Bertrand Russell: The Ghost Of Madness

John Hare, in booksandculture.com, analyses the personality and personal history of the celebrated mathematician and anti-Christian philosopher, Bertrand Russell.

Russell’s Why I Am Not A Christian, is a favorite of  many atheists and anti-Christian Hindus.

Note: Most Hindus adhere to the mainstream Hindu tradition of  respect for Jesus as an avatar of God, even while they object to the aggressive conversion tactics and chauvinistic language of some missionaries.

But, as Hare writes, Ray Monk’s outstanding biography of the man, “Bertrand Russell: The Ghost Of Madness,” tears off the mask of genius to show  a deeply immoral, cruel, and mentally unstable man:

What keeps the reader fascinated is the unfolding of this double truth; that one of the century’s brightest, most influential thinkers seems to have been at the same time capable of appalling cruelty and moral blindness……..

Russell’s sense of the hereditary danger was confirmed by his own experience. An informal account of what we would now call a psychopathic personality is the disorder of someone who is amoral, who harbors great rage that he usually hides, who considers almost all others inferior, and who is a pathological liar. Monk gives us evidence of all of these traits in these first 49 years of Russell’s life. I am not trying to say here that Russell was a psychopath, but that he had evidence in his own life to make it reasonable for him to fear that he was predisposed to some such disorder.”

Salient excerpts from Hare’s review of the Monk biography reveal Russell’s moral monstrosity:

[Note: Beatrice Webb (referred to in the first line below) was the wife of Sidney Webb, and, along with him, was one of the founding members of the Fabian Society, which promoted Fabian socialism.

Fabian socialism was a gradualist approach to communism that was inflicted on former colonies, like India.

It had as its own goal the goal of the New World Order – population control through family planning and feminism and through the advocacy of income redistribution]

On Russell’s callous treatment of women (this from someone who championed women’s “liberation”):

Beatrice Webb, after a visit, put it this way, “[Russell] looks at the world from a pinnacle of detachment. What he lacks is sympathy and tolerance for other people’s emotions.” One of the most chilling examples of this trait is the story of Russell’s relationship with Helen Dudley, whom he met in America and persuaded to come to England to live with him. When she arrived, he discovered he was no longer in love with her and got rid of her, as a result of which she suffered a complete and permanent mental breakdown. In his Autobiography, Russell puts it this way: “I had relations with her from time to time . . . and I broke her heart.”

It is not just what Russell did that is chilling, but the fact that he talks about this and other such episodes as though they had happened to somebody else.”

On Russell’s murderous rages and seething hatred (this from a “humanitarian” and “pacifist”):

Russell’s desire to kill people was sometimes quite literal. Indeed, this was one of his fears about his heredity, because of the fate of his Uncle Willy, who had lost his memory and ended up in a workhouse infirmary. As in Plato’s example in the Republic, the police gave Uncle Willy back a knife he owned and with it he went on a murderous rampage. When institutionalized, he continued to be prone to apparently random attacks of rage and violence. Russell had moods in which he hated the whole human race. But he also had to fight against the desire to kill quite specific people, such as his friend Fitzgerald: “On one occasion, in an access of fury, I got my hands on his throat and started to strangle him. I intended to kill him, but when he began to grow livid, I relented. I do not think he knew that I intended murder.”

On Russell’s alienation from, and feelings of superiority to, ordinary people (this from a man who professed that his hatred of religion, especially of Christianity, was based on his love for human freedom):

When I am talking to an ordinary person,” Russell says, “I feel I am talking baby language, and it makes me lonely.” In prison because of his anti-war activities, he reports that “Life here is just like life on an Ocean Liner. One is cooped up with a number of average human beings, unable to escape except into one’s own stateroom.”

On Russell’s pathological lying (this from a philosopher who attacked religion for being based on something other than truth):

He seems to have been a pathological liar. This started very early, with his grandmother. He maintained the outward show of piety, while departing further and further from the Christian faith. It became, however, a recognizable pattern in all his relationships, even those he cared most about. “You simply don’t speak the truth,” said D. H. Lawrence to him. “You simply are not sincere.”

On Russell’s self-loathing, expressed in hatred for  Christianity (the religion of his upbringing), alienation from his own emotions, and constant alternation between rage and guilt (this from someone who claimed to be completely rational):

Later, the sense of sin keeps recurring, as a kind of self-hatred………

..On another occasion Russell found himself on his knees in a church in Verona, praying for strength to subdue his instincts. He does not associate either experience explicitly with God, but what strikes this reader is the echoes of Russell’s grandmother’s piety, which was also a religion of love, duty, and suffering.

A Christian can see these experiences as God trying to break through, as the untiring chase by the hound of heaven. But Russell himself could not interpret them that way, or at least he could not do so for long. My hypothesis about why he could not do so is the one I gave earlier. The experience of God’s presence and his own failure was just too painful for him, and the pain was too close to his fear of madness. One response was the retreat to the surface and to disengagement.”

 

Why Bertrand Russell Was Not A Christian

 

Update:

This post should be understood in the context of my other writings in and around this subject.

Clearly, Bertrand Russell was a Christian in upbringing, as were his ancestors for generations.

Clearly, there is nothing in Torah-based Judaism per se which supports the kinds of positions he took in his life. Russell’s liberal/libertine and atheistic views have nothing in common with either Christian or Jewish orthodoxy. However, central tenets of modernist ideology (by modern, I mean the schools of thought arising out of Darwinian Evolution theory, Freudian psychology and the psycho-social theories associated with the Frankfurt school) were formulated by people whose descent was ethnic Jewish (in the sense in which that term is employed today).

In doing so in no way am I suggesting a biological/genetic component to this ideology of modernism.

I am suggesting instead that biology explains the phenomenon of the converso, who retains ancestral traditions and beliefs, regardless of the conversion.

I am suggesting that a tradition of hostility to the establishment and explicit espousal of revolutionary socio-economic schemes and libertine theories, colors the converso’s new-found faith and renders it only a variant of his old faith, which he, perhaps unconsciously, continues to propagate.

Put more bluntly, Russell could well have been a Sabbatean Frankist (a kabbalist) in everything but name.

Please read the original post by scrolling down below the two updates.

The substance of this post is that the celebrated mathematician Bertrand Russell, who wrote perhaps the most popular denunciation of Christianity, was a cold, cruel and deeply immoral individual in his personal life.

A recent book has also shown that he came from a family-line with a high degree of insanity and psychopathy.

That same line funded the Tavistock Institute and was notable for the propagation of sexual libertinism and population control, twin pillars of the New World Order.

Update 2:

In “Black Terror, White Soldiers,” David Livingstone has the following:

MK-Ultra, the CIA’s infamous “mind control” program, was an extension of the behavior control research conducted by the Tavistock Institute. Formed at Oxford University, London, in 1920 by the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), a sister organization to the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) created by the Round Table, the Tavistock Clinic became the Psychiatric Division of the British Army during World War II.[1] The clinic took its name from its benefactor Herbrand Russell, Marquees of Tavistock, 11th Duke of Bedford.

The Dukes of Bedford was the title inherited by the influential Russell family, one of the most prominent aristocratic families in Britain who came to power and the peerage with the rise of the Tudor dynasty.

Herbrand Russell and arch-conspirator Bertrand Russell shared the same great grandfather, John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford. Bertrand Russell was descended from John Russell’s third son, Bertrand’s grandfather, John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, who served twice as Prime Minister of the England in the 1840s and 1860s.

Herbrand Russell’s son, Hastings Russell, Lord Tavistock, the 12th Duke of Bedford, went on to become patron of the British Peoples Party, a far-right political party founded in 1939 and led by ex-members of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. It was he whom Rudolf Hess flew to England to contact about ending World War II.

The basis of the project of the Tavistock Institute was explained by Round Tabler, Lord Bertrand Russell, who is considered one of the founders of analytic philosophy along with his predecessor Gottlob Frege and his protégé Ludwig Wittgenstein, and is widely held to be one of the twentieth century’s premier logicians.

Russell offered a revealing glimpse into Frankfurt School’s mass social engineering efforts, in his 1951 book, The Impact of Science on Society:

 I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology… Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.” Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part…. It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.

…Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.[2]

Update:

The author of numberless anti-Christian statements, toward the end of his life, Bertrand Russell attempted to blunt the force of his singular attack on Christianity by including Hinduism, Confucianism, and other religions, in his criticism.

Notably, he did not include Judaism.

There are two explanations for this: either Russell was aware of the ruling class whose interests he served and feared reprisal, or he actually supported the goals of the ruling class.

The second seems more likely, when one researches Russell’s history.

He came from an aristocratic family line – the Dukes of Bedford – with a long history of subversive activity and “progressive” ideals (women’s liberation, birth-control, free love etc.).

The name Russell/Russel is said to derive from the word “rous.”

Rous was originally a nick-name for a person with red hair and derived from an Old French word for red.

The nick-name might have arisen from the supposed red hair of the Norman conquerors of England.

[Coincidentally, note the following:

1. The “Red Jews” were part of a legendary Jewish nation that can be found in vernacular literature in Germany upto the 1600’s. They were said to be an existential threat to Christendom and were associated with  Gog and Magog who are released in the end-times in the Bible.

2. The name Rothschild is derived from the German for Red Shield.]

A description of the origin of the Russell/Russel clan in Scotland can be found at Wikipedia, which identifies Bertrand Russell as the descendant of one Rufus (which is an alternative name for Russell).

Rufus is a popular Jewish name.

Bertrand Russell was thus apparently of Jewish/crypto-Jewish descent (using the word Jew here in the modern sense to refer to the people known as Ashkenazim).

That might explain how his advocacy of the goals of the NWO became so popular.

It might also explain his anti-Christian animus.

ORIGINAL  POST

Bertrand Russell, the mathematician, philosopher and activist, has had a great deal of popularity among atheists and among anti-Christian Hindus in India, because of a book he wrote attacking Christianity, “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

Russell’s stature as a “peace activist” is such that he is accorded a pass on what it is he actually advocated.

I urge Hindus and atheists who take Russell’s critiques at face-value to delve into the motivations of the man who wrote it.

A closer look shows a deceptive and unsavory supporter of  the key goals of the New World Order.

  1. Russell was a Fabian Socialist from his college days at Cambridge onward. He is thus associated with the pernicious system of thought responsible for the “stealth communism” that has destroyed most of  India’s social and economic fiber.
  2. Even though he was aligned with pacifists in theory, in practice he was in favor of violence, if it was in the cause of overthrowing what he considered unjust governments. Thus, he supported the communist revolution in Russia, but, after its conclusion, distanced himself from it.
  3. He claimed to have held refined views on human relations, but the facts of his own life are at odds with his claims: he betrayed his first wife for a succession of wives and paramours, although his wife continued to be devoted to him to her death; he seduced the bride of the great Christian poet, T.S. Eliot, before her wedding, contributing to the destruction of the marriage. A bi-sexual and an outspoken advocate of “free love” his “consensual cuckolding,” enabled by wife, Dora, created an unstable home for his children that exacerbated the latent insanity in the family leading to more than one case of insanity and suicide.

Russell’s political positions were far from purely humanitarian and seem to have been articulated ultimately for the benefit of the New Order coming into being.

In “Bertrand Russell, Prophet Of The New World Order,” David Peterson writes:

Bertrand lost both father and mother at a very early age. In his sixth year he was placed in the home of his elderly grandmother. In his autobiography Russell complains bitterly about the stifling tyranny and repression he endured while living in her home. Unlike his older brother who rebelled and left home, little Bertie remained her pet, never openly defying his granny. He said he developed an overwhelming rage which, to keep the peace at home, he completely suppressed during his childhood. Whether his grandmother did him any harm is hard to say; however, there is no doubt he developed some serious psychological problems. In his autobiography he speaks about his plan to commit suicide as an adolescent, a plan, which was abandoned when he realized it would mean never learning any more mathematics. Despite his great intellect he displayed the personality of an iconoclast and a misanthrope all his life. The primary motivation of Russell’s intellectual effort was the removal of cultural repression, which he attributed to traditional religion. He set his mind to the task of eliminating the influence of Christianity on Western culture.

Here is a passage from a letter Russell sent to his friend Gilbert Murray, which gives some insight into his tumultuous state of mind as a young man: “I have been merely oppressed by the weariness, tedium and vanity of things lately, nothing seems worth doing or having done. The only thing that I strongly feel worthwhile would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world.”

Sexual obsession and lust were a dominant force throughout Russell’s life and underpinned his public advocacy of population reduction and birth control. Lady Ottoline Morrell, Bertrand’s longtime lover and confidante, was the wife of Phillip Morrell. Russell was a notorious libertine whose multiple marriages never prevented him from satisfying his momentary lusts with whomever was at hand and willing. Russell carried out a long series of such affairs after he walked out on his first wife, Alys. With characteristic bluntness, he explained that he left his despondent young wife because he was “bored and disgusted with her.” We could say that, all in all, Bertrand Russell devoted his life to eradicating what is known as the moral order. Nietzsche had pronounced in his writings that “God is dead” and firmly held that the ethical norms taught by Jesus Christ had emasculated the human race. It was Russell who took Nietzsche’s call for the “transvaluation of all values” (reversing the Judeo-Christian moral order) and lent to that project his respectable credentials as a modern scientific thinker.”

At one time or other, Russell became a highly effective public advocate of the pillars of the New World Order – sexual libertinism (the destruction of the family unit, social control through psychology and addiction to drugs, a one-world government, and population control.

Russell’s population-control, like Sanger’s, was an outgrowth of his own eugenecist and racist ideas.

David Peterson:

He was alarmed about the higher fertility of nonwhite women and he demanded that the Asian and black birthrate be drastically curtailed. Otherwise, he felt his own breed (whites) would be overwhelmed, resulting in chaos and disaster. His view on population was made clear in his Prospects for Industrial Civilization: “Population [must be] stationary or nearly so…. The White population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the Negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without the help of war and pestilence…. Until that happens…the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific….”

Advocating what is now know as Zero Population Growth, Russell wrote:

If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors would be free to procreate freely without making the world too full.” Russell went on, “this state of affairs may be somewhat unpleasant, but what of it? Really high minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people’s.”

As for Russell’s pacifism, David Peterson has the following:

During World War I, Russell described himself as a pacifist and was jailed in England for his antiwar speeches. Later his reputation as “peace maker of his generation” suffered severe damage when, in the early years of the Cold War, Russell signed on as an avid backer of the so-called Baruch Plan. The proposal was billed as a peace offer to the Russians but it might be better described as a bomb hidden in a CARE package. Under the plan, Stalin would be given an ultimatum: the Soviets could join an international peace agency and forgo developing an H-bomb; but if they refused, Moscow and the other major Russian population centers would be instantly obliterated by a nuclear bombardment.

In his defense, Russell told a BBC interviewer, “I thought the Russians would give way but you can’t threaten unless you’re prepared to have your bluff called.” Certainly this English aristocrat and intellectual was not the only voice that could be heard recommending a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the Soviets, but he was by far the most prominent “pacifist” to do so. Some years later when he was faced with the publication in a New York newspaper of the charge that he had “decided that it would be good morals and good politics to start dropping bombs on Moscow,” Russell contracted a convenient case of amnesia and vehemently denied that he had ever countenanced any such thing.

By the opening of the inaugural meeting of the Pugwash Conference in 1957, Cold War Realpolitik had changed considerably and the Baruch Plan was buried. Russian scientists had developed a Soviet version of the ultimate weapon of mass destruction and just as suddenly Russell experienced a change of heart. Miraculously, his former mortal enemies, the Soviets, were now his partners in world peace! Anti-Communism had dissolved in favor of Russell’s new crusade for world peace and nuclear disarmament. Pugwash proposals were imbued with the ideology of the British Fabian Society, calling for a world government (made up of the world’s elites) to enforce a global peace. The plan called for NATO and the Warsaw Pact to be partners in halting the spread of nuclear weapons. The Pugwash Plan, however, went far beyond megatonnage and delivery systems. All nuclear energy and technology were to be centralized in the hands of the existing nuclear states–America, Britain, and Russia.

The antinuclear weapons campaign allowed Russell and his circle to accomplish two of their most important cultural objectives. The first was establishing a command and control center for one-world government. The second was creating a radical ecological movement that was hostile to technology and industrial progress. Pugwash propaganda skillfully equated “nuclear warfare” with “industrialism and technology.” The three terms were linked together and branded as the characteristic “evils of modern capitalism,” three evils which would soon annihilate us, either by nuclear war, by uncontrolled pollution, or by the depletion of our “fixed” resources. Only the Pugwash planners — with the “peace-loving” Soviets as their partners — had the solution. World leaders had to come to their senses and submit to a world government or all humanity was doomed!

Many of the Pugwash initiatives became the bedrock beliefs of Zero Population Growth and the radical ecology movements. The same ideology was disseminated in Western media channels and financed by the donations of hundreds of wealthy corporations, think tanks, and foundations. Much of this philanthropy is subsidized by having tax-free status — which means in effect it is paid in part by U.S. taxpayers.”

Is Jehovah Satan?

Is Jehovah Satan?

That was what many Gnostics, both medieval and modern, believed.

Gnosticism is the idea that liberation from the world of matter (believed to be sinful) is available to someone who cultivates esoteric wisdom that the masses cannot easily grasp.

The particular form of gnosis might vary – it might involve chanting mantras, or contemplating mystical visions, or inquiring into the nature of the self.  The main notion is that liberation from the world of the senses requires some kind of  knowledge inaccessible to the hoi polloi.

The early Gnostics were antagonistic to the early Christians. They thought the religion was simple-minded and ant-intellectual.

Many leading Gnostics were part of the Jewish emigre population in Alexandria, one of the great centers of learning in antiquity.

This was the Syro-Egyptian Gnostic school.

There was also a Persian school, but that was regarded as a distinct religion – Manicheanism.

The Jewish-Christian conflict of those days was reflected in the anti-Gnostic polemics of Church leaders and the Gnostics have had a bad reputation among Christians ever since, sometimes unfairly.

Many beliefs that Christians now regard as heretical, such as, Arianism – the notion that Jesus is not divine, but only a man –  began with the Gnostics.

But Gnosticism is increasingly understood to be rooted not in heretical Christianity but in heretical Judaism.

One of the most typical of the Gnostic beliefs was that from the original creator of the universe who is an impersonal monad, emanations issued, each more remote from divinity than the one before.

Among the lowest of these divine emanations was a demiurge or a lesser/false god, to whom the creation of the physical world is attributed.

The demiurge was seen as imperfect, even evil.

Yaldabaoth, Yahweh in the Bible, Satan, Ahriman (in the Persian tradition) were all regarded as demiurges.

It is this conflation of Satan and Yahweh among the Alexandrian gnostics that was revived in the 18th century by William Blake, the English poet, that underlies the tension of such famous lines as

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”

Blake’s Tiger suggests a darker deity than the benign Father of orthodox Christian belief.

So, when you see  websites springing up all over the Internet, equating Yahweh with Satan, it’s a continuation of this ancient Gnostic and neo-Gnostic error.

Error, because Yahweh is not Satan.

And Satan is not the same as Saturn, despite the visual resemblance of the two words.

Saturn is an Indo-European term.

Satan is Semitic (HaSatan in Hebrew) and it is not a proper but a common noun. It should be translated “the adversary.” From its root (S-T-N), the Arabs get Shai-tan.

A closer equivalent to Satan in the West is the Egyptian Set, the murderous brother of Osiris.

Although at one period considered a “good” God,  Set was later seen as evil, perhaps by association with the Semitic Hyksos rulers of Egypt in the early part of the 2nd millenium before Christ.

The Hyksos linked Set with the Phoenician god, Baal.

[Baal only means “lord” and was used to denote a variety of deities. There was Baal Hadad and there was Baal Hamon, to whom child sacrifices were offered.]

Because Baal is also known as El (Lord, singular), and the term Elohim (plural) is often used to refer to God in the Old Testament, the Gnostics in turn equated Baal with Yahweh.

The Gnostic equation was:

JEHOVAH =  BAAL =JUPITER = SATURN = SATAN

It ought to have read:

SET = BAAL(ZEBUB) = SATAN

 

 

 

Jesus666 Site

Yet another anti-Christian propaganda site replete with fallacious etymologies and the old claim that Jesus (the Greek version of Yehoshuah) is really Gaze-at-Zeus and pagan.  It’s not about accepting the redemptive work of Jesus; no, apparently, if you call God Yahweh, rather than Yeh-weh, you are on the road to perdition.

Google Jesus666 and see how many sites pop up.

This is all rather typical Judaicizing anti-Christ propaganda, common in Messianic and Hebrew Roots circles.

If you cross the bridge, it doesn’t matter what you call it. You’ll reach the other side.

If you don’t cross the bridge, it doesn’t matter what you call it, you’ll stay where you are.

Cross the bridge.

 

Strong’s Concordance

The best way to study the Bible at first hand is to use the King James Version (which is not without its flaws) in conjunction with Strong’s Concordance, which gives the Greek and Hebrew meanings relevant to the text.

(Note: I first linked by mistake to something called Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance, which at first glance, seems like a highly politicized version of the famous resource. It dispensed the familiar end-times narrative of political Zionism. Stick with the original Strong’s).

The Old Testament texts that Jesus read were in Greek (in the supranational Koine form), because the Greek version (Septuagint or LXX) was the most authoritative one at the time.

Here is an online version of the Septuagint with the Greek text next to the English.

It was called the Septuagint  because, at least anecdotally, 70 (or 72)  of the most important Hebrew scholars  compiled it.

The Septuagint predates Jesus by a couple of centuries and was widely used in Alexandria in Egypt, where there was a very large Jewish diaspora.

This was the text used by the Church fathers when Christian doctrine was formulated in the first few centuries of the millenium.

The other authoritative Old Testament text, the Masora, was compiled over several centuries by Rabbinical scholars (Masoretes)  between the 6th century and 10th century AD (that is, almost a 1000 years after the Septuagint).

It was a product of Rabbinical schools that were actively attacking and responding to Christianity and it should be understood in that light.

[Note: It isn’t necessary to ascribe a malicious motive to the Masoretes, although many Christian scholars do. From the Masoretes’ point of view, the Christians were simply reading things into the Hebrew text and they were taking a more neutral position. Both sides probably had some valid points.]

The Masoretic texts are the Old Testament texts used in the Talmud, which is the Rabbinical commentary on the Bible.

The Talmud, not the Torah, is the true core of modern Judaism.

Since the Talmud in both its Palestinian and its more famous Babylonian version were written down only in 200 AD (Mishnah) and 500 AD (Gemarah), the written records of modern Rabbinical (Talmudic) Judaism post-date those of Christianity.

Even the oral traditions of modern Judaism stem only from the Babylonian captivity, around the 6th century BC.

Consider that the earliest manuscript of the Talmud is the 1342 AD Munich Talmud.

By contrast, the first full manuscript of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, dates back to the middle of the 4th century AD or around 350 AD (a thousand years earlier).

In addition, there are fragments of the New Testament that go back much earlier, to the second half of the 1st century AD.

Altogether, there are over 25,000 early copies or fragments of the New Testament, not including quotations by the Church Father.

The New Testament is the most well preserved and well-documented piece of writing from antiquity.

Even so, understanding how the original Hebrew or Greek words have been translated into English is essential to understanding how meanings have been changed, either  accidentally or intentionally.

In that respect, Strong’s Concordance is an invaluable resource.

 

What Did Jesus Really Teach About Divorce?

 

Update 2:

I read a bit more about the Rabbinical context of Jesus’ reference to Adam and Genesis and found this excellent post, which points out other problems in the traditional teaching.

Since stoning was, apparently, the correct Jewish response to adultery, the question of remarriage can have applied only to the non-offending partner; the question of marrying an adulterous woman ought never to have arisen, because she would have been killed by stoning as soon as she was judged adulterous.

That conundrum reinforces both the authors’ argument below that taking Jesus’ words out of context leads to nonsensical conclusions, not profound ones.

Update:

Reading more from Dr. Instone-Brewer, I am uncomfortable with some of his conclusions.

Aligning Jesus with the Shammai Rabbinical school would mean that women who were divorced unfairly could legitimately remarry.

But Jesus’ own words seem to refute that interpretation.

Memo to self: Look at this angle a bit more.

However, the context of the debate between the two Rabbis is still very illuminating.

ORIGINAL POST

I came across a  fascinating description of  how divorce was seen during the time of Jesus’ ministry.

The author, David Instone-Brewer, a Professor of Rabbinic and New Testament Studies at Cambridge, examines actual practices and divorce certificates of the period, as well as the teachings of the two major Rabbinical schools then – that of Shammai (which was stricter) and that of Hillel (which was  more lenient).

He places Jesus’ teaching in the context of a debate between the two.

Instone-Brewer’s conclusions dramatically change the Gospel teaching on this crucial matter.

He argues that Jesus implicitly accepted at least one other ground for divorce besides “porneia” (which means sexual immorality) – failure to provide food, clothing and love (including sex) .

Such a failure would constitute neglect, the extreme variant  of  which is abuse.

The defining words in the Gospel passages on divorce, says the author, are “hard-hearted.”

Of course, no ground was to to be seen as automatically granting divorce, should the offending partner repent, since Jesus also constantly admonished his followers to forgive and be tender-hearted.

But a repeat offender who does not repent is not “tender,” but hard-hearted.

It follows that the person who divorces a repeat offender is not the one at fault, but simply the one legalizing the breach of the marriage inflicted by his partner.

David Instone-Brewer:

 Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage sounds completely different when you listen to him with the ears of a 1st C Jew
– so before I take you to Jesus’ teaching, I have to teach you what a 1st C Jew knew
– and then you can listen to the words of Jesus and hear them as they were heard

Jews relied on the OT to teach them God’s Law. So what did God’s Law say?
– they found 613 commandments in the OT, and five grounds for divorce
– the first commandment gave them the first ground for divorce – see Gen.1.28
“Be fruitful and multiply” – it is expressed as a command, so Jews obeyed it
– this meant that they regarded infertility as a ground for divorce
– it was a command which they tried to get round, but nevertheless a command
– Jesus specifically rejected this by saying that you could be a ‘eunuch’ for the kingdom (Mt.19.12)

[Lila: This argument sounds weak to me.

Mt. 19.12 is about becoming a “eunuch” for the kingdom, not because of a lack of fertility. It is a voluntary and therefore moral renunciation of sexuality, not an involuntary inability to conceive.]

[Instone-Brewer]

– that is, you could remain single, because the command to have children was not for everyone.

[Lila: It was, for married people engaged in lawful sexuality.]

– so infertility is not a ground for divorce, though it is frequently a cause of much grief.

The second ground for divorce they found is one which we do recognise: Immorality, in Deut.24.1
“When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favour in his eyes because he has found a cause of indecency in her, and he writes her a bill of divorce and puts it in her hand and sends her out of his house, and she departs out of his house…”

– the observant among you will notice that the sentence has not ended

– this is part of a case law – an actual occurrence with complicated circumstances

– it goes on to say that if this woman marries someone else, who also divorces her, and she comes back to her original husband, he may not marry her again.
– why? We don’t know. It is described as an “abomination”, so it is very bad
– but why is it worse to remarry your first husband than to marry a third?
– the best solution I know is that this was outlawing pimping your wife
– ie you divorce her, let her marry a customer for the night, then remarry her
– it is legal and common in some branches of Islam, but it was abominable to Moses

Perhaps that’s what the original case referred to, and perhaps not. It matters little
– the important thing is the principle in it: It allowed divorce for a particular ground
– the ground is “a cause of indecency” which the Jews interpreted as “adultery”

The last three grounds for divorce, the most important, were all found in one text
Ex.21.10f: If he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. And if he does not do these three things for her, she shall go out for nothing, without payment of money.
– OK, this doesn’t make much sense the first time you read it.
– the context is talking about slaves, and about someone who marries a slave.
– these verses tell him how he should treat her if he later marries another wife
– polygamy was allowed in the OT so it wasn’t wrong to marry another wife
– but these verses told him not to neglect his first wife now that he had another
– and, if he did neglect her, she had the right to a divorce and her freedom

This is revolutionary teaching in the Ancient Near East – treating slaves with dignity
– when the Jews came to apply this, they made various deductions, which I agree with
– they said: if a slave wife has these rights, then a free wife must also have these rights
– and if a wife has these rights, then a husband must also have these rights
– this kind of deduction is normal in OT law, which often gives only an example
– the Law says: Do not muzzle the ox, but let it eat the grain it threshes (Deut.25.4)
– Jews said: if this is the right of an ox, it is also the right of any farm worker
– and the NT uses this same method to argue that ministers should be paid (1Co.9.9)
– so I agree that this text gives these same rights to all husbands and wives
– and if they don’t get them, they have the right to divorce and freedom

What does this law say a husband should give to a wife, and wife to a husband?
– “food”, “clothing” and “marital rights”
– what would a lawyer make of this? It all sounds too vague
– and that’s exactly the conclusion of the Pharisees – the Jewish lawyers

– they debated exactly how to define neglect of food and clothing and love
– they defined how much food and clothing preparation the wife had to do
– so that if she fell short of this, the husband could divorce her for neglect
“These are the kinds of labour which a woman performs for her husband: she grinds flour, bakes bread, does laundry, prepares meals, feeds her child, makes the bed, works in wool.” (Mishnah Ketuvah 5.5)

– they also defined how much money for food and clothing the husband had to give:
– “he may not provide for her less than two qabs of wheat or four qabs of barley [per week]…. And he gives her a bed, a cover and a mat. And he gives her a cap for her head, and a girdle for her loins, and shoes from one festival season to the next, and clothing worth fifty zuz from one year to the next. ”  (Mishnah Ketuvah 5.8)
– I did some calculations, and found what this minimum support actually entailed
– for a normal day labourer, the cost of his wife’s clothes was 1/7th of his income!
– and if a husband didn’t support his wife properly, she could get a divorce

[Lila: So,  a bit more than 1/7th of the husband’s income was due to the wife for her upkeep, at a time when women were not earning in the market-place like men. This is far from 1/2, which is what modern feminism-instigated laws seem to demand, even though women are now in a position to contribute just as much or more to the finances of a marriage.]
Marriage was a contract in the Bible, and if you had to keep your side of the bargain
– both sides vowed to supply food, clothing and love, and to be faithful
– and if you didn’t keep your contract, the wronged partner could end the contract
– ie ask for a divorce, because marriage is a contract made before God (Prov.2.17)

We used to think that only men could get a divorce, and women were helpless
– but now we know that it was normal for Jewish women to get a divorce
– in fact half of all the divorce certificates surviving from the 1st 2 centuries are written for wives divorcing their husbands.
– before you stow that away as a useful fact, let me admit this is a statistical trick
– because but actually only two divorce certificates have survived from that time
– and 50% of them, ie one, was written for a woman divorcing her husband

– See more at: http://www.instonebrewer.com/visualsermons/Jesus-Divorce/_Sermon.htm#sthash.fTrPffZy.dpuf

For a refutation of Instone-Brewer’s analysis, see John Piper’s post at Desiring God.

Piper claims that too much of Instone-Brewer’s analysis relies on extra-textual elements and silences in the Biblical texts.

Hell Is Not Eternal Torment

An excellent analysis of the correct meaning of “hell” in Old and New Testament can be found at HellHadesAfterlife.com.

It shows that the traditional Christian teaching on this subject is actually unjust and morally repulsive.

The most important points it makes are the following:

1. Biblical Judaism as enunciated in the Old Testament does not teach that the soul is immortal. That is a Greek and pagan idea.

2. The Bible teaches that the REWARD for salvation is acquiring immortality.

3. The Bible teaches that this eternal life is enjoyed by a resurrected body, not an immaterial entity.

4. Misunderstanding of the differences between the terms “Sheol” (Hebrew), Hades (Greek), Tartarus (Greek), Gehenna (Hebrew), which are all translated as “Hell,” has led to a commingling of Pagan Greek ideas (eternal torture in hell) with Jewish.

As I’ve pointed out in other cases, literalism is the problem. The misunderstanding of the poetic language of the Bible has led to the belief that the damned are tortured forever, whereas all the metaphors used for it (blighted trees or branches, cut grass, burnt waste) indicate finitude.

Damnation in the Bible is essentially destruction. The human being who is not “fruitful” (spiritually alive) is struck down like a blighted tree and destroyed.

That is perfectly logical, even from a scientific viewpoint, because he has remained base and materialistic and therefore must share the fate of the base and materialistic (dust unto dust).

Apart from this, there are also hints in the Bible that at some point this destruction may be undone and even the most evil may be reconciled with God.

There are hints in the Bible of something akin to reincarnation.

 

Yeshua (Jesus) As An Anagram For Esau

 

 

UPDATE:

Going back, I see that I’ve used the Yeshua form myself in at least one post. I’ll correct it when I find it again.  I will make sure to use the form Yehoshua.

Note: These posts on Esau should be read as my thoughts on the subject, from varying angles. I equate Edom/ Esau with a world tyrant/super-state.

Since the only power of that dimension today is political Zionism, I equate the two.

So why do I bring up the view of some influential Rabbis of Jesus and Christians as Esau?

Because it is a history and reality that Christians need to understand.

They should also understand that this is by no means a universal view among Rabbis or Jewish scholars. Many Rabbis considered Jesus as a profound Jewish teacher. Many accepted him as the Messiah.

Also, the “Jews” of Jesus’ time (Idumeans and true Jews) did not reject Jesus en masse, by any means.

A substantial number of the earliest disciples of Christ and the most influential were Jews.

Paul himself was a Pharisee, just as Jesus well might have been. [On the contrary, this blog considers that the suggestion that Jesus was a Pharisee is a meme floated by the Hebrew Roots Movement and is subversive in intention. So also, the idea that the Pharisee Hillel “taught” Jesus or that Jesus plagiarized Hillel.  All these notions seem to diminish Jesus, which, ultimately, seems to be the goal of  the movement.]

Finally, Jesus never founded something called “Christianity.” He created a body of believers in his resurrection and atonement, who instituted a practice of commemorating his death among themselves and committed themselves to obeying his commandments – and those of no other.

He never told these believers to call themselves Christians or to call other people’s faiths false or demonic.

He just told his Apostles to take his message of “Good News” about the availability of salvation through grace to the Gentiles (a word that doesn’t mean non-Jews) and the “nations” so that they would see the light and come to it.

Everything beyond that simple teaching is actually controversial, if not controvertible.

ORIGINAL POST

The name Jesus is the Greek rendering of Yehoshua (in English, Joshua) or Yeh – hoshua or Yah (weh) saves. (Strong’s Hebrew Concordance gives it as the Lord is Salvation).

However, I’ve often seen Jesus referred to as Yeshua, especially on Hebrew Roots websites.

Hebrew Roots is a growing movement among Evangelical Christians that seeks to see the Jewish context of Jesus’ teachings. They see Jesus as a faithful Jew and not the apostate he is often made out to be in Jewish writing.

However, there is a troubling angle. These sites often go beyond pointing out how Jewish Jesus was to imposing Talmudic practices – often from several centuries after Jesus – on non-Jewish believers, thus making “traditions of men” more important than Jesus’ atonement..

On these sites you will often find the familiar Greek words from the New Testament given their Hebrew rendering, something I generally find very helpful and a needed corrective.

However, I’ve always wondered where they got the variant Yeshua from, in place of Yehoshua.

Researching the Jewish view of Edom/Esau, which traditionally is equated with Christianity in Rabbinical texts, I came across a comment on a Noahide site that YESHUA is an anagram for ESAU in Hebrew. The equation of the two is made elsewhere.

[The Islamic name for Jesus, Isa, is also said to be derived from Esau/Esav.]

Jesus is Esau in to many Rabbis and thus by extension Christianity and Christendom is Esau or Edom to them.

.

 

The Bible: Hebrew, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant

It is very important for Christians to understand that when the term Judeo-Christian is used casually, it is often based on a misunderstanding or incomprehension of the differences between what modern Jews believe and what orthodox Christians believe, let alone heterodox.

For instance, Christians may well believe that the “Old Testament” (that is the books of the Bible prior to the Advent of Christ) is something they have in common with Jews.

This is far from being the case. The Old Testament compilations vary even among Christians.

Catholics use a different set of books from most Protestants and Eastern Orthodox believers use a still different set.

Among Jews, there is no “Old Testament” at all, because Jews do no acknowledge any “New Testament” in order to make that distinction.

Catholic Resources has the following:

“Although the “New Testament” contains the same twenty-seven books for almost all Christians, there are some major and important differences between the Hebrew Bible” (HB) used by Jews and different versions of the Old Testament” (OT) used by various Christian churches and denominations:

  • The foundational texts are different:
  • Jewish Bibles are based on the HB;
  • the OT section in Christian Bibles is arranged according to the order of books in the “Septuagint” (LXX), the ancient Greek version of the Jewish scriptures;
  • however, the translations of individual OT books in Christian Bibles are now usually based on the texts of the HB.
  • The total number of biblical books is different:
  • Jews count 24, Protestants 39, Catholics 46, Orthodox Christians up to 53;
  • certain books of the HB are subdivided in the LXX; e.g., “The Twelve” minor prophets are considered one book in the HB, while the LXX and Christian Bibles count these as twelve separate books;
  • the LXX contains several additional books not found in the HB; Orthodox and Catholic Christians regard these additional books as part of the OT canon (calling them the “Deuterocanonical Books”), while Jews and most Protestant Christians do not (calling them the “Apocrypha”).
  • The arrangement of the categories of books is different:
  • e.g. the “Latter Prophets” come before the “Writings” in the HB, but all the “Prophets” come after the “Wisdom” literature in the Christian OT.
    the order of the “Prophets” is also different between the LXX and the Catholic and Protestant OT.
  • The titles of some of the books are different.
  • e.g. “Samuel” of the HB is split up into “1 Kingdoms” and “2 Kingdoms” in the LXX, which are renamed “1 Samuel” and “2 Samuel” in most Christian Bibles.
  • The categorization of some books is different:
  • e.g. several of the books categorized as “Writings” in the HB are placed among the “Historical Books” or the “Prophets” in LXX and the Christian OT; the displacements of Ruth and Esther, Ezra-Nehemiah and Chronicles (1&2), and Lamentations and Daniel are indicated with highlighted colors in the chart below.

Notes:

  • HB = Hebrew Bible; LXX = Septuagint; OT = Old Testament; see my Biblical Glossary for detailed explanations of all these terms.
  • Books in CAPITALS are found in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Bibles, but not in most Jewish or Protestant Bibles.
  • Books in Italics are also in the LXX and considered biblical by various Orthodox Christians, but NOT by Jews or most other Christians.

Comparative Chart:

HEBREW BIBLE
(a.k.a. Mikra or TaNaK/Tanakh)
ORTHODOX BIBLES
(based on larger versions of LXX;
exact contents & editions vary)
CATHOLIC BIBLE
(based on Alexandrian canon of LXX;
with seven Deuterocanonical books)
PROTESTANT BIBLE
(retains Catholic order, but
seven Apocrypha removed)
Torah / Books of Moses
1) Bereshit / Genesis
2) Shemot / Exodus
3) VaYikra / Leviticus
4) BaMidbar / Numbers
5) Devarim / Deuteronomy
Pentateuch
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy
Pentateuch (Law)
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy
Law (Pentateuch)
1) Genesis
2) Exodus
3) Leviticus
4) Numbers
5) Deuteronomy
Nevi’im / Former Prophets
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Samuel (1&2)
9) Kings (1&2)
Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Kingdoms (= 1 Sam)
10) 2 Kingdoms (= 2 Sam)
11) 3 Kingdoms (= 1 Kings)
12) 4 Kingdoms (= 2 Kings)
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles
15) 1 Esdras
16) 2 Esdras (=Erza + Nehemiah)
17) Esther (longer version)
18) JUDITH
19) TOBIT20) 1 MACCABEES
21) 2 MACCABEES
22) 3 Maccabees
23) 4 Maccabees
Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Samuel
10) 2 Samuel
11) 1 Kings
12) 2 Kings
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles15) Ezra
16) Nehemiah
17) TOBIT
18) JUDITH
19) Esther (longer version)
20) 1 MACCABEES
21) 2 MACCABEES
Historical Books
6) Joshua
7) Judges
8) Ruth
9) 1 Samuel
10) 2 Samuel
11) 1 Kings
12) 2 Kings
13) 1 Chronicles
14) 2 Chronicles15) Ezra
16) Nehemiah

17) Esther (shorter version)

Nevi’im / Latter Prophets
10) Isaiah
11) Jeremiah
12) Ezekiel
13) The Book of the Twelve:
Hosea, Joel,
Amos, Obadiah,
Jonah, Micah,
Nahum, Habakkuk,
Zephaniah, Haggai,
Zechariah, Malachi
Khetuvim / Writings
14) Psalms (150)
15) Proverbs
16) Job
17) Song of Solomon
18) Ruth
19) Lamentations
20) Ecclesiastes
21) Esther (shorter version)
22) Daniel (12 chapters)
23) Ezra-Nehemiah
24) Chronicles (1&2)
Poetic Books
24) Psalms (151)
25)    Odes (w/ Prayer of Manasseh)
26) Proverbs
27) Ecclesiastes
28) Song of Solomon
29) Job
30) WISDOM of Solomon
31) SIRACH, a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus
32) Psalms of Solomon
Wisdom Books
22) Job
23) Psalms (150)
24) Proverbs
25) Ecclesiastes
26) Song of Solomon
27) WISDOM of Solomon
28) SIRACH, a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus
Wisdom Books
18) Job
19) Psalms (150)
20) Proverbs
21) Ecclesiastes
22) Song of Solomon
. Prophets
33) Hosea
34) Amos
35) Micah
36) Joel
37) Obadiah
38) Jonah
39) Nahum
40) Habakkuk
41) Zephaniah
42) Haggai
43) Zechariah
44) Malachi45) Isaiah
46) Jeremiah
47)     BARUCH
48)     Lamentations
49)     LETTER of JEREMIAH
50) Ezekiel
51) Daniel (2 chapters listed separately):
52)     SUSANNA
53)     BEL and the DRAGON
Prophets
29) Isaiah
30) Jeremiah
31) Lamentations
32) BARUCH (incl. LETTER of JER.)
33) Ezekiel
34) Daniel (14 chapters)35) Hosea
36) Joel
37) Amos
38) Obadiah
39) Jonah
40) Micah
41) Nahum
42) Habakkuk
43) Zephaniah
44) Haggai
45) Zechariah
46) Malachi
Prophets
23) Isaiah
24) Jeremiah
25) Lamentations26) Ezekiel
27) Daniel (only 12 chapters)

28) Hosea
29) Joel
30) Amos
31) Obadiah
32) Jonah
33) Micah
34) Nahum
35) Habakkuk
36) Zephaniah
37) Haggai
38) Zechariah
39) Malachi

 

 

Ambassadors For Christ: Mtegemee Yesu

I just discovered Rwanda’s magnificent gospel choir, “Ambassadors for Christ.”

The song is Mtegemee Yesu.

Even in tough times, it says, trust in Jesus.

The subtitles are in English, but even without the translation from Swahili, the meaning comes through.

Rwanda is around 90% Christian, one of the many predominantly Christian African countries that make the continent a new bastion of Christianity, supplanting Europe.

Mtegemee Yesu

1. Mambo mengi yanakupata ndugu….yanayokuumiza moyo Hata ukimwomba Mungu waona…. kama vile amekutenga Maisha magumu shida tupu….. wabebeshwa dunia nzima unapapasa hapa na pale…. bila kuata msaada
2. umeanza kukata tamaa…. imani yako inayumbayumba unajisikia mpweke …..umeachwa kama yatima utokako ni mbali sana…… kiasi kwamba huwezi rudi mbele huendako nako giza….. umekosa matumaini Kiitikio Magumu shida yakupatayo ndugu…. ni ya muda kidogo kamwe yasikutenganishe na yule… rafiki wa kweli Hebu itegemee ahadi yake ….kwamba atakuwa nawe hata kwenye wakati huo mgumu….. mtegemee yesu
3. Umezongwa nazo shida nyingi…. lakini mkumbuke Ayubu Alivyozidiwa nayo majaribu…. alisimama imara Tabu yako imefanywa wimbo…. na waumini wenzako sawa na wale marafiki za ayubu …walivyomcheka
4. Usiruhusu shida yako… ikunyakue mikononi mwa bwana jibu lako ni yeye pekee…. tegemeo na kimbilio hata wenzako wakucheke…. vumilia utayashinda ndugu jipe moyo mtetezi yupo…. magumu atarahisisha