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old testament page 7

Polytheism ended, monotheism took over. The anthropomorphic tribal God left the scene and the perfect universal God took his place. The dead used to go to sheol to join his/her family, and there was no afterlife; but after the exile both immortality and paradise replaced this gloomy prospect. Political Messiah which was thought to have been coming to establish the kingdom of God was replaced by the trancendent Messiah. There were no angels or demons before, but they took their place in the post-exilic belief system together with the 'holy spirit.' Primitive laws were replaced by elaborate and complicated code of moral and secular laws.

There is one ritual which was not changed by the Pharisees: The circumcision. Experts on that era say that the rite of circumcision was imperceptible until the period of Maccabees (167 BC.), and that may be why the Persians did not change it.

A very important aspect of the Old Testament is the ban it introduced on images. I can hear you say 'what harm could an image do?' Alright, let us go to ancient Egypt for a while. When Sun Good Ra descends to his home in the glittering west every night, he is attacked by the armies of demons commanded by Satan Apepi; Ra fights with them all through the night; sometimes the forces of darkness send black clouds to the blue skies of Egypt to black out Ra's light and diminish his power. In order to help the Sun God in His daily struggle a great ceremony is held at the Sun Temple in Thebes.. An image of Apepi is made, the name of the Satan is written on it with green ink.. The image is bound by a single hair, is spat on, then cut by a stone knife, and thrown on the ground. This act which is accompanied by certain spells is repeated. Demons (spirits) of darkness, clouds and rain fall, wounds open on their images as if they were on their own bodies; they go away for a while, and the beneficial Sun God shines once again with His victory. Here we see the image being used as an instrument of black magic, and sorcery. Judaism has its roots - at least the early ones - in Egypt. So the ban on images in the Old Testament must have one of its foundations it the practice of sorcery in ancient Egypt as well as in other regional practices. The purpose of this ban must be to rid sorcery one of its instruments. Islam has an identical ban on statues, pictures and paintings with a similar pretext: To prevent idolizing and worship of idols. It is clear that this ban is not peculiar to Islam but has its roots in the Hebrew belief system.

Fear of sorcery has brought about another ban. This is the ban on uttering God's name -YHWH - freely. Islam has a similar ban on the free usage of the name of God of Qoran - Al-lah. This prohibition is thought to have its origins in a taboo in pre-history. But also magic and sorcery are thought to be the other reasons behind it, because it was believed that, knowing the name of a person gave one the ability to take that person under one's influence. There are two names used for God in the original Hebrew Old Testament: Elohim and YHWH. These different names are taken as an evidence of the belief in more than one God in the early years of Mosaic belief system.

The taboos in the Mosaic belief system are as follows: Eating of the thighbone muscle.. Eating of leavened bread for seven days in the month of Abib.. Eating of the meat which touched anything that is taboo.. The rules governing the consuming of meat is as follows: Ox, sheep and goat are permitted. Animals with parted hooves, with double claws, and those that ruminate are permitted, and the rest of the animals are taboo. Camel, hare and coney beat are taboo. Pig is unclean, its flesh is taboo and its carcass should not be touched. All the marine animals having fins and scales are permitted. Those which have no fins and scales are taboo. The list goes on and there is no point in duplicating it here.. The important thing is the taboo on the pig. Why? Pig comes from Egypt. Pig is the animal of Seth who is the enemy of Osiris. Sometimes Seth was called a pig. In the moonlit nights pigs were slaughtered to Seth (the God of Darkness and Evil) and the flesh was consumed.. This is the usual practice concerning a typical totem animal. Sons of Israel may have taken this taboo from Egypt. Moslems took it from Jews. But when Israel was supposedly in Egypt there were no camels there. Domesticated camels were first seen in 11 BC. Therefore camels must have entered the Old Testament in the writing process. The flesh of the permitted animals which 'died of itself' are forbidden. It is forbidden to seethe a kid in his mother's milk. Meat and butter should not be served together. It is forbidden to cook meat in butter. The offerings to God are taboo; those could be consumed only by the descendants of Araron (the Levites) and by some of the temple workers. Following the sexual act the participants would remain unclean for a whole day, then they have to wash their bodies and clean their clothes. A woman having her period would be unclean for seven days. Her bed and everything she sits on will also be unclean, also those who touch her and the man who makes love to such a woman would be unclean for seven days. The condition which is called leprosy in the Old Testament is not the leprosy that we know, because it is impossible to treat leprosy fully even today. So this condition in the Old testament should be all kinds of skin ailments and the stains and molds on the furniture and walls. If a bride turns out not to be a virgin, she is taken to her father's house, and the men of the town stone her to death in front of the house, because she has dishonoured Israel by committing adultery. But despite all these strict rules against illicit sexual relations in the Old Testament we read in the same Book the story of David committing adultery with Uriah's wife. Fathers should not be killed for what their sons have done, and sons should not be killed for what their fathers have done. One should be killed for one's own crime.

In ancient North Africa, Asia Minor; and in the Middle East, from Anatolia and Egypt to Persia the notions of transmigration of souls and rebirth were taken for granted. Israel knew the doctrine of the transmigration of souls in 30 AD., and they called it 'gilgul' (wheel/cycyle). This Gilgul doctrine was an ordinary knowledge for the first Christians. The Konversationslexicon (1907), under the heading "Reincarnation in the Jewish Talmud" writes the following: "..The jews of the time of Christ held a general belief in the transmigration of souls. The authors of the Talmud took it for granted that God had created a finite number of Jewish souls that would continue to return to an earthly existence for as long as there were Jews, if occasionally in the form of an animal in order to teach a soul a lesson. But all would be purified on the Last Day, and rise in the bodies of the righteous in the promised land."

The Old Testament ends with a prophecy in Malachi 4:5 (written in 870 BC.): "Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord." (Malachi 4:5) We read in Matthew 11:10-11: "For this is he, of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy way before thee. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of woman there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." Now Malachi 11:13-14: "For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which has for to come." Jesus himself was later to state that John the Baptist was Elijah-Elias.

Elmar R. Gruber & Holger Kersten in their book The Original Jesus write that the idea of reincarnation was completely unfamiliar in Greece before Pythagoras. Most writers, following Herodotus, have sought the origin of that idea in Egypt. But Pythagoras' teaching about reincarnation certainly did not come from Egypt, since the idea of transmigration of souls was also unknown there. Whereas the concept of reincarnation of the soul was only to be found in India from early times. It played an important part in everyday religious life. So Leopold Von Schroeder concluded: "Pythagoras could only have taken over his teaching from Indians." The concept of reincarnation of the soul in other forms and living beings was only to be found in India from early times. The Samkhya Indian philosophy and the Buddha's belief system, both of which came into being at precisely Pythagoras's time, emphasize redemption from the 'cycle of rebirths.' They view the soul as being trapped in the body. Only through a process of recognition of this state of affairs can the soul be liberated from its body and spared having to return to the suffering of a bodily existence. Similarly Pythagoras believed that the soul is bound to a body, buried there, as a punishment.

This idea of rebirth is also preserved in various places in the New Testament despite all the attempts to get rid of it. It even seems as if this un-Christian concept was taught by Jesus himself. So, here is the crucial question: Did Jesus acquire this attitude from an Indian source like Pythagoras half a millenium before him? We shall deal with the Jesus-India connection in the near future. So let's get back to the subject of reincarnation. As an idea, reincarnation is among humanity's oldest and it entered into Shamanism from the belief systems of the stone age hunters. It reappeared in the cult of the Great Mother among pastoral peoples and then later in the mystery religions of the Near East. In Hellenistic times, with the accompanying opening to ideas from the East, Indian views of rebirth became known in Palestine. If you want the actual route these ideas followed in their progression towards West, the answer lies in Alexandria, where there was a colony of Indian missionaries sent there by King Asoka of India.

There is another link between the Mesopotamian and Indus civilizations: Elamites.. They lived to the north of the confluence of Euphrates and Tigris. Archaelogical discoveries have now shown that a proto-Elamite culture flourished in the 4th millenium BC., 200-400 years before the oldest Indus valley culture, the Amri culture, only 600 miles away from the later high civilization of Harappa. Important contacts between India and a high culture to the west - immeasurably far away for those times - certainly existed over 4000 years ago. ...Celtic God Cernunnos sitting in the Buddha position corresponds to a Harappa seal from the Indus valley. Numerous analogies and correspondences between the Celtic and Celto-Iberian religions and India are to be found in the idea of reincarnation, a vegetarian diet, the tree cult and the Swastika - a symbol that is still found today on the door-posts of Basque farmhouses. A Buddha's head from the same period has even been found in a Celto-Iberaian burial chamber in the south of France.

Cuneiform contractual documents relating to the Hittite kings of Mittani found at Boğazköy in Asia Minor (dated to 1400 BC.) preserve a unique echo of spiritual exchanges within just a few centuries. They contain invocations of the Gods Mi-it-ra, Ur-w-na, Indar, Na-sa-at-ti-ia, all deities worshipped under the same names - Mitra/Maitreya, Varuna, Indra, Nasatyas - in ancent India. Ancient Persians also called themselves Aryans and their language differed little from Sanskrit. Avesta, holy scripture of ancient Iran is in part almost identical with the Rig-Veda, the oldest Iranian text. Indian God king Rama is to be found there as well as 'soma' the divine potion ('haoma' in ancient Iranian) and the holy river Saraswati (Haraquati). Dr. B.G. Siddhart from Hyderabad attributes Avesta and Ramayana to the seemingly inconceivable date of 7000 BC. In his opinion the Rig-Veda even originated a thousand years earlier in Anatolia. A Team of researchers from Heidelberg University has found the remains of a highly developed urban culture, dating from the 7th millenium BC at Nevali Cori in Turkey. The sculptures there include the life-size depiction of a man displaying all the characteristics of a priest from the time of the Rig-Veda. In order to understand what role Asia Minor (Anatolia, present day Turkey) played in the progress of Mithraism towards the West we should stop for a brief period at the land of 'Khuru' where Hurrian people lived. The Old Testament calls them the Horites and their land Khuru. The Horites mentioned in the Old Testament were not a Semitic people. Their home was among the mountains around Lake Van in Eastern Asia Minor. They were prominent in Northern Mesopotamia, Syria and Eastern Asia Minor about 1500 BC. The names on many Hurrian documents indicate that at least the princely caste must be reckoned as Indo-Aryan. In the north of Mesopotamia they built up the powerful kingdom of Mitanni between the upper reaches of the Euphrates and the Tigris. Their kings had collected round them an aristocracy of warlike charioteers and they bore Indo-Aryan names. The aristocracy of the country was called Marya (an old Indian word) which is the equivalent of 'young warriors.' Their temples were dedicated to old Indian Gods. Magic incantations from Rig Veda were intoned in front of the images of Mithras - the victorious champion of Light against Darkness, who ruled the storms; and of Varuna who governed the eternal order of the universe. With the advent of this 'supreme being' the old Gods of the Semites crashed from their pedestals. But in reality the Mithra which attracted the West was not this nationalist one, but an amalgam which took its final shape in the Eastern Asia Minor (Anatolia) where the Persian traditions survived the longest.

Concurrent with the spread of the idea towards west there was a renaissance of interest in Pythagoras. Therefore Hellenistic intellectuals were familiar with this idea. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan metropolis where all these old and new ideas were hotly discussed. There also was a Jewish colony in Alexandria of those days. Though the idea of reincarnation was not known by the Jews of earlier times, the Hellenistic philosophy spread this idea within its sphere of influence and the Jews were effected. One can safely say that the idea of rebirth and the transmigration of souls took up roots in Jewish popular feelings of that age. The story in St. John 9:2, about a disciple asking Jesus whether a man blind from birth sinned himself or his parents, is one of the declarations proving it. The concept of rebirth, 'gilgul' became established in the Jewish circles around the start of our millenium. Talmudists started from the assumption that God had created only a specific number of Jewish souls, which were constantly reborn. For punishment they returned in animal bodies. According to that view a human has to live through a prolonged transmigration of souls 'gilgul-neschama,' until redemption 'tikkun' - right order, harmony - is achieved. The idea that redemption only occurs when the goal of earthly development is achieved indicates Indian and Buddhist origins. These Jewish teachings first arose during the Hellenistic period. Christianity also had the Indian connections as shown by Jesus's statements on reincarnation. In later centuries the Church made great effort to suppress all New Testament references to the idea of reincarnation without being able to eliminate them completely. The most important passages in the New Testament with regard to Jesus's views on rebirth have been preserved in John's Gospel ( St. John 3:1-7). But John's Gospel is a mutilated text due to incorrect translations. So, the German theologian Günther Schwarz, tried to re-establish the original Aramaic text of the gospels from the existing Greek translations. He called the product of his work Jesus-Evangelium (The Gospel according to Jesus). In Jesus-Evangelium 5:12-16 we read the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus: "Nicodemus: What must I do to enter into the Kingdom of God? Jesus: Verily, verily, I say unto thee: except a man be born again and again, he cannot be (re-)admitted into the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus: How can be a man be born again and again when he is old? Can he return into his mother's womb and be born again? Jesus: Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again and again." (Schwarz G. and Schwarz J., Das Jesus Evangelium. Munich, 1993). There are some scholars who think that this Jesus-Nicodemus story is most probably adopted from the Buddha-Yasa story.

Furthermore one must remember the passages where Jesus calls John the Baptist an Elijah who has come again (Matthew 11:13-15, 17:10-13, Mark 9:11-13); and the ones where he (Jesus) is thought to be a reborn Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. Matthew 18:3 is one of the worst examples of this wrong translations. As it stands in the official versions of the New Testament it reads like this: "Except you be converted and become as little children..." In contrast to this the corrected translation runs: "If ye be not reborn, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." Let us check what the people in India thought in relation to reincarnation: The ancient Indian pre-Buddhist belief was that a human being had to pass through many earthly existences in order to attain that degree of spiritual perfection which makes possible a 'return' to his or her divine home. The Upanishads from the pre-Buddhist epoch viewed that return as realization of the understanding that the self (ATMAN) is identical with the primal ground, with the highest divine totality (BRAHMAN). For the Buddha who rejected the idea of either a highest God or a soul, that 'return' signified finding one's way home through entering the void known as Nirvana. Soon after the Buddha died his followers diluted that radical view of things. ...The Buddha was transported into heaven and Nirvana was declared to be a state of endless bliss. It was believed that before their earthly existence buddhas existed in a heaven and returned there after their death - until the next voluntary incarnation. Jesus's 'Kingdom of God' viewed in terms of rebirth turns out to be the Buddhists' 'Buddha Heaven'.

An Indian rendering of the idea of reincarnation is to be found in the Epistle of James (3:6). German translation speaks of the tongue inflaming the 'circle of life,' which is another wrong translation. It should really be 'circle of births' or 'wheel of existence' which constitutes the literal translation of the Indian concept of the Wheel of Rebirths ('samsara chakra'). The context of this passage from the Epistle of James betrays its Buddhist origins. It is concerned with the right use of the tongue - restraining what one says. Because it is believed that the abuse of speech is said to keep the Wheel of Rebirths in motion. According to Buddha the right speech is one of the demands of the Eightfold Path. There cannot be right thinking and action without right speech. Dhammapada and Suttapitaka.Udanavarga contain astonishing number of elements, passages and moral views that we come across in the Gospels. It is striking, above all, that the instructions of Jesus are based on these Buddhist texts. For the early christian communities the belief in reincarnation was taken for granted until it fell victim to historical error in 553, being declared to be a heretical belief at the fifth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople, and remaining banned from the Christianity up to the present day. In this Council this doctrine of reincarnation and transmigration of souls was in fact condemned by no more than a mere personal veto by the emperor Justinian and the anathematization was never part of the Council resolutions. The Council was hardly ecumenical, and could only be described as a council. Even Pope Vigilius visiting Constantinople at the time stayed away from the council in protest.

Now let us have a look at another very important book, the Talmud? What is it? It is the main text of Rabbinical Judaism, second only to Torah. There are two versions of it: The more detailed, complete and progressive version is called the Babylonian Talmud, which came about during the Babylonian exile in Sura (5th. century AD.) The second version is the Palestinian Talmud of the 4th. century AD., which is more conservative and traditionalist.

Talmud is made up of the Mishnah (Mesani in Arabian), which is the compilation of the Oral Law; and the Gemara. Mishnah is arranged by the subject matter of Halakhot(:::). Gemara in its narrowest meaning, is often called Talmud. The Talmud is encyclopaedic both on the Halakhah-Halakhot and on the Haggadah, the theological, ethical, and folkloric side of things. Rabbis often refer to it. The Talmud records all views, no matter who said it and why. Disputes, and discussions are endless. When there is a need to reconcile contradictory texts, commentaries known as Midrash is consulted, which is a tradition of Rabbinical Biblical exposition and exegesis designed to reveal the inner meaning of Torah.

A 16th century abridgement of Talmud which is called 'Shulhan Aruch' is popularly used by most Jews, leaving the full Talmud for scholars.

When we come to Torah it is the 'written Law' and called 'Torah Shebikhtab.' Talmud is the 'unwritten law,' or 'oral law', or 'non-pentateuchal law.' Talmud is not sacred. Only the Old Testament carries that attribute. Don't forget, a belief system cannot achieve its final form only with its sacred book, but also by the contributions of its clerics. Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all alike in this sense. Keeping that in mind we can say that, Judaism has taken its final form in 5th. century AD. with the post-exilic rewriting of the Old testament.

Where does this 'oral tradition' come from? Well if you consult the pages on Moses you will see that the Mosaic belief system in its original form is thought to have survived through a vague and distorted 'oral tradition.' This word of mouth worked beneath the surface and achieved great influence. One should study the pre-exilic and post-exilic texts. One must pay a special attention to the existence two Talmuds: Talmud Yerushalmi (Palestinian Talmud) and Talmud Babli (Babylonian Talmud). The Palestinian Talmud is written in western Aramaic and full of many Greek and Latin terms and expressions. But the post-exilic Babylonian Talmud, written in eastern Aramaic is sprinkled with Persian words. This Talmud, the Babylonian one is the most authoritive and usually called the Talmud. Try to find the differences in between the two, and you will end up with the progress of the Judaic belief system in time. Do not forget the role played by Ezra in the post-exilic period for the Judaic belief system. You may find more if you go on searching,

Spenta Mainyu has mentioned above that Mishnah was the written form of the 'Oral Tradition.' The existence of Mishnah, the pre-exilic Palestinian Talmud, the post-exilic Babylonian Talmud, and finally the differences between these deserve more attention. What is Mishnah again? It is the 'teaching,' the compilation of 'unwritten' or 'oral laws' which were passed down by the word of mouth all through those centuries. The compilation of the discussions on the articles of Mishnah is caled the Gemara, which means 'complementary.' The explanations in the Gemara have further explanations called Midrashim. Midrashim are haggadic or halakic exposition of the underlying significance of an Old Testament text.. But Midrashim are not considered a part of the Talmud. Mishnah had taken its final form as a result of 50 years of study by Judah Ha Nasi. There is no Day of Judgement in the Old Testament. Paradise and Hell are the natural consequences of the existence of Angels and Satan. The story on throwing of Abraham into fire does not exist in the Old Testament. It exists in Mishnah. Since Mishnah was finalized (in written form) by the sages who lived before 70 AD., and Gemara (commentaries on Mishnah) 150 years later, around 220. The fact that the Talmud (Mishnah+Gemara) must have been around Mohamed's time and often consulted by the Jewish people explains why this story about Abraham thrown into fire (which does not exist in the Old Testament) exists in Qoran. Likewise the Old Testament mentions the name of Abraham's son to be sacrificed as Isaac. On the other hand Talmud and Mishnah give the name of this son as Ishmael. The writers of Qoran again, adopted the version written in the Talmud and Mishnah. It is also highly probable that the stories of Abraham breaking the images in the Temple and his searching for the God among the stars, sun and moon (which has nothing to do with the story told in Genesis) and then rejecting their 'Godhood' were taken from Mishnah. Qoran seems to be in agreement with Mishnah and the Babylonian Talmud.