Rose

Read Yourselves into a Story

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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-vs-eisegesisExegesis 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

The True Sayings of Jesus

Road Map

Map or Instruction Manual

Both the advocates for religion, people like the late Ravi Zacharias, and those against it, people like Richard Dawkins, tend to focus exclusively on the scriptures. This has always struck me as somewhat strange, as though the written words themselves actually prove anything. I’ve always wondered what people are expecting to find in the written word? Just saying ‘it is written’ is meaningless. Ancient graffiti is ample evidence that for the last three thousand years most people have had access to literacy.

What are you looking For?

TomTom

So this begs the question, ‘what are you hoping to find in scriptures? Are you looking for a map or an instruction manual?’

What do I mean by that?

Whose Journey?

Recently, I’ve noticed that long car journeys are a little like life. There are two kinds of drivers, some love the freedom and love to explore. They will take the time to look around and will be able to tell you about the journey and the things they have seen. They take a map but only use it to inform their own journey – it is their own journey that they are interested in.

GPSThe other kind of driver just wants to be told what to do; they listen to their GPS navigation system and when it says turn right, by crikey they are going to turn right – sometimes with disastrous results.

Living life from an instruction manual often means that, by the time you arrive at your destination, you have learnt very little from your journey. For this kind of traveller, only the destination is important.

For example, when I was a boy driving in cities terrified me. Finding my way and trying to make sense of a map was hard but over the years I got to know the city very well. A few years go I abdicated responsibility and started to use the GPS navigation system. Now I have no fear. I have driven through the heart of Barcelona for years. The price of this confidence and absence of fear is ignorance. If you asked me how to get to the Rambla, I would not be able to tell you. This observation has to beg the question, which is more important, the journey or the destination?

It is evident that many religious people look to their scriptures to be somewhat like a GPS system – they want to be told what to do. They want to be in the right lane, they want to be saved. If you asked them why they felt justified to kill or sacrifice an animal they just look at you blankly and quote a passage of scripture. They mistake the map for the terrain; they look to abdicate spiritual responsibility for their own life to the words of a book.

Throw Away The Bible?

Modern archaeology has proven that Jewish history is so much more complicated and beautiful than the Bible would suggest (Finkelstein). The Jesus family tomb would seem to cast doubt on the whole resurrection idea (Talpiot). Why shouldn’t we just throw the Bible away? I would posit that it depends on whether you are looking for a map or an instruction manual. If the Torah and the Tanakh are maps and clues from our past, as most Jews believe, then we are not looking for them to be a substitute for our own journey. We do not, as Dale Allen Hoffman so eloquently said, ‘mistake the map for the actual terrain’.

So what is more important to you, the journey or the destination? Judaism believes the journey is the most important thing, as did the historical Jesus (Burton Mack: Q-Source). Buddhism is thinking two destinations ahead and desperately trying to escape this world and Christianity is busy selling tickets to the tunnel. So which is the right way for you? I guess it depends on whether you are looking for a Map or an Instruction Manual. Come to that, can you tell the difference between the map and the terrain?

My God is better!

Some people follow a religion all their lives, or one after another, and tell themselves and everyone else who will listen that they are ‘saved’. Often the people who know them best will tell you that they have not grown spiritually or emotionally one millimetre in their entire lifetime. People insist that ‘their God is better than yours’ – they are convinced that they are in the right lane because their sacred text, or more accurately, their interpretation of it, tells them so. They use this certainty of their destination as an excuse to pay absolutely no attention to how they live their lives.

Oh! By the way, if it’s of any use to you, a rule of thumb that I’ve learnt to apply to any scripture is simply this; do these texts increase the division between me and the world or is it the opposite? My own feeling is that if God is the life and animator of all things then if I am going in the right direction the divisions between (me) and (other) should be dissolving. If on the other hand my sense of self is hardening, I know that I’m going in the wrong direction.

A litmus test you can have fun with is a simple question that is common to most religions. Ask yourself, ‘is it now and has it ever been spiritually legitimate to sacrifice an innocent living being’? If you have to refer to the instruction manual to answer that question then you may be more lost than you think – turn off the GPS and look where you’re bloody going!

Read the Research Paper – The Jesus of History: Did He Really Exist – The Jesus Family Tomb

Read the Book – The True Sayings of Jesus: The Jesus of History Vs. The Christ Myth Paperback

The True Sayings of Jesus