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Two Gods and Two Countries

July 22, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment God

The religiously motivated massacre in Orlando, Florida, is a sad reminder of the dangers of trying to find absolute truth in the written word. All books, without exception, are only shadows of the minds of the people who write them. Whatever motivations or inspiration a person may or may not have had at the time of writing are only faintly echoed within the text itself. It is important that we use our common sense when we read any written text except when it comes to reading a religious work it becomes a matter of life and death, as we see today on a regular basis.

Mean no Harm?

We know from contemporary evidence that prior to the middle of the first millennium a large proportion of Israelis believed that the Judeans had forged the books of Moses (Ref 1). The Old Testament paints a picture of a single united Jewish people. The overall narrative is that Abraham, Moses and then the Prophets advocated the God Yahweh and his cult of animal sacrifice. The Judean Priestly Theocracy insisted that all national calamities were due to some ‘failing’ in the Jewish people or due to their general lack of enthusiasm for the Judean blood cult. Jerusalem was the Davidic Capital and centre of the world. To be fair, sometimes a lie is told for the best of reasons and it is possible that this lie was told to protect the people, to unite them in the face of Babylonian invasion and exile.

Two Countries?

Unfortunately, after a hundred years of archaeology we can now see that this Judean narrative is not supported by physical reality. Galilee and the north of the country were always the most prosperous and densely populated areas (Ref 2). Shechem and Megiddo were the major cities and it was in Shechem that Davidic Kings were crowned (Ref 3). It was the Northern God ‘El’ that gave Israel its name (Ref 4) and unlike Yahweh He was viewed as discarnate and eternal rather than anthropomorphically. Worship of El involved His feminine aspect Asherah and gifts of olive oil and incense were offered on the mountaintops and wild groves (Ref 5). Until the Assyrian invasion destroyed Israel, Jerusalem was only a small village in the godforsaken barren hills of Judea (Ref 6). The Judean nationalistic fantasy, post Babylonian return, fundamentally changed the nature of God to follow the Babylonian model of Marduk (Ref 7).

Two Gods?

This false narrative has ensured that the actual sayings of Jesus became almost impossible to understand and this confusion between El and Yahweh, between Judean and Israeli religious understanding has led to some of the worst atrocities the world has ever known (Ref 8). The Galilean movements, which included the Essenes and Nazarenes rejected animal sacrifice, avoided eating meat, practiced ritual purity and believed that prayer was a personal and solitary affair were in opposition to the Judean Theocracy (Ref 9). The fact that the Gospels do not understand this dichotomy but follow the false narrative of Rabbinical Judaism certainly attests to their creation by Romans and Greeks much later than previously thought.

Become Clear!

The power of the priests was weakened when first the Greeks and then the Romans invaded. By the time of Jesus a Jewish Palestinian religious reformation was finally possible (Ref 10). In this context of religious fundamentalism and political nationalism, many of the sayings of Jesus suddenly make sense. His blockade of the Temple and his execution shortly after becomes a desperate Israeli attempt to stop the horror of animal sacrifice. After the death of Jesus (Maran Yeshua) his brother James became the Rabbi to the Nazarene Yeshiva (Ref 11). After the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the Judean Pharisees evolved into Rabbinical Judaism and Israeli religious belief went underground – eventually to become Lurianic Kabbalah.

One or the Other?

Which vision better reflects the words of Jesus – a vision of God as being everything and a father to all life or a capricious God that will destroy cities on a whim? A God that demands sacrifice or a God that desires love. He cannot possibly be both. The historical Jesus taught an Israeli vision, which was later obscured by a nationalistic Jewish narrative. The situation was made worse by the emergence of a pagan cult intoxicated by its own ignorance and made blind by its own arrogance (Ref 12). In the face of such propaganda, it is vital that we read the Bible with the utmost care and use, to the best of our ability, our God-given common sense (Ref 13).

References

Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion
Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
Old Testament – 2 Kings
Merneptah Stele and Genesis 32
Genesis 33:20 and Judges 9:46
Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
Professor R. Reed Lessing – Yahweh versus Marduk
Blackman, E.C. Marcion and His Influence 2004
Keith Akers – The Lost Religion of Jesus
Professor Israel Finkelstein – the Bible Unearthed
Josephus – Antiquities of the Jews and Acts
Eusebius – Ecclesiastical History
Rav Abraham Kook – The pangs of cleanings

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: Are there two Gods in the Bible? and What is Spirituality and can it be found in a book?

Research Paper: The Jesus of History Versus Judean Supremacism

Non-Fiction Book – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

Historical Fiction Book – The Last Letters of Jesus

Is the Bible Fact or Fiction?

July 12, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Animal Sacrifice Jesus of History

The problem many people have is that the Jesus in the New Testament makes very little sense. The image of an anti-Semitic Jew on a donkey driving two hundred thousand people out of a temple with a knotted piece of string was obviously never meant to be history. The Synoptic Q-Source and the extra-biblical Q-Source leave us with many sayings that are almost impossible to understand if all we have of Jewish history is the New Testament.

When Jesus said ‘Judeans’ did he mean all Jews? What was his problem with Pharisees? Why disrupt the animal sacrifices? Why teach in the wilderness?

Talking Donkeys

Unfortunately, the Old Testament fares little better with talking donkeys, genocidal wars, and genital mutilation. History, archaeology and common sense would suggest caution when we approach these books. The Old Testament speaks of Jerusalem as the centre of a Davidic Kingdom, which stretched from Egypt to Damascus. There was only one legitimate form of Jewish religion and the books suggest that all the ills that befall the Jewish people are due to some ‘Failure’ of worship within this cult of animal sacrifice.

I would suggest that to understand what the historical Jesus might have meant and what might have been actually happening, you have to understand his past from his point of view.

America and England unite

Imagine, if you will, that America is attacked by China and its people seek refuge in England. Over hundreds of years it might become expedient to unite Northern Europeans, both American and English, against the Asian threat. A scribe in England begins to rewrite history, downplaying the importance of America and creating a narrative where London is the centre of the world and the English church ruled over the historical kingdom of America of which England was the centre. In this narrative all the presidents were idiots and God punishes them for their failings as Anglican Christians. The legends and memories used by the scribe are based on truth but they are twisted to mean something new, which advances this English/European agenda and justifies the authority of London over all Northern Europeans.

Israel was like America is now. It was based in the fertile north of Palestine and was big enough to be an Egyptian headache. Judea was an insignificant and barren wasteland centred around the village of Jerusalem (Ref 1). Israel was centred around Shechem and it was to Shechem that Davidic Kings went to be crowned (Ref 2).

Invasion

Judea and Israel had coexisted for centuries. When the Assyrians invaded Israel in the north, the Israeli refugees fled to Jerusalem and we see a village with one water source explode into a city. The refugees bring with them their stories both written and oral. After the return from Babylon a movement toward unifying the Jewish people begins within the Judean elite (Ref 3).

The stories of the Israelis were spun to create the myth of Judean supremacism and a justification for Jerusalem and its Theocracy to assume authority over all Jews everywhere. It was through the appropriation of the Davidic legend that this was achieved.

Some religious movements within the Jewish people resented and rejected what they saw as the subversion of their religion, history and culture. We know from several contemporary sources that the Nazarenes rejected the Judean view, their forged books of Moses and the cult of animal sacrifice (Ref 4). When Jesus is reported as saying ‘Judeans’ it is very likely that he did actually mean, Judeans and not Jews as a whole. When he disrupted the Temple Sacrifices, it makes no sense to think he suddenly got upset about the money – this Judean cult had been running for 500 years.

Whose agenda?

In the book ‘The Last Letters of Jesus’ we get to see the temple from the Israeli perspective. It is very likely that the Judean cult of animal sacrifice was as offensive to the Nazarenes as it is to us. Suddenly many of the most obscure sayings of Jesus in the Q-Source start to make sense (Ref 5). The stories, legends and histories of the Jewish people are remarkably accurate covering, as they do, thousands of years but just like any history written at third hand, a long time after the fact, the Bible stories reflect the bias and agenda of the writer and in the case of most of the Old Testament, the bias and agenda was principally Judean. The fact that the New Testament utterly mistakes the context and implication of the words of Jesus is further proof that the New Testament was almost entirely written by Greeks and Romans (Ref 6).

References:

A Great United Monarchy? Archaeological and Historical Perspectives, in: R.G. Kratz and H. Spieckermann eds. 2010. One God – One Cult – One Nation: Archaeological and Biblical Perspectives. Berlin (2010): 3-28.
1 Kings 12-13.
Prof Israel Finkelstein: The forgotten Kingdom – the archaeology and history of northern Israel.
Epiphanius of Salamis: The Panarion.
Burton L Mack: The Q-Source.
Bart D. Ehrman: How Jesus became God.

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like to read: Animal Sacrifice is Evil and Did Jesus believe in Sacrifice?

Research Paper: The Jesus of History Versus Judean Supremacism

Non-Fiction – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth

Historical Fiction – The Last Letters of Jesus

Was Jesus Called Rabbi?

June 11, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Jesus of History

In Spanish we call roses, ‘rosas’. In Welsh they are called rhosyn. Strangely enough, by whatever name you choose to call them, roses smell the same. Roses By the same token, the idea of ‘Teacher’ in English is named ‘Professor’ in Spanish. Morah would be a closer transliteration in Hebrew and again, the idea of someone in whom we place trust and from whom we hope to learn is the same.

Straw Men

In the book, Last Letters of Jesus, I have used the term, Rabbi Yeshua bar Yosef for the Jesus of History. I have used these names for several reasons but the most important one is that I am trying to call attention to the fact that Jesus was a Jew. The spiritual movement of which he was a part was extremely important to Jewish history in particular and world history in general. Unfortunately, there are more straw men in this discussion than in an archery competition and it is easy to get caught up in largely irrelevant details.

My book was written for people who live in the modern world. Most people in the West understand the term ‘Rabbi’ and its implication. I used the term in the book to express the idea of a Jewish religious teacher. Unfortunately, most people know very little about Jewish language and culture.

Historically, the term Rabbenu was used to refer to Moses and means ‘our teacher/master’ but it is much more than that. The actual word for ‘teacher’ in Hebrew is ‘Morah’ but if I had used that term nobody would have known what I actually meant. In reality, the mostly likely term used by the students of Jesus would have been Maran. Indeed, Syriac Christians historically did use this term.

Pharisees

The term ‘Rabbi’ and the codification of its designation was created by the Pharisees after the fall of the Second Temple in 70 AD. After that war, the Pharisees had no choice but to make a sensible accommodation with the victorious Romans. The Pharisees set up a university in the north and became what we now call Rabbinical Judaism.

That being said, Rab or Rav was used as an honorific much earlier than the first century but its meaning was somewhat less codified. The Synoptic Gospels refer to the Jesus of Paul as ‘Rabbi’ and I would argue that this says more about the date of their composition than hint at what the students of the historical Jesus actually called him.

Names

Yeshua bar Yosef With regard to the term, ‘Yeshua’; Josephus refers to James the Just as the ‘brother of Jesus’. He uses the Greek term for the Hebrew Yeshua, ‘Iesous’. When we say the Latin Jesus in Spanish it sounds more like the original Hebrew or Aramaic, ‘Yesu’. I think there is general agreement amongst most scholars that the name of the historical Jesus would have been Yeshua so I will not labour the point.

The common slur the Pharisees used against the people they didn’t like was ‘bastard’ or (if they were women) ‘whore’. Within a strongly nationalistic movement, this insult would have been to put the victim beyond the pale.

Pantera

The common Jewish spin on the Jesus story of the Gospels is that Jesus was a bastard of a Roman soldier called Pantera. The Romans often used rape as weapon of war and as the accusation was that Mary was raped, it is not beyond the realms of imagination that the insult may be true.

Under Jewish law she should have been stoned to death unless the crime was committed in the countryside in which case the Roman would have to pay a fine and marry her. Obviously that was never going to happen.

Just as with the story of Beruryah who was a famous second century female teacher and the wife of a Gentile who converted and became famous for his Torah wisdom. Predictably enough, the scribes leave us a story of how she had sex with her students.

I’ve used the term, ‘bar Yosef’ in the book for several reasons, most of the early historical sources including Paul’s letters all agree that Yosef was the biological father of Jesus. I could see no reason to go against those sources. I’ve used the term ‘bar’ as in ‘son of’ in order to emphasis the fact that Jesus was first and foremost ‘Jewish’.

William Shakespeare

Most Jews tend to lose their mind if anyone mentions ‘Jesus’ and if you’ve been unlucky enough to see the evangelical posts on Facebook you can understand why. But Jewish sensibilities to one side, I’ve used the terms I have in order to focus people on the fact that John the Baptist, Jesus and his brother James the Just did not see themselves as anything other than Jewish and had no intention of starting a new religion. The words we can reliably attribute to them are an expression of a purely Jewish view of the world and focuses us on correcting ourselves instead of crowing over any advantages we think we might have.

As the bard said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Whether we call Jesus Rabbi or Maran it would not change the historical Jew that lived and died. The Last Letters of Jesus as a work of historical fiction, is an attempt to cut through the preconceived ideas and tribal flags and look with empathy at the life of an extraordinary Jewish man.

Historical Fiction – ‘The Last Letters of Jesus: The Secret of the Nazarenes’

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: ‘What did Jesus say and what did he actually mean’ and ‘Did Jesus Really Exists?’

Research Paper: Did He Really Exist – The Jesus Family Tomb

Watch: The Jesus Family Tomb Reopened Part 1 and Part 2

Read Yourselves into a Story

June 1, 2021

by Shelley with No Comment Jesus of History

By way of a reply to the Kabbalah Centre and to Billy Phillips, I would like to tell you a story:

Beelzebub is another word for Satan. The name Beelzebub has nine letters. Rav Berg who started the Kabbalah Centre came from Brooklyn in New York. The original name of Brooklyn was Breukelen named after the Dutch city. Breukelen also has nine letters. Did the Americans change the name to hide this infernal link? Rav Berg’s name was originally Gruberger, which also has nine letters, so if you have an elevated consciousness, like me, this is a clear indication that Rav Berg was really Satan and the Kabbalah centre is a work of the Devil.

Is this true, in the real world? No of course not! Rav Berg was a lovely man and a great teacher and the Kabbalah Centre, despite their many difficulties, bring much light into the world. So what is my point?

Any story has three meanings:

The first meaning is in the mind of the author. The sum of that persons experiences and their beliefs about their past and their hopes for their future. You cannot find meaning number one without understanding the historical and philosophical context of a story.
The second meaning is slightly harder to define. What did the original author want his audience to believe/feel about his story. Again this cannot be approached without understanding the contemporary context.
Anyone else reading this story will bring with them their own context and prejudice unless they try very hard to understand meanings one and two.

For instance, when Shakespeare wrote, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” he was not giving gardening tips. His implication is that a thing does not change its essence by changing its name.

Exegesis does justice

Exegesis, is the process of trying to find the deepest level of meaning within level one. In modern terms this is like trying to understand the Zen Koan, ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping’. Sometimes we cannot arrive at a profound understanding of a phrase or a word without a leap of logic. It is true then that logic will not carry us all the way to an elevated level of consciousness of which we are capable BUT when we do arrive at this point, our insights (if they are true) do not contradict logic.

For instance the word ‘Sh’ma’ means more than just ‘listen’ – Sh’ma Isra’el, at its deepest level means that the process of deeply listening forces us to abandon the ‘self’ and entirely give ourselves up to the silent voice of the Creator within. This transcendental unity within the sound of silence can only be found through experience but when found does not contradict logic.

Eisegesis leads to a misinterpretation

Eisegesis, on the other hand, is to take level three and run with it off the pitch. This is to impose one’s own meaning on a text or story and ignore level one and two as I did at the beginning of this article. Just as I did above, one could say that ‘as I am such an elevated person and my consciousness is so beyond normal people, if you don’t understand or accept my interpretation of this story then by implication you must be spiritually retarded’. This is an easy ploy that many people beside the Kabbalah Centre use. It is very tempting to live in the cave of our own self and listen to the warm comforting drone of our own opinions. Our ego finds validation in other people’s approbation.

If you were to indulge me in my opening story, the legacy of Rav Berg would be obscured by my fantasy. Everything that Rav Berg stood for and everything that he tried to achieve would be lost.

This fate did happen to another Rabbi two thousand years ago and this crime is still being propagated today. Many scholars agree, and you would find on investigation, that only 18% of the words attributed to Christ were likely to have been spoken by the Jesus of History. Billy Phillips is right, because the truth is that it is impossible to understand that 18% without understanding Kabbalah.

Unfortunately we have two thousand years of Shysters telling their own stories about this Rabbi and putting their own words into his mouth.

As an example, Golgotha – as the place of the skulls and its connection to Kabbalah. Actually, Mark was the first Gospel to be written. For reasons too numerous to mention here, it is obvious that it was written after 70 AD by a Greek who was not familiar with Israel or Hebrew customs. The name ‘Gol Goatha’ is Aramaic for ‘Place of Execution’ when Paul was creating his own version of Mithraism he used just enough Jewish sauce to give his fantasy a kick for Greek and Roman consumption. Errors like the meaning of Gol Goatha are legion. From Christ ridding two donkeys at the same time to his mother being a virgin it is obvious that the Church can’t make up their mind when or where their Christ was born, nor can they agree when or why he died.

Make-believe

While fantasies may be entertaining, they inevitably obscure truth and the truth about the Rabbi is so much more complicated and profound than any of the Christian or Jewish fantasies.

The Jesus of History said, “Why call me good? There is none good but one, God” (Mark 10:18) and this is typical of this Rabbi’s teaching – Zen like Koans that force us toward deep understanding. By the middle of the second century, Christian shysters had given us the long, seductive Greek speeches entirely in the syntax of the author, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” (John 14:6).

If I’ve learnt anything from the teachings of the Jesus of History it is that if Hashem is all goodness, then it would also be true to say that Hashem is all truth. When we abandon objective truth we are giving up on God and the world. If you tried to defend the name of Rav Berg in the face of my libellous fantasy, I could say that you are spiritually retarded but it wouldn’t make it true.

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like ‘What did Jesus say and what did he actually mean?’

Research paper – ‘The Jesus of History: Did He Really Exist – The Jesus Family Tomb’

Watch: The Jesus Family Tomb ‘Part One’ and ‘Part Two’

Non-Fiction Book – ‘The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth’

Early Jewish Christian

May 4, 2021

by Shelley with One Comment Christianity Jesus of History

Before the fall of the Second Temple, the Jewish people were trying to decide the nature of God. With the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah, the Romans prevented a reformation of Judaism and have left Jewish religious vision frozen in time like a fly in amber. Some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the texts of the early followers of James the Just have preserved an early vision of God, which is virtually identical to modern Kabbalah and is the complete opposite to the Blood God of the Judeans. These lost texts reveal a people struggling to come to terms with their own stories.

Twin Towers

On 9/11 two planes flew into the Twin Towers. The attacks on the Twin Towers are an historical fact and each story told about the event says more about the people telling the story than the event itself. Depending on your religion, cultural heritage or agenda, the story you favour regarding 9/11 might be one of the following:

The rise of fundamentalist Islam and the reigniting of a thousand year holy war caused the attack
Mossad and the Jews did it in order to blame innocent Muslims
It was an act of God punishing a sinful people
Government conspiracy to create a pretext for an invasion of the Middle East
Aliens did it

People cling to stories as if they were a part of themselves and rarely give any thought to the implication of those beliefs. When the story inculcates a concept of God, the images of that story tend to immediately bypass any capacity for reasoned thought and immediately lodge directly in the subconscious. For some Muslims supportive of the attack, it was the ‘will of God’. If any thought is given to the innocent people who were killed, the general conclusion is that the innocent dead are now martyrs.

Sunan Abu Dawud

The Jewish people have been trying to reconcile the images created within the stories of the Torah (Old Testament) for over two thousand years. Most Christians know the name of the book but assume that it has been made irrelevant by Jesus. Islam (Sunan Abu Dawud, Book 38) initially embraced the Old Testament vision of God only to lose interest during the beginning of the twentieth century. The revival of a fundamentalist version of Islam by the Wahhabi movement has led many within the Ummah to enthusiastically embrace the moral ambivalence and blood thirsty horror of the Torah’s original vision.

So in the twenty-first century, we have reached a strange position. Because of these stories about God, some people ‘of conscience’ feel compelled to become atheists and reject this vision. Many people feel obliged to bring the horrors of the Torah to life and graphically re-enact the punishments described for the benefit of the world’s media.

Kabbalah

In researching early Jewish Christianity and its relationship with Kabbalah, I have found an obvious and clear philosophical link between the two, which we will shortly explore but the connection between Kabbalah and the Torah is less obvious and requires careful examination.

For most Jewish people, the Torah (Old Testament) and its stories are a tribal flag. In discussions with Goyim (Non-Jews) they tend to oscillate between two positions.

‘The Torah is the revealed word of God and everything that Jewish culture demands is sanctioned by God’. If passages involving racial genocide and animal sacrifice are mentioned, they often dig in like our Muslim supporters of the 9/11 attacks and use the same justifications for violence. The alternative argument used by many Kabbalists is to switch effortlessly to position B.

‘The Torah doesn’t mean what it says it means: you have to speak Hebrew and learn the secret language of the Torah to understand it’. This is a clever avoiding technique and it is usually successful in shutting down any further discussion. To push beyond this point would be considered anti-Semitic. At this point, the telephone usually goes dead.

Stories

Before it is anything else, the Bible is a collection of stories. Like 9/11 many of those stories are based on real events. For example the actual Hyksos expulsion from Egypt is a dramatised account detailed within the stories of the Exodus. It is disingenuous to say that this story doesn’t mean what it says it means. You cannot have your scholars declare the historical accuracy of the text and then say it doesn’t mean what it says it means.

The Torah then is part history, part cultural repository of proverbs, poetry, and philosophy. We should not be surprised when events or characters are merged and changed to reflect the agenda and view of the writer; that doesn’t change the reality upon which the story is based. Serious problems arise, however, when the writer presumes to speak for God.

I could say that the Governments of the world caused 9/11 to bring about ‘one-world-government’. I could say that Mossad organised the attack to further its hegemony in the Middle East. I could even say Aliens did it but the moment I say that God wanted three thousand people to die I cross a line. We must be very careful of the stories we tell. Stories can change the world.

Genocide

For believers, when God orders the racial genocide of the Amalekites and the Midianites (1 Samuel 15:3/ Numbers 31) that’s considered good. When the Nazis try to do the same that’s bad. When God orders the sacrifice of every first born son (Exodus 13:2) that’s good. When a woman wants an abortion that’s bad. When God wants to have a goat thrown down a cliff, to a painful death. (Leviticus 16:10) Good! When Satanists sacrifice goats: bad. The Gospels hint at the indignation that many Galileans felt at this moral hypocrisy. We know from Epiphanius of Salamis that many Galilean movements rejected the books of Moses as forgeries and clung to an oral teaching not now available. I would posit that it is this disenchantment that led to the evolution of Jewish belief within Kabbalah.

Stories then are reflections of the inner life of the teller. Over a thousand years, the inner life of the Jewish people matured. Their vision of the blood God of the Torah evolved into the most profound transcendental teachings the world has ever known. How? As we have previously discussed, the Israeli Elohist view of God is incorporeal.

God

Sometime during the first millennium BC this view deepened and gave rise to a view of God as the ‘force that animates all life’, within which ‘we are all united’. From being a God who demanded sacrifice he became a God that treasured all life.

Exodus 13:2 ‘Sacrifice to me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of man and beast; it belongs to Me’. Became: Psalm 145:9 ‘The Lord is good to all; his loving-kindness extends to all he made.’

An argument can be made that many of the statements made by the historical Jewish teacher we know as Jesus were based on the Torah. ‘Why call me good? Jesus answered ‘There is none good but God alone.’ Mark 10:18. is obviously a mirror of Psalm 145:9. But it is hard to trace the genesis of this evolution.

Modern Kabbalah

When I say modern Kabbalah, I am referring to the teachings of Rav Ashlag and his commentary on the ‘Ten Luminous Emanations’ and Rav Kook who said that ‘in a still small voice the wisdom of Israel speaks through Kabbalah’.

Today Rav Michael Berg and Rabbi David Aaron are possibly the most accessible teachers of this view of Kabbalah. I do not have the space here to go into these concepts in detail but will just touch on the parallels.

When Jesus taught the concept of ‘Repentance’ we can see this mirrored in the Kabbalistic concept of ‘Teshuvah’. When Jesus taught the ‘Kingdom of God’, we can see the concept of ‘Emunah’. So much is obvious. But what of more complex ideas?

Point of View

Kabbalah teaches us to not give in to the evil inclination to ‘receive for the self alone’. We learn to find the path of ‘receiving in order to share’. We learn how to be proactive. When Jesus says, “if you are struck on one cheek, offer them the other. If you are pressed to walk a mile, go with them two.” From a Western or Christian point of view, this approach makes no sense but in the context of Kabbalah it is the only logical course of action.

When the Nazarene movement says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.” It is reflected in the teachings of Kabbalah ‘Baat Kol’ which is the ‘still small voice’ that Rav Kook, of blessed memory explained.

Only by viewing the world through the prism of Kabbalah can a statement like the following make sense. ‘But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust.’ Within the Father of lights we are all one and if my enemy is me, then in forgiving him I am forgiving myself.

Which Path?

In 2015 in Paris, Colorado Springs and in Duma, fundamentalists calling on the name of Allah, Jesus, and Yahweh, respectively killed too many innocent people. These fanatics killed because they believed a story about God. On 9/11 three thousand people were killed because of a story that had started three thousand years before in the Torah. In the Q-Document, the historical Jesus taught that the stories we tell are of the utmost importance. Every second of every day we are all faced with a crossroad and we must choose the path of life or the path of death.

It is only within Modern Kabbalah that we can learn to understand how to take the path of life. It is fitting that I should end with the words of the great Rav Kook,‘ The tendency of unrefined people to see the divine essence as embodied in the words and in the letters alone is a source of embarrassment to humanity, and atheism arises as a pained outcry to liberate man from this narrow and alien pit, to raise him from the darkness of focusing on letters and expressions, to the light of thought and feeling, finally to place his primary focus on the realm of morals. Atheism has a temporary legitimacy, for it is needed to purge away the aberrations that attached themselves to religious faith because of a deficiency in perception and in the divine service. This is its sole function in existence…’

Maybe the historical Jesus would see our belief in these ancient stories about God as a kind of idolatry. Maybe within our stubbornness and racial pride, he would see the ultimate blasphemy.

If you enjoyed this Blog, then you might like: What is Spirituality and can it be found in a book?

Watch: Did the Jesus of History invent Christianity?

Non-Fiction Book: The True Sayings of Jesus – The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth