Theodore Winston Pike - Israel: Our Duty... Our Dilemma, p..

I record the following excerpt for the purpose of general interest,
although I can neither affirm nor deny its truth. If true, then I can
see no basis whatsoever for agreement between modern Judaism and
Christianity. The oft heard descriptive term, Judeo-Christian, can
only be considered an oxymoron. -- Howard Duck


Theodore Winston Pike - Israel: Our Duty... Our Dilemma, pp 15-19

Where Did The Pharisees Come From?

Have you ever wondered where the Pharisees came from? They are
unknown to the Old Testament, but are everywhere in the New. The
history of the Pharisees begins like this:

When King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem in 597 B.C. and led the
Jews across the desert to Babylon, the Jews suddenly found themselves
without their cherished temple and all the rituals that went with it.
In order to help the Jews adjust to life in a foreign environment, a
class of teachers arose called the scribes or "sopherim." The scribes
created new laws and regulations which "built a fence around Judaism,"
making possible the continuance of the Jewish religion.

In the beginning this system may have been harmless enough, but it was
soon abused, especially in Palestine during the several centuries
before Christ. The interpretations of the scribes began to possess a
unique legal authority in themselveseven above the Old Testament -
which meant in contradiction to it. Thus (as The Universal Jewish
Encyclopedia frankly admits), "A method of exegesis (Midrash) had to
be evolved that would permit the interpretation of the Torah beyond
its literal meaning." When the law of the Torah was unavoidably
opposed to rabbinic interpretation, they "attempted whenever possible
not to abolish it, but to introduce some legal fiction whereby the
authority of the law was upheld and yet at the same time rendered null
and void for all practical purposes." [1]
----------
1 Authority," Univ. Jew. Encyc., p.634.


Perverting God's Law

Now the manner whereby the scribes were able to "interpret" Scripture
in contradiction to it and yet boldly profess their allegiance to
every jot and tittle of it is very significant. It is unique to
rabbinic hypocrisy.

The problem of the Pharisees was this: How could the Pharisees uphold
the letter of the Mosaic law which they cherished and yet do exactly
what they wanted? Their solution is one of the most amazing feats of
evasion that could be imagined.

First, the Pharisees said that as an architect uses blueprints to
construct a building, so God used the letters of the Hebrew alphabet
to create the universe, including the "Torah" or first five books of
the Old Testament. The Torah, the Pharisees believed, contained two
distinct layers of interpretation: a literal surface interpretation,
and a much more profound mystical interpretation hidden in the letters
of the Hebrew alphabet.

To the Pharisees, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were not simply
symbols which stood for the sounds which make up words and
communication. Quite the contrary, they were least important as that.
Instead, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet were tiny units, something
like "micro-chips" in computer technology, which contained all the
information about the history of the universe and God's will for man.
Thus a Hebrew letter not only held great significance in itself, but
if it were combined with other letters, and those words with other
words, as in the Scriptures, a tremendous source of mysterious
knowledge became available. [2]

The Pharisees believed that only they had the key to understanding all
the information hidden in the Hebrew alphabet and the Scriptures.
They believed that their most eminent rabbis knew how to decipher the
"true" meanings of Scripture because they had previously lived in
Heaven and were only now recalling what God had told them. The Talmud
relates how Moses ascended to Heaven and there beheld Rabbi Akiba
(still unborn) expounding the Torah in a wondrous manner. (Menachoth
296.)

Thus when the Pharisee read a verse from Scripture which was contrary
to his desires he had contempt for its obvious meaning. That meaning
was for the simple-minded and unlearned. Instead he would ponder the
shapes of the letters, notice which letters were next to each other,
count up the number of times a letter was repeated, tally the
numerical equivalent of letters and words, and so on.

After consulting with his fellow rabbis, the Pharisee would then come
up with an interpretation which no one would have dreamed existed, but
which now squared exactly with what he wanted to believe.
----------
2 "Cabala," Jew. Encyc., p. 620; "Gnosticism," Jew. Encyc., p. 635.
The footnote to Sanh. 656, citing the great talmudist Raashi, says:
"... the creation was performed by means of mystic combinations of the
Divine Name, which does not come under the ban of witchcraft. Its
basic idea is that the Creation was accomplished by means of the power
inherent in these letters." Similarly, "... this same power could be
utilized in further creation."


A Secret Tradition

By such occult methods and a good measure of sheer imagination, the
rabbis claimed to be the possessors of a secret "oral" law which
"Moses handed down to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the
Prophets, the Prophets to the Men of the Great Synod and the Men of
the Great Synod to the Rabbis ...." (Aboth 1:1). Despite God's
testimony that He had made a covenant with Israel because of the
written law, the scribes claimed that "The Holy One, blessed be He,
only made a covenant with Israel on account of the Oral Torah; as it
is said, 'For after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant
with thee and with Israel'" (Gittin 60b).

As custodians and interpreters of this secret tradition, the Pharisees
invested themselves with tremendous authority. By majority decision,
their most eminent rabbis could overturn anything Moses had said. If
a particular rabbi was acclaimed by his fellow Pharisees as the
greatest of that generation, then "he is, by virtue of his position as
chief of the courts of justice, invested with the same authority as
Moses (Sifre, Deut. 153; R.H. 25ab). Even when they decide that left
should be right, or right left, when they are mistaken or misled in
their judgement, they must be obeyed (R.H. 25a). Heaven itself yields
to the authority of the earthly court of justice ..." [3]
----------
3 "Authority," Jew. Encyc., p. 337.


God's Opinion of Majority Rule

How God really felt about the will of the majority had been revealed a
thousand years earlier, not long after Moses' descent from Mt. Sinai.
In Numbers 16:3 we read that a Levite priest named Korah and certain
others organized 250 eminent princes of Israel in a rebellion against
the divinely sanctioned authority of Moses and Aaron. "Ye take too
much upon you," they said, "seeing all the congregation are holy,
every one of them, and the Lord is among them: wherefore then lift ye
up yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?" God's answer to
their impudence was to split the earth in half beneath Korah and his
clique. "And the earth opened her mouth, and swallowed them up, and
their houses ... and all their goods. They ... went down alive into
the pit, and the earth closed upon them: ...." (Numbers 16:32,33).
Then, upon the 250 princely followers of Korah "there came out a fire
from the LORD, and consumed the two hundred and fifty men that offered
incense," (Numbers 16:35).

But the "holy congregation" was unimpressed by God's damnation of
majority rule. "Ye have killed the people of the Lord," they berated
Moses (Numbers 16:41). They had never been so ennobled as by those
who proclaimed them corporately holy but who were now buried within
the earth or ashes upon it. So God gave them the same. A plague
descended upon the congregation, killing 14,700 of them. It would
have consumed them entirely, had not Aaron rushed into their midst
with censor and incense in hand to appease God's fury (Numbers
16:45-50).

The rebellion of Korah and the entire congregation of Israel against
the unique authority of Moses and Aaron thus anticipated the revolt of
the rabbinic sect of the Pharisees before the time of Christ. The
Jewish Encyclopedia informs us that "... the Pharisees ... challenged
the Zadokite priesthood by insisting that all Jews had to be regarded
as a kingdom of priests and as a holy people and that the Torah was
the common inheritance of the entire congregation of Jacob." [4]
----------
4 "Judaism," Univ. Jew. Encyc., pp. 233-234.


A New Tradition

Like Korah, the Pharisees claimed that because "all the congregation
are holy, every one of them, and the Lord is among them," those
teachers chosen from among them innately possessed a divine unction.
Thus the authority of the Pharisaic creed no longer resided in God or
special prophets or even in the written Torah, but in those bearers of
the "oral tradition" chosen from the "holy congregation." The ancient
prophets, as well, inhibited the Pharisees and their followers no
longer, for the Pharisaic Masters claimed direct succession to Moses
and the same authority as Moses. [5] From the day the Temple was
destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, the Talmud says, the prophetic gift was
taken from the prophets and given to the Sages. At that time,
Rabbinic tradition relates, many prophets arose in Israel, double the
number of those who left Egypt, which would be about 1,200,000!

It is to these, the Jews and their leaders, "to the genius of its own
people," The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us, "that we must turn for the
secret of its (Judaism's) power. It has grown out of the soul of the
Jewish people .... Whereas Buddhism centers in the Buddha and
Christianity in the Christ, Judaism centers in no one personality."
[6] "In Judaism the center of gravity is the Jewish people." [7]

From the onset of the domination of the religious life of Israel by
the scribes and Pharisees, even unto the present, the religion of
Israel no longer consisted of obedience to a revelation of the past.
Judaism became the "progressive religious expression of the Jewish
people." The rabbis, having acquired greater authority than the
Bible, were persons of immeasurable power. One of the features of
rabbinism, we are told, was "the development of new codes of laws
based on and supplementary to the Torah."
----------
5 "Authority," Jew. Encyc., p. 337.
6 "Judaism," Univ. Jew. Encvc., p. 235
7 Ibid., p. 236.

In article <009lg0pvio3chie61posvm5dshf3o7kev4 DeleteThis @4ax.com>,
hbduck DeleteThis @geusnet.com says...
> I record the following excerpt for the purpose of general interest,
> although I can neither affirm nor deny its truth. If true, then I can
> see no basis whatsoever for agreement between modern Judaism and
> Christianity. The oft heard descriptive term, Judeo-Christian, can
> only be considered an oxymoron. -- Howard Duck
>
>
>

Bigoted BS only a loon would buy snipped..

I guess I can see why you're upset Howard, You don't even make
"oxymoron", you're just a plain old moron loon.

I know you're parents must be sad because of this. Visit them at the
trailer park soon, they would love to see their little pinhead..

BDK