tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83794174184788700802023-11-16T04:48:17.823-08:00From the Write HandBlog Site of the Author of the Kahana Chronicles series of books.Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.comBlogger96125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-71960546289757116282015-01-27T17:39:00.000-08:002015-01-27T17:40:47.427-08:00Mar Zutra Kahana<div id="title" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.8000001907349px; line-height: 20.7000007629395px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px;">
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Mar Zutra Kahana</h1>
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By Kahana</div>
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Another year, hopefully a brighter, happier time but as indicated in my previous articles on Zechariah in Windows of Futures Past, you immediately can see that the year is quickly spiraling down into the chaos that was predicted. Whether it be New York, Paris, Sydney, or London, the populations in all those countries stand at the brink of impending disasters and just as those articles related, most of them cannot even see the black clouds that are gathering on the horizon. So be it, it is the way it was meant to be, and all the screaming into the wind will fall on deaf ears until the howling begins. The ten men to stand up and stop the coming disaster never even passed a shadow across my brow, so what happens is what must occur and I am but a witness to it as it unfolds. It should be no surprise to anyone that we court God's displeasure. We have done so since the beginning of time, flaunting our desires over His will and never relenting in our misbegotten ways. This can be no more evident than in my latest novel to be released, 'ZUTRA', a story of how we were sent a deliverer, a messiah so-to-speak in the truest sense, to change the world, free us from bondage, and bring all the people of this world closer to God, but in the end the people, primarily those closest to him, those that falsely proclaimed themselves as true men of God, plotted and schemed, until they sacrificed his life on an altar of deceit and wantonness. This is his story but it is also our story. It clearly shows that the more we believe we have changed, we have not changed in even the slightest degree when it comes to those values that actually count and are measured by the Almighty. To all those that follow my articles, I hope that you will download Zutra, (available only electronically) from Amazon and Kindle and read it not as entertainment, which it certainly is, but as a moral lesson directed at all of us. Mar Zutra Kahana was not my direct ancestor. Those roles were fulfilled by his father, Mar Huna, and by one of his wives, which in itself should strike you as particularly strange, but as they say, truth is often stranger than fiction. Once again, this is a factual historical recounting of events, biographical in nature, but shocking in all that it will disclose. It will answer once an for all how the animosity between my family and the Rabbanites arose in the first place and why there can never be peace until they admit fully the measure of their sins.</div>
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Synopsis</h2>
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For those of you wishing to have a brief synopsis of the book, I will condense its 500 pages down to a minimum for you. Let me add, that even though this synopsis will give you a brief outline of the story, it provides only a fraction of what story is about and in no way reveals the many twists and turns that are involved. For those you will have to read the novel in its entirety and only then will you come to understand the man known as Zutra.</div>
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Born in 479 AD into the family of Exilarchs (Jewish hereditary kings) the story opens with Zutra’s witnessing his father’s execution in the public square of Ctesiphon, the capital city of the Sassanid Empire. The crime for which his father has been punished was the kidnapping and rape of the daughter of Reb Hanina, one of the chief rabbis of Mahoza. Historical documentation passed down by the legal courts known as the Beth Din record it as such. This grievous event was further compounded when Zutra wass forced to accept the man responsible for his father’s death as his legal guardian until he becomes of age to be Exilarch; two years of living in the household with those responsible for destroying his life. All this was further complicated by his continued cravings for his childhood sweetheart whom happened to be that same daughter involved in the accused rape. It would have been impossible for this real-life Oedipal existence not to have influenced the young prince, scarring him emotionally.</div>
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On his eighteenth birthday Zutra was declared Exilarch and immediately turned the tables on all those that had benefitted from his father’s death. Summoning the time-honoured 400, his father’s elite guard, he placed all those responsible for the murder of his father under house arrest, taking back his estate and possessions, and forcing Reb Hanina's daughter into another marriage contract much to the horror of many who saw this as sacrilege. Their marital encounters that followed were both heated and tempestuous, as one can imagine.</div>
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Meanwhile the Sassanid Empire was under threat from within as the Great Shah Kavad’s nobles plotted insurrection and intrigue, involving Zutra amongst their cabal and together they plan the inevitable coup d’état. While the young Prince stamped his personal imprint on the city of Mahoza, his cousin and Vizier, Mordecai ben Kahana convinced Zutra that with his new status he must seek a wife with far greater influences and alliances than obtainable through a marriage to a Chief Rabbi's daughter. An invitation was sent out to the kings, nobles and barons of the Empire but it went unexpectedly further, reaching the Kingdom of Northern Wei. The Chinese Emperor sent his beautiful daughter, the Princess Ti-Ping west in response to the invitation. To everyone’s surprise, they discovered that her personal escort was a man thought dead for the past 25 years and who wielded enormous influence and power..</div>
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Unforeseen, through deception and manipulation, the arrested Reb Hanina escapes and with his fellow conspirators managed to liberate the imprisoned Kavad, putting into motion the plot that will see Zutra torn from his throne. Assuming full control of the combined Sassanid, Mahozan and allied Byzantine forces, the Princess from Northern Wei's protector achieved a string of successes that saw his army crush Kavad’s forces time and time again. For almost seven years, Zutra ruled Mahoza offering freedom to all of his people for the first time in over five centuries.</div>
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What happened next can only be described as the greatest betrayal of all time.</div>
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Zutra is a story of love, hate, peace and war. It is a true recording of one man's rise to the pinnacle of greatness only to witness his own tragic fall through the betrayal of love. This is the true story which his enemies afterwards felt the necessity to almost completely erase fearing that it would inspire others who desired freedom.</div>
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The Next Story: The Glittering Man</h2>
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For those that believe the promise of Mar Zutra and his descendants ended with his death on Sargon Bridge, in that regard, I will correct your assumption. I believe the actual end to this story is written in a very old and obscure book, difficult to find but still in existence, entitled"The Secret History of the Mongols" the original dating from 1227. That book states that the great Genghis Khan was descended from a mysterious ancestor that had come from a distant land in the west. This ancestor of noble and ancient bloodlines was forced to leave his kingdom without explanation, creating part of the mystique surrounding the Mongol conqueror. Exactly who this man may have been was never disclosed but his existence became the justification for Genghis Khan's claim to have been destined to rule the world. Years later, several more details were provided by the Persian historian Rashid-al-Din, who recorded it in his book simply titled<strong>"Chronicles"</strong> that this unknown ancestor was a tall, long-bearded,red haired and green eyed individual. What compounded the mystery further was that he referred to him as the Glittering Man; an omnipotent being who impregnated the legendary matriarch of the Mongols, Alan-Ko thereby establishing the several lines of Mongol rulers that came afterwards from this union. Ten generations in fact are recorded from Alan-Ko to the Great Genghis Khan, roughly six hundred years in total.</div>
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From a scientific standpoint, there may be some proof of the legend being more of a reality than a myth. With the haplotyping of the likely DNA sequence for Genghis Khan derived from his descendants there were several anomalies that distinguished him from the general Mongolian population. This in particular concerned the number of alleles for DYS markers 391, 392, 426, 455 and 459a. When compared to the Khallach, the predominant Mongolian ethnic population it becomes obvious that the sequences for these genes came from a different ethnic group. Examining 17 different Mongolian populations the allele number for DYS391 was 9 for all of them. Ghenghis Khan’s descendants were 10 as were my family. For DYS 392, only the Japanese were consistently 11 like the Khan’s but we know he was not of Japanese stock. In general Mongolian alleles number 10. My family was also 11 like that of the Khan. DYS428 is known as having the lowest mutational rate at 0.00009, so what it is now was probably what it has always been since the dawn of time and for the Khan that number is 11, again identical to my family. DYS455 has a similar low mutation rate at 0.00016 and again for both the Khan and my family the number of alleles is 11. Then lastly we look at DYS459a, the number of alleles commonly being 9 for Mongolian populations but once again the Khan’s family and mine are in agreement at 8.</div>
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Though none of this will actually prove that the Glittering Man was a descendant of the Kahana, it does demonstrate that Genghis Khan did have an ancestor that was outside the general genetic pool of Mongolians and whereas my haplogroup is J2 and his is C, with agreement of five markers that have key qualities, the possibility of the legend being true is given at least some credence. But enough of the scientific dissertations as you’re probably wondering how any of this relates to the subject matter of my manuscript. For the answer to that question you will have to await my next book.</div>
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-46988262906991265502015-01-22T21:41:00.001-08:002015-01-27T17:26:42.866-08:00The Windows of Futures Past 6<div id="title" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.7px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px;">
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The Windows of Futures Past 6: In the Last Days</h1>
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By Kahana</div>
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I pray that everyone has come through the Holy Days unscathed and with a new awareness of the times we live in and what is transpiring in the world around us. Sukkoth is a time to reap the harvest, to be thankful for the bountiful abundance that has been provided to sustain us. But it is also a time to prepare the storehouses, ensuring that we have what we need to survive the coming winter, until such times that the crops can be harvested once more. And this winter will be a harsh one as you are all about to bear witness. The enemies of truth and justice surround us, harass us, and now threaten us with both war and pestilence simultaneously. One threat is human, or what should be considered an abomination of humanity, with their twisted version of Islam. The second threat is now biological, coming from Africa to the shores of America and it will not stop there. All this was foretold, and as long as there are politicians in the west more concerned with votes than people, then the threats will rise like a tidal wave until they wash away everything before them. I want to commend my brothers in Nigeria. I have talked with Derek and the community is managing to be strong in their adherence to Karaism despite the oppression of both Muslim fanatics, as well as Christian messianists that have also been antagonistic to the community, not to mention their proximity to the West African nations suffering from the Ebola epidemic. I ask that you all pray for them, so that they do not waver in their faith and that Yahweh will watch over them and protect them. Derek asked when my next hub would be available on Zechariah, and as I explained to him, I was told to wait. Wait and see what was transpiring in the world over the Holy Days. To bear witness to the fruitless aerial bombardments against ISIS by America, while these butchers advance on even more towns and cities, leaving a wake of destruction in their path. Wait to see how a coalition of supposedly sixty countries amounts to nothing because their committment in words is not backed by any miliatry force as they all lack sincerity and conviction. Watch as a disease that has the potential to wipe out a high percentage of mankind is mishandled through ignorance and incopmetence by political hacks that beleive they have all the answers but in truth they know nothing. And now that I have borne witness, it is time to release this next prophecy, from the pages of Zechariah's Chapter 13. It gives us hope of surviving what will befall us, but we do not survive unscathed, and we do not continue to exist without having suffered immeasurably first.</div>
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Zechariah 13</h2>
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Once again I have taken the liberty of translating the Hebrew phonetically for those that wish to read the Hebrew along side the standard English translation of Zechariah, followed by the interpretations as were presented to me (marked as A-Z:) and for which I have been instructed to pass on.</div>
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<strong>1 Beyoim hahu, yiyeh makor niftach, lebait David, ulyoishvai Jerusalem—lechatat, ulnidah.</strong></div>
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<strong></strong>1. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for purification and for sprinkling.</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> When that Day comes, and it surely will, the warrior spirit of David will be refreshed from the fountain of the Torah and the Children of Israel shall sanctify themselves and prepare for the coming battle anointed by the hand of God.</div>
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<strong>2</strong> <strong>Vehayah bayoim hahu ne-um Yahweh Tsevaoit, achrit et-shemoit ha-atzabim min-ha-eretz, veloh yizakru, oid; vegum et-hanevi-im ve-et-rucha hatumah, a-avir min-ha-eretz.</strong></div>
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2. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the LORD of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered; and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And it shall happen in those days, that Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts, says that He will destroy all these false idol worshippers, those that have followed their false prophet, with nothing but murderous and contemptuous spirits that have been an insult to the Lord with their idol worshipping of men and false teachings, and He will wipe them from the land that they have invaded, once and for all.</div>
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<strong>3</strong> <strong>Vehayah, key-yinavay ish oid, ve-amru ailuv aviv ve-imoi yoldav lo tichyeh, key sheker dibarta beshaim Yahweh; udkarhu avihu ve-imoi yoldav behinavoi.</strong></div>
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3. And it shall come to pass that, when any shall yet prophesy, then his father and his mother that begot him shall say unto him: 'Thou shalt not live, for thou speakest lies in the name of the LORD'; and his father and his mother that begot him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And when that day comes, as it surely will, all those Imams and Mullahs, both Sunni and Shiite, the parenting faiths of their false teachings will come to realize they have taught and spoken lies in the name of the Lord, and the people will rise up against these followers of Jihad and murder and destroy themselves from within.</div>
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<strong>4</strong> <strong>Vehayah beyoim hahu, yaivshu haniv-im ish maichezyoinoi behinavotoi; velo yilbeshu aderet sai-ar, lema-an kachaish.</strong></div>
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4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be brought to shame every one through his vision, when he prophesieth; neither shall they wear a hairy mantle to deceive;</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And when that day comes as it surely will, all those leaders of this false and distorted faith in our Lord shall be brought down, and their lies shall be exposed for all to see, and any that claimed that it was the true faith, shall become ashamed that they had been deceived and they shall no longer spread these falsehoods.</div>
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<strong>5</strong> <strong>Ve-amar, lo navi anochi; ish-oivaid adamah anochi, key adam hiknani menura.</strong></div>
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5. But he shall say: 'I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the ground; for I have been made a bondman from my youth.'</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And let it be said, that these are the words of the one that so many refuse to see as a prophet, but I only claim to be a man that plants the seeds of truth in fertile soil, a teacher of those that seek the holy truth, for I was born a priest, unredeemed from the Lord and have served as such from the days of my youth, and I am His servant now and for all the days of my life.</div>
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<strong>6</strong> <strong>Ve-amar ailuv, mah hamakoit ha-aileh bain yadechah; ve-amar, asher hukati bait me-ahava.</strong></div>
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6. And one shall say unto him: 'What are these wounds between thy hands?' Then he shall answer: 'Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.' <strong>{P}</strong></div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And those that try to tear down my words and my teachings will say loudly: Look at the life of this man, look at his sins, the many times he has fallen away from the Torah. And I will answer, “Yes, it is true, I have gone astray many times, most often in the pursuit and fulfilment of friendship and I have let myself fall into sin, but I bear my wounds proudly for each one is a sign that I have learned, I have grown in spirit, and my love for Yahweh has increased exponentially as a result of my awareness of my personal failings.</div>
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<strong>7</strong> <strong>Herev, uri al-ro-I ve-al-gever ahmiti-ne-um, Yahweh tsevaoit; hach et-haroi-eh utifutzenah hatzoin, vahashivoiti yadi al-hatzo-arim.</strong></div>
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7. Awake, O sword, against My shepherd, and against the man that is near unto Me, saith the LORD of hosts; smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered; and I will turn My hand upon the little ones.</div>
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A-Z: Beware, all those that will raise accusations against My messenger, for he is loved by Me, sayeth the Lord and have no doubt of what he speaks comes from Me. All those that have dared to harm my messenger have found that they in turn have had that which they tried to do befall them even more severely, and I will curse those that curse him, so one day they may reflect on why such disasters have befallen them and they will come to know it was because they wished harm against My messenger and I have brought My hand against them.</div>
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<strong>8</strong> <strong>Vehayah becol-ha-eretz, ne-um-Yahweh pi-shena-im bah,yikartu yigva-u; vehashlisheet, yivahter bah.</strong></div>
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8. And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the LORD, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.</div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> And when that day comes, as it surely will, I will utterly destroy all those that have entered My Holy Land, the two false religions that have distorted My words, and falsified teachings in the names of My prophets, and only those that follow the spirit and truth of the Torah shall remain.</div>
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<strong>9</strong> <strong>Vehaivaiti et-hashlisheet, ba-aish, utzraftim kitzroif et-hakesef, uvchantim kivchoin et-hazahav; hu yikrah bishmi, va-ani ehehneh oitoi-amarti ami hu, vehu yoimar Yahweh elohah.</strong></div>
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9. And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried; they shall call on My name, and I will answer them; I will say: 'It is My people', and they shall say: 'The LORD is my God.' <strong><br /></strong></div>
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<strong>A-Z:</strong> But the Children of Israel, the only one of the three that survives, are those whom I will preserve and cherish but still need to be refined, for their faith must be honed and restored, and the truth of the Torah must be clarified and redacted so that all will know, “This is My People and Yahweh is the one and only God.”</div>
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In Conclusion</h2>
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All this is recorded in Zechariah, a book that was not only poignant in the prophet's time but as I have shown was meant to be applied to our time as well. The message is clear, it is resounding, but it will only serve its purpose if you choose to listen and decide upon which side you intend to stand with that line drawn in the sand. It is sad to watch our world disravel into turmoil. It is even sadder to see so many place their faith in the leadership of men that will take them even further down the path of destruction. Now is the time that we should be turning to Yahweh in greater numbers, the writing is clearly on the wall, yet still the vast majority will condemn those of us that believe in a higher purpose, believe in the Lord as being nothing more than followers of archaic and primitive beliefs that have no place in the 21st century. How wrong they are. What was true in the beginning is also true in the end. They are the ones that are misguided because they have lost the moral and ethical pathway that was intended to save us from the events transpiring around us. They will dismiss my words as nothing more than the ravings of a religious Zealot and they will continue to blindly adhere to their failed policies of political correctness while heads roll on the sand and people fear to touch the person beside them lest they catch a fatal disease. That is what the enemies of our people, the enemies of God are counting upon, this self-induced blindness and delusion that there is no such thing as 'evil' in this world. All this was foretold, all this is coming to pass.</div>
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Shalom Aleichim</div>
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<span style="line-height: 20.7000007629395px;">Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kahana</span><span style="color: white;">I</span></div>
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-51045648341124349862015-01-22T21:39:00.001-08:002015-01-22T21:57:07.720-08:00Generations of the Kahana<div id="title" style="background-color: white; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20.7000007629395px; margin: 0px 0px 20px; overflow: visible; padding: 0px;">
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Generations of the Kahana</h1>
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By Kahana</div>
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<span style="color: white;">From some of the comments I have received regarding my articles, there seems to be a misguided belief by many that the ancestry of today’s Jews has somehow been wiped clean as a result of the Nazis destroying Jewish records throughout Europe. This in many ways is a fallacy since for the majority of the Jewish population the records weren’t kept in the first place. Contrary to the Nazi propagandists, only a small percentage of Jewish families were of a socially high status, industrial magnates, or prominent in state politics that they maintained family historical records. Peasants, as most of the European Jews were, had no reason to keep records that had absolutely nothing of value to offer the future. This attitude was actually encouraged by the Rabbis who felt glorification of one’s past was tantamount to arrogance and false pride and only the House of <a href="http://hubpages.comhttp//hubpages.com/hub/Khazar-Love-Story" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">David</a>had the right to lord itself over others. Larger cities did keep records of the Kohenim or priestly derived families and these were usually kept in the synagogues and as a result they were destroyed during the war. Amazingly, in spite of telling the common people that glorification of one’s ancestors was not desirable, there was a major effort by the rabbis in Europe to try and prove that they were descendants from the House of David. So what does that tell you about their motivations? Amongst Karaites, recording the family lineage was a sacred trust. All part of the historical justification of Karaism in the first place. And as you can see on my website</span><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><a href="http://legendsofthekahana.webs.com/" rel="nofollow" style="color: #551a8b; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><u>http://legendsofthekahana.webs.com</u></a><span style="color: #333333;">, </span><span style="color: #f3f3f3;">the memorization of ten generations was necessary for the Ascent Ceremony. And since in most cases the Nazis overlooked Karaite communities leaving their historical records alone, it meant that anything written was preserved. In my family we have the good fortune of having a very complete genealogical records available. So to those that wish to argue with me about the impossibility of knowing my ancestors, I’d like to present them to you. With the hope even that some of you that read the record may possibly identify links to your own family if you have Jewish ancestry. As you will read, many of the branches have been lost to us but there is a chance you may know of some descendants that existed. But I’ll start from a more recent time point, that being from my ancestor </span><a href="http://hubpages.comhttp//hubpages.com/hub/Karaites-and-Khazarim" style="color: #551a8b; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Yaakov Kahana</a><span style="color: #333333;"> in the sixteenth century. His story is the ‘stuff of legends’ and I can proudly look back upon his life and say that what he did determined the direction of my family for the next four hundred years. So that being the case, I will begin there as I provide you with the Generations of the Kahana.</span></div>
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Kahana Chronicles</span></h2>
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<span style="color: white;">And in the year 1589, Yaakov Kahana, died in the city of Prague and his body was buried in a strange place by the Emperor and to this day we do not know where he was laid to rest. His wife Raisa Shakna remained in <a href="http://hubpages.comhttp//hubpages.com/hub/Karaites-in-Romania" style="outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Brody</a> with their two children, a son Yusef and a daughter Tanit. And Yusef held possession of the letter given on behalf of his father by the Emperor Rudolph II which granted the family rights and privileges which were to honour Yaakov for what he did in Prague during the years 1588 and 1589 which is described in the book<strong>Shadows of Trinity</strong>,</span><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><a href="http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #551a8b; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><u>http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html</u></a><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><span style="color: white; line-height: 20.7000007629395px;">and he hid the letter away until such time that his family needed to call in the favour from the Emperor. But Yusef grew in the ways of his grandfather on his mother’s side, Rabbi Israel ben Shakna, and he forgot the ways of his father for Yaakov was not there to guide him in the Karaite beliefs, since he was only a youth when Yaakov died. And Yusef Kahana married Reisel Heller, the daughter of a rabbi and they had a son, Aryeh Lieb Kahana, and he in turn begat Shalom Shakhna Kahana, who begat two sons, Jacob Kahana and Abraham Kahana. And Jacob had three sons, one named after his father and was also called Shalom Shakhna Kahana, and Joseph Kahana of Heller, and lastly Zeev Wolf Kahana, and they were rabbis in their day forgetting the ways of the family. And this son Shalom Shakhna Kahana had a son Abraham Aryeh Lieb Kahana, who in turn had a son Solomon Zalmon Kahana and that is the last we know of the descendants of that son. And those are the generations of Shalom Shakhnah Kahana the son of Jacob Kahana the Elder.</span><br />
<span style="color: white; line-height: 20.7000007629395px;">And the other son Joseph Kahana of Heller had many sons, and they were Mordecai Kahana, whom in turn had his own son Judah Kahana, whom begat Daniel Kahana, whom begat Mordechai Kahana, whom begat Judah Kahana and that is the last we know of the descendants of that son. And Joseph Kahana of Heller had another son named Daniel Kahana, whom begat Mordecai Kahana, whom had a daughter Esther that married Judah Greenfeld and that is the last we know of the descendants of that son. And Joseph Kahana of Heller had another son Haim and that is all we know of his line. And Joseph Kahana of Heller had another son, Abraham Lieb Kahana and he had three sons, David Heller-Kahana, Joseph Dov Heller-Kahana, and Hirsch Heller-Kahana and that is all we know of this line. And Joseph Kahana of Heller had another son Judah Kahana and he in turn had many sons, Jakob-Jokel, Zeev Wolf, Leibish, Nachman, Simeon Hirsch, Jehiel, Joseph Mordecai and a daughter Nissel. And there were no sons of Jakob-Jokel Kahana, and that is the last of his line that we know of. Zeev Wolf Kahana had a son that went by the name Nechemye Kahn and took for his wife Dvoyra, and begat Berisch Kahn whom also married a woman named Dvoyra and they in turn begat many children, Rikele, Nehemiah, Fradel, Henry, and Naftali. And Henry Kahn married Lottie Berkovics and they in turn had many children, Devorah, Gordon, Benjamin, Louis Avram-Leib, Annie, Esther and Joseph and that is the last we know of this line. And Naftali went by the surname Kahan and he married Estera Weiner and they begat Benjamin, Henry, Pepi, Gussie and Jennie and that is the last we know of this line. And Judah’s son Leibish had two sons, and these were Isaac whom married a daughter of the Panet family, and they had a son Arie Leibish, and that is all we know of the descendants of that line, and Berel (Dov) who married Sarah Taube Dortort and they had children, Fanny, Deborah, Simon, Louis, Regina and another daughter whose name has been lost. And Deborah married Sam Lieb Kalish and they had children, Rose, David and Helen. And Simon had children named Victor, Szeren and Louis. And Louis married Paula Klein and had children Laura, Adolph, Ernest, Harold, Sarah, Jesse and William. And Regina married Yehoshua Mordechai Dortort and they had children Arie-Louis, Sara Taube and Chaim Fishel. And the daughter whose name has been lost married a man surnamed Burger and they had two</span><span style="color: white; line-height: 20.7000007629395px;"> </span><span style="line-height: 20.7000007629395px;"><span style="color: white;">daughters, Sara and Ella and that is the last we know of the descendants of this line. And Judah’s son Nachman had a son Joseph Leib and two daughters, Malka and another whose name has been lost. And Joseph Lieb married Hantcha Panet and they had a daughter Frida Rivka. And Malka married Samuel Fruchter and they had a son Judah Arie. And the daughter whose name has been lost married Jacob Rosenberg and they had as son, Judah Abraham. And Judah’s son Jehiel had five children, Katriel, Haim Joseph Dov, Moses, Mordechai Arie, and Judah Jacob. And Haim Joseph Dov went by the surname Kahana-Heller and his children were Katreil, Moses Nachman, and two other daughters whose names have been lost. And Jehiel’s son Moses had a son Zvi Hisch Kahana-Heller. And Jehiel’s son Mordechai Arie married Tirza Fish and they had a son Yehuda Menachem Kahana and two daughters. And Yehuda Menachem Kahana married Frida Rivka Kahana, the daughter of Joseph Lieb Kahana and Hantcha Panet. And Jehiel’s son Judah Jacob had a son Samuel Zanwil Kahana and this is the last we know of the descendants of Jehiel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Judah’s son Joseph Mordecai Kahana-Heller had a son Jehiel Zevi and a daughter Channah Yente. And Jehiel Zevi had four children, Hayyim Aryeh Kahana, Joseph Mordecai Kahana, Jacob Gedaliah Kahana and Shraga Feiwish. And Hayyim Aryeh had a son Nahman who married Batyafa and that is the last we know of the descendants of Judah Kahana Son of Joseph Kahana of Heller. And those are the generations of Joseph Kahana Heller the son of Jacob Kahana the Elder.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Zeev Wolf Kahana the third son of Jacob Kahana the Elder, had two sons, Judah Lieb Kahana and Abraham Aryeh Kahana. And Judah Lieb had sons Samuel Zanvil, Kalonymus and Aryeh Lieb Kahana. And Samuel Zanvil had two children, Nissel and Simcha Israel Kahana. And Simcha Israel had a son Samuel Zanvil. And Kalonymus had a son also named Samuel Zanvil. And Aryeh Lieb had a son named Nathan Zanvil haCohen Kahana. And that is all that is known of the decendants of Judah Lieb Kahana.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Abraham Aryeh Kahana, the son of Zeev Wolf had sons Itzhok Kahana, Jacob Kahana, Joseph Kahana and Aharon Mordecai Kahana. And Itzhok Kahana married Rachel and they had a son Mordecai that was also called Mortche-Lieb Kahana and later in life he adopted the surname Goldenthal and he was married to Hanah Leah Belzar. And the children of Mordecai and Hanah Leah are well chronicled in the books of the Goldenthals of New York and there is no need to describe their generations here.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Abraham’s son Jacob had sons Joseph Lieb Kahana and Itshak Kahana. And Joseph Lieb Kahana married Reizl and they had a son David surnamed Goldenthal whom married Mollie. And David and Mollie’s children were Joseph, Bernard and Mary. And Joseph married Anna and Bernard married Annie Kantrowitz and Marie married a man surnamed Newman. And the children of Bernard and Annie are well chronicled in the books of the Goldenthals of Connecticutt and there is no need to describe their generations here. Of the children of Joseph and Anna we have no knowledge of their descendants. And Itshak Kahana married Sura Ryvka and they had children Zelman, Moses Samuel Gershon, and Kalonymus and all were surnamed Goldenthal. And of the children of Zelman and Kalonymus we have no record but Moses Samuel Gershon married Sara Meir and they had two children Baruch Mordecai Goldenthal and Leya Goldenthal. And of the descendants of Baruch Mordecia and his sister Leya we have no record.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Abraham’s son Aharon Mordecai Kahana had a son Zanvil Kahana who in turn had a daughter Sara and that is all that is known of the descendants of Aharon Mordecai Kahana.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Abraham’s son Joseph had sons Julius and Jakob and a third son Nathan Hirsch who were all originally surnamed Kahana. And Julius adopted the surname Goldenthal after his brother Jakob obtained it for all the family and had three sons named Israel, Saloman and Joseph Lieb Goldenthal. And Israel had a son Iosif and a daughter whose name has been forgotten. And Iosif had a son Alexander and a daughter Rakhil. And Alexander married Carolyn Klarsfeld and they had a son William and daughter Edith. And William married Simone Grere and they had a son Henry Alexander Goldenthal and a daughter Mariamne. And Henry Alexander married Nawal El Hachem and that is all that is known of the decendants of Iosif. And the daughter of Israel whose name has been forgotten married a man surnamed Halperin who had deserted the Russian army and needed to be hid away. They married and he in turn adopted the surname Goldenthal but in actuality his descendants are Halperin and there are many in this family living in Israel that go by the surname Goldenthal today.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Saloman the Son of Julius had three daughters, Katharina, Bertha and Rosa and the descendants of these daughters has been lost to us.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Joseph Lieb had a grandson Bruno Goldenthal but the name of the father of Bruno has been forgotten and these are the all the descendants of Julius Goldenthal.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Julius’s brother Nathan Hirsch married Marie and they had three daughters, Sara (Chaje), Tobi, and Rebekah Goldenthal. And Sara married Abraham Virtman and their children were Samuel, Esther and Mihaley. And Tobi married Ignatz Klein and their children were Emmanuel, Leni, Marie and Rebekah. And Rebekah married Solomon Neuman and they had a daughter Marie. And these are all the descendants of Nathan Hirsch Goldenthal.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And the third brother of Julius and Nathan Hirsch was Jakob Kahana who was the first to obtain the surname Goldenthal when it was granted to him by Oswald Von Goldenthal, a German aristocrat who was the burgermeister of the town of Goldenthal. Now the stories of Jakob Goldenthal are well known not only because of what I have written but also what is recorded in the Royal Archives of Austria. It was Jakob that found the letter from the Emperor Rudolph of Austria that had been given to his ancestor Yusef Kahana on behalf of his father Yaakov Kahana and used the promises of the past Emperor to request favours from Franz Joseph the Emperor of his time. It was this letter that obtained a place in the University of Leipzig for Jakob Goldenthal though he had no formal education, and it was this letter that obtained him the position of Principal for the Jewish districts in the Ukraine. And it was this letter that obtained for him the position of Professor at the </span><a href="http://hubpages.comhttp//hubpages.com/hub/ViennaAttractions" style="color: #551a8b; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">University of Vienna</a><span style="color: #333333;">. </span><span style="color: white;">And it was this letter by which he became private tutor for the Empress Elisabeth of Austria and her children only to live in the shadow of innuendo afterwards. But there were many good things that Jakob Goldenthal did that overshadowed those that accused him of doing evil to the community and to those that were involved in his life. And Jakob had three wives the first whom he left in Romania while he travelled and lived elsewhere in the Ukraine and Europe. And this wife whose name has been lost to us had a son David and a second son named Haim Moses. And David married Reyzyl whom was also called Rosa and they had a son Simon Zeev HaCohen Goldenthal and two daughters, Etlya and Sura. And Sura married Nakhman Rapoport and that is all that is known of her descendants. And Simon Zeev married Sara Zelda Fraida his cousin the daughter of Haim Moses and she had a sister Clara. And their children were Morris, Max, Emma, Bessie, Clara and Zvi Hirsch that was called Harry. And Harry married Sophie Herscovitz and they had many children of whom are my aunts and uncles. And their son Joseph was my father and that is the line of my tradition.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Jakob’s took a younger wife Anna Goldenblum who was also known as Johanna and whom he married in Vienna. And together they had a daughter Sidonia who married Armin Reisman and they in turn had a daughter Irene.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And Jakob’s last wife was Rosa and the children of this marriage are unknown to us and their descendants may have perished in the Holocaust.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white;">And the story of </span><a href="http://hubpages.comhttp//hubpages.com/hub/Benevolence" style="color: #551a8b; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Jakob Goldenthal</a><span style="color: #333333;"> </span><span style="color: white;">is yet to be written as part of the Kahana Chronicles for there are many things he did in his lifetime that also are worthy of remembering.</span></div>
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-71473541648978931472014-09-22T20:57:00.002-07:002015-01-22T21:43:21.827-08:00The Windows of Futures Past 5: The Coming of ISIS<div class="modfloat full">
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Some
of you are still not convinced that what was written in the book of
Zechariah is to be applied to our present world. I can appreciate for
many that the concept of prophecy is a hard pill to swallow. After all,
your knowledge of the world filters down through CNN or NBC and in their
media-centered world their is no tolerance for a concept such as
prophecy. And more so, the fact that someone today could be graced with
an enlightenment to decipher the messages of these ancient prophecies
these same people find even more disturbing. To them, they have my
sympathies. They will be unable to prepare for the events that will
transpire over the next few years. They will still be in denial as their
worlds come crashing down around them. As police raids in Sydney and
London uncover terrorist cells determined to behead innocents, I can
only express my concern that they believe they have stopped the
unstoppable.</div>
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Zechariah 12, or what I refer to as my chapter 5 as you will see,
practically spells out the events that we will soon witness as a result
of ISIS. As the world dawdles, presenting unrealistic solutions such as
flying 5000 Syrian resistance fighters to Saudi Arabia to train them for
up to a year and then fly them back so they can take on the army of
ISIS which will number closer to 50,000 by that time. This army of evil
that ISIS represents will continue advancing, avoiding the drop of bombs
from the air as they hide amongst civilian populations until they have
entrenched themselves so firmly within Syria and Iraq that there will be
no way to dislodge them. All the time they will be expanding outwards,
consuming more land, invading more surrounding countries and killing
more people in the process. </div>
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Chapter 12 describes all this and even
foretells the fall of Lebanon and Jordan as this army of evil amasses on
the borders of Israel, causing terrible devastation in the Holy Land
and the slaughter of innocents. There are even select phrases in
Zechariah that clearly explain that this is an army from Syria-Iraq but
more importantly, it informs us that they will be influencing groups all
around the world that will bring a tide of anti-Semitism crashing
against Jewish populations that foolishly considered themselves too
isolated, too assimilated to have been threatened or concerned over
events taking place in the Levant. But ultimately, as this chapter
indicates, it will serve to unite us, to mobilize us, and finally we
will find our true identity and then we will finally do as we have
always been commanded to but failed to fulfill. Again, to those that
understand my words, there will be no problem seeing the correlation of
what Zechariah wrote to what I have seen and been told through my
enlightenments. To those that still hesitate, unable to accept that
there can be modern day prophecy, then I will provide a few more clues
that might help in the conclusion of this segment. We are standing at
the threshold. You can either fall into the pit or take that leap of
faith and perhaps jump far enough to reach the other side. That is why
this terror of ISIS has befallen us, for in the end it will cause those
os us whom chose to believe, to rise to a higher moral standard and we
will walk hand in hand with God, with whom we have struggled against and
have resisted for far too long.<br />
Once again I provide you the Hebrew original phonetically spelled, that standard interpretation of that Hebrew, and the words <b>A-Z</b> as they were presented to me to relate to you.</div>
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Zechariah Chapter 12</h2>
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<b>1</b> <b>Masah devar-Yahweh, al Israel: neum Yahweh, noteh shamayim veyosaid eretz, veyotsair ruach-adam, bekirboi.</b><br />
<b>1</b> The burden of the word of the LORD concerning
Israel. The saying of the LORD, who stretched forth the heavens, and
laid the foundation of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within
him:<br />
<b>A-Z: </b>This burden of relating all that will happen
concerning Israel, Yahweh has placed upon my shoulders and upon my lips,
as He has done to others since the dawn of time to deliver His messages
through man, to mankind. It is a heavy burden but those on whom his
spirit has fallen cannot avoid the calling.<br />
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<b>2</b> <b>Henai anochi sum-Jerusalem saf-ra-al, lecol-ha-amim-saviv; vegum al-Judah yichyeh bamatzoir, al Jerusalem.</b><br />
<b>2</b> Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of staggering
unto all the peoples round about, and upon Judah also shall it fall to
be in the siege against Jerusalem.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And those that come against Jerusalem will be
drunk with the intoxication of their own power, the rivers of blood they
have spilled will be like heavy wine, having devastated and slaughtered
the surrounding nations. And the Jews in all lands will suffer
simultaneously from the hatreds and prejudices of the people of other
nations as Israel and Jerusalem are attacked. Their belief that
Jerusalem will fall will embolden the enemy to bring their terror from
within to every other country in the world for they are already there,
and they will fall upon the Jews in those lands worse of all.<br />
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<b>3</b> <b>Vehayah bayoim-hahu ahsim et-Jerusalem
evan ma-ahm-Asah, lacol-ha-amim—Kol-oimsehah, saroit yisraitu; vene-esfu
alehah, kol goyay ha-eretz.</b><br />
<b>3</b> And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will
make Jerusalem a stone of burden for all the peoples; all that burden
themselves with it shall be sore wounded; and all the nations of the
earth shall be gathered together against it.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that time comes, which surely will,
Jerusalem shall be oppressed by the people(ahm-Asah) of ISIS and the
Jews within Israel will suffer terribly from the horrors of this war as
many others will join this army of the enemy, that came against them.
And other nations will gather to oppose the enemy but their efforts are
too late and too little.<br />
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<b>4</b> <b>Beyoim hahu ne-um-Yahweh, akeh kol-sus
batimahoin, verockvoi bashiga-oin; ve-al-bait Judah, efkat et-aina,
ve-col sus ha-amim, ahkeh ba-ivaroin.</b><br />
<b>4 </b>In that day, saith the LORD, I will smite every
horse with bewilderment, and his rider with madness; and I will open
Mine eyes upon the house of Judah, and will smite every horse of the
peoples with blindness.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that time comes, which surely will,
Yahweh will take pity upon his people and he will bring down destruction
upon those that have attacked the Jews, sending their war machines and
their armies into disarray, and their annihilation will be like a plague
that strikes them down for the crimes they have committed.<br />
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<b>5 Ve-amru ahlufai Judah, belibum: ahmtsah li yoishvai Jerusalem, ba-Yahweh tzevaoit elohaihem.</b><br />
5 And the chiefs of Judah shall say in their heart: 'The inhabitants
of Jerusalem are my strength through the LORD of hosts their God.'<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> and the leaders amongst the Jews all around the
world will find courage as they witness the turn of events in Israel,
and they will rise against those that oppressed them in all these other
lands, and when others from amongst the gentiles see how Yahweh has
defended Jerusalem, this will be an inspiration to all that believe in
the God of Israel.<br />
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<b>6</b> <b>Beyoim hahu ahsim et-ahlufai Judah
keciyoir aish be-aitzim, uchlafid aish be-ahmir, ve-achlu al-yamin
ve-al-semoil et-kol-ha-amim, saviv; veyashvah Jerusalem oid tachtihah
be-Jerusalem</b>.<br />
<b>6 </b>In that day will I make the chiefs of Judah like a
pan of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire among sheaves; and
they shall devour all the peoples round about, on the right hand and on
the left; and Jerusalem shall be inhabited again in her own place, even
in Jerusalem.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that day comes, which it surely will,
the leaders of the Jews and their allies will unleash weapons of such
mass destruction that they scorch all the surrounding lands and
obliterate every country that has threatened Israel, but the fallout
shall not harm Israel proper for these weapons have been delivered
directly into the heartlands of the enemy.<br />
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<b>7 Vehoishiyah Yahweh et-ah-halai Judah, barishoinah: lema-an
lo-tigdal tiferet bait David, vetiferet yoishaiv Jerusalem al Judah.</b><br />
<b>7</b> The LORD also shall save the tents of Judah first,
that the glory of the house of David and the glory of the inhabitants
of Jerusalem be not magnified above Judah.<br />
<b>A-Z: </b>Yahweh will deliver the Jews of the Diaspora
and the followers of the one God from other lands first, and they will
fight battles throughout the world and be victorious so that even those
in Israel will know that this world-wide battle was won by the believers
in Yahweh and their determination, their resistance and their faith,
which tilted this war finally in favour of Israel and its supporters.<br />
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<b>8</b> <b>Beyoim hahu, yagain Yahweh be-ad yoishaiv
Jerusalem, vehayah hanikshal behem beyoim hahu, ke-David; ubait David
kay-Elohim, kemalaf Judah lifnaihem.</b><br />
<b>8 </b>In that day shall the LORD defend the inhabitants
of Jerusalem; and he that stumbleth among them at that day shall be as
David; and the house of David shall be as a godlike being, as the angel
of the LORD before them.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that day comes, which surely will, the
world will witness the true warrior spirit of the Jews, as they were in
the time of David, and also those who are believers in God that came
and slowly joined their ranks, all of them will fight with a courage and
valour that is superhuman and all that witness will know that God has
stood with them.<br />
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<b>9</b> <b>Vehayah, beyoim hahu; ahvakaish lehashmid et-kol-haGoyim haba-im, al Jerusalem.</b><br />
<b>9</b> And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that day comes, which it surely will,
all the nations, and all the many people that rose up against Israel and
tried to take Jerusalem will be crushed beyond any recovery,
annihilated never to rise again.<br />
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<b>10</b> <b>Veshfackti al-bait David ve-al yoishaiv
Jerusalem, ruach chain vetachanunim, vehibitu aila, ait asher-dakaru;
vesafdu ahlav, kemispaid al-hayachid, vehamair ahlav kehamair
al-habkoir.</b><br />
<b>10</b> And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon
the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplication;
and they shall look unto Me because they have thrust him through; and
they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be
in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And the Jews both within and without Israel
will be saved and they will thank the Lord for His deliverance after
they have slain their enemies, but they will also be filled with great
mourning for the losses they have suffered. Their pain will be
unimaginable as every family will have lost someone that they knew and
loved.<br />
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<b>11</b> <b>Beyoim hahu, yigdal hamispaid be-Jerusalem, kemispad hadadrimoin bevikat Megiddon.</b><br />
<b>11</b> In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And when that day comes, which it surely will,
the mourning of the Jews for the suffering in Israel will be louder even
than those cursed remnants mourning for the Syrian-Iraqis that were
crushed in this battle of Armageddon because the cries of the righteous
will always outweigh those of the accursed.<br />
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<b>12 Vesafdah ha-eretz, mishpachot mishpachot levad: mishpachot
bait-David levad, unshaichem levad—mishpachot bait-Nathan levad,
unshaichem levad.</b><br />
<b>12 </b>And the land shall mourn, every family apart: the
family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family
of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart;<br />
<b>A-Z</b>: And all those in Israel and the Jews abroad
will mourn their losses, for no family will have been spared and they
will all grieve no matter what their status in life, neither those
wealthy as a king or those poor as the prophet for they have all
suffered and they will bear that suffering on their own and in their own
way.<br />
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<b>13</b> <b>Mishpachot bait-Levi levad, unshaichem levad, mishpachot ha-Shimi levad, unshaichem levad.</b><br />
<b>13 </b>The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of the Shimeites apart, and their wives apart;<br />
<b>A-Z</b>: Every family, whether Karaite, or Rabbanite, or
even the Children of Israel from foreign lands, will be filled with
remorse for they will have had their families ripped apart by this
terrible war.<br />
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<b>14</b> <b>Kol, ha-mishpachot hanisharoit mishpachot mishpachot, levad; unshaichem, levad.</b><br />
<b>14 </b>All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart.<br />
<b>A-Z:</b> And the shock and horror will mar every family
that survives, and they will come to realize that those that follow God
have always been hated by this world, always held in disdain and this
reckoning was therefore unavoidable. They were always a people apart and
now they will understand.<br />
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<b> THE SLAUGHTER BY ISIS</b><br />
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In Conclusion</h2>
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I
suggested that there were hidden clues that indicated the rise of ISIS
within the words of Zechariah. They are present and they are
significant:<br />
Sentence 11 of this Chapter provides one such significant clue. To
those that have studied ancient mid eastern religions, you will
recognize the use of Hadadrimmon. It is a conjugation of two nouns, each
representing a false god from ancient Mesopotamia. Hadad from Syria,
Rimmon from Iraq, the conjugation of these two should be seen as a clear
indication of a union between Syrian and Iraqi elements, just as ISIS
represents that same union. Coincidence, hardly, for as you all know, I
have repeatedly stated there are no coincidences when it comes to events
as they unfold because the intended message from Yahweh is clear and
precise.<br />
But what is very interesting occurs in sentence 3 where Zechariah
uses the phase 'evan ahm-Asah' which has been always translated as a
stone upon all the peoples but does not use the words 'evan al amim' but
instead uses a terminology that the stone is actually from a people
'asah". As there was no people correlating to Asah back then, it was
ignored but it can be ignored no longer. Whether it be Assur, Ahserah,
or even Shah, that was actually being referred to, they are all words
pointing to the rise of the enemy from the surrounds of northern Syria,
Iraq and western Iran. This was Assyria or Assur, the land ruled by the
religion of Ahserah, and ruled by the Caliph or Shah. Asah, therefore is
ISIS or ISIL or whatever name they will bear tomorrow. And they are the
stone that is now hanging around all our necks and pulling us towards
impending doom. Our necks are bared and their scimitars are raised above
us.<br />
Read the words over and over until you recognize that we are facing a
danger now that all the threats against us in the past pale against.
The world must see this threat for what it truly is and recognize that
if we do not act now, we cannot and will not prevent the level of
destruction that has been predicted. We may not be able to stop the
events about to unfold but perhaps there's a chance we can lessen the
impact if we all recognize that Yahweh through the prophecies is giving
us a chance to change or modify the future before it happens. A chance
to fight now, before any resistance comes too late!<br />
Shalom Aleichim<br />
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kahana<br />
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-29326791838443182402012-09-09T04:12:00.004-07:002015-01-27T06:08:01.716-08:00World War III: The American Dream<div class="title_box">
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World War III: Hey Mr. President</h1>
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Dear Mr. President,</div>
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It is not my normal practice to partake in political discussions and I certainly don't want to make it a habit but when I see my self staring down the barrel of a rifle in the Third World War, then I have to become concerned. I can't understand what you and Hillary are trying to achieve but it is obvious that the United States goal is to undermine the prospects of peace and stability in Eastern and Southern Asia. Personally, I would have thought you would be too busy focusing on Syria with your latest statement that America has the right to invade that country if there should be any hint of chemical weapons. I do remember something similar about Weapons of Mass Destruction which justified the invasion of Iraq only to discover that there were no such weapons.<br />
I'm not even certain if the American public is aware of your government's mechinations over here in Asia. How you are militarizing Japan, a country which according to the agreement at the end of WWII would never be permitted to have anything more than a Self Defence Force. Does the American public know about the sale of the Osprey aircraft which will provide <a href="http://hubpages.com/topics/politics-and-social-issues/asia-political-and-social-issues/japan-political-and-social-issues/4722">Japan</a> with invasion capabilities? Is it aware that you have been involved in military war games with the Philippines, Korea, Japan and a host of other countries in this part of the world for the past few months? Are they aware that you conducted joint military activities with 28 Pacific Rim nations in July but you failed to involve China, instead choosing to isolate it as the nation with whom the exercises would be designed against? Oversight, you might argue. How does one overlook the number two economic power in the world. By not even offering China observer status you actions and intentions were quite obvious.<br />
As a foreigner living in China, I have a right to be concerned. I don't want to be facing Armegeddon because the USA decided it would support nations in a military struggle over what are nothing more than largely uninhabited islands. The Chinese have a historical claim to the Daiyu Islands. In fact until Japan invaded the islands prior to World War II there never was any question as to their ownership. Following the war it was the American government that laid claim to the islands for strategic purposes and in 1964 signed an agreement with Japan that they would return it to them in the future, completely overlooking the fact that it was only through Japanese imperialism and agression that they had any claim to the Daiyu. Rewarding imperialistic military agression may be something the US government now sanctifies but the islands were never yours to award to any country. So now we have a situation where an increasing beligerant Japan that has angered not only China, but also South Korea over the Dokdo Islands and Russia with its claims to islands that rightfully belong to those countries and it is being fully supported by your government.<br />
Once again this week your military is conducting joint US marine and Japanese exercises. They have just begun and will continue for a month, designed specifically on 'how to retake an island' after it is seized by a foreign power does very little to ease tensions in the area. I think the Japanese already are well versed and experienced in island warfare having made it there fighting style back in WWII. I think we should all take a valuable lesson from Napolean who stated two hundred years ago, "Do not awake the Dragon." This is exactly what you propose to do and the question I have for you is why? To further amplify the right wing rhetoric in Japan with their dreams of a revived imperialism and militaristic state make no sense at all unless it is your intention to release havoc and war on this part of the world. Last week Japanese Cabinet Ministers went to a war memorial site to honour several of their war criminals. The Prime Minister suggested (not ordered) them not to do it. They went anyway. They have been emboldened and encouraged by your support of their militarization. In many ways, the Japanese war Criminals were the equal or in fact superior in their inhumanity than the Nazis of Germany. At least the post war German government apologized to all its victims of Nazism, the Japanese governments have never done so, and still refuse to officially do so. <br />
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I have thought long and hard about that question as to why the US would be actively promoting tensions in Southeast Asia. Why it would encourage the Philippines to assert itself by building up its military even though it would never be able to survive such an engagement if it became involved? Why would Hillary Clinton be visiting all the countries that surround China and signing mutual defense accords as she attempts to ring China in a wall of rockets and guns? Why the Secretary of Defense Louis Pino would come to this part of the world to announce that by 2020 the US will have 60% of its fleets stationed in the South China Sea? It was always my belief that the purpose of the American fleet was to have it ready in regional hotspots. If that is the case, then what your Secretary was stating was that this will be a hotspot by that year. This means that the Eastern Mediterranian and Persian Gulf with their reality of constant warfare, interruption of oil vessels, blockage of sealanes, piracy and kidnapping will not even deter the relocation of the fleet to what is currently a relatively quiet region. So I have to ask you Mr. President, once more, what is your true intention. Are you intending to unleash World War III over a group of uninhabited islands? <br />
And when I ask these questions, there is one answer that comes to mind. And it is economic in origins. When you came to power and borrowed close to 5 Trillion Dollars from China, you placed every man, woman and child in America into debt to the tune of $20,000 each. They don't have it. Your government doesn't have it. The debt cannot be repayed and the country faces bankruptcy. Unless, and I repeat, unless you were in a state of war with the country you were indebted to. Then you wouldn't have to pay back at all. Just as you have frozen assets and money from all other countries that you have disagreements with, you could do the same to the loan. Could this really be the true intention behind this provocation in Asia? Are you really willing to begin the war to end all wars over your country's financial crisis. Will this be your legacy in the White House. The man that caused worldwide devastastion? I pray you have a greater vision that this.</div>
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I have been around long enough to remember an America that stood for far more. I remember an America that stood for justice and freedom. That was willing to standup against the bully and fight for the little guy. I remember when Captain America was more than a comic book and was instead a badge of honour that all Americans could carry proudly wherever they went in the world. People from other countries looked up to you, even envied you for what you represented. And now, you have become that bully. That nation that says, "My way or the Highway." <br />
I ask you Mr. President, think long and hard about what you are doing and what you will achieve with this provocation. There were those that said you represented the fulfillment of Revelations when you came to power. The man that all believed and follwed, only to set the world ablaze in its devestating war. Not being a Christian, I don't believe in that scenario but I do believe it is possible for one man to cause such massive destruction. The same way I believe that one man can stop it from happening as well. <br />
I appeal to you Mr. President, as a man of honour that I hope you are, a man of integrity that I imagine you could be, find the path of Peace. Sheath the weapons and the rhetoric and find ways to negotiate settlements without the sacrifice of lives. If there must be a war then let it be for the reasons that America once stood proud and defiant to defend in the past. To protect the weak, the innocent. Not defending resistance fighters that cannot be distinguished from the terrorists or government soldiers they fight against. Who once in power will be just as inhumane and barbaric as their predecessors. Fight for justice. Fight for the children of this world but never fight over economics and self-serving ideals. <br />
Sincerely,<br />
Dr. Allen Goldenthal</div>
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-70779239457692320622012-08-15T02:29:00.000-07:002012-08-15T02:29:49.936-07:00Wisdom of Kahana: Evil of Our World<div class="title_box">
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Wisdom of Kahana: Evil</h1>
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Many times, I have been questioned regarding my disbelief in ‘Satan’ as the demigod of <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Wisdom-of-Kahana-The-Soul-of-Man">evil</a> that is preached within so many other religious circles and factions. And though we do have mention of Satan in Job and <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Hanging-from-a-Red-Thread-Karaite-Perspectives">Zechariah</a>, that in no way infers that there is anything more to his existence than as a herald or servant of YHWH. As <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-History">Karaite</a>, my beliefs are based on the Tanakh and if it is not stated within those books, then I am not about to extrapolate and manifest some Hell-world with a lord of Darkness as other religions have done. But the world has built an entire industry based upon this heavenly servitor as being evil incarnate and the real question posed to me should have been phrased, “Why have we created a <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Part-8">Satan</a>,” and then I would have responded thusly:<br />
If we examine the references to Satan as being the enemy of humanity, and his avowed purpose to destroy all virtue, then we automatically assume his opponents are the friends of humanity and the upholders of virtue. We accord them great tribute and recognition far beyond the status of normal men. Those that adopt the mantle of being opponents of Satan in turn become the source of our tranquillity and happiness because we take comfort in knowing that they are our shield against harm. In return over the ages we have given them our silver and our gold, to buy protection from the threat of Satan and many still continue to do so. And while the people huddled through history in their thatched wooden homes, with the winter’s draft seeping deep to the bone, those that amassed this fortune in gold and silver dwelt in the lap of luxury, sitting warm by their blazing fires and feasting upon the food wilfully donated to them by those same evil fearing people. <br />
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The Industrialization of Evil Inc.</h2>
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Yes, without Satan, these religious teachers, those <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Of-Priests-and-Rabbis-A-Karaite-Kohen-Answers">Priests, Rabbis</a>, Ministers, Imams and Ayatollahs would not have prospered and benefitted from their wisdom and knowledge in the counteracting of Satan’s threats. Satan was the weapon of choice upon which they defended their careers and by which they could justify all their deeds. Without Satan there would be no fear of the unknown and man would no longer require an intermediary to intercede on his behalf with God. For then each man would know the extent of his own sin and recognize that each of us was responsible for our own actions and no longer could excuse our unacceptable behaviours on a being that we created to bear the guilt of all our transgressions by leading us astray through lies, guile and possession.<br />
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No longer would the people buy their beads, blessed objects, talismans and sacred scriptures to ward off the external evil that no longer existed. How many would lose their livelihood when the manufacturing of these items was deemed unnecessary? What would those people do, whose only vocation was to benefit from the fears and anxieties of those unclear about the true path to God? Then we would see a world in turmoil because it has only been through that fostered fear that man has made some of his greatest achievements. Monumental structures that extend the limits of architectural science that are built for one purpose only, so that we can find refuge from Satan’s evil. Spires that reach to the heavens, bells that ring melodious through the extent of the countryside and provide the excuse for communities to compete for bragging rights as to which sanctuary was larger or more beautiful or more expensive in its construction than the other.<br />
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And in those golden houses, built with the sweat and coin from those that feared the coming of Satan, they would raise their voices in consternation, begging to be protected from the evil force that despised man with every breath. They would plead with God to answer why Satan detests mankind to such an extent and those that pocketed their donations would answer, “Because God chose to love you more.” But sadly none would ever ask, “More than what?” for therein lies the ruination of their argument and the demise of their gilded empire. It matters little if <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/After-Yom-Kippur">YHWH</a> loved humankind above the other spiritual beings he created. In His power and His wisdom, He would have accounted for such a contingency and would surely protect that which He loved. Nor would He have denied us freewill because that would have meant enslavement and since He loved us that would not have been permissible. The choice of which path to follow has always been our own and man has always been the master of his own destiny. Only through ignorance did we blame all the evils that befell us on an entity known as Satan. We gave him credit for the storms that destroyed our villages, for the rain that caused our floods and the sun that baked our lands so that they cracked and splintered until famine overtook our countyside. The <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus">plagues</a> that felled us in the millions or caused our cattle and sheep to wither and die, we cast at Satan’s feet. The pestilence and the quaking earth we prayed would pass for we never intended to sin, only that Satan had led us astray in a moment of weakness. The wars, the hatred, the wishing on our part for a fellow human being to be laid low and to die, those stem from within our own existence, and can be seen throughout the animal kingdom. They are innate responses that have always existed within us since the dawn of time and it is only by our own will that we can suppress them. Not all the prayers within these golden cathedrals or all the money we can cast at those that claim they will deliver us from Satan’s clutches will eliminate that which has always existed within that part of our brain that is feral. Only you have the ability to do so for yourself. Far easier for those that fail to exclaim, “Satan made me do it,” than to acknowledge their own weakness. <br />
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Our Evil Within</h2>
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Do not place your guilt into the hands of those who claim they are a weapon against Satan. The guilt is yours alone to bear, for the evil is something that you manifest on your own. It sprouts like a tree in a fertile garden if you permit it to do so for evil if given the opportunity will find other evil. For every place erected to supposedly fight such evil there is an equal institution built and dedicated to exalt and perpetuate mankind’s willingness to follow that other path. Once again, entire industries to provide the wanton pleasures of the hedonist, the sadist, and those enamoured by the darker pursuits. One merely has to scan the Web to appreciate how Satan has been used as the provocation for man’s originality of thought. Facebook and other social pages have become a tell all tales of incredulous aberrations for no other reason that some people do take pleasure in performing wicked deeds. Satan does not have an internet connection, man does. Eliminate Satan from the equation and we acknowledge that evil is not some supernatural force but instead a natural product of mankind.<br />
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Do not pray to God to be delivered from evil, but instead ask that you are given the strength and wisdom to overcome your own evil thoughts and intentions. Give not your gold and silver to the hollow dens of Satan-free Zones, but instead find comfort in the homes and gathering places of those of similar mind that wish to encounter God face to face upon their own terms. For often there is more evil plotted and committed in those gold gilded palaces than in all the neighbouring dens of iniquity. Acknowledge that we are all sinners, we are the source of evil upon this world and then you will fully understand why you are standing before God and praying for forgiveness. Appreciate that you exist in order to achieve an existence free of vice and sin and then you will have found purpose in living. Know that it often appears to be a never ending battle and you will find hope in knowing you gain strength with every skirmish. Perceive that it is not an easy task but nor is it impossible and not all the money in the world will free you from this Business of Evil.<br />
<br />Avrom Aryeh-Zuk <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Generations-of-the-Kahana">Kahana</a></div>
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Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-3114116225784008092012-07-25T23:20:00.000-07:002012-07-25T23:20:00.259-07:00The Meaning of Liife<div class="title_box">
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Wisdom Of Kahana: The Meaning of Life</h1>
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Often I am asked about the seeming unfairness of life, the incongruities that exist where evil is often rewarded and the pursuit of goodness tends to lead to nothing but unbearable suffering and being hurt constantly. And this imbalance often is turned into a question about whether God even pays attention to our prayers and if he is truly omnipotent. After all, how could He not believe in those that believe in Him? It is not a <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-History">Karaite</a> issue, or a <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Rabbanite-Relations">Rabbanite</a> issue, or that of any other religion; it is one about the relationship between God and man. The answer is inextricably entwined into understanding the purpose and nature of life. Not life as in being animate, existing, and breathing, but life as in, ‘why we are here at all.’ So often man has quested for the meaning of life, never thinking that perhaps we already have that answer. If we were to take the time to meditate upon our existence, to actually assess the powers we have in our possession, then all would become crystal clear. We would realize that we have the ability to fulfil our needs and satisfy our desires. But too often we want more than we need and desire that which we don’t and then instead of being enlightened by life’s meaning we are instead dissatisfied and curse our very existence. We have knowledge, we have wisdom and we have the ability to change our world, but still we question why we are stuck with the life we had. Why, because we think once we have established what we consider some order in our lives that it should remain in place. But nothing remains forever. Change is the constant. Life is a continuous ebb and flow. Nothing is intended to remain permanent and understanding life is learning how to embrace that change. Accept who we are and what we are. Accept it gladly and without resignation or condemnation. See life not as a hardship or an affliction that must be borne but as a contest that must be won. We must rise to meet that challenge and not let it overwhelm us nor deter us from our goals.<br />
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Finding Life's Meaning</h2>
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Like the gears in a clock, life is a constant movement and the only way we can exert any control is building those gears with central pins welded to an immovable base. A foundation that remains unchanging, that cannot be altered or overruled. That platform must be constructed from the faith we have in <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/WIsdom-of-Kahana-The-Nature-of-God">God</a>, unalterable, unfailing, and unchanging. And it is from that solid base that we derive our wisdom, our knowledge and develop the skills necessary by which we can face life’s changes. The number of the gears, the size of the gears, number of teeth each gear has and how they are placed are all up to us and completely within our control; no one else’s. If we take our time to place the gears properly like a seasoned watchmaker then ultimately we will construct a timepiece that serves its purpose well. Some of will construct a Rolex, others merely a Casio. But even those that can only construct a Casio, if they study hard, learn from other masters, will eventually build a Rolex too. To do so means asking questions, taking advice, listening to others, and so often that is where we fail. Foolish pride often gets in the way of our ability to listen to others that are trying to help us. And when things go wrong, we will sooner blame others for that failure in our lives than accept our own responsibility.<br />
Life’s adversities will provide us with pains like arrows through the heart, fill our mouths with vinegar like bile, crush our spirit until we feel we are unable to stand. But without such pain we cannot develop, we cannot grow, we cannot mature. Easy words for me to say I know you are thinking, made even more bitter when we see others to whom life appears to be more generous, providing them with far more than they merit or deserve only through the chance of a higher birth, unusual streak of luck, or the gift of treasures unwarranted. It is true, the path is not even, it is not always fair, but it is equally true that the going will not always be rough and there will be good times. We must learn how to make those good times, as fleeting as they might appear to exceedingly overshadow the bad times which plague us. Similarly those that have been raised high must always fear the possibility of being cast down. Our lives are neither short nor long, but the required length in which to achieve an understanding of life. Each one of us is intended to leave our impression upon this Earth so that those that we leave behind will retain a grateful memory of our lives while we were here. It is our choice whether we leave them with sour and foul memories of our existence or with a sense of admiration of how we continually faced adversity and found comfort from within to still be a better person than most would have expected from similar circumstances. And in turn we will pass that quality and understanding to our children so that they too may benefit from what we have learned.<br />
The measure of a wise man is that he will always live his life to the fullest and will be grateful for the life he had. The foolish man is always begrudging what he has and keeps saying that tomorrow he will begin again but every tomorrow is followed by another and another. The coward never begins to live, never accepts the challenge, dying as he lived with nothing achieved. For those whom have only half lived I can say that you are already half dead. Life is to be enjoyed, savoured, relished and celebrated to its fullest. We are only tested by our weaknesses but never by our strengths. Doubts and worry dog us every day of our lives but these pressures force us to seek the wisdom that lies within all of us. Now is the time to live; not tomorrow and never later. Today we make a choice on the meaning of our own life.<br />
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Generations-of-the-Kahana">Kahana</a></div>
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</div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-67151666390897256912012-07-22T23:57:00.000-07:002012-07-22T23:57:16.085-07:00In This Time<div class="title_box">
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In this Time</h1>
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Where has it all gone, that awe and amazment we once all held,</div>
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A time when we could lay back and listen to the quiet of the rustling trees,<br />
Or watch the sun as it reflected across the stillness of the lake,<br />
A time when we ran outside as soon as we saw the graying clouds,<br />
So that we could feel the first drop of rain upon our skin,<br />
A time when we would stare upwards beneath the night skies,<br />
Waiting in anticipation for that eventual shooting star.<br />
When we would greet the morning by taking a deep breath,<br />
As we watched the golden rays of the sun burst above the horizon,<br />
Or hear the waves as they tossed themselves upon the soft sands beneath our feet.<br />
The crackling of the dried branches as we stared deep into the brilliant flames,<br />
Hearing the laughter of young children as they roll like logs down the steep hill.<br />
Feeling the softness of the fallen blossoms between our toes as the fruit ripens,<br />
And the scented headiness of the Spring, filling our lungs with every breath we took.<br />
All these things we once possessed and we cherished them above all else,<br />
Only to give them away for pursuits that bring us far less as we lay claim to the envy of others.<br />
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Generations-of-the-Kahana">Kahana</a></div>
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</div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-36197030111466826312012-07-17T16:15:00.001-07:002012-07-22T23:58:57.390-07:00<div class="title_box">
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Deliverance: Part One of the Flavius Josephus Journal</h1>
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<strong><u>Part One of the Trilogy</u></strong></div>
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With the arrival of 2012, the release of my latest book is about to take place. In fact it's early release is on the publisher's website at <a href="http://sbpra.com/AllenEGoldenthal/">http://sbpra.com/AllenEGoldenthal/</a> but the book is also available from Amazon Books and Barnes and Noble. Most people are aware of the history of the <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Karaism-Antiquities">Roman Jewish War</a> that ended fatally on the mountain top <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/A-Modern-Rose-By-Any-Other-Name">Masada</a> after seven years of fighting. But history isn't about recorded events as they transpired. Real history is about the people that initiated those events, establiishing the patterns in which they unfolded. It is about the mechanisms behind the world stage, behind the closed and sealed doors, the raw emotions that led to both good and bad decisions. Amongst Jewish teachings, the reputation of Joseph ben Matthias, commonly referred to as <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Why-Karaism-Antiquities">Flavius Josephus</a> is one of traitor, liar, and deceiver. Jewish analysts have blamed him for not only the loss of the war but for the end of Jewish civilization as it existed 2000 years ago. Harsh accusations to lay at the feet of a single person, and illogical if one actually studies the history and recognizes that the bitter squabbles, infighting, and selfish motivations of those pursuing control of the Jewish forces were actually to blame. But the rabbis had another motive for casting the blame on Josephus, a far more personal motivation. After all, he was born of a priestly family, his <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Priest-Wars">Sadducee</a> inheritance was enough to condemn him in their eyes even though he professed to have <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/The-Karaite-Schism">Pharisee</a> sympathies. But it was not the Sadducees that caused the downfall of Jewish civilzation. Throughout the war they stood as the peacemakers, desperately trying to find a peaceful solution between East and West. In reality, the people were inflamed by the Pharisees, the early progenitros of the rabbis, to resist any truce, leading them to falsely believe that God would intercede and provide the people with victory. And after these rabble rousing rabbis ultimately drew the blades across the exposed throat of the Jewish nation, they were the first to run from the battle, concerned with only saving their own lives, as evidenced by their illustrious sage, Yohanan ben Zakkai, concealing himself in a coffin to escape the doomed city of <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Jerusalem-of-Gold-Karaite-Perspetives">Jerusalem</a>, leaving behind the victims of his rebellious incitements to face the final assault by <a href="http://darkside.hubpages.com/hub/titus">Titus</a>. As he and his students, specifically chosen to be the bearers of his coffin fled from the face of danger and thereby pass through the lines of the Roman army, a city burned and tens of thousands died.<br />
Meanwhile, Josephus desperately tried to use his influence with Titus's father, Emperor <a href="http://darkside.hubpages.com/hub/vespasian">Vespasian</a>, to stay the hand of the young general from utterly destroying his people. Without concern for his own safety, he managed to secure the safety of several thousand. Two of those people that he rescued were Martha bat Elioneai, the widow of Jeshua ben Gamaliel and her son Joseph. My ancestors, who then headed east into Parthia where my family established itself for a further eight centuries. One might say I have a debt of gratitude to Flavius Josephus, for whom my family would not have survived and I would not have been born. It was he that insured my family survived, not Yohanan ben Zakkai and his band of cowardly rabbis.<br />
But what kind of man would plead for the lives of thousands of Jews, risking his own safety, fully exposed to the arrows and stones shot down from the parapets and towers of Jerusalem by its Jewish defenders? What kind of man could transition from the greatest tactical general of the Jewish armies to the attempted peacemaker walking between two nations but accepted by neither. Who was this man that four years prior to the start of the war was sent on a secret mission by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem into the heart of the Roman Empire? How did a young man move freely through the palaces of Rome, dine at Nero's table, watch the burning of Rome in August of 64 AD, only to lead an army that became the greatest threat to the survival of an Empire? Deliverance provides a view into those secretive years which ultimately changed the world.</div>
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The Prologue</h2>
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<strong>I have attached the prologue to my book. I hope it will wet your appetites and give you a taste of things to come:</strong><br />
There is a stench to all that is Roman. A decaying, gnawing foul odour that eats at your innards until your belly is swollen with gall. For all that is Roman is not to be considered enlightened, or precious, or inspiring, or deserving to be praised and cherished. Instead it is a festering sore, which rots from the center outwards until there is no flesh left to feed upon. If ever there was a crime against humanity, it is their crime of ignorance, their inability to understand neither the world they rule nor the people they have conquered. <br />
Its legions come offering gifts of civilization and Prometheus’ fire but they choose to never comprehend how those they have come to embrace find no solace or comfort in their offerings. This has truly been the sin of Rome’s emperors and senators from their time of conception. Though desired, they can never understand that which they have lusted can never be fulfilled because one man’s passion is another’s hatred. This is Rome’s true gift to the world, hate; a fiery, all consuming, unimaginable hatred that is destined to leave millions dead in its wake.<br />
Remember well the day that wind from the west came to the far eastern shores of our great sea, not as an army to pillage but as a friend, specifically asked to give aid to a battered priest. Our priest-king Hyrcanus, embattled in a war against his own brother in a never ending struggle to wrestle the kingdom and the throne. And remember it well that when the dust had finally settled, there was no longer a kingdom, but a province, ruled not by either of the two brothers, but by a vassal that danced a merry jig to the songs sung by generals and imperators of the most powerful empire that ever ruled. And recall that when these vassals proved weak and inefficient, they were replaced by men of the equestrian order, knights of Rome, that were sent to this far corner of the world so that they could reward themselves with treasures, rape our women and desecrate our most holy of places. Remember them well, for they have reduced us to this pitiful state where we are beggars in our own land.<br />
And none have shown us favor since the first of the procurators was gifted by Tiberius to herald our doom. Neither Caligula, nor Claudius, nor Nero that has followed saw it any differently. We are to be made to suffer by the hands of this breed of men that they have sent to rule over us as their procurators. Cruel and spiteful, bitter as this land of rock and hot sand that they have been rewarded with as their prize for all the years they have served dutifully. This bitterness has turned their hearts black and these men of the aristocracy, these nobles of ancient families have turned their venom against the very people they rule. They line our roads with crosses from one horizon to the other with the corpses of our people hanging until the flesh is eaten by the birds that dot the sky overhead. <br />
Where are our leaders to raise their voices against such atrocities? Our messiahs to bring a strong right arm against such brutality. Too many have fallen beneath the mighty hand that these procurators wield, and too many have been clamped in chains and sent to Rome, to stand before the Emperor to answer for crimes they have committed against this evil and corrupt Empire. <br />
Now is such a time. Now is the time for us to fight for all that we believe in. This is where our war begins. We are at the junction when all that lives under oppression will rise in a single voice to shout that we will not suffer any longer. We will not remain helpless victims of a foreign occupation. It is time for all men to finally look deep within themselves and find that inner strength that long ago separated us from the beasts of the field. There is but one word that whispers over and over in our heads until we cannot hold it inside any longer and have to shout it out loudly for the entire world to hear. We cry out for freedom, and when enough of the people shout that word together in unison, then we will become a force that will settle for nothing less than achieving that dream. There are those of you that say we are not ready. The time has not yet come. The Lord God has not sent us a sign. I say to thee, nay! He has sent us a thousand signs; a thousand upon thousands but we have been blinded by our own ignorance. And even if the Almighty has been deaf to our plight, when he hears the shouts of our voices for freedom, he will be deaf no longer! Let the Empire of Rome tremble in our wake. Let all who bring death and destruction to the seed of Abraham know that in so doing they curse themselves. We are the children of Israel, and we have no master to lord above us but God. And with a mighty hand He will crush our enemies. Hear me my brothers. The breath and spirit of the Lord shall lead you! <br />
Hallelujah!<br />
Jonathan Cayapha</div>
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</div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-21936233977765441442012-07-12T00:21:00.001-07:002012-07-12T00:21:29.219-07:00From Sorrow Comes Great Joy<div class="title_box">
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From Sorrow Comes Great Joy</h1>
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Only when someone has found themselves in the bottomless pit of despair can they then find themselves elevated through true joy of spirit. How often we find ourselves shedding tears from the pure joy of laughter, unable to comprehend the obvious incongruity. From where do these tears stem that our happiness actually brings about their uncontrolled release. They are born in that well that we carry deep within all of us. That dark place where all the pain and suffering of our lives has been buried deep below its murky depths. That place where even the tallest and broadest of trees cannot bear fruit because it never sees the sunlight. And every now and then the levels in that well rise to a height that we can finally drain a portion of their suffering and release a volume of that stagnated pool of misery which in turn manifests itself through the tears of laughter. It is as if a heavy weight has suddenly been lifted from our souls and we know that in that passing we have gained a degree of happiness in our lives, as fleeting as the moment may be.</div>
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The Balance</h2>
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It is up to us to seek that balance, to find that release of the waters from the well of misery because the longer we allow it to remain the more foul it becomes until it seeps into the groundwater and pollutes everything else it comes in contact with. It is no different from opened bottle of wine we rarely pour, only to let it sit well beyond its time, until it ferments to nothing more than the bitterness of vinegar. What remains is a foul and disgusting brew that is so sour in the mouth that it is no longer recognizable as the ambrosia that once graced our palate. Nor is the sweet syrup from the cane, the hive or the maple tree anything more than the theft of those living organisms labour and life blood that we have seized the moment of our joy from their sorrow. The balance of joy and sorrow has existed from the dawn of time and it is the purpose of each and every creature to seek the harmony of that co-existence. More so in our case because mankind has forgotten along the way what true happiness is and why it should be cherished and preserved.<br />
At the time you experience a moment of great joy, then seize that opportunity to stare into the darkness of the well and find a corresponding sorrow that can be lifted in the hanging bucket and then poured out upon the land never to sully the waters again. Look deep into your heart and you will certainly uncover a grievous sorrow that for so long has prevented you from experiencing great joy. Release that offense that life has made you endure and the tears will certainly flow and you will understand that you are weeping more so from the delight of casting that burden from your soul once and for all. </div>
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Until Then</h2>
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Until we have suffered greatly we cannot appreciate the tremendous joys that this life affords us. Until we have carried an insurmountable burden we have no knowledge of what it feels like to have a great weight lifted from our shoulders. Until we have suffered from a broken heart we do not understand how finding eternal love differs from all we had experienced before. Until we have suffered and experienced an unrecoverable loss we cannot appreciate how much joy and happiness we had while what we lost was still with us. Until we hold the broken pieces of a cherished dream within our hands we cannot find the elation of reconstructing it piece by piece until we have restored the treasure to our satisfaction. Until we have stared death in the face we cannot appreciate how magnificent the gift of life is and how we must never take it for granted. Until we have shivered in the dread of an everlasting winter we cannot find the absolute delight of basking in the glorious rays of a summer’s day.<br />
Until we have been downtrodden and cast from the bosom of <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Wisdom-of-Kahana-The-Business-of-Evil">YHWH</a>, we cannot experience the joy of our return to His grace and His loving kindness. This is the lesson and gift God has presented to us throughout our three thousand years of Jewish history, letting us know that only through the despair of being His suffering servants can we actually find the purpose and joy in life. As incongruous as these tears of happiness may seem, to all of you that ask why we must suffer so if we are truly His children then I answer that it is all part of the balance that must be experienced if we are to appreciate all that the Lord has given to this world. And until we can empty the well completely by counteracting every drop of sorrow contained within that pit existing within all of us with both enlightenment and understanding of the joys that are manifested in equilibrium, then we will never attain that point of eternal happiness that we seek. Each of us stands at the edge of the well, bucket in hand. The choice either to stare into its depths and sigh, “this is impossible,” or to roll up our sleeves and shout, “I can do this,” is entirely left to us. <br />
<a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaites-in-Galicia-Part-3">Avrom Aryeh-Zuk Kaha</a></div>
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</div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-51966756328319849582011-10-26T14:58:00.000-07:002011-10-26T14:58:56.890-07:00The Rabbi and The EmperorBy Kahana<br /><br /><br />Although I probably could have written this article under the 'Why Karaism' banner I decided that it warranted to be placed separately under some other category that had as little association with Karaism as possible because it represents everything that is abhorred amongst Karaites. You see, the story I'm about to relate comes directly from the Talmud and commits so many sins that it actually casts Judaism in a bad light in its entirity. Of course as Karaite we would say, "what would you expect, after all it is the product of Rabbanites," but even Rabbanites have a 'modus decorum' by which they must operate and this is dictated by the Torah which still governs how Jews must behave. The fact that this story concerns Rabbi Judah ha Nasi should not be that great a surprise to Karaites. The presumption of his title, 'The Prince' considering he had no government or population to actually rule over I do not hold against him. As a descendant of Hillel, I have to believe his claim to be from the House of King David in the same way that I believe the lineage in my own family to be accurate as being from the House of Phiabi. These claims were passed down from father to son and were intended to be preserved, so I do not doubt his claim to be a Prince of Israel. What I do take exception to is possibly his warranting of the title based on the story to follow. A Prince must act with honour; a Prince must preserve the truth; a Prince must not commit murder; and a Prince must not be boastful when his own people are made to suffer. These would all appear to be lessons that Judah ha Nasi failed to learn, yet he is extolled above all other by the Rabbis through the Talmud. So perhaps the banner for this article rather than 'Why Karaism' would more correctly be 'Why not Rabbinic Judaism'.<br />From The Abodah Zerah<br /><br />The Following Story is taken from the Talmud; Abodah Zerah. I have placed my comments and explanations in brackets so I do not alter the original verse.<br /><br />[Emperor] Antoninus [Pius] once said to Rabbi [Judah ha Nasi], "It is my desire that my [adopted] son Asverus [Marcus Verus] should reign instead of me and that Tiberias should be declared a Colony [Self governing Sartrapy]. Were I to ask one of these things [from the Senate] it would be granted while both would not be granted. Rabbi thereupon brought a man, and having made him ride on the shoulders of another, handed him a dove bidding the one who carried him to order the one on his shoulders to liberate it. The Emperor perceived this to mean that he was advised to ask [of the Senate] to appoint his son Asverus to reign in his stead, and that subsequently he might get Asverus to make Tiberias a free Colony.<br /><br />[On another occasion] Antoninus mentioned to him that some prominent Romans were annoying him. Rabbi thereupon took him into the garden and, in his presence, picked some radishes, one at a time. Said [the Emperor to himself] his advice to me is: Do away with them one at a time, but do not attack all of them at once. But why did he not speak explicitly? — He thought his words might reach the ears of those prominent Romans who would persecute him. Why then did he not say it in a whisper? — Because it is written: For a bird of the air shall carry the voice. <br /><br />The Emperor had a daughter named Gilla [Anna Galina] who committed a sin, so he sent to Rabbi a rocket-herb, and Rabbi in return sent him coriander. The Emperor then sent some leeks and he sent lettuce in return.<br /><br />Many a time Antoninus sent Rabbi gold-dust in a leather bag filled with wheat at the top, saying [to his servants]: 'Carry the wheat to Rabbi!' Rabbi sent word to say. 'I need it not, I have quite enough of my own', and Antoninus answered: 'Leave it then to those who will come after thee that they might give it to those who will come after me, for thy descendants and those who will follow them will hand it over to them.'<br /><br />Antoninus had a cave which led from his house to the house of Rabbi. Every time [he visited Rabbi] he brought two slaves, one of whom he slew at the door of Rabbi's house and the other [who had been left behind] was killed at the door of his own house. Said Antoninus to Rabbi: When I call let none be found with thee. One day he found R. Haninah b. Hama sitting there, so he said: 'Did I not tell thee no man should be found with thee at the time when I call?' And Rabbi replied. 'This is not an [ordinary] human being.' 'Then', said Antoninus, 'let him tell that servant who is sleeping outside the door to rise and come in.' R. Haninah b. Hama thereupon went out but found that the man had been slain. Thought he, 'How shall I act now? Shall I call and say that the man is dead? — but one should not bring a sad report; shall I leave him and walk away? — that would be slighting the king.' So he prayed for mercy for the man and he was restored to life. He then sent him in. Said Antoninus: 'I am well aware that the least one among you can bring the dead to life, still when I call let no one be found with thee.' Every time [he called] he used to attend on Rabbi and wait on him with food or drink. When Rabbi wanted to get on his bed Antoninus crouched in front of it saying. 'Get on to your bed by stepping on me.' Rabbi, however, said, 'It is not the proper thing to treat a king so slightingly.' Whereupon Antoninus said: 'Would that I served as a mattress unto thee in the world to come!' Once he asked him: 'Shall I enter the world to come?' 'Yes!' said Rabbi. 'But,' said Antoninus, 'is it not written, There will be no remnant to the house of Esau?' 'That,' he replied. 'applies only to those whose evil deeds are like to those of Esau.' We have learnt likewise: There will be no remnant to the House of Esau, might have been taken to apply to all, therefore Scripture says distinctly — To the house of Esau, so as to make it apply only to those who act as Esau did. 'But', said Antonius, is it not also written: There [in the nether world] is Edom, her kings, and all her princes.' 'There, too,' Rabbi explained, '[it says:] 'her kings', it does not say all her kings; 'all her princes', but not all her officers!<br /><br />True History<br /><br />From the Talmudic tale we would be led to believe that there was a very close and personal relationship between the Emperor of Rome and the self-titled, Prince of the Jews. Furthermore, the Emperor would seek Judah ha Nasi's wise counsel repeatedly to the point that it even extended into how he should run his affairs and control the Senate. But what do we really know of the relationship between these two men? The answer is that they simply didn't have a relationship. In fact, Antoninus Pius, though not as intolerant as his predecessor Hadrian towards the Jews still had an axe to grind. It is stated that during Antoninus' reign that the Jews were deprived of the right to have their own courts, which prerogative was by the Pharisees considered essential to religion (Yer. Sanh. vii. § 2, 24b). This certainly doesn't sound like the Empror would come to the Nasi seeking legal advice. Furthermore, those that dared to criticize the measures of the emperor were banished or put to death (Shab. 33b). What we also know is that as a result of his harsh treatment of the Jews, the Jews attempted once again to overthrow the Roman domination ("Scriptores Historiæ Augustæ, Antoninus Pius," ch. v.) but there was so little fight left in them after the Bar Kochba revolt against Hadrian that this rebellion was put down quickly and barely rated a mention. The strained relations existing between the Parthians and the Romans may have led the Jews to believe as well as encouraged them to revolt with the expectation of assistance from the Parthians but such assistance was never realized. Whereas the biography of Antoninus Pius in Historia Augusta speaks of this revolt the Jewish sources in the Talmud do not even allude to it and instead provide this fairy tale relationship between the Rabbinic leader and the Emperor of Rome.<br /><br />But it wasn't all bad news as Antoninus did repeal some of the edicts of Hadrian —such as the prohibition of circumcision which prevented the Jews from exercising their religion—on the condition that they should not receive proselytes (Meg. Ta'anit, xii.; "Digesta" of Modestinus, xlviii. 8, 11). Moreover, they were forbidden, on penalty of death, to enter Jerusalem which hardly sounds like the edict of a man whom according to the Rabbis had approached Judah ha Nasi on how he would be able to best grant the city of Tiberias independent status. Those Jews who had fled to foreign countries in order to escape the persecutions of Hadrian gradually returned to their homes but by then most of the land and homes had become the possessions of non-Jewish populations.<br /><br />The actual edict of Antoninus Piusread as follows: ‘By a rescript of the divine Antoninus the Jews are allowed to circumcise only their own sons. If anyone performs the operation on a national of another race, he is liable to the same penalty as for castration’. The penalty being referred to was death so this is hardly the words of an Emperor that would let himself be a stepping stool for the Rabbi. Antoninus was still determined to restrict and control the spread of Judaism and thus would have no interest in God's preservation of a place in the world to come for him. In fact he would have had no interest in the Jewish God at all for it was well documented that he was faithful to the traditonal Roman pantheon of gods and no others.<br /><br />History also records that Hadrian before Antoninus Pius visited Judea and Septimus Severus after Antoninus Pius visited Judea but Antoninus Pius himself did not visit the Roman province. That being the case then there was no house with an undergound passage that led to Rabbi Judah's house that the Emperor ever used. The story is a fabrication with no other purpose to portray the Emperor as a man with a compulsion to murder his slaves, an act which the Nasi obviously tolerated and to portray Rabbi Hanina ben Hama as having the ability to raise the dead even if he was inferior to Rabbi Judah ha Nasi. In their efforts to record themselves as being far greater than they really were, these sages of Rabbinic Judaism were obviously not adverse to lying.<br />So Why Lie?<br /><br />I asked myself that question repeatedly. What was to be gained? What were the Rabbis seeking with this story? I could understand why Rabbi Judah was mute for much of the story, performing actions that the Emperor had to interpret rather than speaking to him directly. It provided the Rabbis with the ability to say that their Prince never actually spoke to the Emperor if they were ever challenged. Plausible denial I think we call it now. <br /><br />Even when the story of his picking radishes would be challenged as his advising and approving that the Emperor eliminate his enemies which in that day and age meant killing them off one by one, an act which according to the Torah made Rabbi Judah as guilty of murder as the man that perpetrated it, the Rabbis could deny such a thing was ever suggest by saying, "he was only picking radishes. Why would you ever think he was condoning murder?"<br /><br />The entire story is to express the superiority the rabbis held for themselves above their Roman masters. The fact that one of their own, Rabbi Akiba not only anointed a false messiah in Simon Bar Kochba, but spurred him on to fight a second war against Rome in which close to half a million Jews died should have taught them modesty, restraint and recognition that their beliefs were faulty. But they could not see the truth in that regard. Rome was still beneath them. A foot stool for their Prince to step upon when climbing into bed. A story of how Rome could kill them but they held the power to resurrect the dead so they had no fear of Rome's threats. Sadly the half million that died following their instruction they could not resurrect but they survived and that would appear to be all they cared about. After all, just as Judah ha Nasi replied when given the gift of gold by the Emperor, he had no need of it, he had plenty of his own. Only the Emperor was wise enought to suggest he hold on to it, not for his sake but for those less fortunate that might need it after he passed on. Perhaps the rabbis should have been thinking of the people all along!Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-40981011027885118192011-10-16T22:41:00.000-07:002011-10-16T22:41:38.549-07:00Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 14By Kahana<br /><br />“Whenever we are witness to the great assemblies of self appointed learned and great men we can expect the world to shake and quake in fear. “<br /><br />One doesn’t have to dig deep into the history of mankind to see that the quotation is as valid today as it was sixteen hundred years ago. Whether it is an assembly for political change, religious institution, a war council or even a modern day assembly like the United Nations, the truth is that the outcome more than often results in the inevitable destruction and devastation that only mankind can unleash upon his own species. We are guilty of the most heinous crimes yet we appear doomed to repeat the mistakes of our past. <br /><br />What is it that drives us to unequalled levels of cruelty against our fellow man in order to exercise our narrow minded pursuit to exercise our will over that of others, to both the detriment and neglect of others, as long as it satisfies our own selfish needs? How is it that we can cloak are misguided intents beneath a shroud of liberalism or humanitarianism even though from the outcome it is obvious that our imposition of our myopic view only causes greater suffering to the many while the few we have protested to protect are minor in significance and very often worth.<br /><br />I have thought long about this dilemma following the outpouring of a fellow Karaite’s heart and soul this past week in which her own personal suffering and that of her family was tested against the rights and privileges of the individual in our society to perpetrate evil are safeguarded to the fullest extent of the law. It would appear in our efforts to appear humanitarian, we have forgotten the meaning of a word which implied the ‘taking care of the human race’ not the interests of an individual or a small group that are opposed to the good of society. To safeguard a minority bent on evil, destructive and anti-social programs is to be anything but humanitarian. From criminals to activists, they are still simply people that feel they have the right to exercise their rights illegally and often violently. We must reexamine the misguided concepts that have pervaded our legal, political and religious structures. We must protect the majority as long as that majority does not persecute or harass the minority. And most importantly we must act in the public good if we are to survive as a species. These last few points are easily forgotten when minorities obtain power and a voice well beyond their proportion and measure and a majority remains both passive and silent. Such was the case with Christianity as it moved towards being granted state recognition. But rather than learn from the mistake of Church development, the error has been perpetrated and perpetuated for countless centuries into modern times and these new minorities, vocal well beyond their numbers, have inherited the legacy of enforcing their will upon the majority simply because they have gained the support of high ranking officials, political pawns, acceptable violence and a legal system that has abandoned the Mosaic Laws with no sentence or sensibility behind its enforcement.<br /><br />The Burning of Heretics<br />The Burning of Heretics<br />The Arian Church<br /><br />This setting of an impossible goal led many to fall into the ever widening net of heresy. One of its victims that it ensnared was a questioning priest in Alexandria by the name of Arius. Arius could not understand how God, being so pure and good have any direct contact with the real world. To do so would mean that the Lord would willingly allow himself t be contaminated by impurity and imperfection and that was unacceptable. How could he or his followers believe in a God anything less than perfect? Therefore he concluded, Jesus could not be a version of the same being. He would have had to have been something completely different; an intermediary with a divine spark but not then or ever a manifestation of God himself. That being the case, Arius continued to teach his followers that Jesus was a being completely separate from the Father and therefore should not be worshipped as such. Immediately, the Bishop of Alexandria called for the excommunication of Arius before he could do irreparable harm.<br /><br />Concerned that this Arian heresy would tear apart the Church that he had so neatly stitched together, the Emperor Constantine summoned the great council in 325 AD, the Council of Nicaea. With close to two hundred bishops from all over the empire, Constantine insisted by the end of the assembly they must have a unified decision on the direction of Christianity, a document we have come to know as the Nicene Creed.<br /><br />The Attainment of Power<br /><br />Following Constantine’s Edict of Toleration written 311 AD, the power of religious authority was concentrated in the hands of one church and one church alone, that being the Catholics, then regarded as the official Church of Rome. The word ‘Toleration’ in the title was a misnomer since it was obvious the Catholic Church was proposed as the universal church and all others were discluded from the equation. With the balance of power to determine the future direction of Christianity, the Catholic Church immediately switch its policy from safeguarding the traditions from misinterpretation to that of eliminating deniers of the Truth. What this meant to the early adherents of Judeo-Christian traditions that they could no longer deny the divinity of Christ. To do so would be to refuse the Trinity and accept the Unity of God. Those churches that believed Yeshua was a man in whom the spirit of God dwelt had to adopt the belief that Jesus was a divine spirit that assumed human flesh. And in so doing the belief in Jesus as the Son of God had to be upheld otherwise you could not belong to this new Orthodox Church. The difficulty in accepting the ideology that the Father and Son were actually different designations of the same being was overcome in one of two ways. Either you accepted it at face value, never to question it again, or you were to be branded a heretic and either killed or banished. Doubt, disbelief, endless questioning were all silenced rapidly. <br /><br />Enforcement of these beliefs to the elimination of all others could only be met by growing resistance. A Yeshua without humanity became an unattainable goal. Why worship a being that couldn’t possibly be a role model for other human beings, since as God he was incapable of performing or contemplating a sin. Perfection couldn’t be tainted and therefore any relevance as a role model was negated. The Jesus of this old-new church was out of touch with the common people.<br /><br />The Final Solution<br /><br />Homoousios was the word that became doctrine at the assembly in Nicaea. Translated it meant ‘of one substance.’ That was their final decision that the Father and Son were from one substance and Yeshua’s divinity was never to be questioned again. In reality, the decision failed to decide anything. Those that still believed as Arius taught refused to accept the final decision and publicly stated so. As for Arius, he was publicly humiliated, excommunicated and exiled but that resolved little. Even though the majority stood against Arius, he challenged them on their creation of a terminology ‘homoousios’ which was nowhere to be found in either the Old or New Testaments. Therefore, similar to Karaites like myself whom accuse the Rabbanites of constantly inventing religious doctrine to suit their own needs, Arius did likewise to his Catholic brethren. In their defense the Bishops passed a ruling that they too could be divinely inspired and therefore they were permitted to create new doctrine. Now legally backed by their newly established power they were confident they could mold Christianity any way they so desired and in feeling thus, they introduced the dogma of immaculate conception which had no religious foundation in any of the sacred books but they no longer required sacred writings to establish the rules.<br /><br />Constantine found himself sitting in a quagmire. By initially agreeing with the Council’s doctrine he had given them powers far in excess of any they held previously. By instilling within them the ability to create religious doctrine and dogma based entirely on their own feelings at the time, he had turned them into rivals rather than subordinates. The Nicaean Creed was received well in the West but the Eastern Bishoprics struggled with its introduction since they had the greatest concentration of adherents from the early Judeo-Christian Churches and those members refused to accept the incorporation of absolute power into the hands of the clergy. <br /><br />Fearing what he had done, Constantine in 328 AD recalled Arius from exile and supported the Arian policies or anti-Nicene party but it was too late. <br /><br />Absolute Confusion<br /><br />For the next four hundred years Arianism survived but wherever it raised its head it was hunted down, tortured and eradicated. The Catholic Church was determined to eliminate this threat no matter how long that might take fearing that the policies of Arius called into question their power and the divine nature of Yeshua. As soon as the populace began to question those doctrines then it would spell the end of the control over the minds and bodies of men. Arianism served a purpose; it reinforced the establishment of Orthodox doctrine. Each and every time that the threat of Arianism arose, the Chatholic Church felt compelled to hold a council and introduce even more legislation to safeguard their empire. Most aren’t even aware of the next Nicene Creed, the one that took place in 381 AD. From that the Church obtained, “For us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was made man.” There was also the new swearing of allegiance to the “Holy Ghost, the Lord and the Giver of Life.” But that didn’t succeed in being taken on very well by the congregations and eventually became replaced by the “Father, Son and Holy Ghost,” much easier for most to recite. The concept of the Holy Ghost had to be introduced because Arius refused to believe that the Spirit that infused Jesus was a part of God, insisting that it was no higher in its creation than that of an angel. In this way, the Church ensured that no part of their Trinity could be questioned as being anything less than God.<br /><br />But by creating this new omnipotence and infallibility of Jesus, God and the Holy Ghost a new threat was created. These were referred to as the “divine mysteries”, unanswerable questions that were beyond man’s comprehension and therefore not required to be answered by the clergy. If God actually manifested Himself on earth, then why had nothing actually improved? If God gave forgave man all his sins, then why did he sin more than ever with each passing year? If had tasted the suffering of mankind during his experience in human flesh then why did he permit man to suffer so? All these divine mysteries and yet so few divine answers, for no other reason that anything divine had been totally eradicated from this new Christianity which claimed to be Orthodox yet had by the end of the fifth century as I have elucidated in these articles removed anything that may perchance have been the original Christian beliefs based on its Jewish heritage. What was left was a hollow shell filled with only the whims and desires a handful of sacrilegious men. What was also clear by the end of the fifth century was that the man in charge was the Bishop of Rome, a position as history has shown could be bought, stolen, killed for and above all, abused. And from that point in time was when the questions should have been asked. Was there ever an original Christian teaching that an institutional Church was the true path? Hardly, the use of the Greek word ‘ecclesia’ in Jerusalem actually translated as an assembly, suggesting leadership would only be via elders, not by something called a church which the Greek now is translated as. Was a single man ever destined to be considered the voice of God? Though James had assumed the mantle of leadership following his brother’s death, at no time did he claim his words to be infallible as the Pontiff of Rome now claimed. Error compounded upon error and every time a spiritual leader appeared that attempted to turn back the clock, he was branded as a heretic and his followers persecuted to death. And therein lies the root cause of so much which has gone wrong with our institutions of today. When the guiding light that a quarter of the world looks towards was based on principles that barely represented the original directives then it follows that all subsequent institutions wallow in their own ineptitude having nothing upon which to define their morality. Like a pendulum, they will swing wildly from end to end seeking the balance but never able to find that point of equilibrium since they are constantly out of sync with every other organization and institution. Without harmony there can be no balance. Without a return to the original beliefs there is no chance to find the guiding light. Without knowledge and understanding of whence we came there can be no comprehension of what we were destined for. And without Karaism there is no way of recognizing what it is we have all lost so long ago.Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-62406947202225194362011-10-10T15:16:00.000-07:002011-10-10T15:40:04.410-07:00The Christianization of Zoroastrianism<a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-13">Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 13</a><br />
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<div class="author">By <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/">Kahana</a> :Myths and fables are all we seem to have passed down from us in the early centuries after Yeshua lived. But what is a myth if not the hopes and aspirations of a people manifested into a physical form which beckons to all to relinquish their doubts, abandon their cynicism and embrace a belief beyond normal human comprehension. And in many of our religious belief systems that is all we possess, a myth that has grown into a reality. Let me take the time to tell you about one such myth which manifested in Persia and grew well beyond the borders of that land. Some of you may recognize it, others actually believe in it, yet the majority will not even know of its origins and would have come to believe that its roots in our society were otherwise. As a Karaite I am free of it but you may not be so lucky as most have come to call it Christian but as you will soon see, it was anything but.</div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleAdSpot color0" id="mod_new4"></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_7116999"><div id="imgs_7116999"><div id="img_url_2753783"><a class="imglightbox" href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-13#" lightbox="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2753783.jpg"><img alt="" class="half" height="195" src="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2753783_f260.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="260" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2753783"></div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_7117000"><h2 class="subtitle">A Gift From Persia</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_7117000">The Persian Magi, the spiritual leaders of Zoroastrianism studied the universe endlessly, contemplating its contradictions, catastrophes and endless sufferings. They found it hard to believe that the truth lay in the Judaic writings that all these events were the manifestations of a singular God. That the Almighty, the Creator of the Universe, He who called himself the Loving God and the Wrathful God could be the perpetrator of history’s greatest disasters. In order to reconcile their belief in an Almighty God they found there could only be one solution; a second Kingdom. Where God reigned in a Kingdom of light and beauty from above in the heavens, another being ruled from the pits, a Kingdom of darkness and evil. The primal God above and a second entity that ruled the universe from below and the two were eternally set in opposition. And in this second kingdom, Satan ruled and the demons were born from its depths.<br />
Desiring more than what rested beneath his hand, Satan invaded the Kingdom of Light and the war began in earnest between the two opposing forces, the Light and the Darkness. To beat back the armies of Satan, God created primal man but Satan’s forces began to overcome the armies of this lesser being and God was forced to rescue Man lest he be lost to Satan. But even after being rescued, Man had suffered grievously, several particles of his original Light gifted by God now replaced by five elements of the Dark. And thus man was set on a path that if he was to return to the Light, return to God, he must overcome the Darkness that now dwells within in an everlasting eternal struggle.<br />
The first of these men to live, a combined existence of both light and dark particles was named Adam. Because of what Satan had done, Adam and his offspring were to be forever born in original sin. There was a woman named Eve, and because she was only created to be Adam’s companion she possessed less particles of light and therefore was more susceptible to the darkness. But God loved his creation of man and throughout the history of mankind would send his heavenly spirits in the form of prophets to guide and correct the corruption that now resided within man’s soul.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_7117112"><div id="imgs_7117112"><div id="img_url_2753797"><a class="imglightbox" href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-13#" lightbox="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2753797.jpg"><img alt="" class="quarter" height="186" src="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2753797_f120.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="120" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2753797"></div></div></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_7117038"><h2 class="subtitle">The Manichaean Universe</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_7117038">As strange as it may sound, what you have just read was not Christian. The beliefs were neither developed by Christian theologists nor were they practiced by the early Christians. In truth, the concept of two kingdoms in perpetual battle were so foreign to the early Christians that it was rejected wholeheartedly but Christianity had never faced a threat before like Mani, with his charisma, his gift to speak and his determination that exceeded that of any Church leader. Mani was born around 215 AD to a wealthy Persian family. He spent his early years travelling throughout the Persian Empire and into India where he encountered Buddhism. In his later years he headed west into the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire where he preached the religion that incorporated his original Zoroastrianism and all the beliefs he had acquired during his travels. He immediately had universal appeal, providing to the people that had always been familiar with Gods at war from their earlier Greek and Roman pantheon beliefs an easy bridge between their present Christian instruction and the religion of their past. Mani listed the prophets that they should believe in; Adam, Noah, Abraham, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Paul and himself whom he saw as the greatest of them all. In case you haven’t noticed, there is one prophet of significance missing from Mani’s list that being Moses. Moses represented everything contrary to what he was teaching to his new followers. To believe in Moses meant believing that all things good and bad did come from the one God of the Universe. To read Moses instruction meant that there was no such thing as Satan and his demons ruling from a secondary kingdom. To follow Moses meant that all men were born with free will to be either good or evil and were not tainted from birth. To Mani, he saw no hope in attracting the Jews to his new religion so he focused only on the susceptibility of the Christians knowing that they thirsted for a link to their old world of paganism.<br />
But if man was born into a world of evil, a sinner from birth, Mani knew that he also had to provide a reward that mankind could strive for. He taught his followers if they learned and studied the prophets, strove against the evil within their souls, then if they were successful they would set the light free and would ascend to God. But if a man could not perform the purification within his lifetime then he would be sent back to live again until such time that he could release the light. And once all of mankind had succeeded in releasing the light then there would be the final apocalypse which would destroy the material universe and banish the Kingdom of Satan forever.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_7117039"><h2 class="subtitle">Something Familiar</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_7117039">Mani divided his followers into five levels. The first three levels were known as the Sons of Meekness. They were the Teachers, the Perfecti and the Electi. And only they would inherit the privilege of ascending to God after a single lifetime. The next level were the Administrators known as the Sons of Knowledge, comprising bishops and priests. The last level was known as the Sons of Understanding and they were the presbyters. The Sons of Meekness had additional restrictions, in that they had to be vegetarians, not engage in marriage or procreation as they had to remain pure if they were to ascend to God. The Sons of Knowledge did not have to endure the same restrictions. They had to follow several commandments including the forbidding of lying, adultery, murder, sloth, and doubt, along with keeping a certain number of fast days. As one can see, there are several parallels to the layering within the Manichean church to the establishment of the Catholic Church. <br />
By the fourth century there already was a singular head, a Pope of the Manichean church. Many of the Marcionites that I had described in an earlier article adopted the Manichean beliefs and in fact by the end of the third century almost all of the Marcionite churches became Manichean. The appeal of the Manichean church exceeding anything witnessed before. It’s popularity amongst the aristocrats of the Roman Empire was immediate as it provided an easy transition from their pagan hierarchy to this new one, a far easier task than adopting the more man-centered concept of Mosaic law. One of the most notable personages to adopt the Manichean religion was St. Augustine who was actually one of the administrators in this church. Eventually St. Augustine left the Manichean church accusing it of teaching a falsehood of rival worlds of Light and Darkness in perpetual battle and that God was at constant war with Satan. In his new position within the Catholic Church he railed against these misguided beliefs enforcing the Mosaic belief that God was the only power in the universe and man was responsible for his own sinful ways, having nothing to do with an external power that forced him to commit wrong doings. How ironic that in spite of St. Augustine’s condemnation of Manichaeism in order to preserve the initial Judaic beliefs of the church, his protestations were eventually washed away in the tide as the Church raced to adopt Manichean beliefs.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_7117044"><h2 class="subtitle">The Ultimate Absurdity</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_7117044">By the fifth century, the Manichean belief system began to dominate the beliefs of Christians from all persuasions. So much so that the Catholic Church could see very little difference between their followers and those that claimed to be Manichaean. The primary difference was that the Manichaeans had their own Pope, their own elders, bishops, priests and lay clergy; a massive organization that bore no allegiance or recognition of the Church in Rome. How ironic that the Roman and Byzantine Churches would pronounce an edict condemning all Manichaeans to death, accusing them of heresy even though there existed by this time very little difference by this time between the beliefs of the two church systems. The decision was one of politics, of power, of greed and once again Christianity had been diverted from its true course without its followers having the slightest indication that the practices and beliefs that they now professed had nothing to do with the initial teachings of Yeshua whom they swore to follow. They had all become Manichaeans but they did not know it!</div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-21209523533613304752011-10-06T01:43:00.000-07:002011-10-06T01:43:26.359-07:00Christian Heretics of the Second Century<a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-12">Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 12</a><br /><br /><p class="author">By <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/">Kahana</a></p><div class="modfloat full"><div id="mod_7005712" class="module moduleText color0"><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_7005712"><p>Having begun the revelation of the myths and fables surrounding the birth of Christianity in my last article it is time to look more in depth at the development of Christianity as to what it has become now. It is a pale reflection of its beginnings and the essential Judaic teachings of its origins were intentionally stripped from it so that it could stand apart and bend to the will of those that controlled its destiny. Men in the Catholic orthodoxy that were not unlike the Rabbis that made a determined effort to mould both their respective religions into something other than intended and most importantly, to their own benefit. These changes were not by accident, were not normal evolution, nor were they done with the best intentions of its worshippers. But what is sadder is that with the wealth of historical information available, so many have not taken the time to read about their Christian origins. Had they merely taken the time and cherished advice of our Karaite sage and founder Anan ben David, they would have recognized that he was not only speaking to those of us that are Karaites but to people of all denominations and religions. His was a warning that to follow blindly is the greatest sin of all because it will do exactly the opposite what it claims it was designed to do. The preaching will be “Do not lead us unto evil” yet the outcome for any religion where it demands blind obedience, advises not to question its teachings or origins, and both assails and condemns any opinion that it deems contrary will do exactly that; it will lead you unto evil! The heritage of Christianity has been the eradication of any opinion that those in power deemed contrary. Silencing the heretics was the norm for hundreds of years. Yet heresy is from the Greek “haerens” which only means an act of choosing. So the execution of the heretics really meant eliminating anyone that wanted to make a free choice and that is the legacy of the rise of Christianity.</p></div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div id="mod_7005713" class="module moduleImage"><div id="imgs_7005713"> <div id="img_url_2705233"> <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-12#" lightbox="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2705233.jpg" class="imglightbox"><img src="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2705233_f260.jpg" class="half" alt="" title="Click to see full-size image" height="184" width="260" /></a> </div> <div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2705233"> </div></div></div></div><div id="mod_7005714" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">A Strange And Unusual Time</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_7005714"><p>From a Karaite perspective what I personally find the most amazing about the second and third centuries AD is that you had two religious sects, both essentially Jewish in origin vying for the title of supreme monotheist but both willing to sacrifice the original teachings of the Torah. Let me explain if this statement has confounded you. Both Rabbanite Judaism and Christianity began writing furiously over this period two centuries to win over the hearts and minds of adherents whether established or new. The Rabbis began writing their Talmud feverishly and the Christians published a plethora of Gospels, both groups specifically designing their books to capture sayings, teachings, and histories, even if the subject material was speculative, inflammatory, and based solely on one’s own personal and therefore far from factual experiences. Whereas the Rabbanites were determined to catalogue their thoughts into one volume, even though it ended up in both a Palestinian and Babylonian version, the Christians made no attempt to consolidate their writings, keeping each manuscript distinct and separate. And therein lay the failure of the Rabbinates to win the race to the publishers and to their respective audience. The Talmud became a massive tome, unable to be finished for several hundred years and therefore never released to be mass circulated to the public and so introspective that it had practically no appeal to anyone but the rabbis themselves who enjoyed reading about their own endeavors, arguments, and congratulatory back patting efforts, whereas the Christian authors were able to circulate their small books quickly, often just as vellum manuscripts, suitable to be read by any individual and with stories bordering on the fantastical and supernatural thus very appealing and capturing an eager readership desiring to read about something other than mundane issues. There really wasn’t any contest when it came down to it. Even though most of these circulating Gospels were to be dismissed and discarded later when the Church decided to canonize the final version of the New Testament, it did so at a time that the general public had already been exposed to the multitude of books and their imaginations captured by the mythological status of the writing. The Talmud which was a never-ending exercise had none of the same mass appeal nor even had it been available early would it have been something the common person desired to read. Yet both of these massive documents, whether Talmud or New Testament had taken their intended audiences far afield from the Laws of Moses and the actual dictates of the Torah or Old Testament. And as I have pointed out numerous times in my articles, both these works of men were constantly in contradiction to the Torah and the teachings of Moses and were intentionally so. Of that as you will see in the next few paragraphs there could be now doubt!</p></div></div><div id="mod_7005727" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">Marcion Versus Montanus</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_7005727"><p>“Who?” is the word you are probably uttering right now. Just two of the most important men in early Christian history and yet the majority reading this will have absolutely no idea who they were and what was their true significance. But both these men were the most prominent leaders in Christianity during the second century AD and shaped the Christianity that we know today. But because they possessed views outside the mainstream Catholic teachings they were later branded as Gnostics even though as I mentioned they were each responsible for giving Christianity its greatest surge in growth and popularity by attaining thousands upon thousands of adherents at that time and providing an ideological framework upon which the Church did build its current concepts thus eventually attaining mass appeal.</p> <p>As hard as it may be to believe to Messianics and Christians today, during these first two centuries, to refer to the Catholic Church was to imply that those adhering to this view were either Jews or Judaized-Gentiles strongly leaning towards the Old Testament teachings as presented by the Jerusalem Church, initially under James and then his cousin Simon Cleophas. It was the Catholic Church that was entrenched with both these Judaizers and Old Testament exponents. Initially it saw itself as the defender against the rise of polytheistic ideologies that began to permeate the other churches throughout the empire. But as the old adage goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em then join ‘em,” especially when those others were growing faster, stronger and with far more determination than your own congregation could ever accomplish.</p> <p>Marcion who lived between 130 and 180 AD considered his Church to be the only authentic one. The speed at which Marcion gained adherents was troublesome to the Catholic Church and Irenaeus wrote against them claiming they would eventually fractionate the early Christians beyond a point of recovery. It was not that Irenaeus condemned the teaching of Marcion only that this adversary did them better and in turn had better conversion results than the orthodox Catholics. Marcion’s message was simple. He wanted to build a church that could bring salvation but was not involved in the speculative and mystical ideas that seemed to have taken over the Christian church. Of interest is that Marcion taught that God had two natures. The wrathful, angry God of the Torah, and the kind loving God that had sent Jesus to save the world. But these two aspects of God were always constantly seesawing in what could be viewed as an eternal battle. Perhaps Marcion was familiar with the Yin and the Yang of eastern philosophy but he determined that it was the wrathful side of God that created the world and therefore all material creations were evil. That meant that man was evil as well but the pure side of God loved man and therefore sent part of himself in the form of a phantom body to live amongst man and die in order to save mankind. Quite interesting that the man that accused the traditional church of being too speculative and mystical was in fact the man that provided the spiritual concept of a non-human Jesus to Christianity in the first place. Marcion insisted that the only apostle that understood all of this was Paul and therefore he justified Paul’s abolition of the Law under the excuse that he was serving the Grace. In this manner Marcion claimed that Paul had done away with the wrathful God of the Old Testament and replaced him with worship of only the pure form of God as revealed in the New Testament. Having this narrow perspective meant that Marcion also had a very narrow canon of scripture which included the Gospel of Truth, which was a collection of sayings but not directly from Jesus, the four Gospels although Luke was an edited version, and the Acts of Paul. Hence he claimed that the only scriptures within his church emphasized the mercy of God whereas the Catholic Church was opposed to the teaching of mercy and therefore failed to comprehend true Christianity. Having condemned the material world as evil, Marcion preached that sex was also evil but only those that were Perfect needed to abstain from sex, whereas the rest of the followers could still engage in it and only when they were about to die would they be baptized. Salvation came through the love of God and the Old Testament was negated by this Loving God. As much as this view by Marcion would appear naïve and perhaps even childish, his teaching had a major impact on the Catholic Church and threatened its survival. So much so that Tertulian wrote, “The Marcionites make churches as wasps make nests.” This rapid expansion could not be stopped but it certainly could be absorbed. Catholic leaders met to see which of the Marcionist views should be incorporated into their own doctrines and in so doing they were to markedly reduce the impact by eliminating many of the differences. </p> <p>Just as threatening were the Montanists which like the Marcionists wanted a return to what they called pure Christianity. Their approach was far more Old Testament, claiming that the Catholic Church was governed by men that had no true sanction by God and therefore their unethical and immoral behavior was not to be tolerated. The only laws that could be considered as truthful were those already passed down by God and his prophets. As you might have noticed, the concepts espoused by the Montanist were not unlike the Boethians and Zadokites of the same time against the Rabbis; in fact these Montanists were very Karaite in their comments. All we know of Montanus is that he appeared preaching in Phrygia around 156 AD. He dispelled the teaching of both the Rabbis and Catholic Church that the age of prophets was gone and that there would be no further prophets. In fact Montanus claimed that he himself was a chosen prophet of God. Montanus’ concept of the Holy Spirit was that it was sent down by God to enter the bodies of his chosen prophets. Therefore any that spoke the word of God were engaged by the Holy Spirit and Yeshua was one such man. Montanus believed that all scriptures were the word of God and therefore he maintained that in his Church all doctrines were acceptable, none were to be repudiated but God’s only requirement was that the followers maintained a high level of morality, fasted regularly, and had strict marriage laws. But as his followers pursued their beliefs, Montanus expected them to abandon the daily world and separate themselves into religious communes. This was in direct contradiction with the Catholic Church that decided its followers should maintain their everyday lives and didn’t need to separate themselves from Roman life in order to become holy. </p> <p>By the end of the second century it appeared that the Montanists would become the dominant sect of Christianity. The Catholic Church reacted as it had done so many times before, labeling the Montanists as heretics, excommunicating the lot, and condemning their prophets to either banishment or death. This dogma of branding anything that opposed them as heretics was exactly the institutionalized corruption that the Montanists were opposed to. There considerable threat forced those leaders in the Catholic Church to move closer to the reigning powers in Rome. By emphasizing that the Catholic Church supported the Roman authorities and advised its followers to contribute as part of everyday society, they were able to demonstrate the danger represented by a Montanist Church that encouraged its members to withdraw from society and become separate. It didn’t take much encouragement for the Roman authorities to join in the condemnation of the Montanists and use them for their entertainment in the coliseums. Although Christian history will talk about the martyrs fed to the lions and slaughtered in gladiatorial exhibits, it fails to comment that it was Montanists providing this entertainment while a Catholic elite grew closer to the Emperor and 100 years later actually was proclaimed as the one and only Christianity of the Empire.</p> </div></div><h2 class="subtitle">The Best And Worst</h2><p>Having survived the century of turmoil and beating back those breakaway sects that condemned it, the Catholic Church, soon to be the State Church of the Empire, recognized that the Marcionists and Montanists had been popular for two entirely antithecal reasons. The first gained popularity by emphasizing the spiritual nature of Jesus and therefore won over the hearts and minds of a people seeking far more than the strict laws that evolved from the Torah. </p> <p>The latter, the Montanists gained their popularity by emphasizing the freedom of choice, the fact that God intercedes in the world through his prophets and that survival meant separation from the daily life of the Empire. From the general description, they were not very unlike the Jews that still represented a large portion of the eastern populations. </p> <p>And therein lay the solution that would become the hallmark of the Church for a couple of thousand years. By adopting Marcion’s teachings of the uniqueness of Christianity, the spiritual nature of Jesus and the rejection of all the old laws that were Jewish or Old Testamental they could create a distinct separation between themselves and their original beliefs. And by categorizing the Montanists as nothing more than Christians practicing a Jewish mode of life, they could again emphasize that separation and at the same time focus the Empire’s distrust on any people that were determined to remain separate, especially the Jews. In doing so, the Catholic leaders gained the trust of the Empire and were to eventually to take over the operation of the empire itself in the form of the Holy Roman Empire where the power to invest kings and emperors suddenly lay within their Church.</p> <p>It was a learning process that would not have been possible if it had not been for the advent of both the Marcionists and Montanists. In a very short time they had gained all the myths and fables necessary to reshape the Catholic Church into the image of bishops; men seeking power at the cost of its heritage. It would have to go through one more phase before the transition was complete. That involved the canonization of the New Testament and finalization of its arrangement with the Empire in the sharing of power. That wouldn’t happen to the fourth century and will be the topic of discussion for the next article.</p>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-21876508831688970942011-10-04T20:48:00.000-07:002011-10-04T20:50:38.017-07:00Christian Heretics of the First Century<a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-11">Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Chapter 11</a><br />
<br />
<div class="author">By <a href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/">Kahana</a></div><div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_6915591"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_6915591">This article unlike the previous ones will not have anything to do directly with the Hazuk Emunah. It will actually be a slight diversion from the previous topics and focus on early Christian History rather than the first century Pharisaic history which precipitated Christianity. The context of this article I actually owe to one of my Messianic readers who asked me the question, “Is everything she learned about Yeshua merely the result of fable or myth?” A very difficult question for a Messianic to ask because even though they have struggled to break away from the Christian religion, they so carefully want to hold on to something tangible to say that all was not a loss. In their particular case it means holding on to Yeshua or Jesus as their life buoy as they lose their grip on the dock which was their previous Christian faith and are now set afloat in a raging sea of conflict, contrast and contradiction. One wants to believe so strongly that the floatation ring will keep them safe even as the waves crash and the winds howl as the storm sets in. Unfortunately the lifering is unlikely to do the job as one would need a raft if they were even to stand a chance at survival. But a raft needs to be constructed from a far studier material than the simple floatation device, and without an outboard motor, or in the least oars, even the best raft will capsize without direction. The person that was rumoured to have managed to survive the storm at sea without these items was/is a myth or as we have become accustomed to saying, an urban legend.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_6915592"><div id="imgs_6915592"> <div id="img_url_2667038"> <a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2667038.jpg" href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-11#"><img alt="" class="quarter" height="152" src="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2667038_f120.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="120" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2667038"> </div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_6915593"><h2 class="subtitle">The Legends Surrounding Yeshua</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_6915593">Myth, fable, tales, it really doesn’t matter what we call it the fact remains that all three are fabrications of the imagination. But when it comes to Yeshua, it was not as if the truth didn’t try to prevail at times. When we review the early history of the Church, any attempt to tell a more humanistic history was met with exile, excommunication and extermination. The X’s have it when it came to trying to present anything contrary to those that held the reins of power. It is ironic that in today’s age people question what has happened to the historical Jesus. The fact is that any essence of historical fact or reality was killed off and silenced by the Church. And what those in power presented as the one and only authentic story of Jesus is in fact the product of men’s imaginations. Through process of elimination the history of the Church has answered my Messianic reader’s question. Everything she has learned about Yeshua is likely the result of fable and myth. <br />
But one should not take my word for it. After all, I am a Karaite and as such the belief in Yeshua as Messiah is foreign to me and that would render me prejudiced in any accounting. So instead, let’s examine what those within the early Church had to say about it. After all, at one time these were esteemed and credible leaders of the Christian communities, only to find themselves ostracized and banished once a new emperor or a new bishop courted and craved power. And the best way to eliminate a rival was to brand the old teachings as heretical even if they were the original teachings and therefore probably more accurate.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_6915636"><div id="imgs_6915636"> <div id="img_url_2667079"> <a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2667079.jpg" href="http://kahana.hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Chapter-11#"><img alt="" class="half" height="359" src="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2667079_f260.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="260" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2667079"> </div></div></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_6915605"><h2 class="subtitle">James and Ignatius</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_6915605">What most people forget is that for almost thirty years Jacob (James), the brother of Yeshua was spiritual leader of the Jerusalem Church. He was the most important leader of the early church and those in Rome or Antioch were secondary, perhaps even tertiary to his authority and rank. From 36 AD until 62 AD when he was murdered he was the man that made the decision regarding the future of the Nazoreans and Minim, not Peter and certainly not Paul. Though some might argue that he took control in 33 AD arguing that is the year when Jesus was crucified, in the book Caiaiphas Letters which provides a prespective unlike any other coming from that of the high priest (http://legendsofthekahana.webs.com/3onthecharts.htm), I present sufficient information to suggest that the year was actually 36 AD. But for the point of this discussion three years is neither here nor there. What is important is recognizing for the duration of his leadership, James taught from the Temple, something he would not have been able to do if his lessons ran counter to the established religion. For the punishment for heresy, any heresy against the Jewish religion was stoning; stoning to death. If there had been any element of heresy within James’ teachings then he would have met that outcome long before his murder in 62 AD. Any suggestion of Jesus having divinity, magical powers, or making statements contrary to the Laws of Moses would have resulted in immediate trial and punishment. And all it took to lay the accusation would be two witnesses so it wouldn’t have been difficult if James was guilty of saying such things. Therefore to have survived for almost three decades while preaching outside the Gates of Nicanor could only mean that the sermons were well within the acceptable parameters of Judaism. That could only mean no immaculate conception, no resurrection, and nothing of a magical nature that would upset the status quo. That still meant that James could have proclaimed Yeshua as the Messiah since that would have been perfectly acceptable. There already were those claiming that John of Gamala, both Theudas and Judas of Galilee and John the Baptist were already the messiahs, so one more wouldn’t have made any difference to anyone. And therein lays the first myth that the early followers of Jesus already viewed him in terms of being greater than man. They didn’t; all that was to come much later, very much later. <br />
And though the doctrines of these initial followers as instructed by James and who appeared to have an understanding of the essential Jesus continued to exist and grow throughout that first century they were condemned as heretics by Bishop Ignatius of Antioch just before the end of the first century AD as he was being led to Rome to be executed. For Ignatius, a man born after the death of Jesus insisted that he knew much better than those that had sat and learned at the feet of Yeshua. In his letters to the early Christians Ignatius makes the point sixteen times that Jesus and God were one and the same. And there is no misunderstanding of what he meant by this claim since Ignatius affirms he believed Jesus to be the invisible and timeless (achronos) one, incapable by his godlike nature of suffering so he had to come earth so that he would be capable of suffering as a result of his human birth. But Ignatius had far more on his agenda than just argue about the divine nature of Jesus. As his letters indicate he insisted on creating an entire set of rituals that would set Christianity apart from its all too Jewish early followers and the traditions of James’ Jerusalem Church. For Ignatius and those to whom he writes that the Eucharist had to be the center of the Church’s existence and it could only be performed by a bishop or by one he authorizes, hence providing a ritual of consecration that is totally under the control of Bishops thereby giving them total control. Furthermore, in order to eliminate the Judaizing teachings of James, Ignatius ordered that Christianity cease keeping the Sabbath on Saturday like the Jews and instead to observe it on what he referred to as the Lord’s Day or Sunday. And finally in his bid to preserve powers in the hands of his fellow bishops, Ignatius instructed that there could be no church unless you had a bishop in charge and presbyters and deacons which they would appoint to do their bidding. So in reality, much of the doctrinal changes that separated Christianity from its Jewish heritage were the result of this individual who had purposely contradicted everything that James had established. The only myth would be to assume that Ignatius had either divine inspiration or divinely granted authority to do so.<br />
From the little bit you have now read, you can either assume that the first century Jerusalem followers that had direct contact with Yeshua didn’t know him and only one man almost a century later who had no contact knew him better, or you can assume that these early followers did know him very well for the man he was and it was only after the initial followers passed away and men like Ignatius assumed control of the church that they could create a story that smacked of polytheism but would appeal to the Greeks and Romans that they wished to convert t their new religion. Myth, legend or fable, the choice is yours.</div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-16367370280279250202011-07-22T02:55:00.000-07:002011-07-22T02:55:14.289-07:00Forbidden Food<a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshuar-Jesus-Part-10">Karaite Comments: To My Brother Yeshua (Jesus) Part 10</a><br /><br /><div class="modfloat full"><div id="mod_6817547" class="module moduleText color0"><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_6817547"><p>As I mentioned in Part 9, I would use the scientific discoveries of today to focus on laws handed down over 3200 years ago. But first it is imperative that those of the Messianic or the Christian path understand exactly how your falling away from the Lord’s commandments occurred. To do so you have to appreciate that the first Christians were Jews and that they continued in their worship at the Temple and their obedience to Jewish Law. At the same time they were able to reconcile their following of Yeshua’s teachings by referring to him as the greatest of the prophets a point of difference between them and both Karaites and Rabbanites. But soon a division was to take place as the result of one man; a man that Jesus never even selected as one of his apostles. As described in Galatians II:7 the main body of Christians were circumcised Jews and that the Gospel of the circumcised was unto Peter. But there was another group rapidly developing and Paul wrote in the same Galatians II:7 that “The gospel of the uncircumcised was committed unto me.” A self appointed commission to the Gentiles that would ultimately be a slap in the face of God. Paul reveals that Peter came to Antioch where Paul had his base and under pressure Paul convinced him to eat with the Gentiles. But when a delegation came from Jerusalem to berate Peter for his abandonment of the commandments, he quickly separated himself from the Gentiles and then insisted that they should all “live as Jews do.” Paul was furious and he went after Peter with all the ferocity he could muster as revealed in Galatians II:11. Of course having a large threatening Gentile mob in your face could be enough to convince the weak and indecisive fisherman that he was backing the wrong horse. Paul then went to Jerusalem along with Barnabas and after similarly threatening the apostles and elders he not only convinced them that the dietary laws and circumcision were not required but as he states, “they no longer needed to keep the Law!” The only restriction was they abstain from eating meats offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled and from fornication.” But we have historical proof that the community that was originally Jewish never abandoned the original Torah laws and remained as a separate entity within Christianity. Though Paul was able to intimidate them into fearing his wrath of the Gentile mob, he could not sway them from the teachings of Jesus and his brother James. For those wishing to know more about these original Christians and their preservation of Jewish ways, I suggest you read about the Ebionites. They existed for another 400 years before they were hunted down and killed by the Church of Rome.</p></div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div id="mod_6817548" class="module moduleImage"><div id="imgs_6817548"> <div id="img_url_2624362"> <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshuar-Jesus-Part-10#" lightbox="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2624362.jpg" class="imglightbox"><img src="http://s3.hubimg.com/u/2624362_f260.jpg" class="half" alt="" title="Click to see full-size image" height="173" width="260" /></a> </div> <div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2624362"> </div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div id="mod_6817549" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">There Are No Coincidences</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_6817549"><p>Now you might ask, “What provides me with the authority or knowledge to talk of such things as if I understand the intricacies of God’s commandments. Just what are my qualifications to make the following statements?” Fair enough, legitimate questions but of course I have legitimate answers as well. Firstly, let me say that I am doing exactly what my family has been instructed to do for the past three millennia, fulfilling the role of Kahana as intermediaries with the purpose of saving mankind even if it is only one human life at a time. Secondly, for those that may have wondered what I actually do (my everyday job so to speak) since whatever my role in life it’s obvious that it’s now taking me to China on a monthly basis, has me speaking internationally at biotechnological conferences, and sees me supporting scientific breakthroughs that eliminate suffering for thousands, perhaps even millions. So let me elaborate for you and then you can judge the veracity and credibility of the statements I will make subsequently. I am a veterinary trained preclinical toxicologist, a test development medical technologist and a biotechnological researcher. Yes, I have university degrees in each of those three areas of specialization. Big words but then it’s a big job. I am one of those men that each day faces the challenge of how do we find the cures and prove that they work against X, Y or Z. And as I mentioned, it is simply the extension of what we as the Kahana have done for a thousand years both in the Tabernacle and the Temples while they still stood. Of course then it was much simpler, as all we had to do in those days was make animal sacrifices on the altar and pray for cures and divine intercession. And we only had to face the Big Boss in the Holy of Holies for our performance review once a year. Now the job is a little more demanding since in the past my family prayed that God would intervene on behalf of the people but now the onus has become for us to provide the answers on our own. It is no mere coincidence that there are three family members involved in a similar line of scientific endeavor even though we were initially unaware of each other’s professional choices at the time. One might say it’s in our genes, and a more lengthy aspect of that particular discussion can be found at <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/GLEEM"><u>http://hubpages.com/hub/GLEEM</u></a> but as you will see, it is highly likely that we are products of our past and we are all predestined to do what we do. So, having the benefit of several decades of medical and veterinary specialization has provided me with a perspective that Isaac ben Abraham of Troki did not possess. It enables me to examine the dietary laws and find a rationale behind their instruction. But what it really does is leave me in awe because I have to consider that three thousand years ago these laws were clearly established with an impossible precognizant foresight and knowledge of discoveries that we have only made over the last 150 years. And that too cannot be simply passed off as another coincidence. Remember, I’ve been telling you for a long time that there are no coincidences! </p></div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div id="mod_6817696" class="module moduleImage"><div id="imgs_6817696"> <div id="img_url_2624375"> <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshuar-Jesus-Part-10#" lightbox="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2624375.jpg" class="imglightbox"><img src="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/2624375_f120.jpg" class="quarter" alt="" title="Click to see full-size image" height="93" width="120" /></a> </div> <div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2624375"> </div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div id="mod_6817581" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">The Eating of Dead Things</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_6817581"><p>Over a decade ago I wrote my thesis on the Apolipoprotein E pathway’s involvement in both CJD and Alzheimer’s. Without going into the details, I was looking at ways in which abnormal proteins were absorbed, transferred and reproduced in neurological tissues to the detriment of the host. The key appeared to be Apolipoprotein E and the production of Tau proteins. What does this have to do with dietary laws you might ask, well let me explain. One of the undiscovered routes I proposed was Vagal nerve (10<sup>th</sup> Cranial Nerve) transference; a conduit directly from the stomach to the central nervous system. It was one of the only ways to explain the rapid transposition of an ingested abnormal protein to the brain (neurocellular phagocytosis) resulting in diseases we refer to as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. You would call one of these diseases Mad Cow. The story behind prion diseases is an exciting one. When Prusiner first proposed its existence he was laughed off the stage. Science refused to believe that abnormal proteins once ingested would cause a disease. Twenty years later it was a fact and more alarming would appear to be the reason that cattle had suddenly developed the disease because they were being fed rendered protein. Essentially herbivores were being turned into carnivores. Cattle were being fed byproducts that were remnants of dead animals. Let’s first think of the prohibition of contact and consumption of dead animals in Leviticus. If the animal is found dead, even if it was one of the approved animals for consumption, we would never be certain of what it had died from. Though not necessarily a prion disease, it was a forewarning that the byproducts of dead animals could still transfer disease, a finding that most certainly shocked the world in the 1980’s and still presents a major threat. Studies in a Wisconsin game park where there was an outbreak of CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) in mule deer in 1972 turned out to be a prion disease as well. The fact that Wisconsin is a major dairy state should send off the alarm bells as you’ll read in the next paragraph. All the deer in the park were eradicated and the park was not repopulated until ten years later. The new population also succumbed to CWD which meant that the prions had been retained in the soil and were virtually indestructible; a fact which leads into my discussion over the next couple of paragraphs.</p> <p><strong>Weasels, Mink and Ermine</strong></p> <p>And there’s more when it comes to prions. A little known study in the 1970’s traced a higher incidence in dairy states of downer cows where there was also intensive mink farming. A neurological disorder in mink that was later identified as a Mink Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy would be running at high levels when these mass outbreaks of downer cows would occur. For those that aren’t familiar with downer cows, it’s a term used for cows with a calcium deficiency and they start stumbling and going down. Usually, a quick IV drip of Cal-Mag salts gets them back up on their feet. The difference with these cows was they weren’t getting back up and were then sent off to the rendering plants with no diagnosis other than Downer Cow made. Incidentally, as my thesis examined, the incidence of CJD or the human prion disease was higher in the dairy states. Therein lays the link because in some way this disease in Mink was eventually showing in humans and since mink, ermine and weasels (mustelids) are all in the same family we have a credible reason why God specifically mentioned not eating weasels. What took us until now to understand a little better scientifically was known 3000 years ago. All we did was corroborate it with our current scientific techniques.</p> <p><strong>Only If It Jumps</strong></p> <p>How strange that there would be a distinction of which insects could be eaten based on their having large jointed hind legs for the purpose of jumping. Why should this even make a difference you must wonder? It took me a long time to understand this prohibition and it wasn’t until my work with prions that I finally understood it. Jumping insects like grasshoppers and locusts aren’t burrowing into the ground. They consume live and dead plant tissues above ground but not the organisms or waste in the soil. Whereas those insects that creep and crawl on the ground are consuming dead organic tissue, especially from other animals. A matter of fact, the Torah insists that once we die we do not embalm our bodies so that we will be consumed by the myriad of creatures that creep and crawl. And if that is the case, then any disease causing entity that cannot be destroyed will in turn be preserved within the bodies of these creatures. Now you should be recognizing the threat that was exposed during the investigation of prions and the insects consuming dead organic material. They are a conduit to the preservation of the disease ensuring that there is a preservation of these abnormal proteins unto eternity. We’ve only known about this new category of disease causing entities for the past thirty years. God knew about it three thousand years ago. Incredible as it sounds it is the only logical conclusion.</p> <p><strong>Scavengers</strong></p> <p>The birds listed are known carrion eaters. Not only that, some of them are hunters and would therefore eat the small animals and other birds that were forbidden. I’ve already provided a warning of the threat that dead animals present in the transference of disease. But it’s not only prions but many other viruses, bacteria and parasitic cysts that will be provided a continuance through intermediate hosts. </p></div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div id="mod_6817695" class="module moduleImage"><div id="imgs_6817695"> <div id="img_url_2624368"> <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshuar-Jesus-Part-10#" lightbox="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2624368.jpg" class="imglightbox"><img src="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2624368_f120.jpg" class="quarter" alt="" title="Click to see full-size image" height="179" width="120" /></a> </div> <div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2624368"> </div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div id="mod_6817582" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">Forbidden Swine</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_6817582"><p>It has only been over the last fifty years that medical research has demonstrated a close link between swine and humans. It is the major reason that the species is being suggested for xenotransplantation or in other words why science wants to use swine for replacement parts, such as hearts, skin, pancreatic cells, etc. The fact is that swine actually came off the evolutionary chain closer to humans than other species except for the primates. But being closer has its drawbacks which we have all come familiar with over the last year with the outbreak of Swine Flu. If we are close then we also share things in common such as parasites and worst of all viruses. Of major concern to transplant specialists are the REO and Retro viruses but there are far more diseases that can spread the fear of mass death within humanity. The transmission of disease between pigs and swine and back again is not a new thing. It would have been known long ago that pig farmers and those in close proximity to swine herds had a higher incidence of serious illness. Thereby through the forbidding of swine to be eaten the animals wouldn’t even be kept in the vicinity of the community as they’d serve no economic purpose. As a result the following would be avoided by their exclusion; Swine Flu, Swine Vesicular Disease, and Foot and Mouth virus; all of them serious diseases that theoretically could exterminate humanity. But let’s not forget the bacterial transmission of such diseases as brucellosis, campylobacteriosis, erysipelas, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, streptococcus, anthrax and colibacillosis. Swine are a threat to spread all of these and they can be as equally serious as the viruses. Then there are the parasitic diseases spread by swine such a trichinosis, sparganosis, taeniosis, scabies, cysticercosis, yersiniosis (Plague), tularaemia and balantidiasis. Probably the most serious, even though Plague was in that aforementioned list, is that pigs not only carry the tuberculosis of cattle and birds but they can also be the source for human tuberculosis and that has a greater precedence to exposure than the others.</p> <p>Are you thinking twice about eating pork, well you should be? As consumed species go, swine is the one that has the greatest chance of causing severe illness through ingestion because not even cooking the meat well eliminates all of the listed organisms and quite a number on the list are deadly. Foot and Mouth has been found to survive pickling, salting and drying of meat. Even after eradication of swine herds, some of the viruses and parasites were found to survive the decontamination process living on inanimate objects. Bacterial such as leptospirosis were found to be surviving well in water barrels and bowls and sparganosis favourite means of transfer is through water where the cysts for this foot and a half tapeworm are deposited. From just these few organisms it should readily be seen why there was such concern with any water that came in contact with these prohibited carcasses and why even the bowls and utensils became a concern. Once again you must say ‘Wow’, how amazing that three thousand years ago God was able to forewarn Moses about these possibilities.</p> </div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div id="mod_6817753" class="module moduleImage"><div id="imgs_6817753"> <div id="img_url_2624381"> <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshuar-Jesus-Part-10#" lightbox="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2624381.jpg" class="imglightbox"><img src="http://s2.hubimg.com/u/2624381_f260.jpg" class="half" alt="" title="Click to see full-size image" height="200" width="260" /></a> </div> <div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2624381"> </div></div></div></div><div id="mod_6817583" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">No Fins Or Scales</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_6817583"><p>From the fish perspective that leaves us with either those fish that scavenge the bottoms such as catfish or those that are aggressive hunters such as eels to be avoided but it also eliminates the shellfish and mollusks from the menu. We should all know about paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) by now, there’s been enough press about it. But what you may not know is that there are at least twenty derivatives of the saxitoxin produced by the dinoflagellates that then accumulates in the shellfish such as mussels, clams and scallops. PSP is only one of these and the others can be just as dangerous. The toxins are heat stable which means that not even cooking destroys them, so how confident are you when you consume your next meal of shellfish? Does Red Lobster provide a medical plan? Tetramine poisoning is common when eating whelks (marine snails) as it exists in their salivary glands causing a wide variety of neurological signs when ingested by humans. Not to mention that these snails are both predators and scavengers which means they’re picking up whatever diseases their last meal might be carrying. But besides toxins there are many other dangers presented by shellfish. Dioctophymiasis is a parasite from crayfish and other crustaceans in which the nematode migrates to our kidneys and begins its destructive process. Removal of the kidney is the only treatment. If both kidneys are affected then there is a serious problem. Short of a transplant, you will die. The facts are that shellfish are bottom filter feeders, which means their exposure to bacteria is quite high and it should be no surprise that they are disseminators of microbial diseases. The fact that aquaculture farmers know their lobsters are susceptible to such diseases as shell disease, Gaffkemia, microbial epibiont disease, Lagenidium disease, Haliphthoros disease, and Fusarium disease does not provide us with any reassurance that these entities do not cause a disorder in humans if digested. We just don’t know enough about them yet. Back in July of 2008 the FDA released an advisory regarding tomalley, the soft, green substance found in the body cavity of the lobster that functions as the liver and pancreas. High levels of PSP toxins were present in lobster tomalley The FDA advisory applied only to tomalley, the government declaring the rest of the lobster meat was safe since high levels of PSP toxins were only present in the lobster tomalley and only insignificant levels in the remainder of the lobster. Perhaps one should define insignificant since we know that these toxins can accumulate and cooking no matter how long did not eliminate it. The symptoms of PSP included tingling and/or numbness of the mouth, face or neck; muscle weakness; headache; and nausea and in extreme cases large amounts of the toxin if consumed, could lead to respiratory failure and death. They warned that symptoms usually would occur within two hours of exposure to the toxin. Two hours before you press the panic button. And if that wasn’t enough to worry about the FDA warned that PSP toxins normally occur in clams and other shellfish. Often these symptoms will lead to respiratory failure and death. Anyone experiencing these symptoms should seek medical attention was their last bit of advice. Perhaps the advice should have been “think twice before eating shellfish.” The Torah warned you first and now the FDA is giving you their warning.<br /><br />In regards to eels, there is still much we have to learn. In a report from the Protein Journal in 2008 the following was disclosed, “Although eels are well known to contain toxins in the serum, their chemical properties have remained to be clarified for a long time. In this study, a proteinaceous toxin was purified from the serum of Japanese eel <em>Anguilla japonica</em> and was lethal to both mice and crabs.” And in 1995 we find the following article which reveals that the researcher isolated and purified a lethal protein toxin from the Indian catfish <em>Plotosus canius</em>. The toxin was lethal in mice being both cardiotoxic, and having neuromuscular blocking activity. The toxin also produced cardiac arrest on isolated toad and guinea pig hearts. Prior administration of atropine and propanolol failed to counteract toxin activity on isolated heart preparations. Even antiserum raised against the toxin failed to antagonize its lethal activity in mice. And in a recent report from the University of Michigan a study there concluded that poisonous catfish are far more common than previously thought. The researcher Jeremy Wright warned of how catfish venoms poison nerves and break down red blood cells, producing severe pain, reduced blood flow, muscle spasms, and respiratory distress.</p> <p> </p></div></div><h2 class="subtitle">In Conclusion</h2>This article has merely emphasized the fact that three thousand years ago dietary laws were put in place for the preservation of mankind. There were issues that the people of that time period couldn’t even contemplate let alone understand. God asked that they trust Him. An act of faith that He knew what was best for humankind. And along came a heretic twelve hundred years later that challenged the Jerusalem Church. He told Peter he was a fool for following the commandments within the Torah when it came to the dietary laws. And then Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem and they stood down the elders in Jerusalem and managed to sway them to their opinion. A fact that it was not Yeshua who changed the dietary laws but a man named Paul. And ever since Christians have been acting contrary to the commandments of the Lord. Perhaps now the science of today and the teachings of a Karaite can help you reconsider that decision!Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-15647692316858510982011-07-20T04:06:00.000-07:002011-07-20T04:06:01.240-07:00Wisdom of Kahana: The Soul of Man<a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Wisdom-of-Kahana-The-Soul-of-Man">Wisdom of Kahana: The Soul of Man</a><br /><br /><div id="mod_15201774" class="module moduleText color0"><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_15201774"><p>One of the hardest concepts to appreciate and understand is the soul of man. And to further exasperate the problem, religions have decided to confound the matter even more by ignoring what is clearly defined in Genesis, that the soul was a particular gift from God to man, and to no other species on this planet. For it is clearly written that even after God had created all the other animals he did something different with man at the time of our inception.</p> <p><strong>7</strong> Then the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.</p> <p><strong>ז</strong> וַיִּיצֶר יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים אֶת-הָאָדָם, עָפָר מִן-הָאֲדָמָה, וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים; וַיְהִי הָאָדָם, לְנֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה.</p> <p>This breath of life was different from the the actual act of living which all the other creatures possessed. Man became the embodiment of this soul. We are the vessel to contain it but it is something very different and apart from our own existence. This was an actual part of God which He infused into man to become the soul and our essence. So even though you will have religious leaders today claiming that dogs and cats have a soul and they too will be granted an afterlife, the fact is that man is unique in this attribute. Only man, and man alone possesses a soul. And we don't even really possess it because as God clearely stated, we become part of it, not the other way around.</p> <p>Now what I am about to say may upset some of you because even though I am a Karaite, and some Karaites would like to believe there is a final reward, my beliefs are those of a Zadokite and therefore I have no concept of an afterlife. And to those that have come to believe that your soul grants you some form of immortality, and that you find some respite from the hardships of this world by finding a place in heaven where you can idle away eternity in discussion with sages and ancestors of the past, I am afraid those are concepts that have little to do with the 'soul' that I am about to discuss. The only reward to life is this beautiful gift of life we already have. And we should choose not to follow God's laws because we expect some reward of eternity or paradise but because it is necessary for the betterment of the soul that we have been gifted with to nourish and protect for reasons I will attempt to explain.</p> <p>What I am about to relate to you has to do with the Shekinah, or what Moses described as the cloud which contained the presence of God. It was not God but a manifestation of his creative power, or as we might describe in our scientific language of today, an energy 'sink' or 'pool'. And as I have said repeatedly, all things come form the Shekinah and all things return to the Shekinah. It is the Shekinah that provided us with the origin of what we refer to as our soul. Perhaps we should think of it as a library book that we have borrowed for a time, derived great joy and pleasure from it, but when we are done we must return it so that others may also benefit. I know this is a difficult concept to accept but let me explain:</p></div></div><div id="mod_15201960" class="module moduleText color0"><h2 class="subtitle">The Soul of Man</h2><div style="" class="txtd" id="txtd_15201960"><p><br /></p> <p>Above all things is the greatness of God, but under Him and above all else on this earth is the soul of man. The soul of man is not separate from God but is in itself a part of God by which He has spanned the gulf between Heaven and Earth. It is the chord which binds man to God and why man is the only creature on earth that recognizes its own mortality. Only man understands that he will grow old and succumb to death and pass into nothingness. No other animal on this planet understands that their lives will end in decay and doom.</p> <p>And it is this nothingness, this sentence of death which frightens man the most and why he has always desperately searched for an answer to immortality. All of man’s superiority and yet mankind is terrified by the ultimate fate that awaits. Born as a hapless babe and dying like a hapless babe, crying for one more chance, one more hour, fearing the unknown and not appreciating the divine plan where the spark returns to its origin through the chord attached.</p> <p>To the beast of the field, they have no comprehension of time. Each day is like the next. There is no understanding of the changes of life, the span of time or the desire of youth. The carnivore has no understanding that one day itself will be prey to the ravages of time, its bones bleached beneath the blazing sun no different from the animals it has slaughtered. The cow marched through the abattoir has no concept of what awaits in the stunning chamber. Only man can appreciate what happens next and it shakes him to the core of his bones.</p> <p>The soul must not be confused with life for all creatures have life. That is nothing more than an electrical-chemical spark that infuses the cells with activity, the heart to beat, the nerves to relay their signals through the synapses. But that is not the soul, that essence of spirit that drives us to achieve more than we think ourselves capable of achieving, to contemplate that which we have no knowledge of. The receptors in the nose smell but it is the soul that brings back sweet memories to a particular odour or fragrance that fills us with a longing and desire. It is the stomach that digests, but the soul that makes us savour a particular flavour that makes our heart sing. Our eyes see but it is the soul that gives us that second sight that transmits what we saw into lessons we treasure for the rest of our lives.</p> <p>All creatures can sense fear, rage, anger and love. These are basic needs that drive life to survive and exist. But other than man, what creature can have a sense of honour and shame, justice and treachery, or chivalry or cowardice. These are qualities that require not only intellect but willpower and the ability to overcome the basic instincts. Only with a soul can a man react in a completely opposite manner to the fight or flight instincts that are hardwired into all living organisms. It is the soul which provides us with the ability to act noble, to appreciate beauty, to act contrary to our animal directives.</p> <p>The soul is malleable, waiting for us to shape it well beyond the simple spark that was infused within us the day we were conceived. It is ours to beautify, ours to fill with goodness, ours to glorify with love. In the same manner that we can shape it into a thing of ugliness should we choose to follow a path of darkness, filled with vices and hatred. What you do with the soul is within your own power and therefore it is left to your imagination to carve and shape into a final image of your life. The soul thirsts for its final transformation and it is the product of free will which was God’s gift to mankind. God has provided his guidelines by which man is to shape the soul but the determination of whether one does or doesn’t is left to each one of us.</p> <p>Though man will never know immortality, the soul is already part of the everlasting existence of the universe. It is returned to the Shekinah when life is done, back to the domain which is God, Himself. How it returns to the Shekinah is our responsibility. Glorified, splendiferous, or scarred and damaged, that is within our power. And only when we realize that our existence does have a purpose, that it just isn’t about being born, living a life of toil and hardship, and then dying but in reality is finding ways in which to care and nurture this soul through the love and happiness that life can offer, then and only then do we face death knowing that we can achieve immortality but in a manner different than we assumed it would be achieved. Once we appreciate that throughout our lives we carry the soul like a foetus in the womb in order to give birth to it at the moment of our death then we have also attained an understanding of the meaning of life. The knowlege and experience that we impart to this soul will then either be of benefit or detriment to those already contained within the Shekinah, awaiting to spark another life, another existence. That is within our power. That is how our life is measured and weighed in the balance when we reach our final destiny. Not seeking some personal benefit and reward as we would like to believe, reducing God to some market haggler for our own fulfillment but instead with nobility and honour knowing that we have done our part to shape a better future for mankind and provided and instilled the love for a kinder world with the spark that we have passed on.</p></div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-36313191358705704802011-07-16T22:20:00.000-07:002011-07-16T22:22:10.598-07:00Wisdom of Kahana: The Nature of God<a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/WIsdom-of-Kahana-The-Nature-of-God">Wisdom of Kahana: The Nature of God</a><br />
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<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_15179958"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_15179958">In <a class="" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Why-Karaism-Abodah-Zerah">Karaism</a>, it is the role of those born Kohen to teach. And although that is what I have been trying to do over the years, it would appear that there is far more that I could be doing and should be doing. So often, I find that people are willing to debate the small and insignificant matters and lose their perspective on the big picture. Sadly, all this leads to is confrontration and consternation within and amongst my Kariate brethren and in so doing fragments us further. And for that reason I have decided to start this series which will provide my perspective on matters but not to the infinite dissection that some seem to desire but through a broad scope with panoramic vision. Karaism was intended and is still intended to paint its teachings with as broad a brush as possible. It mattered not so much whether God's name is pronounced with a 'vav' or an extra 'heh' but that in our hearts and our mind that we knew there was only God to turn to in our hours of need. That it was only his divine existence that we should praise, and that it was only He that could bless us. Everything else was of inconsequence because He needs not to hear His name upon the lips of men but only inscribed upon their hearts. And because this very issue has seemed to have taken upon itself a life of its own and caused endless debate amongst some <a class="" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-History">Karaites</a>, some of which has turned insulting and cruel at a personal level, then I felt it was time to do what it is I have been hereditarily conscripted to do. So this first teaching will be on what I see as the essential nature of God without concern if we pronounce His name with a vav or a heh.<br />
</div></div><h2 class="subtitle">The Nature of God</h2>There is but one God. He is the designer, the creator and the ultimate ruler over all things. He is everlasting and all powerful, both to degrees that can never be fathomed by the intellect of mankind. His existence permeates all things and for that reason He is invisible but yet we see Him at all times and He is unknowable but yet we know of his nature through the world we live in. He is silent, yet his words and actions ring in our ears every day of our lives.<br />
He is the father of fathers, the mother of mothers, for all has come from Him yet he is not defined by sexual attributes or gender. He, or Him is only a pronoun, a tool of language but in no way tries to define God. Those that try to do so do not understand. Man never walks alone, he is never unescorted because God is there at all times whether we choose to see Him or not. He is self-created, there at the beginning and at the end, and He was the one that separated the Light from the Darkness, the Chaos from the Ordered, the Substance from the Void. His is the universal consciousness from which all existence has sprung.<br />
His knowlege is the wisdom of an eternity, and hist strength reaches to the limits of infinity. He dwells within and without the universe, from the core of an atom to the heart of a blazing sun. From the emptiness of space to the dancing radiance of the quazar.<br />
His voice whispers to us from the running waters as they splach over the rocks and pebbles, and roars to us from the force of the whirling tornado. He sighs from the bending treetops and he laughs upon the leaves dancing as they blow in the wind. All these are the voice of God and yet we hear him not.<br />
A man dreams and wishes that it would be reality but God dreams and it becomes reality. Man tries to rationalize God through reason, but the essence of God is beyond reason and therefore always beyond human comprehension. Man seeks God through science but fails to understand that even the laws of science had to be set by one who possessed the creative power. Therefore it is nothing more than a tool and a tool can never reveal its maker. Because through His laws of nature he governs the destinies of all living creatures and we are bound to these laws that we continually try to master. All the forces within and withou are controlled by God and that which we continually seek to explain these forces is none other than Him. Whether we accept it or not, our spirits are filled with the urge to seek God. It is an insatiable hunger no matter how much we try to deny it.<br />
All things have their appointed place and purpose in the universe, and all existence conforms to the laws that He has created. The workings of the universe transcends our understanding so how can we even attempt to understand He that has created the universe? Few will understand the path that He has set for us. We wil curse the stones that cut our feet and scream in agony at the thorny brambles and adversity that block our way. We equate riches and fame with blessings and money and possessions with heavenly reward but none of these are from God and only deceive us into thinking we have found Him. For God is in the order of nature and His plan is in the direction of its orderly laws. Look for Him amongst the stars in the heaven and the sands on the beach and then you will appreciate His grand scheme.<br />
See His glory in the heavens, his brilliance in the light of the sun that gives life to all creatures and plants upon this Earth, his peace in the moon that inspires us to love, his creativity in all which inhabit the oceans and the air, His bounty in the fruits of all that grows from the soils of our planet. Then and only then will you truly appreciate the Glory of God. <br />
The Earth bends to His will. Mountains rise and islands sink beneath the waves. Ground quakes and the winds ravage all that we create. We are insignificant against all that He has created and we must find our place in His universe. We are bound by His limitations but these are still beyond our grasp for He has given us the intellect and capacity to far exceed our present knowledge.<br />
We must realize that the sun shines down on the good and the wicked alike. The heartbreak of misfortune will strike the worthy and unworthy with indifference. Only the wise man will appreciate that this seeming indiffence by God actually serves a purpose. For God neither rewards nor punishes. Long ago he gave us the intellect to establish our own fate. But all that we think that we accomplish has only been throuh His initial design. Each man ultimately decrees his own fate and is rewarded according to their own achievements.<br />
Order and beauty is God's gift to us. All things within the universe move accordingly to the direction of His hand. And it is the beauty of this creation which is His face. It is the awe of our own existence that is His wisdom. It is the sounds we hear from a world of amazement that is His voice. Know that He is with us always. He walks beside us wherever we may go. He is all that we are, and all that there is. From the burning bush He told us so but so many fail to listen and understand. Let us appreciate that Life is a gift and existence is its reward. We come from the Shekinah and all things return to the Shekinah. Such is His law, such is His glory. <br />
Avrom Aryeh-Zuk <a class="" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaites-and-Khazarim">Kahana</a>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-14522103978519861542011-07-06T18:53:00.000-07:002011-07-06T18:53:07.114-07:00Jesus of the Talmud: Rabbinical Shame<div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_6289288"><h2 class="subtitle">Changing World</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_6289288"><br />
Why now? A simple question that deserves a simple answer. Although there are many that will argue that the world is a far better place now than it has ever been, based on their arguments that mankind has become more tolerant, more accepting of differences, more liberal in its thinking, more technologically attuned, less prejudicial against its fellow man and generally world focused regarding global causes rather than the egocentric universe of the past, I beg to differ. These are merely illusions provided to us on a daily basis by the spin doctors that control our media, our politicians, our education and if I dare say so, our religious institutions too. Scrape past the thin veneer and it becomes obvious that which is being promoted as a better, kinder, wiser world is in reality nothing more than a repackaging of everything we struggled and fought against in the past that we knew was wrong. But in past days we would speak up and would not tolerate the misappropriation of power. The wants and desires of the majority have been replaced by the whims and cravings of minorities wishing to exercise their way of life over the many. The prejudices of the past have taken on an entirely new set of labels; religious prejudices of the past are now adorned with national labels; color prejudices are merely shrouded in economic adjectives; cults and glamorized activists are merely the masks of those we viewed in the past as megalomaniacs bent on the destruction of the world. We have words such as ethnic cleansing, collateral damage, terrorism, anti-terrorism and anti-anti-terrorism bantered about as daily occurrences. Movies and television have raised the occult to a desirable status of the young generation, while an older generation looks at the anti-hero or the vigilante as a desirable endpoint since law and order no longer bears the hallmark of justice. Nothing has actually changed other than the fact that because we have now relabeled our sins of the past we can now say that mankind has progressed beyond those days of violence, pettiness and misguided prejudices. If the pendulum has swung the other way, then being 180 degrees from the starting point does not make the offense any better, merely different, designed to confuse and silence the average person who still dreams of a better world. And that is our greatest sin in that we have become silent and let this happen.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_6289289"><div id="imgs_6289289"><div id="img_url_2398080"><a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2398080.jpg" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Karaite-Comments-To-My-Brother-Yeshua-Jesus-Part-5#"><img alt="" class="quarter" height="149" src="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/2398080_f120.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="120" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_2398080"></div></div></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_6289290"><h2 class="subtitle">Curse of the Talmud</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_6289290">A while back I posed the question as to whether it was acceptable for someone to perform evil in order to achieve something good. That question runs throughout the plot of Shadows of Trinity (<a href="http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html"><u>http://www.eloquentbooks.com/ShadowsOfTrinity.html</u></a>) as each of the real-life characters was faced with answering the same question for themselves. To some it was clearly acceptable based on the things they did during those years at the end of sixteenth century. The Emperor Rudolf II definitely thought so since his status as monarch was preserved as a result, at least for another two decades before he was forced to abdicate. So it was not too surprising when some of my readers responded that they too would find it perfectly acceptable as long as the response was of a greater benefit than the action. Let me rephrase that, the majority of those that responded found it perfectly acceptable. But therein lies the problem because nothing in life is guaranteed. Just because one expects to achieve a certain result or reaction does not necessarily mean it will happen. Exactly the misguided premise that the Rabbis took when they decided to give their perspective on Christianity when writing the Talmud. Rather than deal with and confess to their own iniquity when they transformed the messiah legends that created the false legacy making Christianity possible in the first place as discussed in previous articles in this series, they instead chose to attack the religion that resulted from their fabrications, thinking that by doing so that they could make it disappear through ridicule and condemnation. Now it should be remembered that these were the ignorant actions of men living between the first and fourth centuries A.D. , so it would be difficult for us to expect any better of them or try to judge them according to modern standards but they are living proof that often evil actions do not result in good responses even though in their minds that was their expectation. Instead, by recording their religious intolerance, bias, prejudice and desire to see the Minim dead, they essentially created the future waves of anti-Semitism that underscored Christian history once the Church came to power. The Minim was an early Hebraic reference to the Christians along with the term Nazorean. The actual translation of Minim was those Jews that used the Torah in a manner deemed contrary to Judaism. One must remember that the early Christians were all Jews and therefore they’re justification of Jesus was Torah based since they used the very precepts that had been laid down by the rabbis to battle the Sadducees over the derivation of the messiah. Just how these so-called knowledgeable and righteous men could have expected any different response from a people they identified as enemies and worthy of being smitten from existence and sent to hell is beyond any reasoning I can think of? As it is written in the Talmud in Seder Mo’ed (Rosh Hashanah) page 17a, ‘But as for the Minim and the informers and the scoffers, who rejected the Torah and denied the resurrection of the dead, and those who abandoned the ways of the community, and those who ‘spread their terror in the land of the living’, and who sinned and made the masses sin, like Jeroboam the son of Nebat and his fellows — these will go down to Gehinnom and be punished there for all generations’. This very nice comment of condemnation to a rotting hell for eternity was not only directed at Christians but at Zadokites as well. One must not forget as much as the rabbis resented the early Christians their hatred for the Sadducees was far greater. In fact, anyone who disagreed with the rabbis was going to be sent to Hell forever. But the rabbis, whom I’ve often described as old men sitting about with nothing better to do than listen to the sound of their own voices, went further than they should, making comments regarding Christianity and Jesus that they barely attempted to disguise by giving false names to the individuals. But unable to restrain themselves they would always insert enough facts that it became obvious whom they were talking about as is the case of Sanhedrin 106a where they wrote, ‘Balaam also the son of Beor, the soothsayer, [did the children of Israel slay with the sword]. A soothsayer? But he was a prophet! R. Johanan said: At first he was a prophet, but subsequently a soothsayer. R. Papa observed: This is what men say, 'She who was the descendant of princes and governors, played the harlot with carpenters.' Examining their comment about a woman that was from the Davidic line that wed a carpenter, but played the harlot indicating she had someone else’s child, and that son was initially a prophet but became a soothsayer or magician subsequently is obviously alluding to Jesus. They furthermore say in their addled talk that he was slain as a result of the Jews which only further infuriated Christian clerics when they translated the Talmud. Their attempt to ridicule Christianity, never thinking it would become a dominant religion was their attempt to do something evil with the expected outcome that it would simply disappear over time. Such stupidity has led to the massacre of millions of Jews over time, all because a bunch of men sought power and had neither political nor diplomatic acumen to understand neither the ways of the world nor the foresight to realize that if you continually hit upon someone they will eventually hit back a hundred times harder.<br />
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The matter becomes even more obtuse when one realizes that the Talmud that is published today has undergone an extensive editing process over the years due to censorship. When Christian leaders became aware of some of the sayings of the Rabbis in the Talmud regarding Christianity and Jesus, they demanded these be changed. Some of the ancient Talmud manuscripts prior to these changes still exist today and one of the more noteworthy comments in Sandhedrin 107b was as follows: And a Master has said, 'Jesus the Nazarene practised magic and led Israel astray.' At first it doesn’t sound like much. Hardly enough to raise the ire or objections of any reader. It’s not until one appreciates what these rabbis have admitted in their statement. From my perspective they have publicly stated that Jesus possessed powers beyond that of most men and that he had a considerable following. As a Karaite I do not see this as a declaration of his being a messiah but what it does suggest to me that he most definitely had the abilities of a prophet, not dissimilar from an Elijah or an Elisha. If that was the case and they did know that he was special right from the start, then what were they thinking by continually ridiculing him in the Talmud. Surely they knew the lessons from the Tanach that we are a people guilty of harassing and attempting to slay the prophets sent to us by God and their own actions were reaffirming this. <br />
It is obvious that these Rabbis had lost control of the situation. Rather than remedy the turmoil they created they only aggravated it further and alienated Jews and Christians further in the process. Nothing would improve and the resultant separation would never be resolved. The planned evil that they perpetrated certainly didn’t result in a bettering of mankind. Modern Rabbanites acknowledge that their ancient predecessors may have lacked critical judgment where necessary but then excuse them as having lived in an age without the benefits of critical scrutiny that we now possess. Rabbanites agree that some of the statements made were inflammatory and not worthy of men they hold in reverence and quickly shovel them underneath the carpet and exclaim that we can ignore these minor transgressions because of the greatness that is found elsewhere in the Talmud.<br />
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I for one am not so forgiving to accept that as a legitimate defence and I’m certainly not willing to accept any part of the Talmud which was written by these same men that were never divinely inspired based on the dissemination of intolerance that they exhibited in their writings. God would have never accepted that nor would advise His children to do so. But there also is a logical refutation to the defence made by the modern Rabbanites in support of these ancient Talmudists. And as a logical equation it removes any doubt as to their validity and is written as follows: If their logic was impaired; if their intentions were misguided and if the evil they perpetrated was nourished by malcontent and misinformation and then it must be accepted that their judgment was both inaccurate and unsupported in this regard. And that is being true then it must be assumed that everything else they’ve incorporated into the Talmud was made under identical conditions and therefore is doubtful as to its accuracy and authenticity. Essentially if they were completely wrong about their facts and approach in one area and that they fabricated the facts and stories to support their beliefs then the same will hold true for everything they produced. That would include their doctrines of the Messiah which were purposely designed to run contrary to those of the Sadducees and Zadokites. And from this we can deduce that if statement (A) being their intent behind particular stories in the Talmud was malicious and non-righteous, this leads to conclusion (C) that the Talmud was therefore not sanctioned by God. Furthermore statement (B) that these stories included derogatory and defamatory statements regarding sects and other religions which resulted from Rabbinical fabrications and lies regarding the advent of the messiah and perpetrated as in (A). That being the case, then if B=A and A=C then it can be concluded that similarly B=C indicating the resulting religions of Rabbinic alterations of the truth are not sanctioned by God.<br />
<br />
It was this scenario that Isaac ben Abraham Troki found himself immersed in when he examined the repulsion between the two religions. But he also knew that as long as rabbinical dogma took a sarcastic and malicious approach to Christianity the slaughter of Jews by Christians would continue as a normal reaction of human nature. Only by exercising a logical approach and finding a way to promote self-evaluation amongst Christians he knew that many would see the validity and sense of his argument and Christianity would then be brought to a crossroads, not because the rabbis ridiculed them but because their own conscious demanded they do so. And upon self-evaluation he hoped they would recognise the preceding errors behind their origins and move closer to aligning themselves with Karaite beliefs.</div></div><h2 class="subtitle">Isaac ben Abraham Troki</h2>As I have introduced the logical argument, Troki went on to prove in the <b>Hazuk Amunah</b> that the argument was flawless. There were four conditions he wrote that demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that Yeshua was not the Messiah and these were all provided from the New Testament. The first condition of irrefutable proof had to do with the pedigree provided. The second had to do with the acts he performed as described in the Gospels. The third had to do with the period in which he lived and the last was based solely on the fact that during his existence the promises which herald the advent of the Messiah were not fulfilled and only by fulfillment could the identity of the Messiah be beyond a shadow of doubt.<br />
The first, regarding pedigree was the Gospels own refutation that he was a patrilineal descendant of King David. Since it is written in Chapter 1 of Mathew that Joseph did not know Mary until after she had given birth to Jesus, then Joseph’s pedigree has absolutely nothing to do with Yeshua. Conflicting pedigrees between Mathew and Luke don’t help the matter either but since both end with Joseph, to be the result of virginal birth, then neither really matters.<br />
The second, looking at specific acts of Yeshua as indicating he was not the Messiah can be summed up with just one, the rest being supporting details. In Zechariah 9:10 it is written that the Messiah will speak peach until the heathen and in Isaiah 2:4 it is said they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks, nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But Yeshua says in Matthew 10:34 says, “Think not that I have come to make peace on earth: I came not to send peace but the sword, and to set a man at variance against his father and a daughter against her mother and the daughter-iin-law against her mother-in-law.” In essence Yeshua was telling everyone right there and then he was not the Messiah.<br />
The third issue raised by Troki was about timing. Isaiah stated in 2:2 that the timing of the Messiah comes to pass in the latter days when the Lord’s house shall be established on top of the mountains.” Clearly Yeshua did not exist during the latter days. Two thousand years afterwards we can look back and say they definitely weren’t the latter days. <br />
And fourthly Troki raised the issue of fulfilling the promises of the Messiah. These included the prophesy of Daniel in 2:44 that at the time of the Messiah there will only be one kingdom and one King, that being the Messiah. Of course that isn’t the case with the world divided into many kingdoms, empires and states. And Isaiah speaks of the time of the Messiah being a time of one creed and one religion and that is the religion of Israel in 52:1. Well, that certainly isn’t the case either. In fact it’s the opposite with many of the old pagan religions such as Wiccan, Earth-goddess, etc. experiencing a revival. This is echoed in Zechariah 13:2 with the predicted disappearance of all false idols. Once again, in this time we are living the opposite is happening. Even more condemning in this regard is the prediction by Zephaniah 3:13 that when the Messiah does come the remnant of Israel shall not speak lies, nor shall a deceitful tongue be found in their mouths. I think one can already tell from my numerous articles in which I argue against the false and misleading statements made by the Rabbanites that his certainly has not come to pass nor does it appear to be in any time soon. But most importantly, as a Karaite, the Shekinah plays a very important role in my beliefs of Messianic times. All things come from the Shekinah and all things return to it is the core of my beliefs. And it is clearly evident from Ezekiel 37:26 that we will know when the Shekinah has returned because it will be as it was in the former days with the Lord living in our midst evermore and the people will increase in prophecy, wisdom and knowledge. That definitely has not happened and it was reported during the Roman-Jewish War that the exact opposite may have happened with people witnessing what they assumed was a remnant of the Shekinah fleeing from the Temple in Jerusalem prior to its destruction.<br />
It should be evident from Troki’s opening arguments and my few comments in addition to his that the logical approach of utilizing the Christian Gospels as the determinant of Yeshua’s messiahship was the only approach that should have been taken and the rabbis when they had the opportunity to fix their mistakes completely fumbled the ball in that respect. Now we are left with the consequences of their errors in judgment. And once more I raise the initial question of whether it is acceptable to perform evil in order to achieve good and I will qualify it with my own answer: Only when the outcome is guaranteed to be far greater than the evil committed. And since there are no guarantees in life then like my ancestor Yakov Kahana in <b>Shadows of Trinity</b>, I’d have to say the answer is ‘No’.Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-7765015241779637382011-07-02T00:01:00.000-07:002011-07-02T00:01:43.096-07:00Historical Evidence fo the Ten Plagues of the Exodus<div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12645072"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12645072">The last article established some basic considerations that are hard to refute. For your recollection, these were: 1. The Exodus occurred in the last two years of the reign of Amenhotep III, 2. Moses was a Crown Prince of Egypt and in fact was the renegade Thutmose, 3. Monotheism was already becoming a contentious issue in Egypt and was challenging the existing pantheon of gods. 4. The city of Pi-Ramses was actually Avaris and over a twenty-five year span, Amenhotep used slave labour comprised of the Hapiru, the same people it is believed were the Hebrews. All this sounds very convincing but it is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. There is far more evidence which is about to be discussed which helps cement the case solid. Once again, I repeat my belief that the more scientific, archeological, historical evidence that can be provided to support the Exodus story, even if it does not actually portray the events exactly as they are described in the Torah these are vital to the overall teachings of the Law Giver, proving that it was not the story but the lessons that must be learned by all. Again, this is the essential pillar of Karaism, that the teachings and the law supersedes all else. And if clarifying the means by which these teachings are portrayed helps to create believers of those that have lost their way, then so much the better. Because teaching is what not only being a Karaite but being Kahana is what our purpose in life has been since the beginning.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_12645073"><div id="imgs_12645073"> <div id="img_url_4548387"> <a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/4548387.jpg" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-9#"><img alt="" class="half" height="226" src="http://s4.hubimg.com/u/4548387_f260.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="260" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_4548387"> </div></div></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12645074"><h2 class="subtitle">Dating the Plagues</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12645074"> The matter of the plagues has already been discussed in the article <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus</a> and therefore rediscussing each individual plague doesn’t serve any purpose in establishing the time line since none were ever recorded by Egyptian historians. But this article did serve the purpose of demonstrating that such events could occur if there was a major eruption. And the reality of an eruption of this magnitude was thoroughly discussed in <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2</a> where we see there were a series of major volcanic eruptions occurring in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries BC, the Thera eruption being the most catastrophic and the one which occurred during the reign of Amenhotep III.<br />
Now the first of those articles looked at the plausibility of the plagues occurring but the question has always been why was there never any record of them in Egyptian history? And as mentioned previously, Egyptian Pharaohs had no desire to list their disasters for posterity, concentrating only on their successes. Unfortunately, this meant that even if they did occur, there purposely would be no record of them as proof and that is where most investigators leave off their pursuit and classify the event as impossible to prove. Had they thought beyond the black and white they would have seen that there was circumstantial evidence to suggest the plagues actually did occur and they happened in the last two years of Amenhotep III’s reign. <br />
For every action there is a reaction. We have all experienced this law of mankind. If someone was to hurt us, we would take action to protect ourselves from it ever happening again. There is always a response to an adverse event and Amenhotep was no different from any other human. He had been hurt, his country had suffered, his firstborn was lost to him forever, and he would rely on the gods to ensure that he would never suffer such a catastrophe again. There was only one god of Egypt that he would turn to. The goddess of disasters, Sekhmet and in the last two years of his reign, the Pharoah dedicated to Amun and Ra at his birth was suddenly history’s biggest advocate of this small time goddess. He began erecting hundreds upon hundreds of statues all over the country. The temple at Ashur that he was building for the chief goddess Must was suddenly dedicated to this second string goddess, Sekhmet. Many of these statues can now be found in museums all over the world because he erected so many. At Luxor alone he erected seven hundred Sekhmet statues. So despite history’s recording of Amenhotep III’s reign as being a period of stability, prosperity and expansion, there was obviously something that occurred that sent shivers down his spine and made him start trying to appease the goddess of disasters almost to the point of madness. If we examine Egyptian Mythology and realize that Sekhmet according to legend tried to destroy all of mankind and only through the intervention of her father Ra was mankind saved, then we have a gauge of the degree of madness he was experiencing. As far as Amenhotep was concerned, he was saving his people, his country, his kingdom from total destruction; the weapons of mass destruction known as the Ten Plagues. He was desperately trying to appease the goddess of disaster so that she would stop the plagues being visited upon the land by this unknown God of his son, Thutmose.</div></div><h2 class="subtitle">Summary</h2>Now we have a date. The last two years of Amenhotep III"s reign which places the events somwhere between the years 1350 to 1360 BC since we don't actually know the actual dates of Egyptian Pharaohs within more or less of a decade. Even though the historical records do not say that the plagues were visited upon Egypt at this time, we have enough evidence in the form of statues to suggest that a major catastrophe did occur that terrified the Egyptian monarch beyond any nightmare that we could imagine. But then again, we don't have to imagine it because the Torah provides us with a pretty accurate description of what occurred. I'm not about to stop here, there is more to my investigation yet to be revealed but that will have to wait until the next article. So until then, Peace be with You.<br />
Avrom Aryeh Zuk KahanaBelieverhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-53316134656801272212011-06-05T11:47:00.000-07:002011-06-05T11:47:30.670-07:00True Moses of the Exodus<div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12616390"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12616390">Every hub I’ve written on the Exodus has been leading towards these next few that I’m writing. This article is designed to shock the senses; to make the reader ask questions of their own foundation of beliefs, not to weaken but instead to strengthen their convictions. It purposely will interweave historical fact with the existing legendary tales and demonstrate that what we have perceived and dismissed as legends were probably legitimate historical details that others in the past, those responsible for recording the actual origins of our religion, refused to accept and either purposely dismissed or eliminated in their process of refinement. In their efforts to rewrite history for the sake of preserving religious icons in their own image they have in reality not achieved affirmation but instead created doubt, confusion and skepticism in the society of the last hundred or so years, because we are now a people that thrive on facts and are suspicious of anything that lacks supporting documentation or scientific grounding. Essentially, we need proof that what we have been expected to accept on faith for three thousand years really did occur. There will be those that will find the statements made in the content of this article threatening. They will not understand that just because the facts might present a different storyline from what they have grown up to believe does not mean that the teachings are in any way negated. Because as some of the more notable Karaite scholars recognized, the stories of the bible are exactly that, stories. Stories designed to convey lessons in morality, justice, behavior and social interaction. And it mattered not if the story did or did not happen precisely as described but only that the laws as presented to us were handed down by God to his chosen representative and that we recognize that we have only managed to survive for the past three millennia as a result of these laws. Sadly, too often the focus has been on the dazzling bling and very little of the substance. The miracle is not whether a wind from the east parted the Reed Sea and a people walked across on dry land but that this hunted, refugee people actually survived at all and went on to conquer a land within one generation to call their own. Too often we are mesmerized by the spectacular and fail to recognize that it is the simplicity that should draw our attention. The definition of faith should never be about being led around blindly and believing wholeheartedly in the unrealistic and unimaginable. There are other words for that kind of belief and faith certainly isn’t one of them. As a Karaite, faith is about trusting and believing in an interpretation that seems good to me. Creating a framework that reinforces the structure of my religious observance and customs. That is the essential role of the historical traditions in the Torah, and thusly we must relegate them to their actual purpose and not transform them into the actual religious teachings that are held sacred and therefore immutable. They merely provide the scenery, the background, but are not the actual religious ordinance that we must follow. </div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_12616391"><div id="imgs_12616391"> <div id="img_url_4541132"> <a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/4541132.jpg" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-8#"><img alt="" class="half" height="260" src="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/4541132_f260.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="260" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_4541132"> </div></div></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12616392"><h2 class="subtitle">A Rose By Any Other Name</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12616392">I have already introduced the likelihood of our Law Giver, Moses, being none other than the crown prince Thutmose, son of Amenhotep III. There are many reasons for making this supposition and once they are laid out in a clear and organized manner, it will become obvious how I have drawn this conclusion. This particular article will concentrate on the background of this mysterious Crown Prince that disappeared completely from the annals of Egyptian history, except for his mummified cat that was entombed along with his mother. The one piece of evidence that tells us that a mother’s love transcends even the eternal command of a disappointed father that his memory was to be obliterated completely. Clearly, the Crown Prince Thutmose was no longer living within his father’s kingdom and was clearly not welcome had he returned. Thutmose, the son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye, was also known as Djutmose, Thutmosis and Tuthmose. His name means "Thoth is Born" or "Child of Thoth." Thutmose disappears from Egyptian records completely somewhere between year 27 and year 33 in his father's reign, so he never became a Pharaoh, otherwise he would have been Pharaoh Thutmose V. If the reign of Amenhotep III (1390-1352) is correct then that means that Thutmose disappeared between 1363 and 1357 BCE. One can attempt to justify his absences by claiming that he probably died, but that would not explain why his tomb was not discovered with or close to those of the rest of his family. The tomb that would have been constructed for his eventual entombment since he was already named as Crown Prince was never found in the cluster that was reserved for Amenhotep’s family. What we do know is that during the short period of his recorded life that he was a very important member of the royal family, clearly being groomed to be Amenhotep III's successor. The existence of Thutmose is also attested by a total of 7 pairs of calcite and pottery vases that are held in the Louvre. As for his mother taking his mummified cat into her sarcophagus, we can appreciate had he died, there would have been numerous mementos that Tiye would have taken with her, but the apparent absence of anything of that nature tells us that they had all been purposely destroyed. </div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12616419"><h2 class="subtitle">Monotheism In Egypt</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12616419"> To comprehend the religious understanding of the Crown Prince Thutmose, it is necessary to appreciate exactly what was happening during the 18<sup>th</sup> Dynasty. A religious reformation was occurring, that reached its pinnacle under the reign of Akhenaton, Thutmose’s brother. One can describe Akhenaton’s attempt to alter the religious practices of Egypt as an introduction of monotheism, but it ultimately met with failure. The question that should be immediately asked is whether Akhenaton just arrived at this unique vision of monotheism of his own accord, or was he in fact attempting to copy a pattern of beliefs already established by a predecessor? It certainly wasn’t his father that he modelled himself after. His father’s birth name was Amenhotep Heqawaset ("Amun is Pleased, Ruler of Thebes). His father’s throne name was Nub-maat-ra ("Lord of Truth is Ra"). The combination of these names into a singular title would be Amram. Again, one of those reoccurring coincidences that seem to surround the Book of Exodus in that Amram was also the name of Moses’ father. And as I have said repeatedly, there are no coincidences. Amenhotep III also used the Horus name Kanakht Khaemmaat ("Strong Bull, Arising in Thebes"), the Nebty name Semenhepusegerehtawy ("One establishing laws, pacifying the two lands") and the Golden Horus name Aakhepesh-husetiu ("Great of valour, smiting the Asiatics"). So it is apparent that his father was definitely not a monotheist or would he have been in any way a role model for the young Akhenaton’s monotheism. <br />
Yet, although the worship of Ra, Amun and Horus are clearly evident in the 18<sup>th</sup> Dynasty, so to were the beliefs in the ancient gods of Egypt, those that came first. <em>Djehuty</em> is sometimes alternatively rendered as Jehuti, Tahuti, Tehuti, Zehuti, Techu, or Tetu or as jt-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%E1%B9%AFr" title="Nṯr">nṯr</a> "god father". The first rendering of Jehuti is very close to names that were commonly used by the children of Israel as in Jehudi, or one from the Tribe of Yehudah or Judah, the J being pronounced as a Y in Hebrew. Once again, another of those coincidences but that is not the point of this discussion so we won’t explore it further. The Crown Prince Thutmose, named after this primordial god Djehuty would be aware of the many roles his namesake held in the Egyptian pantheon. Thoth served as a mediating power, especially between good and evil, making sure neither had a decisive victory over the other. According to the texts of the ancient Egyptians, Thoth was regarded as One, self-begotten, and self-produced. This belief bears a striking resemblance to the basis of monotheism in which God was there from the beginning, omnipresent. Thoth was considered the master of both physical and divine law, once again a striking similarity to Moses’ appreciation of our one and only God. Similarly, Thoth is credited with making the calculations for the establishment of the heavens, stars, Earth, and everything in them, identical to the wording in Genesis. The Egyptians credited him as the author of all works of science, religion, philosophy, and magic. With this description of Thoth in mind, it would not be surprising if the Crown Prince came to the realization that his namesake was the one and only God of the universe, the primordial God from which all things flowed, just as the description of Nun proclaims. In this belief, there would have been only one God, this Djehuty or Nun. And as discussed in <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Of-Karaite-Things">http://hubpages.com/hub/Of-Karaite-Things</a> the letter Nun is quite significant, especially in the matter of Rabbinical cover-ups. If Jehuti was the most probable pronunciation, then Yahweh is certainly well within the scope of that name. <sup> </sup></div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12616421"><h2 class="subtitle">The Building of Pi-Ramses</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12616421">The building of these twin cities in Goshen is golden key to the story of the Exodus. In fact, it was the naming of these cities that led to the belief that the Exodus had to occur during the 19<sup>th</sup> Dynasty because how else could it be explained that one of the twin cities was named Ramses. But again, it is imperative that we understand that the recording of these stories in their final written form, came long after the actual events, meaning that the editors would use names of towns and cities with which they were familiar in their own timeline. How many today would refer to the city of New York as New Amsterdam, its original name? They wouldn’t because that name is lost to later generations, the same way the original names of the cities of Pithom and Ramses were lost in the time period of the actual writing of the Torah. We know for a fact that these cities had another name, long before the restoration of the 19<sup>th</sup> Dynasty. We know this because archeology has proven that Seti and Rameses weren’t the first to begin building these cities. In fact these weren’t original cities at all but the reconstruction of a much older one. The original name for the city where the twin cities were being reconstructed was Avaris. This city which once was the capital of the Hyksos rulers of Egypt, was leveled by Ahmose several hundred years earlier when he conquered the Hysksos and reestablished Theban rule over Egypt. And what is even more interesting is that the excavations by Dr. Mandfred Bietak of Vienna University have found inscriptions that were records of the slave labour force that was used to rebuild the city. This rebuilding occurred between 1385 and 1360, during the reign of Amenhotep III. The use of slaves on a mass scale to rebuild this city would correlate well to what is written in Exodus. There is other evidence that suggests that it was this first rebuilding, almost one hundred years earlier than the reign of Ramses II, that is the correct dating of the Exodus. We know that the Egyptians recorded that they had slaves from the Hapiru. We also know that the Hapiru apparently came from the land of Canaan. Once again, the coincidence of slaves referred to as Hapiru and the Children of Israel referring to themselves as Hebrew would suggest that it was no coincidence at all but one and the same people. But if that is the case, then the inscription on the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak celebrating the victories of Ramses’ father Seti would only make sense if the Exodus occurred during the reign of Amenhotep III. This inscription reads, “Fallen are the Hapiru of Beisham.” The city of Beisham, located in central Canaan, unless one wants to argue that the Hapiru and the Hebrew were not the same people, was already conquered by the Israelites and had a large enough population that they attempted to defend the city from the Egyptian army. This could only mean that the Hebrew were already well established in the land long before the 19<sup>th</sup> Dynasty. <br />
Archeology gives us one more vital piece of information that also dates the Exodus to the reign of Amenhotep III. Originally, when Kathleen Kenyon excavated Jericho she placed the date of its destruction around 1500 BC. A date which many used as a weapon to negate the story of the conquest since that date was well before any possible Exodus by the Children of Israel. From that date they also tried to say that the Joshua of the Bible never existed. But in 1996, two researchers at Groningen University radiocarbon dated cereal grains that Kathleen Kenyon herself had actually excavated at the site. The dating of these grains had an approximate date of 1320 BC plus or minus 10 years. This would place the event 30 years after the reign of Amenhotep, or the one generation that the Children of Israel wandered in the desert. </div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12616443"><h2 class="subtitle">Summary</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12616443"> This article is just the first of several that will utilize existing information to provide the framework of the Exodus. What we have seen is that there was a Crown Prince that disappears from Egyptian recorded history at the same time there are Hapiru slaves building the historical city called Pi-Ramses at a later date. We know that monotheism was taking shape in Egypt exactly at the same time that these other events were occurring. We know that archeology is suggesting that Jericho was burnt to the ground one generation after these aforementioned events. What is left now is to find the evidence for the actual exodus, the plagues, and true identity of the Law Giver. These will be provided over the next few articles. And when all is completed, there will be a historical Exodus that we can clearly point a finger at and all will hopefully find their faith strengthened.</div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-7640716874754748652011-05-08T02:16:00.000-07:002011-05-08T02:16:49.472-07:00Exodus and Ethiopia Part 7<div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12277394"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12277394">The most read article that I have on this website concerns the Ethiopian Princess that Moses married. Why has this story created such a stir that it has become a feature on other sites that have copied and posted it, spreading the word of this long forgotten relationship? I have seen the information in the article used from those proclaiming the true decent of the Israelites was through Africa, by others that proclaim that we are all one people, and also by those that have seen it as one more device to spread anti-Semitic propaganda. Three different perspectives, diametrically opposed and yet all quoting the same article for their justification. I have even witnessed its rebuttal by Jewish groups, totally ignoring that the Torah, the Old Testament, itself states that our origins were as a mixed multitude. Do they not understand what a mixed multitude means? Are we that myopic that we must divide our religious beliefs between black and white and taint it with the prejudices that have afflicted mankind since its creation? Or cannot the simple beauty of this ancient story, where a man and a woman see one another, not in terms of their external appearance but for what they are inside. That which counts the most is the lesson tht must prevail. And no where better do we learn this lesson tha from the Queen of Sheba.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_12277393"><div id="imgs_12277393"><div id="img_url_4451212"><img alt="" class="half" height="237" src="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/4451212_f260.jpg" title="" width="260" /> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_4451212"></div></div></div></div><div class="modfloat full"><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12277399"><h2 class="subtitle">A Sacred Line</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12277399">I cherish the fact that we had roots that extended beyond the borders of Canaan and Egypt. I praise Moses for his lofty ideals that transcended race or creed or colour. And once upon a time, so too did the rest of the Israelite population as we can recognize from Flavius Josephus’s record of this fabled liaison, the inclusion of such stories in the Talmud (one of the few times I’ll praise the Talmud for any of its content) and the writings of Artapanus and Cornelius Polyhistor. None of these authors saw the marriage of Moses to the Princess of Ethiopia as anything less than a testimony of Moses’ greatness. A relationship that was well known and understood in ancient times because the Queen of Sheba had no other purpose in seeking the bed chambers of Solomon but to re-establish the sacredness of offspring of her lineage. Recognizing that the line of Moses had been superseded by the house of David, in her wisdom she knew that that the legitimacy of her own reign rested on carrying this seed blessed by God. And whether or not we choose to recognize the legends and historical records of the Ethiopian royal house, this is exactly how they explained the traditions that they have passed down from father to son for the last three thousand years. And although no one can state exactly how the Felashim came to be, those Black Jews of Ethiopia, the majority now residing in Israel, that practiced a religion not dissimilar from that which was practiced in Israel pre-Babylonian exile, why should we doubt the obvious. That they did return with the Queen of Sheba and her son Menelik, and they did rekindle the faith that had been first introduced to them by Moses when he married their princess Tharbis, three hundred years earlier. Probably the most valuable lesson I learned in life, long ago was that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it is a duck. Why are there are so many of us that refuse to accept that. This simple Karaite belief, the fundamental concept of Karaism, that some things in the Torah simply are the way they are described.</div></div></div><div class="modfloat right"><div class="module moduleImage" id="mod_12277407"><div id="imgs_12277407"><div id="img_url_4451216"><a class="imglightbox" data-lightbox="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/4451216.jpg" href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Ethiopia-and-Sheba-Rediscovering-the-Exodus-7#"><img alt="" class="half" height="174" src="http://s1.hubimg.com/u/4451216_f260.jpg" title="Click to see full-size image" width="260" /></a> </div><div class="caption_half" id="img_desc_4451216"></div></div></div></div><h2 class="subtitle">The Queen of Sheba</h2>Or do we forget what it says in the Song of Songs? In chapter 1 Verse 5 she admits that she is a beautiful black woman. In the next verse she repeats that she is swarthy, tanned darker than the daughters of Jerusalem. As dark as the tents of Kedar. The Kedarites were a tribe descended from Ishmael. The expression to dwell in the Tents of Kedar was often used to imply that one was cut off from serving God. Therefore she is admitting that she does not follow the Hebrew faith but in Solomon’s eyes she is still beautiful. To read the Targum now, the Rabbis will insist that the story has nothing to do with the love between a man and a woman. They state that the kiss is representative of Gods revelation of the Torah at Sinai. That when the woman says that she is black she is actually referring to Israel’s sinning nature to chase after idols. And that in Verse 9 her reference to herself as Pharaoh’s mare is in reality a reminder of the crossing of the Red Sea. Even Maimonides could not accept the Song of Songs as it simply reads, stating in his Guide to the perplexed it was actually about the love between God and the human soul and not with Israel proper. The fact is that they were all embarrassed by its inclusion by the earlier editors and in their efforts to justify what essentially would have been early pornography they have spent eons trying to explain away the obvious. Because if they didn’t, then they would have to confess that the stories of Moses in Ethiopia were all true and the reasons for the Queen of Sheba visiting Israel had far more to do with a continuation of a royal lineage than they did with coming to ask Solomon a few questions to test his wisdom. They’d have to admit that Solomon as this pinnacle of God’s faithful was lusting after a woman that was neither part of the faith nor physically resembling the general populace. <br />
Firstly, if we were to accept the Rabbi’s arguments then we would have to accuse them of anthropomorphizing God, giving him human features which the woman (being Israel in their view) has now described physically. The invisible, indefinable God is no more. He has circlets on his cheeks and wears beads about his neck as it says in verse ten, and God also has a desire for gold and silver as it states in verse 11. Human obsessions and human frailties and therefore the intended man in this song could never have been God. But in verse 9 we have the ultimate perversion of the Song if we choose to attribute its description to the Almighty. To be a steed has only one implication when a woman describes her lover in such terms. It creates an image that is religiously profane for it would be not in any way dissimilar from the images of Greek gods where Zeus had taken delight in riding human woman after woman, just like a steed rides a mare. And if this truly was a description of a God:Israel relationship, then the banter that is exchanged between the lovers makes no sense at all. For example in Chapter 6 Verse 8, the woman speaks of his having 60 other queens and 80 concubines, as well as a number of serving women, a recognition that she must be happy with the moments she does have with him, content that for a time he has placed her above the others. And as we read Chapter 8 we recognize that they are parting, that the Queen is going away. She cannot be fenced in with walls and turrets as he could do with other women; hardly a comment that Israel would make to God. She knew that the people did not accept her, she admonishes them for her rejection, knowing that had they been of the same people (a brother) then her presence in his bed chambers would have caused no offense to the daughter of Jerusalem that have awoken to condemn their love. But though she must leave, not all the water in the world could quench the love they have for one another. Obviously this is not a song about God and Israel but is exactly what it claims to be. A song of Solomon. A song of Sheba. A song of love!Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-49729004530587840402011-05-05T03:10:00.000-07:002011-05-05T03:10:37.820-07:00Exodus and Direct Clues from Moses Part 6<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12196397"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQuwkBLbyIz2JD2OKDp2bRgwQ36VN7jzPT0f3fm5EDPO8q32tbgLmYN8nVS79lsSkxNN2yQKFd5gn8if24kEvugkBOzStoqHUexCNpbFzF59hl1u0HbXXQDJTSYQxvIZrZ_R15B7mi9q8/s1600/moses-parting-the-red-sea-rosencruz-sumera.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQuwkBLbyIz2JD2OKDp2bRgwQ36VN7jzPT0f3fm5EDPO8q32tbgLmYN8nVS79lsSkxNN2yQKFd5gn8if24kEvugkBOzStoqHUexCNpbFzF59hl1u0HbXXQDJTSYQxvIZrZ_R15B7mi9q8/s320/moses-parting-the-red-sea-rosencruz-sumera.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h2 class="subtitle">That Which Has Been Written</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12196397">From <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Karaite-Reading-of-Exodus">http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Karaite-Reading-of-Exodus</a> I wrote about the fable about Moses's name being Moshe, a Hebrew word meaning to draw out, as in to 'draw out of the water' a reminder of the baby in the basket inference. But this was an addition, a post exilic Rabbinic creation. And we know this for a fact because in their commentaries to the Torah, they admit it freely that they knew that the word 'mehshitihu' only had the barest resemblance to the name Moshe and that an Egyptian princess would never have used, let alone known the Hebrew language. But although they admit this literary flight of fancy, they also refused to admit what the name really meant even though they knew that it was a shortening of the Egyptian meaning ‘son of’. And in that article, I wrote of the likelihood that Nunmose or Nunmoses was probably the actual name of Moses. And being the primordial god of the river, the Egyptian god that was there at the beginning of all things, it is understandable how the story of drawing the baby from the Nile was born. Later in the article <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-2</a> I mentioned that the likelihood of the Egyptians even mentioning the Exodus of 15,000 slaves was unlikely, but as I will discuss in a later article, the plagues were a completely different matter. And there is evidence through extrapolation of events in Amenhotep III’s reign that a catastrophe of biblical proportions did take place. Throw in the fact that the Exodus was led by a renegade prince from the Great House, his own son, and it is understandable that the events were stricken from Egyptian historical records as was the common practice for all embarrassments to the royal household. Do we have an indication of any such son of Amenhotep that was erased from history, yes we do, because even with the best attempts to erase memories, there is always something overlooked. And then in the article <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3</a> I quote from the Book of Jasher, “But the tribe of Levi did not at that time work with the Israelites their brethren, from the beginning, for the children of Levi knew the cunning of the Egyptians which they exercised at first toward the Israelites.” And from this I suggested that the Levites were actually an Egyptian priestly caste that for reasons unknown threw their lot in with the Hebrew slaves at the time of the Exodus. Conjecture would say that in some way, the Levites did something that offended Pharaoh and therefore lost any status that they once held in Egypt. And sure enough, we have record of a priestly rebellion amongst the priests of Heliopolis that ultimately failed and was put down by Amenhotep III. And then we have other stories, stories which I inferred in <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-4">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-4</a> talk about Moses’ role in conquering the Cushites or Nubians. A role which in Egyptian history is attributed to this disgraced son of Amenhotep III. And there are other stories that state this conqueror of Ethiopia later rebelled against his Egyptian Pharaoh. His punishment was never defined but we know that the man responsible was never caught or slain. It would have been something that the Amenhotep III would have made certain never got recorded in his own royal chronicles. And the pharaoh might even banish his son to one of the religious cities where it would be expected that he could do no harm.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12196398"><h2 class="subtitle">Egyptian Clues</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12196398"> Much of the preceding events indicated will be discussed in subsequent articles, but more importantly we must ask ourselves, if Moses was truly a Egyptian Prince, a prince of the blood, did he leave us any clues to confirm this? Because if we believe the great Law Giver was far more than the average slave, a man of destiny, of privilege, of intelligence then that part of him that was Egyptian would want to ensure that his life was never obscured; that it was immortalized no differently from those buried in their pyramids and royal tombs. The likelihood of his displacement, of his history being rewritten was already evident to him through the numerous insurrections, rebellions, and challenges he had to face, especially from those closest to him. Knowing all this, then someone like Moses would attempt to leave a trail of evidence that would go unnoticed by most but for those taking the advice of an Anan ibn David, or a Kirkisani, they would search for the truth, the logic of it all, and they would find that which was purposely left behind to be rediscovered. And just how would Moses accomplish such a feat? He would do so by leaving this trail of bread crumbs scattered through the Torah, but so sublime that it would be overlooked completely and not recognized for just how Egyptian it truly was. Something completely overlooked by those he knew would attempt to make revisions of the sacred book in the future. And the obvious choice for a man raised and educated in the Great House would be to use something that no other culture had at that time and that was Egyptian mathematics. The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text that we have available is called the Ahmes Papyrus or Rhind Papyrus dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document from the Middle Kingdom of about 2000-1800 BC.<sup> </sup> This papyrus provides evidence of a mathematical knowledge that included composite and prime numbers as well as arithmetic, geometric and harmonic means. Prime numbers are the key here since there is no known formula that yields all of the prime numbers and no composites. The distribution of primes, by calculating the statistical behaviour of primes was only modelled in a proven statement since the end of the 19th century. So there use in ancient Egypt were intentional and could never have occurred randomly or coincidentally. As I have always said, there are no coincidences. And since the knowledge of Prime Numbers was exclusively the domain of Egyptian scientists, the high priesthood and the Royal Family, then their incorporation into the Torah would have been intentional. And if intentional, then Moses was using them to make a statement.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12196423"><h2 class="subtitle">Prime Numbers</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12196423">On this premise, the inclusion of a string of prime numbers in the Torah would be the means by which Moses would be clearly pronouncing his Egyptian heritage. His vehicle for stating that he was raised not only in the Great House, but would have also attained the higher learning of the high priesthood. We know that the Prince Tuthmose was installed in the high priesthood of Heliopolis following his conquest of Ethiopia. A strange reward for someone that should have been hailed as the next conqueror and heir apparent. In the twenty-third year of his father’s reign, Tuthmose suddenly disappears, never to be heard from again. Two years later, Amenhotep’s reign ends. Far from coincidences but actual facts. <br />
So where are these prime numbers? Placed exactly where they would go unnoticed because they would be hidden in plain sight. In the one book where Moses knew statements bordering on the fantastical could be readily accepted; that book being Genesis, incorporating the legendary stories of the ancient traditions. As Karaites, we learn from the Book of Genesis the morals and origins that shaped our civilization but as both Anan ibn David and Kirkisani stated, we must use logic and build our faith not on the literal translation but on the intent. As we read about the incredible ages of our ancestors, we have a choice; either accept them as actual ages or look for something deeper. Firstly, it matters little that Adam lived for 930 years or Methuselah 969 and but yet they are included in the Torah with no seeming purpose. Until we look at Adam’s age, made up of the four prime numbers 2, 3, 5 and 31. Each number unique and used only once. Just like Enosh, consisting of the two prime numbers 5 and 181, and his son Kenan consisting of 2, 5, 7 ,13, and his son Mahalel consisting of two prime number 5 and 179, and his son Jared consisting of three prime numbers 2, 13 and 37, and his son Enoch consisting of two prime numbers 5 and 73. This trend continues with Enoch’s son Methuselah, 3, 17 and 19, his son Lamech 3, 7 and 37, and his son Noah, 3, 11 and 29, and his son Shem 2, 7 and 43, and his son Arpachshad 2, 3, and 73, and his son Shelah consisting of a single prime number 433. From the above list, only Seth, Adam’s son has an age that does not consist of single use prime numbers. It would appear that it was Moses’ intent to highlight Seth as being different for another purpose. So out of a possible thirteen ages, twelve are purposely derived from the multiplication of prime numbers used only once. Clearly intentional and serving a specific purpose. Only when we reach Shelah who’s age is derived from a single prime number does the trend stop once more with his son Eber who’s age like that of Seth’s consists of multiple use of the same prime number. But Eber’s son Peleg consists of a single prime number 239, as does his son Reu, also 239. Clearly Eber was to be highlighted, framed between generations using only single prime numbers, an obvious change of trend from the previous ages. And Reu’s son Serug is a return to three prime numbers 2,5 and 23 and his son Terah once more only consisting of two prime numbers 41 and 5. After this we are in to the Abraham and his children and we no longer have a need to conceal any message in the ages of the patriarchs since Moses is aware that the knowledge of Abraham and subsequent patriarchs was already well established as would have been any legends regarding their ages. Eighteen generations out of which sixteen have been clearly manipulated to consist of prime numbers used only once. <br />
</div></div><h2 class="subtitle">In Conclusion</h2>Whether you choose to believe it or not, the ages described were intentionally selected since you have a better chance to win the lottery than to have successive ages made up of single use prime numbers occur with such a high frequency. Since the statistical formula for deriving these numbers, which again is only a probability formula and not exact, was only arrived at in the nineteenth century, then the author of these ages had an advanced knowledge of higher mathematics and was able to determine prime numbers, even one as high as 433 without the advantages we have of our present education. So truly this was a person of exceptional skill and knowledge, but knowledge that only existed amongst a very elite in Egypt.<br />
As to why highlight Seth and Eber from amongst all those other patriarchs, that too can be explained if I attempt to be so bold as to guess at what Moses may have been suggesting. If we look at the three individuals, Seth, Eber and Abraham, we have the three identifiable fathers of our people. Seth, who came into existence so that we would be his descendants and not those of Cain, Eber who fathered us as a distinct race, that being the Hebrew, derived from his name and the language he gave us, and then Abraham who’s own name states clearly that he would father a people that would be unique amongst the nations. Through the use of mathematical principles, Moses has made two very evident statements. Firstly that his origins were clearly Egyptian from that of the Great House but secondly that the parentage of the majority of the people he led were not. Our Lawgiver has spoken to us directly in a manner that only he was capable of doing. A message that he passed down through time so that we would have a better understanding of our origins.Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-90968677084678517892011-05-02T02:17:00.000-07:002011-05-02T02:17:45.558-07:00Exodus and the Book of Yasher Part 5<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12152175"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12152175"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrW13oaiX-DSyyaJplKuhoEeCjN_o2JdAenfF9jmqGk9lMbrRy_hM_qwPYUZ2YSnyHcjGzkBEVxqpEb1UXDsdmgbzNJN4NJVsQMAqglk7kcP0aFViXrnS-NDG9oPFNROCpUvIHL7RT8k/s1600/Faith-Print-C10055348.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFrW13oaiX-DSyyaJplKuhoEeCjN_o2JdAenfF9jmqGk9lMbrRy_hM_qwPYUZ2YSnyHcjGzkBEVxqpEb1UXDsdmgbzNJN4NJVsQMAqglk7kcP0aFViXrnS-NDG9oPFNROCpUvIHL7RT8k/s320/Faith-Print-C10055348.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>There are so many unresolved questions regarding the Exodus that it is truly surprising that those of us that claim to follow Karaite traditions have not done our utmost to search the realm of possibilities in order to discover our past. After all, it is the nature of a Karaite to be inquiring and constantly exploring the essence of our beliefs. These are the fundamental instructions of our early progenitors. From Anan ibn David’s advice to believe in that which seems right to you, to Kirkisani’s instructions to apply logic when attempting to comprehend the scriptures and avoid rhetoric and dogma. Both of these men knew that there were essential truths still awaiting discovery, and that once revealed they would not weaken our beliefs but in fact strengthen them for we would be able to built our faith upon an undeniable foundation that could withstand the skepticism that now infiltrates all our religious institutions resulting in a new generation that has no belief at all.<br />
<br />
</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12152195"><h2 class="subtitle">The Book of Jasher</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12152195">Awhile back I was questioned why I would raise the book of Jasher as a resource for our religious beliefs. It was raised because to understand our early beginnings we must recognize that many of the foundation stones were built upon the revelations that came from that particular book. The question should not be why I would use the book of Jasher but why it was deemed necessary post-Babylonian exile that the book was made to disappear from the annals of Judaism. We know it was in existence and well preserved at the time of the Babylonian exile because we know that Nebuchadnezzar requested that he be provided with a copy. But 70 years later, with the rebuilding of a new Israel, the Book of Jasher was expunged from our historical documents. The reasons for this occurring are far more important than trying to establish which chapters from the current versions presently available are verifiable. Because what becomes obvious is that the religious leaders during the reformation of the third to fifth century BCE feared that the Book of Jasher would contradict everything they were trying to achieve in their pursuit of political and religious domination. Specifically because the book of Jasher placed a far greater emphasis on the Hebrew faith of the Kingdom of Israel which sharply contrasted to that which was now emerging from shores of the river of Babylon.And secondarily, how would they be able to exclude a Samaritan population from the New Judea if it was to become common knowledge that our most illustrious founders of our religion were anything but Hebrew. Or what if the Israelite practices which were condemned by the Judean prophets happened to be those that were instructed by Moses and Aaron and not sacrilegious at all? How does one deal with historical truths that suggest the taking of wives as captives from other nations was entirely permissible as long as you gave them the right to leave if they refused to accept the nation’s belief? What if the early records suggested that Jerusalem had no entitlement to become the religious centre of Israel and it was Beth-el that was eternally to serve in that function? These issues would continually divide the people, much as they had done in the time of Reheboam and Jereboam unless they could be made to disappear once and for all.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12152217"><h2 class="subtitle">Or H'Oylum</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12152217">So what I teach as a Karaite is as I have been instructed; as my ancestors have done, generation after generation. Yes, there have been times when my family has decided it was easier to join the other side than fight against the tide. There is a long line of Kahana and ha-Cohen Katz (KAhana TZadek) that became chief rabbis throughout eastern Europe. That is often the way when men start a path of questioning their belief structures. Often they question so much that they end up becoming stalwarts in the antithesis of their beliefs. But similarly, those of us that have remained faithful to our origins will grow even stronger in our fundamental principles and whether or not you choose to accept what I am about to tell you, at least it will make you think. Hopefully it will make you question and then subsequently apply rational judgment. That is all that Kirkisani wanted to achieve in his lifetime. That those of us that proclaim ourselves to be Jews, not only Karatites but Rabbanites as well, examine our beliefs, question them and arrive at logical conclusions so that we have no doubt in what we teach or practice. I have spent my life doing exactly that and as a result my faith is unswerving, inexhaustible, and inextinguishable. I do not need outward signs, a style of dress, a cut of my hair, to say who or what I am. That is clearly expressed as soon as a stranger sits with me. They learn very quickly what motivates me, and for the most part they respect my beliefs because I live my life without pretense of being anything more than I am, and in so doing they choose to sit and listen because I paint a world that they have never heard of before. Essentially I try to be that light, that Or Ha-Oylum. Not a light that shines upon myself and says look at me, ‘how great am I’ like so many of my spiritual counterparts but a light of self-examination, of self-evaluation and hopefully they will come away better for the experience of having taken the time to sit with me. Essentially I am both ‘sinner and winner’ and that which makes me all too human is what attracts them to the stories I have to tell. </div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_12152234"><h2 class="subtitle">All Too Human</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_12152234">So to those of you that fail to comprehend what Kirkisani was trying to tell you, then let me express it in plain English, “Those that we have elevated to greater than human status in our early traditions were nothing more than men and women like you and I. They have to be examined within the framework of human emotion and motivation. They excelled neither in righteousness nor saintliness but instead in determination and fortitude. Their motivations were often self-serving but in so doing they also achieved a greater good for the people. Yes, some of them heard the word of Yahweh and were able to separate us from the sea of nations that surrounded us, but we must never to forget that they were human and as such their greatness was not in the hand of God that rested upon them but in the fact that they could overcome their human frailties, fears and failures time and time again.<br />
So this being the context of how we should examine the Exodus, I will in my next article discuss the two people that were essentially the instigators of that greatest of all stories. A story of brothers, yet that brotherhood may have only been in spirit and not in the true sense of biological brotherhood. To some of you, that suggestion might appear sacrilegious, but considering that one of these brothers was my ancestor I think it’s only fair that I have the right to question my own origins in the search for truth.</div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8379417418478870080.post-26212870423721615822011-05-01T04:57:00.000-07:002011-05-01T04:57:11.411-07:00Exodus and the Book of Yasher Part 4<div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_9713561"><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9713561">Hopefully, many of you have already begun investigating the book of Yasher for yourself and realize just how important this ancient text is for the understanding of our origins both historically and religiously. One might ask why it was not included in the original canonization of the sacred Tanach and that is a very legitimate question because if a book was actually being used as a reference text, it is surprising that it never made it into the final scriptures which have ultimately changed the world through three major religions. <br />
There are there possible explanations for this failure to include the Book of Yasher. First, it may not have been available at the time having been used as a resource based on oral traditions but never formalized into an actual document. It would not have been unusual after Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, and Seleukid occupations that the oral traditions never had an opportunity to actually edit the stories into a structured version. But what goes against this possibility is the fact that even in Joshua and Samuel, it is referred to as a Book of Yasher, thereby implying that it had undergone the process of final editing and scripture. <br />
The second possibility is what we now experience in our current age, where there are multiple versions of the Book of Yasher, most obvious hoaxes and therefore they would have presented a problem for the editors in the 2<sup>nd</sup> Century BCE to decide what was truth and what was fiction. They had neither the investigative tools that we now have, nor the knowledge of period texts and styles that would have supported their decisions that currently exist in our time. So, in order to avoid including a heretical and false text it was easier to exclude them all.<br />
The final possibility is that those canonizing the Tanach refused to include the Book of Yasher because of some of the stories that were included. Some do appear more of a fantasy nature and in conflict with some of the events as recorded in the Torah. For example, in the Book of Yasher, both Abraham and Noah were concurrent rather than separated my many generations. In order to avoid confusion and conflict, it was best to remove the presence of these stories completely. But if I was to make an educated guess, it was not only this reason that they used as their justification to exclude the Book of Yasher but specifically it concerned the stories of Moses that brought them their greatest distress. In my earlier article, <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess">http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess</a> , which also happens to be my most popular article with close to a thousand readings, it is clearly evident that there are far more stories about Moses’ origins that have been intentionally kept from us than there are actually included in the Torah. The reasons for this are obvious; they suggest that Moses was neither Apiru (Hebrew), or Shazu, but could have been very easily Hyksos or even Egyptian. These stories are well preserved in the Book of Yasher and they certainly confirm his presence in Ethiopia which took a large part of his earlier life to achieve. So as you read these verses taken from Yasher, I ask that you open you mind and ask, what is far more believable; that a son of slaves walked into the palace of the Pharaoh and made demands on the most powerful regent in the known world, or that a man of equal status walked into the chambers of his father and caused an insurrection that eventually led to the release of a people because Pharaoh feared the consequences of refusing this Prince and his protector God more than he feared the loss of his own power and influence in acquiescing. </div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_9713572"><h2 class="subtitle">Establishing the Timeline</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9713572"> In Chapter 70 verse 1 of the Book of Yasher it reads, “And in the third year from the birth of Moses, Pharaoh was sitting at a banquet, when Alparanith the queen was sitting at his right and Bathia at his left, and the lad Moses was lying upon her bosom, and Balaam the son of Beor with his two sons, and all the princes of the kingdom were sitting at table in the king's presence.” This corresponds well with the legends recorded by Ginzberg, the works of Josephus and other tales of Moses’ early life. Some texts record his royal mother as Bithyia, but I believe this one to be the most accurate. The one on his left would have been a secondary wife, sister or daughter, whereas Alparanith would be the Royal Consort, or primary queen. The name Bathia if it was a Hebrew construct would translate as the House of Yahweh. We can call this a mere coincidence but as I have stated repeatedly, there are no such things as coincidences. Her name had a purpose and it was to inform us that there was a royal wife of Pharaoh that was a follower of this desert God. <br />
But who was Bathia? Do we have any suggestion in Egyptian recorded history of such a woman existing? And if so, why has no one bothered to connect the dots so to speak to explain one of the great mysteries of the Bible. Well, avoiding connecting the dots does make sense if the editors feared the consequences of Moses’ origins being known more than their intent to commit a serious crime of omission. What they failed to comprehend was that it never really mattered who Moses’ parents were, even though they felt they had to prove they were Levites and therefore part of the migrant tribes that entered Egypt at the time of Joseph. That was more important to them than the realization that it mattered not whom God chose, whether he was from the Apiru, Mittani, Canannites, Egyptian, Hittites or whomever. What was truly important was that God found a man that was willing to undertake the greatest burden imaginable, defy odds and persecutions that would have humbled and destroyed most human beings, and do so all because in his heart and in his mind he heard the voice of God and he had no doubts regarding his mission.<br />
To identify the period in which Bathia may have been a secondary queen it is necessary to focus on the name of his primary wife. The fact that we have an actual Egyptian name as evidenced by the ending of her name of ‘nith’ or ‘neith’ as was commonly used in such names as Neithotpe, Herneith, Merneith, Nit, Henite, all suggest that this truly was a royal name. In fact the Egyptian meaning of Neith is either "water" or "weaver." In mythology, this is the name of a mother goddess, the personification of the waters of life which would be interchangeable with the male form or the god Nun that I have already disclosed in <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess">http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Ethiopian-Princess</a> as the most likely concealment of Moses’ actual name and how the Rabbis have still preserved the ‘Nun’ in the Hebrew texts for fear of altering sacred scriptures too much. Since Nun was the primordial god of Egypt, or the one that preceded all other gods, then he would have been essentially the one and only for a period of time even in Egyptian religion. So Alparanith could have been easily referring to a time when monotheism had a hold on Egypt. If we divide the word into Al-Para-Neith then we know her name actually means The Province of Neith, which means strictly that she belongs to or was dedicated to Neith. Neith also was thought of being the goddess of wisdom, so this could actually be a characteristic reference to the Queen, meaning the one who is wise, or gifted with wisdom if she had a been given a role in making royal judgements in the court. It is said by some that Tiya or Tiye was the most influential royal queen in Egyptian history, which is quite a statement since Hatshepsut had actually ruled as a Pharaoh all on her own. Egyptian Queen. Tiye was the daughter of Yuya, the King's Lieutenant of Chariots and Master of the Horse, and Thuyu the Superintendent of the Harem of Min of Akhmim and of Amun of Thebes. Tiye was also the niece of Mutemwiya, a wife to Thutmose IV making her Amenhotep III's first cousin and sufficiently royal to be his Great Wife. But it is Tiye's parentage which is a subject to debate and provides us with a significant clue; she was probably not full Egyptian. We know from the study of the mummies found in 1904 that her mother had Egyptian features, but her father did not and from the features it is most likely that her father may have been Apiru, Shazu or similar coming from Mesopotamian origins. . Tiye bore the pharoah at least seven children including Thutmose, Sitamen, Isis, Henut-Taneb, Nebetah, Beketaten, and Amenhotep who is better known to history as Akhenaten. Historians believe that Tiye was the power behind the throne as she acted as her husband's advisor and confidant, playing an active role in foreign relations; so much so that she was the first Egyptian queen to have her name included on official records. Tiye even remained visible during the reign of her son, Akhenaton's correspondence speaking of Tiye's continued political influence. So the picture of Alparanith and Tiye being one and the same has a better probability than most. But what of this second wife Bathia.<br />
From the list of offspring above we know that Princess Nebetah was apparently the fourth daughter of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. Once again we have the intial ‘Nun’ beginning the name, as is the possible case with Moses, but only the last part of the name being preserved, or in this case Betah or as the Book of Yasher would have recorded it as Bathia, to give it a more Hebrew sound, the same way that Moses loses it Egyptian orginin when transcribed into its Hebrew form of Mosheh. Though she is not as well known as her sisters, perhaps because she has disappeared from the palace later on, as the story of the Exodus suggests, her name does mean 'Lady of the Palace' or 'Great Lady', which would be unusual for a lesser daughter and one that certainly didn’t marry her brother as was tradition. <br />
In fact, it appears as if Nebetah has been intentionally removed from Egyptian history by her father for some act that she must have committed even though it is clear from her name that he prized her quite highly at one point. All of her sisters appear frequently on statues and reliefs during the reign of their father and are also represented by smaller objects but Nebetah is purposely absent as if any of these items had been destroyed. This removal of her existence is further enhanced by the Egyptian chronicles where she is never referred to as a 'King's Wife' and she was never officially married to her father, Amenhotep III. Yet here she is referred to as the ‘Great Lady’ and was recorded to have the official title of ‘'King's Daughter Whom He Loves.' All these would suggest that she was her father’s favourite, and if Tiye was as powerful as the history would suggest, then she could easily have stopped her husband from officially marrying this daughter, yet still permitting her to sit on the left hand of the throne in the early days, and if as the Exodus story suggest, Bathia went with her attendants and retinue into the wilderness with Moses, then it would make sense that her father eradicated practically every memorial to her existence. And like any favourite daughter, she would have had her every wish granted by her doting father until such time that she defied him and then he would have overreacted as is human nature and declared that she was no longer any child of his.</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_9713573"><h2 class="subtitle">Young Prince Moses</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9713573"> If the reign of Amenhotep III is correct in fixing the time that Moses existed then what evidence is there to support that Moses was a member of this particular royal dynasty? For this we have to look at Chapter 72 verse 22 and following from the book of Yasher to read, “And Moses was eighteen years old when he fled from Egypt from the presence of Pharaoh, and he fled and escaped to the camp of Kikianus, which at that time was besieging Cush. <br />
23 And Moses was nine years in the camp of Kikianus king of Cush, all the time that they were besieging Cush, and Moses went out and came in with them. <br />
24 And the king and princes and all the fighting men loved Moses, for he was great and worthy, his stature was like a noble lion, his face was like the sun, and his strength was like that of a lion, and he was counsellor to the king.<br />
25 And at the end of nine years, Kikianus was seized with a mortal disease, and his illness prevailed over him, and he died on the seventh day.<br />
26 So his servants embalmed him and carried him and buried him opposite the city gate to the north of the land of Egypt.<br />
27 And they built over him an elegant strong and high building, and they placed great stones below.<br />
28 And the king's scribes engraved upon those stones all the might of their king Kikianus, and all his battles which he had fought, behold they are written there at this day.<br />
29 Now after the death of Kikianus king of Cush it grieved his men and troops greatly on account of the war.<br />
30 So they said one to the other, Give us counsel what we are to do at this time, as we have resided in the wilderness nine years away from our homes.<br />
31 If we say we will fight against the city many of us will fall wounded or killed, and if we remain here in the siege we shall also die.<br />
32 For now all the kings of Aram and of the children of the east will hear that our king is dead, and they will attack us suddenly in a hostile manner, and they will fight against us and leave no remnant of us.<br />
33 Now therefore let us go and make a king over us, and let us remain in the siege until the city is delivered up to us.<br />
34 And they wished to choose on that day a man for king from the army of Kikianus, and they found no object of their choice like Moses to reign over them.<br />
35 And they hastened and stripped off each man his garments and cast them upon the ground, and they made a great heap and placed Moses thereon.<br />
36 And they rose up and blew with trumpets and called out before him, and said, May the king live, may the king live!<br />
37 And all the people and nobles swore unto him to give him for a wife Adoniah the queen, the Cushite, wife of Kikianus, and they made Moses king over them on that day.<br />
38 And all the people of Cush issued a proclamation on that day, saying, Every man must give something to Moses of what is in his possession.<br />
39 And they spread out a sheet upon the heap, and every man cast into it something of what he had, one a gold earring and the other a coin.<br />
40 Also of onyx stones, bdellium, pearls and marble did the children of Cush cast unto Moses upon the heap, also silver and gold in great abundance.<br />
41 And Moses took all the silver and gold, all the vessels, and the bdellium and onyx stones, which all the children of Cush had given to him, and he placed them amongst his treasures.<br />
42 And Moses reigned over the children of Cush on that day, in the place of Kikianus king of Cush.<br />
As was discussed in the article on the Ethiopian Princess, Moses actually came to the land of Cush with an army intent on conquering its major city. There are similarities in that for 9 years Moses fought until such time that the city fell. According to the other story it was the daughter of the Ethiopian King that finally put an end to the war, whereas here it would appear to be tied to the death of Kikianus. At first reading it would appear that Moses was fighting for Kikianus and for some reason the Ethiopian King was attacking his own city. But on closer examination, although it says that Moses went to the camp of Kikianus, it could have just as easily been a mistranslation of the word ‘against’ as ‘in’. The former making far more sense that Moses came as general and counsellor for Pharaoh in a war against Kikianus’s city which he eventually took after nine years. But most importantly is that after the death of the Cushite king, Moses has himself proclaimed as king or Pharaoh of Upper Egypt. The reference to ‘his treasures’ makes us well aware that Moses has taken the glory all for himself and not for his Pharaoh. <br />
</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_9713574"><h2 class="subtitle">The Nubian War</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9713574">Do we have anything in Egyptian history that lends veracity or is comparable to this history provided by the Book of Yasher? The answer is obviously yes. It is recorded that before Akhenaton, Egypt was to be ruled by his brother since Crown Prince Thutmose was the eldest son of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. He is also knowns as Djutmose, Thutmosis and Tuthmose. His name means "Thoth is Born" or "Child of Thoth." Thutmose disappears from Egyptian records completely somewhere between year 27 and year 33 in his father's reign, so he never became a Pharaoh, otherwise he would have been Pharaoh Thutmose V. One can say that he probably died, but that would not explain why his tomb was not discovered with or close to those of the rest of his family. So very little is known about this doomed Prince Thutmose, that it would suggest that he too, like Bathia was erased from the records intentionally. But during the short period of his life that was, recorded, he was a very important member of the royal family, clearing being bred to be Amenhotep III's successor as he was a member of the priesthood of Ptah in Memphis, most likely being the High Priest and had a role in the military though this is not elaborated upon. Prince Thutmose had a pet cat, Ta-Miu ('the Kitten' or 'the lady cat'), who, like many animals in Ancient Egypt, was mummified and placed in her own sarcouphagus when she died. The cat sarcophagus of Prince Thutmose, states that he was indeed the eldest son of Amenhotep III giving his current title of 'Crown Prince at the time of the cat’s death. Thutmose is also attested by a total of 7 pairs of calcite and pottery vases in the Louvre. But the cat is most interesting in that it was buried within his mother’s tomb, that of Queen Tiye, who died long after her husband, almost as if this was the last possession or memory of a son that she had and she wanted to cherish it even after death. One would think that if the son had died naturally, there would have been many items that the Queen would have selected to take into her tomb with her having preserved a son’s memory as best as she could as any mother would do. But all she had left was the cat that he himself had mummified. Everything else was gone, but with her husband dead 12 years earlier, he could not stop her from having this last item of a cherished son buried with her.<br />
Building on this connection of the Crown Prince and the military campaigns of Moses, we do know that Amenhotep III did have campaigns in Nubia, or Cush to the South. His army we can presume was under the direction of the man appointed as his Viceroy of Cush, one Merimose. Obviously, this is a very different name from Thutmose but it must be remembered that Egyptian members of the royal family had numerous names by which they were called. And since Meri-mose translates as ‘Beloved Son’ there is no reason why these two men were not one and the same. As to how this son could be both Thutmose and Nunmose as I consider the case, then as mentioned each Pharaoh had five different names but it is of interest that Toth the god referred to in Thutmose was considered the tongue of the chief god, as well as the messenger. Now this Merimose, Viceroy of Cush was found in a burial tomb for servants of the king and his mummy currently lies in the British Museum. And though it says Royal son, this Merimose was not a member of the royal family, nor was he treated as such in his burial so it is clearly not the same man as Crown Prince Thutmose, whom also would have been Merimose, or the beloved son. So the presence of this mummy in no way excludes the fighting prince of the Book of Yasher from being the fighting prince of Amenhotep’s army.<br />
So more importantly, the clarification of this issue of warfare in Ethiopia is paramount as it should connect this Prince of Egypt with the Moses in the Hebrew stories being proclaimed a king in Cush. We know that in 1375 BCE there was an ending to a revolt by the Nubians against Amenhotep III, the 27<sup>th</sup> year into his reign if counting from the time he was co-regent with his father. How interesting that Moses would have been 27 years of age when he finally took the city and became king of Cush according to the Book of Yasher. This war in Cush is the only recorded military activity undertaken by Amenhotep III army and it is only commemorated on three rock-carved stelas found near Aswan and Sai Island in Nubia. Hence, it was not an undertaking of such tremendous magnitude that it was commemorated with the building of massive temples such as was the case of Amenhotep’s father and also by later Pharaohs such as Rameses II. Instead it was merely marked within the affected territory itself, clearly indicating that the Pharaoh never had an actual presence during the skirmish and also that it was not given the status of a major threat to Egypt itself that Amenhotep could claim to be the Defender of the Two Lands. The official account reads as follows: <br />
<br />
“Regnal Year 5, third month of Inundation, day 2. Appearance under the Majesty of Horus: Strong bull, appearing in truth; Two Ladies: Who establishes laws and pacifies the Two Lands, King of Upper and Lower Egypt: Nebmaatra, heir of Ra; Son of Ra: [Amenhotep, ruler of Thebes], beloved of [Amon]-Ra, King of the Gods, and Khnum, lord of the cataract, given life. One came to tell His Majesty, "The fallen one of vile Kush has plotted rebellion in his heart." His Majesty led on to victory; he completed it in his first campaign of victory. His Majesty reached them like the wing stroke of a falcon, like Menthu (war god of Thebes) in his transformation...Ikheny, the boaster in the midst of the army, did not know the lion that was before him. Nebmaatra was the fierce-eyed lion whose claws seized vile Kush, who trampled down all its chiefs in their valleys, they being cast down in their blood, one on top of the other.” <br />
The title of the rebellious king of Cush is the ‘fallen one.’ Fallen from where one might ask. Fallen from grace, from honour, but then that would imply that he had a high status to begin with. Perhaps it was not fallen in any of those senses but to be taken literally as in he has fallen down dead. Whoever he was, he had underestimated Amenhotep’s general who came at him like a lion. Or in the sense of a nine year campaign, a general who refused to give up and was relentless in his pursuit to destroy the city. This rebel is given a name or an insult being Ikheny, the boaster but this could easily be a play upon his actual name as recorded in the Book of Yasher. Kikianus is obviously a Greek stylized rendition of the name, and in most likelihood it would have ended in a vowel, such as ‘i’. In that situation we’d have the name Kikiani. If we remove the first letter k then we have a name that is very similar to Ikheny. In fact it would be almost indistinguishable. This King of the Cushites did not know this lion before him, this Lord of Ra’s Ma’at that clawed his way through Kush until he finally conquered it. This would suggest that the general was a young unknown, with no reputation that preceded him. And because he was unknown and underestimated he was able to take the country piece by piece, eliminating each chieftain of the Nubians one by one until the finally laid siege to the king’s city. But it is clear that although the other chiefs that had fought under the banner of this rebel were slain, the king of Cush, the man responsible for the rebellion was never caught or slain. Just like Kikianus in the Book of Yasher, neither of these was possible because the king died of other causes during the siege at which point the people threw open the doors and ended the war by surrendering. Hardly a victory worth commemorating with a major building project to the north, and certainly not one to be commemorated if this general-Prince happened to place the crown upon his own head and place himself in direct opposition to Amenhotep III. It would have been something that the Pharaoh would have made certain never got recorded in his own royal chronicles but he would not have been able to eradicate the steles set up independently by his general far to the south near Aswan. <br />
</div></div><div class="module moduleText color0" id="mod_9713607"><h2 class="subtitle">In Conclusion</h2><div class="txtd" id="txtd_9713607"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbCFU6W8DRwuZMlo9PFIkb-wGqKmWliRVZ_5wc76aBYhc-79csH9gSizr_QeN1m5jhm7aQFZNBxUgSXQb4Temm47xsSlNu3czTOZea2dKPC8NI4geE50t3A6WXacH8cnSoVm3Xz54_aQc/s1600/prince+moses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbCFU6W8DRwuZMlo9PFIkb-wGqKmWliRVZ_5wc76aBYhc-79csH9gSizr_QeN1m5jhm7aQFZNBxUgSXQb4Temm47xsSlNu3czTOZea2dKPC8NI4geE50t3A6WXacH8cnSoVm3Xz54_aQc/s1600/prince+moses.jpg" /></a></div>Though one might claim that the historical data listed in this article in no way confirms or establishes that the time frame and family connections of Moses as being part of the 18<sup>th</sup> Dynasty in Egypt, it must be appreciated that it does not deny it either. In fact, it is the only historical time period in which the almost all the events of the Exodus have a correlating connection to actual events. As I stated in <a href="http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3">http://hubpages.com/hub/Rediscovering-the-Exodus-3</a> my role is to make you think, to open your minds and appreciate that in the Karaite manner, the Torah is a compilation of historical truths that merely need to be interpreted in their proper context. And as such, the true miracle is that Yahweh not only made them happen for a specific purpose but that when required there were men of incomparable stature that rose to the occasion, defied incredible odds, and in the end overcame impossible barriers because God imbued them with a faith that could move mountains. And the history that we uncover together only emphasizes how incredible those feats may have been.</div></div>Believerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07614309240508695910noreply@blogger.com0