Is the Old Testament a Jewish Book?

Is the Old Testament a Jewish Book?

Thomas Allen

    Many people, both Judeophiles and Judeophobes, believe that the Old Testament is a “Jewish holy book.” Jews as such did not come into existence until the time of the prophet Jeremiah. The ancestry of today’s Jew and Judaism began during the Babylonian captivity. (The Babylonian captivity occurred in two waves, 597 B.C. and 586 B.C., and ended in 538 B.C., when the Jews in Babylon were allowed to return to Jerusalem.)
    As most of the books of the Old Testament were written before the Babylonian captivity and even before Jeremiah’s time, they cannot be Jewish — except in the sense that Jews consider them sacred as Christians consider them sacred. Thus, they are just as much Christian as they are Jewish. Indeed, they are even more Christian than Jewish, as Christians recognize and accept Jesus as the Messiah prophesied in them and Jews do not. Moreover, Moses, a Levite, wrote the first five books, the Pentateuch; he was not a Jew.
    Originally, a Jew was a citizen or a subject of Judea from about the time of Jeremiah — sometime between 627 and 580 B.C. Later, the term was used specifically to identify those who returned to Jerusalem from Babylon at the end of the captivity (538 B.C.). Eventually, it came to apply to the followers of the tradition of men, the Talmud.
    In the time of Jesus, “Jew” primarily meant an inhabitant of Judea. In the religious sense, most Jews were followers of the “tradition of men.” Accepting the tradition was the Pharisees, and rejecting them was the Sadducees. Later, “Jew” came to signify a person who followed the tradition of men as preserved in the Talmud. Today, a Jew is a person whose ancestors were Jews who did not convert to Christianity.
    Also, in the days of Jesus, many inhabitants of Judea, Jews, were Edomites, who were not descendants of Judah, but were distant cousins. Today, according to Jewish historians, most Jews are descendants of the people of the now extinct Khazar Empire. Only a few seem to be descendants of Judah.
    The tradition of men was the oral precepts attached to the Law. Presumably, they were the oral teachings of Moses, who, by the way, was not a Jew. He was a Levite and never lived in Judea. By the time of Jesus, the tradition was replacing the Old Testament as the supreme authority, which explains why Jesus adamantly and ardently condemned it. Eventually, the tradition became the written Talmud.
    Unfortunately, Christians have followed the example of the Jews and have created their own tradition of men. Often, the Christian tradition appears in the creeds adopted by the Catholic Church, most of which the Protestants have also adopted. Furthermore, they appear in the teachings of such renowned church fathers as Augustine. As the Jewish tradition superseded the Scriptures, so the Christian tradition has superseded the Scriptures.
    Converts from Judaism to Christianity are often called “Jewish Christians,” especially converts during the first century or two. To call someone a “Jewish Christians” is an error. The term is an oxymoron. A Jew rejects Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. A Christian accepts him as the Messiah, the Son of God. (I do not recall converts from paganism being called “Pagan Christians,” although they brought of a good deal of corrupting baggage into Christianity as taught by Jesus and the Apostles.)
    Also, to refer to Jesus as a Jew is erroneous and, perhaps, even egregious. For Jesus to be a Jew religiously, he would have had to denounce himself. Instead of claiming to be the Messiah, he would have to reject himself as such. (As an inhabitant of Judea, he could be considered a Jew politically, but even the use of Jew in the political sense is incorrect because Jesus was a Galilean and not Judean. However, the political sense of Jew is not what those who call Jesus a Jew mean. They mean Jew in the religion sense.) Furthermore, in the Bible, Jesus is referred to the “Son of David,” “Son of Man,” the “Son of God,” and the Messiah (Christ), among other things; but except the sign that Pilate ordered to be placed above Jesus on the cross, he is never called a Jew (or, for that matter, as “God the Son”).
    In summary, most of the books of the Old Testament are not Jewish since most were written before Jews as such came into being. Moreover, they are more Christian than Jewish because Christians recognize and accept the Messiah prophesied by the Old Testament. Furthermore, the real holy book of the Jews is the Talmud, which contains the tradition of men.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.
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Development of the Nicene Creed – Part 3

From Justin Through Clement of Alexandria

Thomas Allen

[Reference Note: As this article relies primarily on First Three Centuries by Alvan Lamson, page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Lamson’s book. References to other works are enclosed in parentheses with the work’s title or the author’s name listed in “References” at the end of this article.]

From Justin to Clement of Alexander
    Like Justin, the Fathers who followed were not Trinitarians. They did not believe in an undivided, coequal, coeternal three being God.
    Tatian (c. 120 – c. 180) was a theologian and a sophist, who taught rhetoric and philosophy. He was educated in the Greek religion and philosophy and was a disciple of Justin Martyr. Sometime after his conversion to Christianity, he founded an ascetic and heretical sect.
    Tatian described “God alone as without beginning, invisible, ineffable, the original cause of all things visible and invisible” (p. 116). He does not apply this description to the Son. His concept of the Logos was similar to Justin’s. However, Tatian did not distinctly associates the Logos with Christ. Nevertheless, he did assert “that God was born in the form of man” (p. 117n). “Tatian regarded the Son as originally and from eternity in and with God, not as a real being or person, but only as an attribute, or by virtue of his power of begetting him; in him and with him, only as all things created were; that is, not as the actual, but as the possible” (p. 116). According to Tatian, the Son had a beginning as a real substance or person; the Father produced the Son. Moreover, after his production, the Son was “a being distinct from the Father, and subordinate to him” (p. 116).
    Theophilus of Antioch (d. 183-5) was the Bishop of Antioch (c. 169 – c. 183). In regards to the Father and the Son, he taught a doctrine similar to Tatian. He described “God as Supreme, ‘the true and only God,’ ‘without beginning’ ‘invisible,’ ‘unbegotten’ and, as such, immutable” (p. 118). The Son he described “as inferior, having, as a real being or person, a beginning, ‘visible,’ ‘begotten,’ and therefore, according to his philosophy, not possessing the attribute of immutability” (p. 118).
    According to Theophilus, the Logos was with God Himself; the Logos of God was what reason was in man. This Logos was God’s helper in creation, and through the Logos as His minister, God made all things.
    Moreover, God the Father “‘cannot be confined to space, or be found in place’” (p. 118). The theophanies in the Old Testament were the Logos, that is, the Son. (However, Theophilus did not apply his concept of the Logos to Christ.)
    About the Logos, Theophilus wrote, “‘Of him, before the creation, God took counsel, he being his own reason, or wisdom. And when he willed to create what he had designed, he begot this Logos, the emitted first-born of every creature; not emptying himself of Logos (Reason), but begetting it, and always holding converse with his own Logos (Reason).’ Thus the uttered or begotten Logos or Reason of God became a real person, having a proper subsistence in himself, without diminishing, or taking from, God’s understanding, Logos or Reason” (pp. 118-119). In this way, Theophilus made a marked distinction between the internal and begotten Logos.
    Furthermore, Theophilus contended that only the true God, the Father, was to be worshiped. He believed that the Son was “begotten, or produced from the reason of the Father, a little before the creation of the world; thus becoming a distinct being subject to the will of the Father, and not entitled to equal adoration” (p. 119).
    “Theophilus was the first Christian writer who used the term ‘Trias,’ Trinity, in reference to the Deity: but it is deserving of remark, that, to adopt the modern phraseology, the three ‘distinctions,’ or three ‘somewhats,’ designated by it, are, according to him, ‘God, his Logos, and his Wisdom’” (p. 120). By Wisdom, he may have meant Spirit, though Spirit was usually considered synonymous with the Logos or Word. Yet he did not assert that the three were equal.
    Athenagoras (c. 133 – c. 190) was a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity, after which he wrote apologies for Christians and a treatise on the Resurrection. According to Athenagoras, the Son of God “‘is the Logos (Reason) of the Father in idea and operation.’ ‘Through it all things were made.’ ‘The Son of God is the understanding and reason of the Father.’ ‘God from the beginning being eternal reason, had in himself the Logos (Reason), being always rational’” (pp. 121-122). Thus, the “attribute reason, or wisdom, was eternal, but not the Son as a personal being” (p. 122).
    Like most of the other ante-Nicene Fathers, Athenagoras maintained the supremacy of the Father, who was “‘unbegotten and eternal’ [and who] created all things by his Logos, or Reason” (p. 122). To Athenagoras, the Holy Spirit was “something flowing out from God, as rays flow from the sun, and are re-absorbed, that is, not as a person, but an influence” (p. 123). The Logos “is the eternal reason of God. . . . The Holy Spirit is the Divine Wisdom, the bond of unity between the Father and the Son” (Pressense, p. 250).
    Irenaeus (130 – 202) became the Bishop of Lyons in 177. He wrote five books against the Gnostic heretics. Unlike most Christian writers of his era, he avoided abstract metaphysics of the Platonist Fathers.
    According to Irenaeus, the Son had a second existence and was inferior to the Father. However, he did not discuss the mode of the Son’s generation because he considered it inexplicable. No one knew the Son’s generation except “‘the Father who begat and the Son who was begotten’” (p. 124). However, in his arguments against Gnosticism, he connected the Son with the terms “always” and “eternal.”
    Always, he was careful “to distinguish the Son from the ‘One true and only God,’ who is ‘supreme over all,’ and ‘besides whom there is no other’” (p. 124). The Father is above all and is the head of Christ. Further, he declared that the Church “‘has received from the Apostles and their disciples this belief in one God the Father, supreme over all . . . and in one Jesus Christ . . . and in the Holy Spirit, that through the prophets preached the dispensations.’” (p. 125). Thus, the “Father ‘sends,’ the ‘Son is sent:’ the Father ‘commands,’ the Son executes, ministering to his will. The Father grants, the Son receives, power and dominion” (p. 125). Consequently, Irenaeus did not conceive “of the Son as numerically the same Being with the Father, or as, in any sense, his equal” (p. 125).
    Like the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus held that Jesus Christ had one nature and that he “suffered in his whole nature” (p. 126). Jesus was the Logos of God, and the Logos became flesh and suffered. Thus, Jesus “suffered in his most exalted nature” (p. 127). (Modern Trinitarians maintain that Jesus Christ has two natures, divine and human. Whenever Jesus fails to act divinely, such as his lack of omniscience in not knowing the time of the end [Mark 8:32], Trinitarians claim that he was acting in his human nature. Also, only Jesus’ human nature died on the cross because God, being eternal, cannot die. Thus, this dual nature of Christ gives them an easy escape in ignoring or explaining away the clear teachings of the Bible that contradict their dogma.) “Like the old Fathers generally, before the time of Origen, Irenaeus did not attribute to the Saviour a rational human soul but supposed that the Logos supplied the place of it” (p. 127). He held “1. That the Son was really divine; 2. That this divine element was perfectly joined to humanity in Jesus Christ” (127n). Thus, Christ was “God, God and man” (p. 127n).
    Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240) was a presbyter and later became a Montanist. He has been called “the father of Latin Christianity” and “the founder of Western theology.” (Montanists believed that the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete whom Jesus had promised in the Gospel of John, was manifesting himself to the world through Montanist prophets; they also taught a rigorous legalistic moralism and asceticism.)
    Tertullian maintained the supremacy of the Father. However, he believed “that the Son is entitled to be called God, on the principle, that ‘whatever is born of God is God,’ just as one born of human parents is human” (p. 129). Although he states that the Son possessed “‘unity of substance’ with God” (p. 129), Tertullian “never meant to express a numerical unity of essence, but only a specific, that is, a common nature” (p. 129). He supposed that “the Son to be in some sort divine by virtue of his birth, and of one substance with God, as he is a spirit, and God is spirit. At the same time, he regarded him as a different being from the Father, that is, numerically distinct from him” (p. 129). However, this distinction did make two Gods: “‘[T]he Son is subordinate to the Father as he comes from him as the principle, but is never separated’” (p. 130n). Still, “God and Christ are two things, two species, two forms” (p. 130). Tertullian observed, “‘The Father is different from the Son (another), as he is greater; as he who begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent; he who does a thing, different from him by whom (as an instrument) it is done’” (p. 130). Furthermore, the Son is inferior to the Father. According to Tertullian, “‘The Father is a whole substance; the Son a derivation, and portion of the whole, as he professes, saying, “The Father is greater than I”’” (p. 131).
    Although he admits to “the pre-existence of the Son, [he] expressly denies his eternity” (p. 131). He states, “‘There was a time when the Son was not.’ . . . ‘Before all things, God was alone.’ . . . [N]othing existed without or beyond himself. ‘Yet he was not alone; for he had his own reason, which was in himself, with him. For God is rational’ a being endued with reason” (p. 131). Moreover, the Father was “‘more ancient, nobler, and more powerful than the Son’” (p. 132).
    Nevertheless, after he became a Montanist, he described the Godhead in terms approaching the modern Trinity Doctrine. He wrote, “‘All are of one, by unity of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded which distributes the unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; three, however . . . not in substance but in form; not in power but in appearance, for they are of one substance and one essence and one power, inasmuch as He is one God from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ He describes these distinctions of the Godhead as ‘persons,’ meaning by the word not our [Trinitarians] usage in the sense of personalities, but forms of manifestation” (Walker, p. 69). (Did he come to this conclusion by studying the Scriptures or was it a special revelation to a Montanist?) Ironically, while some Trinitarians claim Tertullian’s Montanist statement supports the Trinity Doctrine, others claim that Montanists were hostile to Trinitarian ideas — even Tertullian, expressed his disdain toward Trinitarians with his Monarchian explanation of the trinity.
    Tertullian also believed Christ consisted of two natures: divine and human. “We see His double state, not intermixed but conjoined in one person, Jesus, God and man” (Walker, p. 69).
    To the objections that he and the others like him were advocating two or three Gods, Tertullian replied that the number and deposition of the Trinity were not a division of the unity. His solution was a monarchy. Monarchy was “one rule or dominion, but may be administered through many officials; or the monarch may associate his son with him, all power still emanating from him. The monarchy then remains. So with the divine monarchy” (p. 134-135). The heavenly King’s use of “‘the Son and Spirit, who are second and third to him, and of a similar nature as begotten of his substance’” (p. 135) does not destroy the monarchy. Tertullian noted “that the Son does ‘nothing without the Father’s will;’ that all his ‘power was received from the Father’ who granted it.” Under Tertullian’s explanation, Christ lacks supreme divinity and numerical identity with the Father. Tertullian’s unity is that “the Son was of Divine origin, and his will always harmonized with the will of the Father, which is no unity at all in the later Athanasian [Trinitarian] sense” (p. 135).
    Hippolytus (170 – 235) was a Roman presbyter and Bishop of Pontus and an apologist for what was the considered orthodoxy. About 220, he wrote A Refutation of All Heresies.
    About the Trinity, Hippolytus believed in strict subordination. “He asserted that ‘God caused the Logos to proceed from him when he would and as he would’” (p. 238). He believed in “the superiority of the Father, and the dependent and derived nature of the Son” (p. 212). Like other ante-Nicene Fathers, he believed that God used a subordinate being or instrument in creating the world; this subordinate being was the Logos, the Son: “‘This sole and universal God first, by his cogitation, begets the Word (Logos), . . . the indwelling Reason of the universe.’ — ‘When he (the Logos) came forth from Him who begat him, being his first-begotten speech, he had in himself the ideas conceived by the Father. When, therefore, the Father commanded that the world should be, the Logos accomplished it in detail, pleasing God’” (p. 213). Thus, “God is the Original: he commands, and the Son, or Logos performs” (p. 213). Yet, the Logos “is not confounded with the world, since it exists antecedently to it, and proceeds not from nothing, but from the Father Himself, . . . but He does not possess a distinct existence from all eternity. He exists first as the creative thought, then He becomes the instrument of creation, the sovereign agent of the Divine will, to call into life contingent beings. He is thus a person, not simply an idea” (Pressense, pp. 406-407). Hippolytus conceived of the Logos to be a person, not simply an idea. The Father alone produced the Logos “not simply as an utterance or sound, but as the inner thought of the universe” (Pressense, p. 407).
    To explain away the appearance of two Gods, Hippolytus declared, “‘There are not, then, two Gods, but one God in two persons. The third economy is the grace of the Holy Spirit.’ The Father commands, the Son obeys, the Holy Spirit enlightens. The Father is over all, the Son acts by all, the Holy Spirit is in all” (Pressense, p. 408). (Later, following Hippolytus’ method of a mere assertion to reduce two Gods to one, the Trinitarians would reduce three Gods to one by merely declaring them to be one God.)
    The Fathers between Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria introduced the thought of a trinity. Also, they advanced the notion of God’s reason, the Logos, which or who later became the Son and Christ, existing from eternity with the Father. Thus, they continued the Platonization of Christianity.
    However, they still maintained the supremacy of the Fathers and the subordination of the Son and struggle with the notion of two Gods, ditheism, or three Gods, tritheism. Moreover, like most earlier Fathers, most continued to “believed that Christ did not possess a human rational soul, the Logos supplying its place” (p. 135).

Clement of Alexandria
    Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was a philosopher before he became a Christian. He was a presbyter and became the head of the Catechetical or Theological School in Alexandria. He advanced the application of Greek philosophy, primarily that of Plato and the Stoics, to Christianity. As Philo had interpreted Judaism by philosophy into scientific dogma, so Clement interpreted Christianity. He was somewhat gnostic as he was inclined to equate knowledge of and about God to salvation. (Later, many clergymen would act the same way when they thought that salvation depended on believing the Trinity Doctrine.)
    His residence was Alexandria, where “the Jewish, the Oriental, and the Grecian culture, mingled with the old Egyptian superstitions” (p. 140). The people of these cultures were generally hostile to the religion of Jesus. Also, the home of Philo and the Platonist school were in Alexandria.
    Clement believed that the Son existed before the world. Although he gave the Son the title God, he did not ascribe to him supreme, underived divinity. Moreover, like the other early Fathers, he did not believe that the Son had a personal existence from the beginning.
    “The Fathers ascribed to the Son a sort of metaphysical or potential existence in the Father: that is, they supposed that he existed in him from all eternity as an attribute his logos, reason, or wisdom; that, before the formation of the world, this attribute acquired by a voluntary act of the Father a distinct personal subsistence, and became his instrument in the creation” (pp. 148-149). Likewise, Clement held that the Logos was the reason or wisdom of God. That is, the Logos was an attribute of the Father.
    Moreover, the Son was inferior to the Father. (For passages from Clement’s writings asserting the Son’s inferiority, see Lamson, pp. 150-151. For additional description of God the Father, the Logos, and the Son and their relationship, see Pressense, pp. 257-260.) “Clement believed God and the Son to be numerically distinct; in other words, two beings, the one supreme, the other subordinate” (p. 150). He conceived of the Son, or Logos, as the image of God as man is the image of man. Thus, his view of the Logos was like that of his predecessors. Like them, he had no concept of the eternal generation of the Son as do Trinitarians.
    To Clement, the Logos was “the source of all the intelligence and morality of the human race — the teacher of mankind everywhere” (Walker, p. 78). God was the giver of philosophy to the Greeks. He declared, “‘For this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law the Hebrews, to Christ” (Walker, p. 78). Moreover, his “view of Christ’s life is almost Docetic” (Walker, p. 78). (Docetists believed “that Jesus Christ had appeared as a phantom form, that he had not had a real or natural body, and that his crucifixion had only been an illusion. . . . Consequently, Christ’s resurrection and ascension into heaven were denied” [“Docetism”]. Thus, “. . . Christ only ‘appeared’ or ‘seemed[’] to be a man, to have been born, to have lived and suffered” [Arendzen].)
    Clement advanced the notion that being from the Father, who is the supreme God, the Son was God. Since he was from God, his nature was divine. Also, he encouraged the use of Greek philosophy in understanding the Scriptures.

References
Alford, H.W. The Manual of the Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity, Investigated and Defended. Dover, New Hampshire: The Trustees of the Freewill Baptist Connection, 1842.

Allen, Thomas. “Early Church Theories of Christ.” Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Co., 2009.

“Amonoean” http://looklex.com/e.o/amonoean.htm. Downloaded July 6, 2009.

Arendzen, John, "Docetae," The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. V. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm. Downloaded July 12, 2009.

Arendzen, John. “Manichæism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. IX. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm. Downloaded July 4, 2009.

The Creed of Nicaea – Agreed at the Council in 325, http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/creed_of_nicaea_325.htm, Downloaded October 29, 2017.

“Docetism.” http://looklex.com/e.o/docetism.htm. Downloaded Jul. 5, 2009.

Fleming, Thomas. “A Plague on Both Their Houses.” Chronicles, Vol. 39, No. 3, March 2015, page 9.

Hase Charles. History of the Christian Church. Translators Charles E. Blumenthal and Conway P. Wing. New York: D. Appleton, 1870.

Lamson, Alvan. First Three Centuries: Or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, With Special Reference to The Doctrine of the Trinity. Reprint. and revised with notes, Ezra Abbot, editor: Boston, Mass.; 1875 reprinted with additional notes, Henry Ierson, editor: London: British and Foreign Unitarian Association,

The Lost Books of the Bible. 1820; reprint. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co., 1929; reprint, 1979, New York, New York: Crown Publishing Co.

Milner, Vincent L. Religious Denominations of the World. Philadelphia: Bradley, Garretson & Co., 1872.

“Montanism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Montanism. Downloaded November 12, 2017.

Pressense, E. De. The Early Years of Christianity: Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Translator Anne Harwood. New York: Nelson & Phillips, n.d.

“Q&A.” Grace in Focus. November/December 2017, page 46.

Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Part 2    Part 4

Pharisees and the Cabala

Pharisees and the CabalaThomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in the original are omitted.]

The father of all modern-day secret societies of any importance came out of Babylon about 517 BC. It was Pharisaism. During the 70 years of captivity, Judaism began to develop. During this time a sect known as the Pharisees arose. The theology that they developed became the Talmud, which the New Testament calls the “traditions.” The Talmud became superior to the Old Testament.

The Pharisees were preachers of Talmudic Judaism. Judaism is a cabalistic (occult) religion. It is based on the Talmud, which the Jews brought to Jerusalem when they were freed from the Babylonian captivity. The Jewish Talmud is based on the Babylonian religion. It replaced the Torah of Moses as the foundation of the Pharisees’ religion. Pharisaism became Judaism after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

The Talmud contains the oral traditions that God supposedly gave Moses to interpret and apply the written law that He had given Moses. Part of these traditional oral interpretations of the Old Testament was written down as the Mishnah in the second or third century A.D. Soon after that, the Gemara, a commentary, was added. These two works formed the Jerusalem Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud was revised between the third and fifth centuries. This revised work is the Babylon Talmud, which is the Talmud used today. The Talmud pertains to everyday matters. It contains the rules of the rite of the Jewish masses. The Talmud also contains derogatory remarks on Jesus.

Using Chaldean Pantheism, the Pharisees molded the laws that God had given Moses into Jewish Pantheism, modern-day Judaism. Thus, they develop the doctrine that Jews are superior beings who are predestined to rule the world. They rejected the Old Testament teaching of God ruling the nations and replaced it with the doctrine of the Jews dominating the material universe. Instead of redeeming man from sin, the Messiah became a mighty king who would lead the Jews in the conquest of the world.

The moral code of the Old Testament applied to the relationship between Jews and between non-Jews. It also applied to non-Jews in their treatment of Jews. However, it did not apply to Jews in their treatment of non-Jews; Jews could morally treat non-Jews anyway that they desired.

The Pharisee (correctly) did not envision the God to whom Jesus prayed, the God of the Old Testament, whom they rejected, subjecting the nations to their rule. They were to achieve world domination by human means—hence, their use of secret societies and conspiracies. Like all secret societies, the Pharisees restricted their membership and maintained “the religion of the secret.”

Pharisees practiced a naturalistic religion. They taught that man is God, man rules the Universe, and man defines reality. They had no choice but to reject Christ. Jesus’ teachings were completely opposite of theirs.


Book of Zohar
Several decades before the pope abolished the Order of the Templars another important event in the history of Illuminism happened. The Book of Zohar was published.

A new dialectic of mysticism appeared during the Middle Ages. This mysticism was the Cabala. In 1280 Moses de Leon, a Jewish mystic, published the Cabala in the Book of Zohar. According to legend, God gave Moses two revelations. The first revelation was the written law of Moses, which is given in the Pentateuch. The second revelation was the secret meaning of the Law. The secret meaning was not written down for many centuries. It was past down orally through a chosen group of initiates. This secret meaning became the Cabala.

The Cabala is part of the oral tradition, dealing with the speculative, philosophical, and theosophical doctrines of Judaism and is a mystical commentary on the Pentateuch. It is an occult system of Jewish religious philosophy based on theosophy, mysticism, and magic and marked by belief in creation through emanation and a cipher method of interpreting Scripture. The Cabala contains the esoteric and occult teachings for the higher initiates of Judaism. These doctrines are related to Neoplatonic philosophy, Gnosticism, Hermetism, and the Mysteries. The Cabala teaches a sacred doctrine about the spiritual nature of man. Like Gnosticism, the Cabala teaches that divinity is found within man. It connects Judaism with the Mysteries of Egypt. According to the Cabala, not only is the nation of Israel and rest of the Universe in need of salvation, so is God Himself. It also teaches that every living and nonliving thing has a divine spark that seeks to return to its origins. One of its goals is to hasten the coming of a great universal ruler when Jews will rule the world. Also, it teaches humanism, the worship of humanity.

From the very beginning of the Christian era, the Jewish Cabala has played an important part in the occult and anti-Christian sects. According to Albert Pike, a Freemason, “The Kabala is the key of the occult sciences.”[1] It has greatly influence Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, and New Age religions.

Endnote
Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 99.

References
Cahill, E. Freemasonry and the Anti-Christian Movement. 1930 ; Reprint. Second edition. Dublin, Ireland: M.H. Gill and Son, Ltd., 1952.

Hoffman, Michael A., II. Judaism’s Strange Gods. Coeur d’Alene, Idaho: The Independent History and Research Co., 2000.

Inquire Within. Light-Bearers of Darkness. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1930.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Kirban, Salem. Satan’s Angels Exposed. Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Salem Kirban Inc., 1980.

McKilliam, K.R. Conspiracy to Destroy the Christian West. London, England: The Board of Anglo-Saxon Celtic Deputies.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Mohr, Gordon. The Hidden Power Behind Freemasonry. Second edition. Burnsville, Minnesota: Weisman Publication, 1993.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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The Mysteries

The Mysteries
Thomas Allen

[Editor's note: The footnotes in the original is omitted.]

Secret societies may be said to begin with Nimrod and his worship of Lucifer—or, perhaps more correctly, with the death of Nimrod. Nimrod is often credited with founding Freemasonry; he invented it with the building of the Tower of Babel. This Nimrod is the infamous Nimrod of the Bible (Genesis 3:21), who established a great empire. Among the names given to Nimrod in later history are Marduk, Bel, and Merodach.[1]

Nimrod was a master of the occult and other Satanic practices. He employed genocide—especially of Aryans—and encouraged miscegenation—especially with Aryans. Ritual murders, human sacrifices, and cannibalism were also among his practices.

Legend has it that Shem, Nimrod’s great-uncle, beheaded Nimrod. Then he cut up Nimrod’s body and sent the pieces to Nimrod’s priest as a warning of what would happen to them if they did not cease their vileness and demonic worship. The priests hid the pieces of Nimrod’s body in their groves and shrines. They revered these relics of Nimrod’s body as objects of worship. The worship of these relics became the first “Mysteries.” These Mysteries were made known to initiates only after long indoctrination. When the Illuminists were convinced that an initiate could be trusted not to betray the true object of worship, they enlightened the initiate. Masonic rites originate from these Mysteries.[2]

Some of the secret societies counted among the Mysteries are the Persian Mysteries (Zoroastrianism and the cult of Mithra and Semiramis Mysteries), Greco-Thracian Mysteries of Eleusis (the Mysteries of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus), the Babylonian Mysteries (the Mysteries of Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylon), the Egyptian Mysteries (the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris), the Phoenician Mysteries (Mysteries of Baal and Ashtoreth in Canaan), Arabian Mysteries (from which comes Islam[3]) and Gnosticism. Much of the mystery cults survives in the Babylonian Talmud, the Zohar, and the Cabala. The Mysteries, especially the Egyptian Mysteries, also appear in the symbolism and rituals of Freemasonry.

Many of the Mysteries imitated the death of resurrection of Christ. Most Mysteries were built around the death of a god or goddess who later rose from the dead. Followers of this god or goddess would receive eternal life if they acquired the appropriate knowledge and performed the proper rite. The Mysteries ranged from extreme hedonism to extreme austerely, from satisfying all the lusts of the flesh to hating and mutilating the flesh because it was the enemy of salvation. At the heart of the Mysteries were regeneration, procreation, and reproduction. The Mysteries promised that the practitioner, with proper ritual magic, which was the secret of the Mysteries, would gain wealth and power. They promised the ability to control the fate of men and countries. The objective of the Mysteries was to make man god. Another basic tenet of the Mysteries was the idea of universal brotherhood.

Entry into the priesthood required the initiate to pass through a series of occult rituals. Secret doctrines were only revealed to the initiate once he reached the highest level of the priesthood. This secret doctrine always included the worship of Lucifer although he was frequently called by a different name, such as the God of Hades or the God of the Underworld. (Freemasons call Lucifer the Great Architect.) While in a trance, the high priest communicated with Lucifer or his demon messengers. These demons became the god or goddess of the Mysteries religion. Kah believes that the idols worshiped were more than pieces of stone, clay, or metal; they were actually images of the demons themselves.[4] The Mysteries would go on to form the foundation of the secret societies that followed.

Canaanites
The Canaanites partook of the Mysteries and more literally followed the hideous and evil practices of Nimrod than most others. Afterwards, the Nimrodic cult appeared in the Phoenicians, an offshoot of the Canaanites.

The Canaanites seemed to vanish from history around 1200 B.C. However, they essentially merged with their kindred the Phoenicians. With the fall of Carthage in 146 B.C., the occulted society of the Canaanites suffered a great set back, but it was not destroyed. The Luciferian occult of Nimrod would later appear in Freemasonry, various societies of the Illuminists, and other secret societies. Among the groups that later instituted various practices of Nimrod were the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, Essenes, Herodians, Scribes, and Assassins.

Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism arose around 600 B.C. Zoroaster taught the existence of two gods, a good god and an evil god, or the God of Light and the God of Darkness. These two gods constantly struggled against each other. Zoroastrianism is an ancestor of Freemasonry. (In Freemasonry, the God of the Christians is the God of Darkness. Lucifer is the God of Light That Lucifer is the God of Light who enlightens, illuminates, and frees man is the great secret of Freemasonry and other illuminated societies.) Zoroastrianism is also an ancestor of the Jewish Cabala and Talmud, i.e., Judaism.

MithraA branch of Zoroastrianism was the cult of Mithra. Mithra was the god of light and truth and intercessor between man and Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda. Ormuzd was the supreme god and creator and the good principle or light. Mithra became worshiped as a solar deity. He promised his worshipers worldly success and happiness and security in the next world. This cult contained seven grades of initiation. It became popular in the Roman Empire and was particularly strong among the Roman Praetorian Guard.

GnosticismGnosticism flourished several centuries before and after Christ. Gnostics claimed knowledge of the secrets of the Mysteries. Gnosticism taught that only by developing certain facets of his mind can man come to his full power. Knowledge is not merely the collection of facts; it is also mystical. Gnostics stress personal mystical experience, and initiates were guided to and through this experience under great secrecy. The secret knowledge of the Gnostics was how to contact the supreme being or power; contact with this power enabled man to work out his destiny. Once an initiate learned to contact this power, he became a vehicle for its use. He became identified with and part of the power. Accordingly, he attained his true purpose as a purified personality and became infinitely superior to the unenlightened masses. Gnostics believed that a person gained salvation through knowledge of his spiritual nature. Thus, Gnosticism taught that salvation came from knowledge, especially from “knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe and of magic formula indicative of that knowledge.”[5] Gnosticism promised the initiate that he could fully realize his divine nature and achieve oneness with God, “who is the Universe in all its phases and in its wholeness and completeness.”[6] Through knowledge, man could become God. Pantheism is the chief dogma of Gnosticism.

Gnostics considered themselves intellectual aristocrats; only a few were capable of receiving their knowledge. They saw themselves more enlightened and, therefore, more important than the unenlightened. While believing the basic principles of Gnosticism, they could easily participate in the outward ceremonies and teachings of the prevailing political and religious system. Gnosticism was the forerunner of a universal religion. Many held that they had a license to sin and that God’s law taught promiscuity. Gnostic masters often used drugs to debauch their followers and to make them easier to control.

During the Christian era, Gnostics attempted to supplement the Christian faith with the knowledge of the eternal and to give Christianity a wider meaning by linking it to earlier religions. Because Gnosticism was more deceptive and clever than other forms of Pantheism, it became the most effective and widely accepted form and the occult’s only major counter explanation to the message and person of Christ. Its primary objective was to subvert and destroy the person of Christ and Christianity and to replace Christianity with the worship of Lucifer. Gnostics taught that Jesus was an ascetic, a magician, or a sexual deviate who used secret ceremonies to initiate his followers. Jesus, who had found the secret knowledge of the Universe and thereby obtained higher consciousness, was not the savior of man. The fundamental principle of Gnosticism was the double divinity or dual principle: Lucifer is the good god; Christ is the evil god, the devil. Gnostics claimed that what Christians called vice was for Gnostics really virtue. For some Gnostics, good and evil were meaningless labels; experiencing everything was the way to perfection. Gnostics rejected the Christian idea of absolute morality.

Gnosticism descended from the Cabala. It was religious existentialism. The seal of Lucifer marked Gnosticism. Originally, the Gnostics were Jewish occultists, but non-Jewish followers soon dominated Gnosticism. Gnosticism is also part of the ancestry of Freemasonry and modern-day occultism, New Age religion. Experimentalism, which was popular among the hippies of the 1960s, is a modern-day form of Gnosticism.

Some notable Gnostics were Simon the Magician and Basilides. Simon merged Greek philosophy with Christianity and taught that the human soul existed outside the physical body. Thus, it had access to universal knowledge. He also taught that wisdom came from the heavens to Earth. Basilides was an Egyptian “Christian” who merged the ancient Mysteries with Christianity. He believed in extraterrestrial beings who were messengers between the heavens and Earth.

Carpocratians
An important Gnostic cult was the Carpocratians of the second century A.D. This group held the laws of Christianity and Judaism in contempt. Carpocratians recognized only the knowledge of great men, such as Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, and Jesus, freed from the taint of religious doctrines. They made man God’s equal and approached the deification of humanity. (Man as God’s equal or man as god is a key doctrine of illuministic secret societies.) Since man is a god, he needs no revelation or guidance from God. Man only needs introspection about his own nature. As nature is divine, natural man is praiseworthy. For man to hold land, goods, women, and everything else in common is natural. Human laws to the contrary are unnatural. Carpocratians lived a lascivious lifestyle.

Valentinians
Another important Gnostic sect was the Valentinians who dressed their Gnostic beliefs in Christian terminology. Unlike the Carpocratians, who practices extreme licentiousness, the Valentinians practiced extreme asceticism.

Gnosticism eventually merged with Manichaeanism. Manichaeanism taught syncretistic religious dualism and releasing the spirit from matter through asceticism.

Greek Mysteries
In Greece the illuministic cult of Nimrod surfaced about 1400 BC in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were also known as the Mysteries of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysus. These Mysteries were the principal religious mysteries of the ancient Greeks. They began as agricultural rites combined with the afterlife. The Eleusinian Mysteries did not appear to have expressed any special metaphysical, ethnical, or social message.

A descendant of the Eleusinian Mysteries was Orphism, which was the next important Greek Mysteries. Orpheus introduced the Orphic Mysteries in the sixth century B.C. Orphism was centered around Dionysus and Zagreus, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Orphism dealt with man’s dual nature of good and evil and sought to deliver the divine soul of man from his evil flesh. Nevertheless, it glorified evil. (The glorification of evil is an important component of modern Illuminism.)

Related to Orphism was the Pythagorean School founded by Pythagoras, a Rosicrucian,[7] at Crotona in the six century B.C. The Pythagorean School was much more of a secret society than the earlier Mysteries. It was more like most modern-day secret societies in its concern for esoteric doctrines. Members of this school were carefully initiated. It emphasized the mystery aspects of philosophy. This school was an early school of secular humanism and an early school of dialectic. It was a communistic aristocratic community. Men and women held their goods in common and believed that they were the guarding rulers of the state. One of its key teachings, salvation through special knowledge, is a key doctrine of modern secret societies. Its two primary tenets were transmigration of souls and that numbers were the true essence of all things. Also, it stresses such virtues as truthfulness, temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, and abstinence from vice. Many of its precepts, such as numerology, later appeared in the Book of Zohar and the Cabala. Theosophy is a modern-day version of the Pythagorean School. Pythagoras “may have been the first to predict a ‘New World Order.’”[8]

Following Pythagorus as a secret society leader was Plato. Plato was an important figure behind the scene of the political maneuvering occurring in his day. He wrote The Republic as a guide for humanist rulers.

In Plato’s ideal society, a small elite ruling class supported by a powerful army ruled the state. The ruling elite exercised absolute power over the masses. Women were completely equal to men and did the same labor as men including fighting wars along the side of men. Marriage and family were eliminated. Sex was promiscuous, and the government reared the resulting offspring when they were weaned. The government undertook a program of selective breeding. Children considered inferior were killed. Plato’s society had three classes: the ruling elite, the military, and the workers. The rulers assigned each person to one of these classes.

Illuministic Greek Governments
An early government established by Illuminists was the government of Sparta established by Lycurgus in the seventh century B.C. This government operated under the authority of superstition mixed with violence. It was an early form of Communism. Sparta became one great camp. All citizens shared in public meals and public sleeping quarters. Everyone held an equal share of land. Slaves worked the land to support the family of the holder. Although marriages existed, promiscuity was encouraged. (Marriage was permitted after age 20 and compelled for the unmarried at age 30.) When a child was born, a committee examined the infant to decide if it should live. Boys were separate from parents at an early age and underwent a uniform militaristic training program directed by the government. To prevent the accumulation of wealth, business enterprise was prohibited, and all male citizens essentially live a militaristic life.

Athens also fell victims to Illuminists. Its form of government differed greatly from Sparta, at least on the surface. In Athens the form was democracy. The Illuminists indoctrinated the Athenians with the idea that government should be by consent, so they became a democracy. Once democracy was in place, the Illuminists could manipulate the masses through demagoguery. Thus, Athens was reduced to a government of men and their immediate whims. The rule of law vanished.

Sparta provided the model for communistic Russia. Athens provided the model for democratic America.

Appendix. Garden of EdenIlluminism goes back before recorded history. Perhaps the earliest record of Illuminism is the story of the Garden of Eden and Eve eating the forbidden fruit. Lucifer sent his agent, an Illuminist named Nahash, who was a pre-Adamic human, to persuade Eve, the mother of the Aryan people, to rebel against her Master, and Lucifer’s arch enemy, the God of the Christians. Eve fell for Nahash’s illuministic deception, rebelled against God, and ate the forbidden fruit.

Nahash deceived Eve with two lies, which are the foundation of Pantheism, the religion of the Illuminists. They are (1) that she would not die, and (2) that she would become like God. Thus, Lucifer won his first battle in his war to destroy the race that God created in His image. By destroying the Aryans, Lucifer hoped to defeat God and supplant Him. If he could not defeat God, at least he would have the satisfaction of destroying God’s special people. Unfortunately for Lucifer, but fortunately for Christians, God foiled Lucifer’s scheme by sending His Son, Jesus, into the world.

Endnotes
1. Eustace Mullins. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 11

2. Ibid., p. 37

3. Gary H. Kah, The New World Religion (Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998), p, 246

4. Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 74

5. James W. Wardner, Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America (James W. Wardner, 1996), p. 82

6. Ibid., p. 226

7. H. Spencer Lewis, Rosicrucian Questions and Answers with Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order (Second Ed. San Jose, California: Rosicrucian Press, 1932), p. 49.

8. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 350

[Editor's note: The list of references in the original is omitted.]

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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