“How can I not be happy when I see millions of goyim bow down to one Jew tonight” – Rabbi Yosef “Yossi” Mizrahi when discrediting Christianity in one of his online outreach (kiruv) lectures.
What if Jesus Christ was not a Jew but a non-Semitic Hero-King who was worshipped by Jews? – Antony Kagirison.
Do you know that the first Jews who worshiped Christ recognized that Christ was a non-Semitic person who had undergone apotheosis to become a God equivalent to Yahweh? Do you know that this Christ was not crucified nor was he born to a woman nor was he the son of David nor was he a descendant of Abraham? In fact, the first Jewish Christians described him as a great hero who had been created before Adam Ha-Rishon i.e before creation. He would later be adopted in Kabbalah as the Lesser Yahweh (Yahweh Katan). That said, can all these claims be proved?
Christianity started as a non-Semitic religion with fastidious education, rites, and rituals. Its noble founders disregarded Judaism as unfit for the human soul and spirit, but they did not seek to convert everyone to their religion. To these Perfecti, stating that Christ is Jewish is equivalent to making a statement today that George Washington – the first President of the United States of America – was a black man. I wonder what the Perfecti would make of the Sacred Name (Yahweh-Jehovah-Yeshua) Movement.
Antony Kagirison
“If he is God, let him come and oppose me” shouted Ceasar Titus boisterously after gaining entry into the Temple of Jerusalem and ripping the curtains that covered the entry to the Holy of Holies. At this time, the office of the High Priest had been seized by a rustic usurper, Pinhas ben Shmuel – a militant revolutionary from Havta. As the High Priest (or Kohen Gadol), Pinhas rallied armed zealots incited by John of Gischala – and fueled with apocalyptic fervor – to fight Roman soldiers in the Temple complex. Pinchas and his zealots met a violent end and the temple was sacked and destroyed. Its destruction marked the end of Second Temple Judaism, and it can be argued that Apocalyptic Judaism which animated these zealots caused the death of Second Temple Judaism. However, this was just one of the major crises facing Judaism at that time.
Anabasis to Pardes
In the first century of the common era (C.E), Judaism was facing a crisis of epic proportions. Apart from the Roman rule that had politically subjugated Jews, a strange foreign theology was gaining prominence among Torah scholars and was driving them to abandon Judaism as they came to believe that there are two Gods in heaven i.e YHVH/God who gave Torah to Moses was not the only God in Heaven. The Tannaim sage, Rabbi Elisha ben Avuyah, was one of the scholars who abandoned Judaism and joined what Professor Richard Smoley believes to be a Christian community. This shocked his contemporaries as he was an extraordinary Torah scholar who was regarded as a potential saint. Rabbi Avuyah is the teacher of Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes (or Meir, the Master of Miracles). Moreover, Avuyah’s rulings are cited in the Talmud in Tractate Megillah. Tractate Chagiga 14b of the Babylonian Talmud describes his apostasy but never clarifies what really caused the apostasy, which leaves us with the Zohar to fill the gaps. This is what happened.
Rabbi Avuyah joined Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Azzai, and Rabbi Zoma in a mystical ascent to the heavenly orchard, which the Talmud calls Pardes. Mystical ascent to the heavenly realm is known as anabasis. According to the Talmud, only holy Torah scholars could perform anabasis successfully if he follows the right procedure. There exists an entire genre of Jewish mystical literature called Maaseh Merkavah that is dedicated to anabasis and its procedure. Interestingly, the Christian treatise, the Testament of Levi recounts how Levi was able to ascent through the seven heavens with the help of an angel. In The Greek Versions of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, it is reported that Levi’s journey of ascent lasted 14 earthly days. This shows that anabasis was done by both Jews and Christians. Now, back to Rabbi Avuyah.
The anabasis of Rabbi Avuyah went well and he reached the Throne of God where he saw an authority seated on this throne. This sight marks his apostasy as he saw a familiar figure – a man who had lived on earth and then ascended to heaven. The figure sitting on the Throne of God was writing down the merits of the people of Israel. This fact convinced Rabbi Avuyah that there is a Second God in heaven. Is there a second God according to Judaism? The Zohar explains that the heavenly being was seated on the Throne of God because God was away on “heavenly journeys” and thus this being is the Deputy of God, hence the designation, Lesser Yahweh or Yahweh Katan. However, there was a problem.
Rabbi Avuyah lived during a period when a peculiar group of highly intelligent people with peculiar rituals and even stranger theology preached about a way of life that prepared its members for the worlds to come and the immense responsibility of raising a world. They preached that their members who were purified and made perfect (i.e perfecti) could become Gods. For now, I will call this group of highly intelligent peculiar people the Nobles of Ur-utu-dur-an-ki. This is just a working description, not the most appropriate designation of these noblemen (they were all men). This working definition allows me to show that they have no relationship with Judaism and that they are not related to Jews or Greeks or (Ancient) Egyptians or Romans or Babylonians or Persians or Mandaeans or Chaldeans or Assyrians. Another reason for choosing that name is that they revered a hero who can be given the theophoric name ur-utu and the authors of the Hebrew Bible modeled the Biblical saint, Enoch, after him. The figure that Rabbi Avuyah saw seated on the Throne of God was Enoch after he had undergone apotheosis to become Metatron. So, if Metatron can become a God (even if Deputy God), then man can become God.
“Ye are Gods”, said Saint Clement of Alexandria (150-215 C.E) when explaining his doctrine of deification in his work, Stromateis. According to Saint Clement, the purpose of every Christian is to become an eternal god. His famous aphorism “men are gods and gods are men” served to surmise his statement “I say, the Word of God became a man, so that you might learn from a man how to become a god”. This statement obviated the need for Sar Torah (Prince of Torah) in teaching man about deification. This doctrine of deification came to influence Christian theology, including Mormon theology which believes that its members will become gods after they die if they undertake all the requisite rituals, rites, and secret lessons.
Death as Rebirth and Creation of Future Worlds
As mentioned earlier, the designation Nobles of Ur-utu-dur-an-ki is a working description to show that they were different from Levantine Semites. A better description of these noblemen would be the Utu Circle or its Akkadian equivalent the Shamash Circle. I relate this description to the Iyyun Circle of medieval Kabbalists in Europe who studied and composed the Kabbalah in secret. The Utu Circle revered a hero whose theophoric name contains the name Utu, the Sun God of Ancient Sumerians, and they studied in relative secrecy. I am talking about the sun that provides daylight, not the Black Sun that the Sumerians called gi-nna and provided light at night as explained in The Sumerian Black Sun. Therefore, the Utu Circle can be rendered in English as the Solar Circle, and as founders of what became Christianity, they played a key role in molding Christianity into what can be described as a solar religion, unlike Judaism which can be described as a lunar religion. I also use the terms solar and lunar in this website to define the right-hand path and left-hand path respectively. Now, back to the Nobles of the Solar Circle who we can now call the Perfecti of the Solar Circle as they considered themselves to have attained perfection. The difference between Nobles and Perfecti is that Nobles are just members of good standing in this community, and they may or may not have attained perfection. The Perfecti are the nobles who have attained perfection.
These Perfecti preached that anyone who joined their religion would need to undergo a rebirth and acquire two new names – a holy name and an evil name. As explained in the World as Womb, these Perfecti argued that at the moment that one is reborn, a new world emerges in the universe that (s)he will rule and reign over for eternity under his/her holy name when (s)he departs this world without committing sins, including suicide. This new world was described as the world to come because this is where the saint goes after leaving this world. From my studies, I have not managed to determine if the world to come emerges as an old world i.e a world with living things and non-living things, or if this world to come will look like our world. What is interesting is that Judaism adopted this idea of the world to come as the hereafter designated as Olam Ha-Ba. Orthodox Judaism describes Olam Ha-Ba as just our world that has been renewed and made perfect after the arrival of the Messiah and the resurrection of the saints and cleansed souls.
According to Sephardic Kabbalist, Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, the God of the Torah created two worlds – Our Present World and the Olam Ha-Ba. He relates this to the two accounts of creation in Genesis with the first chapter describing Olam Ha-Ba, while the second chapter describes Our Present World. This raises some questions: why was there no tree of knowledge of good and evil in the first account of creation, while it appears in the second chapter of Genesis? Also, why is the first person created as a divine hermaphrodite i.e both male and female (Genesis 1:27)? These questions will be explored in the next section which discusses whether creation is defective or if creation is not optimized. Relatedly, is it the same God being described in Genesis Chapter 1 and Genesis Chapter 2? In Gnostic Rationalism, Agnōstos Theos, and the Aristotelian God, I describe two Gods – the Aristocratic God who is described in Genesis Chapter One and I relate this deity to the God described by the Neopythagorean-Neoplatonic philosophers. The second God I describe is the Working God who I relate to the Aristotelian God and the Demiurge of the Gnostics. Nonetheless, standard Orthodox Judaism considers the Aristocratic God and the Working God as the same deity, though the Kabbalah elevates the Aristocratic God to become the Ein Sof. Regardless, as I explained in Who is Anochi?, neither Yahweh nor Ein Sof is the true identity of the ultimate deity of Judaism.
“All of the Jewish people have a share in the World to Come” states the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 10:1. However, this Mishnah has an interesting proviso. All Jews who read “foreign literature” are excluded from Olam HaBa. What foreign literature is this, and who wrote this literature? This foreign literature is the works discussing the theology preached by the aforementioned Perfecti. What did this literature say?
Bio-Minimalism
Two Greeks, Acembes (Akembes) of Carystus (Karystus) and Euphrates established the Peratic, a religious community that has posthumously been designated as the Ophites because of their veneration of the snake. Why was the snake venerated? One of the reasons is functional bio-minimalism i.e. the snake embodies a minimal biologic design that still allows it to feed, defend, and move. This can be contrasted to the lion whose body has large organs and more ornate anatomical build. How is bio-minimalism related to Christ? Ophite/Paretic Theology provides an interesting approach.
