Month: March 2016

We continue, from part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, part 9, part 10, part 11, part 12, considering pop-research on the issue of the historical Jesus and Jesus mythicism with regards to some Atheists who have taken to the utterly radical view that Jesus never even existed. I have been considering Michael Paulkovich and Raphael Lataster and, in this case, I got into a comment section discussion within an article written by YouTube celebrity Atheist AaronRa that was simply titled “Jesus never existed” November 3, 2015 AD.

See my article Historical Jesus – two centuries worth of citations wherein I chronicled 205 texts that reference Jesus dating from pre 70 AD to 200-250 AD.

Note how the Judaism 101 question is likely to be answered by just about any and every Jew which is just as the encyclopedia put it, “born to a Jewish mother or properly converted to Judaism.” I will focus on the “born to a Jewish mother” aspect of it so as to demonstrate just how removed Rabbinic Judaism has become from the Judaism of the Tanakh.
Here is a sample of that which even just chapter one of the Book of Numbers/Bamidbar (quoted from the JPS) has to state on this issue: keep in mind that this book was meant to enumerate who was and who was not Jewish, an Israelite, a Hebrew:

AND THE HaShem spoke unto Moses…saying: ‘Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, every male, by their polls…And with you there shall be a man of every tribe, every one head of his fathers’ house. And these are the names of the men that shall stand with you…These were the elect of the congregation, the princes of the tribes of their fathers; they were the heads of the thousands of Israel…they declared their pedigrees after their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names, from twenty years old and upward, by their polls…the children of Reuben, Israel’s first-born, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses, according to the number of names…the children of Simeon, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Gad, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Judah, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses… the children of Issachar, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Zebulun, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Joseph, namely, of the children of Ephraim, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Manasseh, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Benjamin, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Dan, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Asher, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…the children of Naphtali, their generations, by their families, by their fathers’ houses…These are those that were numbered, which Moses and Aaron numbered, and the princes of Israel, being twelve men; they were each one for his fathers’ houses. And all those that were numbered of the children of Israel by their fathers’ houses…

Thus, the Tanakh reckons who is a Jew by their fathers’ houses but Rabbinic Judaism does so by the mothers’. This means that in the case of a Jew married to a Gentile, Rabbinic Judaism is telling people who are born to a Jewish mother and a Gentile father that they are Jews when according to the Tanakh they are not and telling people who are born to a Jewish father and a Gentile mother that they are not Jews when according to the Tanakh they are. Consider what this does to the issue of who is a Jew?

The next point made by Rabbi Federow was that “the rabbis, when the times required it, were much more strict. Those times are now…it is time now to be strict.” But one can be more strict without manipulating facts, taking only one of many views due to a polemical bias and pretending that other sides of the issue simply do not exist.
Now, he elucidates that “Those times are now. For any Jew who cares about Judaism, who cares about Jews, who cares about maintaining our distinctive Jewish values and faith…” And yet, he complain about, for example, Tuvia Zaretsky who changed his name from Lloyd Carson as an example of those who seek “to make themselves appear to have been Jewish!” But maybe he was Jewish all along (after all, there are born Jews who’s last name is “Smith,” etc.). Some people find out that they are Jews due to genealogical research and do things such as changing their names in order to show care about maintaining distinctive Jewish values and faith. In fact, some Gentile Christians express concern about Jewish Christian Judaizing the church and some Jewish believers do take it too far (such as when they demand adherence to the Law for salvation) and yet, many merely seek to stay connected or reconnect with their, and Christianity’s, Jewish roots.
So, there are Jewish Christians who care about maintaining distinctive Jewish values and faith and Rabbi Federow condemns them for caring about maintaining distinctive Jewish values and faith even whilst calling for Jews to follow his lead in caring about maintaining distinctive Jewish values and faith. Yet, of course, he wrongly claims that Jewish Christians are doing no such thing as they are no longer Jews.

He also references “Paul’s dictum to be deceitful in order to make converts, by their understanding of I Corinthians 9!” Well, if “their understanding” of I Corinthians 9:19-23 is that Paul promulgated a “dictum to be deceitful in order to make converts” then theirs is not an “understanding” but rather a misunderstanding of the text, which states:

For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel’s sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you.

In common parlance we would say, “When in Rome do as the Romans.” This is not meant to say, “If you are in Rome and are not a Roman the pretend to be a Roman so as to deceive Romans into thinking that you are a Roman.” Rather, the New Testament’s overall context is that God created and is calling all sorts, kinds, types, nationalities, colors, etc. of peoples and we need to keep ourselves from any of them just because they are in some or another way different than us. In fact, when Peter withdrew from Gentiles when Jews were around, Paul rebuked him (Galatians 2:11). Peter was to have fellowship with anyone and everyone and not fear man when his mission was of God.

Forget, “It’s turtles all the way down”;
now it’s multiverses all the way down

Keeping in mind that his previous theories relied on “imaginary time”; hot off of the press is the latest from Stephen Hawking along with Leonard Mlodinow.
Apparently, many atheists are happy because a book tells then that God need not exist.

For my parsed essay about creation, God, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Invisible Pink Unicorns, et al. I received an interesting comment responding to the statement that everything that begins to exist has a cause:

Why does something beginning to exist have a cause?
This is a Theological argument on cause and effect… which derives from Newtonion laws of physics. However, it has already been shown that Newtonian laws of physics did not exist until the big bang occurred, therefore before the big bang, an effect did not necessarily have a cause, so your argument is flawed and we are here because we are… simple [both ellipses in original]

I would appreciate it if my attention were directed towards something that began to exist without a cause. Now, the commentator does not know that the universe began un-caused yet,—even if I deny that everything that began to exist necessarily had a cause—I can still assert that it is far more sensical to conclude that it had a cause. Consider that the alternative is that “we are here because we are” which is logically, philosophically and scientifically bankrupt. Appealing to the “it just is” of the gaps is merely a killer of science and philosophy. By the way: applying the commentator’s very own “logic” they end up proving that God exists as; God is because God is (in the essay I explain why to assert God’s eternality is not merely an appeal to the “it just is” of the gaps).

Seems like Bertrand Russell’s ghost is haunting my machine. Some may be aware that Bertrand Russell’s erudite elucidation of this matter was expressed thusly, “The universe is just there, and that’s all.”1

On the M-Theory issue; I highly recommend the article,
The Grand Design~Hawking on Gravity and Creation-and William Lane Craig on More posted by (Big) PapaGiorgio.
Also, see my section on cosmology for info about the multiverse, the universe’s beginning, etc.

The AP reports:

Hawking likes the tale of the old lady who accused a lecturing cosmologist of talking nonsense: She knew for a fact that the whole universe lies on a flat plate, borne on the back of an enormous turtle. “What does the turtle stand on?” the lecturer asked. “Another turtle,” she replied. “It’s turtles all the way down.”

For some readers, the answer from Hawking, known for his work on black holes and author of the best-selling “A Brief History of Time,” and physicist Leonard Mlodinow, may not be much more satisfying.

The “grand design,” says Hawking, is to be found in M-theory, an idea launched in the mid-1990s…

“According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god,” the book says. “Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law.”…

Hawking writes that M-theory is a unified “theory of everything” that Albert Einstein was looking for but never found.2

Of course, at this point we encounter a qualifying term which should rightly accompany any theory, any work in progress: a big “If.”

“If the theory is confirmed by observation, it will be the successful conclusion of a search going back more than 3,000 years. We will have found the grand design.”

Within the realm of research with regards to the Vatican’s Roman Catholic Church as well issues generally relating to what may be termed the New World Order and the Illuminati (pertaining to secret societies / mystery schools) certain names are generally referred to as sources of information.

One such mane is Alexander Hislop in particular regards to his book The Two Babylons. As per an Amazon.com book description:

Originally published as a pamphlet in 1853, and expanded to book length in 1858, The Two Babylons seeks to demonstrate a connection between the ancient Babylonian mystery religions and practices of the Roman Catholic Church.
Often controversial, yet always engaging, The Two Babylons comes from an era when disciplines such as archeology and anthropology were in their infancy, and represents an early attempt to synthesize many of the findings of these areas and Biblical truth.

The bottom line issue is not whether or not there is a connection between the ancient Babylonian mystery religions and practices of the Roman Catholic Church because there clearly are many elements of secret society / mystery religions within Roman Catholic doctrine and practice.
The issue is one of scholarly accuracy and it is to this end that Ralph Woodrow wrote the article The Two Babylons which first appeared in the volume 22, number 2 (2000 AD) issue of the Christian Research Journal.

Let us survey some of his points and follow up with various links to books, videos, article, etc. which seek to critique Roman Catholicism accurately:

In my earlier Christian experience, certain literature fell into my hands that claimed a considerable amount of Babylonian paganism had been mixed into Christianity. While the Roman Catholic Church was the primary target of this criticism, it seemed the customs and beliefs with which pagan parallels could be found had also contaminated other churches. Much of what I encountered was based on a book called The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop (1807–1862).

Over the years The Two Babylons has impacted the thinking of many people, ranging all the way from those in radical cults (e.g., the Jehovah’s Witnesses) to very dedicated Christians…
Its basic premise is that the pagan religion of ancient Babylon has continued to our day disguised as the Roman Catholic Church, prophesied in the Book of Revelation as “Mystery Babylon the Great” (thus, the idea of two Babylons — one ancient and one modern). Because this book is detail­ed and has a multitude of notes and references, I assumed, as did many others, it was factual…

As a young evangelist, I began to preach on the mixture of paganism with Christianity, and eventually I wrote a book based on Hislop, titled Babylon Mystery Religion (Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Assn., 1966). In time, my book became quite popular, went through many printings, and was translated into Korean, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and several other languages. Hundreds quoted from it. Some regarded me as an authority on the subject of “pagan mixture.” Even the noted Roman Catholic writer Karl Keating said, “Its best-known proponent is Ralph Woodrow, author of Babylon Mystery Religion.”

From this interesting introduction it is evident that Ralph Woodrow took interest in the issue, relied heavily on Alexander Hislop and did much to popularize the Two Babylon concept. However…:

As time went on, however, I began to hear rumblings that Hislop was not a reliable historian. I heard this from a history teacher and in letters…As a result, I realized I needed to go back through Hislop’s work, my basic source, and prayerfully check it out. As I did this, it became clear: Hislop’s “history” was often only an arbitrary piecing together of ancient myths.

Here are some specifics:

He claimed Nimrod was a big, ugly, deformed black man. His wife, Semiramis, was a beautiful white woman with blond hair and blue eyes. But she was a back­slider known for her immoral lifestyle, the inventor of soprano singing and the originator of priestly celibacy.
He said that the Babylonians baptized in water, believing it had virtue because Nimrod and Semiramis suffered for them in water; that Noah’s son Shem killed Nimrod; that Semiramis was killed when one of her sons cut off her head, and so on. I realized that no recognized history book substantiated these and many other claims.

Yet, the main focus of The Two Babylons is Roman Catholicism and, as we shall, there were issues of accuracy and reliability pertaining to this religion in particular:

The subtitle for Hislop’s book is “The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife.” Yet when I went to reference works such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, The Americana, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Worldbook Encyclopedia – carefully reading their articles on “Nimrod” and “Semiramis” — not one said anything about Nimrod and Semiramis being husband and wife. They did not even live in the same century.
Nor is there any basis for Semiramis being the mother of Tammuz. I realized these ideas were all Hislop’s inventions.

At this point one may wonder if reference works such as the Encyclopedia Britannica, The Americana, The Jewish Encyclopedia, The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Worldbook Encyclopedia are too mainstream. Also, one may conclude that such details do not matter because the point is what the myths say and not what history says.

In any regard, Ralph Woodrow was doing his homework:

…we should at least start out with facts…Such is the inherent weakness of Hislop’s thesis that papal worship is the worship of Nimrod and his wife.
I saw that a more direct and valid argument against errors in the Roman Catholic Church (or any other group) is the Bible itself, not ancient mythology.

The last point is actually an important one. This is not to say that comparative mythology, as it where, is unimportant in understanding how Roman Catholicism has deviated from the Bible. The point being that the main manner whereby to determine how they have deviated is, precisely, by comparing their doctrines and dogmas against the Bible and this is something that someone who knows nothing about ancient mythology but does know their Bible can do:

For example, the Bible speaks of a minister being “the husband of but one wife” and that “forbid­ding people to marry” is a doctrine of devils (1 Tim. 3:2; 4:3). This provides a stronger argument against priestly celibacy than trying to show that ancient priests of Semiramis castrated themselves.

Such is a good place to start but did Hislop go too far?:

While seeking to condemn the paganism of Roman Catholicism, Hislop produced his own myths. By so doing, he theorized that Nimrod, Adonis, Apollo, Attes, Baalzebub, Bacchus, Cupid, Dagon, Hercules, Januis, Linus, Lucifer, Mars, Merodach, Mithra, Moloch, Narcissus, Oannes, Odin, Orion, Osiris, Pluto, Saturn, Teitan, Typhon, Vulcan, Wodan, and Zoroaster were all one and the same.

By mixing myths, Hislop supposed that Semiramis was the wife of Nimrod and was the same as Aphrodite, Artemis, Astarte, Aurora, Bellona, Ceres, Diana, Easter, Irene, Iris, Juno, Mylitta, Proserpine, Rhea, Venus, and Vesta.

But is it not the case that as one culture begs, borrows and steals form another the same deity essentially remains the same albeit with different names, etc.? Ralph Woodrow seeks to pin point his point:

Take enough names, enough stories, and enough centuries; translate from one language to another; and a careless writer of the future might pass on all kinds of misinformation…Building on similarities while ignoring differences is an unsound practice…citing a similarity does not provide proof. There must be a legitimate connection…They may appear to have a connection, but on investigation, often there is no connection at all.

But what of the actual claims; were they legitimate connections or Hislopian mythmaking? Woodrow looked into it in detail:

Because Hislop wrote in the mid-1800s, the books he refers to or quotes are now quite old. I made considerable effort to find these old books and to check Hislop’s references; books such as Layard’s Nineveh and Its Remains, Kitto’s Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature, Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, as well as old editions of Pausanias, Pliny, Tacitus, Herodotus, and many more. When I checked his footnote references, in numerous cases I discovered they do not support his claims.

Here are some examples:

Hislop says, for example, that the “round” wafer used in the Roman Catholic mass came from Egyptian paganism. For this he cites a statement in Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians (vol. 5, 353, 365) about the use of thin round cakes on their altars. When I checked Wilkinson’s work, however, he also said the Egyptians used oval and triangular cakes; folded cakes; cakes shaped like leaves, animals, and a crocodile’s head; and so on. Hislop failed to even mention this.
While condemning round communion wafers as images of the sun-god Baal, Hislop fails to mention that the very manna given by the Lord was round. “Upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing….And Moses said unto them, This is the bread which the Lord hath given you to eat” (Exod. 16:14–15, KJV, emphasis added). Round is not necessarily pagan.

Hislop taught that Tammuz (whom he says was Nimrod) was born on December 25, and this is the origin of the date on which Christmas is observed. Yet his supposed proof for this is taken out of context. Having taught that Isis and her infant son Horus were the Egyptian version of Semiramis and her son Tammuz, he cites a reference that the son of Isis was born “about the time of the winter solstice.” When we actually look up the reference he gives for this (Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians, vol. 4, 405), the son of Isis who was born “about the time of the winter solstice” was not Horus, her older son, but Harpocrates.

The reference also explains this was a premature birth, causing him to be lame, and that the Egyptians celebrated the feast of his mother’s delivery in spring. Taken in context, this has nothing to do with a December celebration or with Christmas as it is known today.

In another appeal to Wilkinson, Hislop says that a Lent of 40 days was observed in Egypt. But when we look up the reference, Wilkinson says Egyptian fasts “lasted from seven to forty-two days, and sometimes even a longer period: during which time they abstained entirely from animal food, from herbs and vegetables, and above all from the indulgence of the passions” (Wilkinson, Ancient Egyptians, vol. 1, 278). With as much credibility, we could say they fasted 7 days, 10 days, 12 days, or 42 days. Hislop’s claim appears to have validity only because he used partial information.

So, what was the result:

For these and many other reasons, I pulled my own book, Babylon Mystery Religion, out of print despite its popularity. This was not done because I was being threatened in any way or persecuted. This decision was made because of conviction, not compromise. While my original book did contain some valid information, I could not in good conscience continue to publish a book against pagan mixture knowing that it contained a mixture itself of misinformation about Babylonian origins.

I have since replaced this book with The Babylon Connection?, a 128-page book with 60 illustrations and 400 footnote references. It is an appeal to all my brothers and sisters in Christ who feel that finding Babylonian origins for present-day customs or beliefs is of great importance. My advice, based on my own experience, is to move cautiously in this area, lest we major on minors. If there are things in our lives or churches that are indeed pagan or displeasing to the Lord, they should be dealt with, of course. But in attempting to defuse the confusion of Babylon, we must guard against creating a new “Babylon” (confusion) of our own making.

In short, ultimately and in closing it is good advice indeed to move cautiously in this area. There most certain is non-, un- and anti- Biblical influence in Roman Catholic faith and practice. The issue here is that if we seek to discredit and bless with correction via faulty information we will merely drive Catholics further into their church’s embrace.

For more info see the following articles, books, audio/videos:

True Freethinker’s section on Catholicism

The books in contention are:

Alexander Hislop The Two Babylons

Ralph Woodrow Babylon Mystery Religion

Ralph Woodrow The Babylon Connection?

Other works of interest by Ralph Woodrow:

Reckless Rumors, Misinformation and Doomsday Delusions

Noah’s Flood, Joshua’s Long Day, & Lucifer’s Fall: What Really Happened?

Audio lectures in video form:

Roman Catholicism, in general

Basic historical background of Roman Catholicism

Roman Catholicism: Eucharist

Roman Catholicism: Purgatory

Roman Catholic Mary: Mariology and Mariolatry

Other relevant books:

James White Mary-Another Redeemer

Ron Rhodes Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics

Joseph R Schofield Escape from purgatory

Ron Rhodes The 10 Most Important Things You Can Say to a Catholic

James R. White The Roman Catholic Controversy

See my various books here.

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