king messiah, but he and his son, Titus, distrusted Jews. Jews tried to rebel again, but lost. I think something like this happened. The end of the times had been calculated from prophesies, so the war was not a reaction to Roman suppression. Jesus was needed as the prophet messiah to bring redemption to the nation, which had sinned as was proven by the fact that they were again under a foreign rule. Redemption is only in blood, thus the prophet had to be sacrificed. The messiah would come again as the king messiah. I think the king messiah was from the Hasmonean family and possibly originally Herod Agrippa. Herod Agrippa beheaded James, the brother of John, James the Greater. Why was he beheaded? That is a death of a noble. Herod Agrippa also died, probably of poison. James the Greater may have been Hasmonean and behind the story may be political intrigues.

Finally, what about baptism?

Those who believe and are baptized will go to Heaven, those who don’t go to Hell. Believe in what? Jesus did not reveal being God, Son of God or messiah to the people. They were not required to believe any of those claims. They were expected to believe that the Judgment Day was drawing near. Many Jewish sects baptized at that time. Jesus talked of baptizing with water and with fire. Baptism means most probably exactly what the Church has taught it means. The Judgment Day was near. People had to repent their sins and be born again. In baptism with water the old self symbolically died. With baptism with Holy Spirit, they got a soul that would help them to live as they should. The sacrifice of Jesus shows that he believed in Heaven, as where else the soul of the sacrificed is supposed to go. Did he believe in Hell? Jesus drove out evil spirits. These spirits had a master. The master of evil spirits had to rule somewhere. Jesus must have believed in some kind of Hell.

I will not go through all teachings of Jesus but I have not found anything that cannot be understood as Jewish religious ideas from the Second Temple period. What Paul taught was different: it was Hellenistic Christianity, strongly opposed by Jews, but a superior religion in the moral sense.

Why did the Jews not accept Jesus as the messiah and why so few Jews converted to Christianity? This is a misunderstanding. Jews accepted Jesus as the prophet messiah, not all but most. It is shown by the fact that almost whole nation took part in the uprising. Jewish Christians did not, but it was not their task. The prophet messiah was the sacrifice and the task of the disciples was to tell the good message. Some disciples wanted to die as martyrs and go to Heaven, but that was additional, not needed for redemption, a side theological effect. Jews did not convert to Christianity since there was no conversion to Jewish Christianity regardless of if it was the Greek (=Hellenistic) or Hebrew speaking community. The good message was that the prophet messiah had come and was making the miracles and deeds as was written, therefore the end of the times was soon and the Judgment Day would come. The sins of the people would be paid by an acceptable sacrifice. They were still Jews, Messiah was the Son of God, but that is so with every messiah.

The difference between the Hellenistic Jews and the traditional ones was that the former ones believed that the messiah had abolished the law. The messiah had the right to do so when setting the new covenant, but Jesus did not do so. He only loosened the Shabbat law, which was important for faring a war, and tightened the divorce law, so in total the law remained as tight. Traditional Jews did not accept the views of the Hellenistic communities and so there was some persecution. The Jerusalem Church split and some part, probably the Hellenists, escaped to Pella.

After the war was lost and the two other wars were also lost, rabbinical Jews, the descendants of Pharisees, did curse Jesus rather badly. The first part of the Essene end of the times war did go as planned: the temple and city were destroyed and people taken to captivity, but the continuation did not work out. The king messiah did not arrive. I think it is because the coup d’etat in Rome failed and Vespasianus was elected as the emperor.

So did Saint Paul or his followers misunderstand something? I do not think so. They used the chance to go to Heaven easier than by converting and following the law. They were strong believers and they converted on their own wish. Later it was misunderstood. A young girl, Saint Lucia, cut off her eyes. Jewish Messianic movements are never really good ideas. These Gentiles converted. They converted to one form of Judaism from Pagan religions. The form of Judaism into which they converted was not accepted by traditional Jews as Judaism, but it was Judaism. It was more rational without circumcision and food restrictions. It turned out to be a very good religion, so there the Gentiles were not cheated even if the miracles maybe would not have stood scientific tests of modern times.

What does this mean to the Christian belief? Nothing, nothing at all. The religion as it was formulated by the New Testament lasted the test of the time. There are people, who assure having met Jesus, meaning the spirit of Jesus. I have no objections. Humans have souls by which we refer to the experience that we exist, related but not quite the same as consciousness, which you can lose by being unconscious. We have this experience and by observation mammals and birds probably have rather similar experiences. So there is a soul. Is it of this world or not? I would say not, as an automaton can do everything we do and does not have such experience. At least nobody knows how to build an automaton having any experiences. And the material-energy world does not need such things, but the reality? Quantum physics has the concept of an observer. I do not have arguments to object to a soul which is not born when the body is born and does not die when the body dies. But if souls do not die, do they stay separate or do they join to larger units? Why not the last? It solves a problem where souls come from: they split. Then if we have millions of Christians dying believing in the Jesus they know, they will combine to a soul of their Jesus somewhere in the shadow world. It is an alive and powerful Jesus and you possibly can meet this soul. There can be a different Jesus for all Christian denotations and maybe even the Jewish one suffering the punishments given in Talmud. On maybe not: nobody believes in that character.

One can believe things that are believable and accept the moral teachings that seem good and correct. Christianity did not stay as a suicidal cult and Christians do not leave work and family for a life of a vagabond, they do not always turn the other cheek and most of them go to medical care instead of healing with faith. Hardly any Christians drink poison or hold poisonous snakes in hands to prove their faith. It become as good a religion as any and better than most.

That’s all I wanted to say about this issue. I have often thought about it. I rather think it is more or less as I wrote here. I hope I did not offend anybody, or offended everybody equally much. Or, who cares, nobody reads this blog anyway.

 

 

 

10 Comments

wilfried February 24, 2020 Reply

As a Jew, Jesus certainly knew the book of Deuteronomy, and the content of its chapter 10, verses 17-19:
17 For the Lord your God is God of Gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward. 18 He doth execute the judgement of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. 19; Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt. (King James edition)
How do you fit the moral attitude expressed above in Deuteronomy into your view that ‘there is no indication that Jesus during his earthly mission wanted all non-Jews to be treated as neighbors’.
According to Matthew chapter 5, Jesus corrected in some way or another at least half of the 10 commandments (from the book of Deuteronomy as well) to lift them to a higher level of morality. Did he ever correct or criticize the moral attitude expressed in chapter 10, verses 17-19 ? To my (limited) knowledge he didn’t.

jorma February 24, 2020 Reply

Maybe you are right, but I can justify my opinion.

Stranger is someone who lives among Jews, as Jews lived in Egypt. That is, a foreigner in their country. It does not include foreigners in foreign countries. The widow, the orphan and the stranger are to be treated kindly.

It does not mean that they are your neighbors. Your neighbor, like to good Samaritan parable tells, is one who does good to you. For why is the Samaritan your neighbor and not the Rabbi: for the Samaritan did good to you. So, why the Rabbi was not your neighbor? Because not all people are your neighbors. By your logic Jesus would have told that both were your neighbors, as all people are your neighbors. But he did not say so.

A Jew also does not become a neighbor of the stranger by doing good to him. The foreigner is not under the law and cannot conclude from the Jewish law that a Jew is his neighbor when the Jew only does what the law requires. That is, a Jew is good to the foreigner because he must follow the law.

This law does not in any way change the command that Alamek was to be exterminated or that Jews must separate from the peoples. Jesus, on his earthly mission, told the disciples to go to tell the good message to the Jews only.

The moral attitude in this command from the Deuteronomy could be that remember that you may be in a similar situation and therefore you must set the model of good behavior in order to receive similar behavior if you need it. Jesus did not support this moral attitude. I find more of the attitude of Boethus in Jesus: Jews should fill the law regardless of the reward: if you do what you should do, why should there be a reward?

In fact the moral of the attitude is that God’s law must be followed because God is strong and terrible and has decreed so.

wilfried February 25, 2020 Reply

Your opinion with regard to the meaning of the word ‘neighbour’ is based on good arguments, nevertheless the conclusion it leads to remains still very strange to me.
I am more familiar with a completely different interpretation of the ‘good Samaritan parable’ which is based on other arguments, but no less good for that, i.e. more in line with what is set out in the article below for instance (see link)
https://blog.israelbiblicalstudies.com/jewish-studies/who-is-the-neighbor/
Anyway, I find your articles very interesting. Some of them are unfortunately too difficult for me to understand them.

jorma February 25, 2020 Reply

I may be wrong, I do not say my opinions are the only truth. However, about this whether Jews and non-Jews are treated equally, then naturally they are not. A Jew cannot take interest from a loan given to a Jew, but from non-Jews he can take interest. As usury was a major (often the most common) profession of Jews and the usury interest was anything from 10% to 40% and loans given with the intention of ruining the loan taker, this difference is important. A Jew could practice usury against non-Jews, so a Jew did not love non-Jews as himself. As a Jew was to love his neighbor as himself, a non-Jew was not his neighbor. The command to love (or show kindness) to orphans, widows and strangers cannot be turned into a statement that orphans, widows and strangers are your neighbors. However, let us notice that a widow’s son is half-orphan. So, a Jew should love a widow’s son even, and especially, if he is a stranger (non-Jew) and the non-Jew widow’s son should love the Jew. The widow’s son is naturally a Freemason.

About Jesus, his teaching must have been according to the law as the only mention of breaking the law were healing on the Sabbath and disciples eating grain on the Sabbath. As his teaching was according to the law, it made a distinction between a Jew and a non-Jew. Even Paul, though hellenized Jew (probably of Edomite origin and Herodian) says, first Jew, then Gentile. Paul extended the new religion to include pagans. If Jesus had so intended, surely his original disciples had preached to pagans, but they did not. In the Old Testament, in Isaiah, there are prophecies that the good message will be preached also to pagans. That is why James the Just accepted Paul’s mission, but it cannot have come from Jesus since neither James, not John, nor Peter did originally not preach to Greeks.

Wilfried March 1, 2020 Reply

[The widow’s son is naturally a Freemason].
The meaning of this sentence in your reply escapes me. Is freemasonry perhaps associated with Jewish spirituality ?

jorma March 1, 2020 Reply

Forget it. I was just ironical. I poor insider joke by me to me. There was a certain conspiratorial connection between Freemasons and some Jewish bankers in the 19th century, called the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy, which become notorious due to its later association with Nazis. Freemasons have the sign: is there any help for a widow’s son. The term widow’s son is usually explained as a reference to Bonnie Prince Stuart, the leader of jakobites in 18th century England (There was a theory, not considered false, that revolutionary Freemasonry developed from jakobites.)
Freemasonry actually has taken something from Judaism. Revolutionary Freemasonry included some Kabbalism, but Masons are the builders of the temple of Solomon and the pillars in Masonry are the two pillars of the temple of Solomon. In practice, Freemasons were the first (with Christian Zionists) to support the Zionist plan of moving Jews to Palestine and creating Israel.

Joshua H June 24, 2020 Reply

Great Blog!! I love to study the same things.

Some similarities I have recently discovered are.
The letters over the cross INRI are the last letter of the full name. rabbI shimoN baR yochaI.

Also RabbI Shimon son Elazar was in a cave with him.

Elazar is the name Lazarus. Which we have a NT story of Lazarus in a cave.

So something did indeed happen during the Jewish Roman wars which shaped Christianity and Kabbalah.

Next
Jesus fed the multitude with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread.

There is something special about Numbers 10 35-36. The verses are Blocked with 2 inverted nuns. The letter Nun in Aramaic the language of Jesus means fish.

Now the verses say

35 So it was, whenever the ark set out, that Moses said:

“Rise up, O Lord!
Let Your enemies be scattered,
And let those who hate You flee before You.”
36 And when it rested, he said:

“Return, O Lord,
To the many thousands of Israel.”

So the 2 fish represent the 2 messiahs theory. The Messiah that rises up After suffering and the returning Messiah at the end. The five loaves represent the 5 books of Torah.

One more

The verse the only way to the father is through the son. This a a representation of the tree of life in Kabbalah or the Name of G-d

Y=Father
H=Mother
V= Son
H= daughter/bride/Israel

So yes to get up to Y=Father you have to go through the Vav =Son The part of the tree of life or Jacobs ladder that is called zer anpin means son. So same rule applies. To get to Keter or Crown you must ascend through the lower seforit of the Son. In Christianity you get a crown at the end.

Also many Jews were tortured on a cross but a huge story in Judaism is the story of RabbI Akiva being skinned alive on a cross who was the teacher of RabbI ShimoN

I have many many more but I’ll not put you to sleep. Sorry for grammar and spelling my cell phone is not friendly

Thank you for this blog

jorma June 24, 2020 Reply

Very interesting observations. I have not yet much looked at 1st century rabbis, but whatever Jesus said, it had to be Judaism of that time.

Dale B. May 13, 2022 Reply

The best book that I have seen on the original teachings of the Christian Movement is Dennis R. MacDonald’s TWO SHIPWRECKED GOSPELS. MacDonald, a professor at Claremont in California, makes a strong case that a “Sayings of The Lord” was the earliest gospel along with a semitic “Gospel of Matthew.” These can be only partly reconstructed.

jorma May 14, 2022 Reply

Thanks for the hint.

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