WARNING. HOLY QURAN CHAPTER 9 VERSE 30.

“The Jews say: Ezra is the son of God, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of God. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. God (Himself) fights against them. How yufakuna are they!

Semantic specifications.

Ezra. It is the current translators or Muslims who transcribe the Arabic name Uzayr, Esdras. There is no evidence that he is the secretary for Jewish affairs of the Persian empire mentioned in the book of the Bible bearing his name.

If this is the case, it must be remembered here that the Jews never made him a son of God. The Bible does not even make him a prophet. He is a pious Jew sent to Jerusalem in -458 with a first group of volunteers to reorganize the Jewish state with Jerusalem as its capital. Then he disappeared, to reappear in -448. on the occasion of a first reading of the new Jewish law (different from that of the Samaritans remained on the spot).

Only a few speculative Jewish currents make it a new Moses.

About the Arabic word "yufakuna" which essentializes or characterizes therefore Jews and Christians according to Surah 9 verse 30 in the Quran and which is often conveyed in translations as something like "Jews and Christians .... understand nothing”.

They are

-beguiled

-perverted

-perverse

-deluded

-turned away

It is a derivative of the word afaka, at least according to the volume 1 of the book by Muhammad Mohar Ali entitled "Word for word translation of the Qur’an.”

But the word yufakuna does not imply a simple ignorance, it rather suggests a misguided intelligence, or that one prevents from functioning normally.

And the "one" in question is to be taken in the strongest sense: it can be God as well as the devil.

Being an atheist, however, we will reject this hypothesis and we will opt for a more natural impediment.

"Jews and Christians ...... are naturally unable to see, to know, to understand! "

At the philosophical level "Jews and Christians’ faith…has nothing to do with Reason! ”

More bluntly "Jews and Christians……are morons.”

In short in summary "Jews and Christians ... are persons with Down’s syndrome.” Or alienated.

But the same could be said of Muslims. Unlike *the religions of nature, seasonal and cyclical, or the god of philosophers; or the individual Grail quests, the mass monolatries that are Judaism, Christianity and Islam, claim, by repeating and even singing; to be based on historical foundations, on characters who really have existed, on revelations that would have been made to them.

However, the progress of historical science and its auxiliary sciences (see the work of Israel Finkelstein of Thomas Römer and their colleagues) has shown that the Abraham Isaac Jacob lineage or Moses and the Exodus.... HAVE NOTHING HISTORICAL.

Snippets of history only appear in the Bible with David and Solomon. This human imposture would be of little importance if all their later intellectual constructions were not solely justified by the revelations made to these 3 (or 4) people.

This means that a dialogue between Buddha and Plato or the god of the philosophers is possible **; but with the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob or Muhammad one cannot argue, one can only "credere obbedire combattere" (to believe, obey, fight).

Hence an unprecedented catastrophe for mankind!

Judaism is thus a human or divine, sham, Christianity a sham squared, Islam a sham cubed, each adding its layer of sham to that of its predecessors. A REAL DISASTER!

* Or infinitely more.

** And besides, it took place, in Gandhara and in the Kushan Empire, which resulted in the Mahayana.

PROLOG.

Intended, as John Toland would have said it , to the sincere believers more concerned about truth than about out of date or interested opinions…

The great force of the druidism is that it recognizes the share of truth of any religion, if weak is it. This eagerness to recognize the truth, whatever the sources of which it comes, is one of its characteristics.

But the truth, with due respect to some people, it is the belief in God does not imply automatically human fraternity, harmony with nature, concord; unless, of course, like the French intellectuals or journalists of today, to consider.

a) That the religion of love, forever, was the first religion of Mankind.

b) That the Aztec gods of war or the Celtic human sacrifices were not part of their religion.

And conversely, mutatis-mutandis, atheism or agnosticism does not involve ineluctably violence, or non-humanity; for the simple reason that even the animals have their ethology and have rules of life in common (courtship display, maternal instinct….).

To explain religion, it is to explain a particular type of mental epidemic (cf. d’Holbach the sacred contagion) which results in developing (starting from variable information) rather similar ideas and religious concepts; [because] it is not at all obvious that the supernatural one makes the world “more comfortable.” Quite to the contrary: a religious world is often more terrifying that a world without religion.

The History, the true one, the scientific history, it is the speech whose accounts convey the reality of the facts well … Because there are three main manners to distort it.

- The First is not to speak about the awkward facts.

- The second is of especially speaking about the accommodating facts (when there are some of them).

- Third is to invent them when there are not.

Either by inserting there plausible, possible, but having never existed, facts or words.

Or by inserting there marvelous, but incredible, facts or words.

A catechism, a sacred book learned by heart, can only instill in children, by images and repetition, the simplistic belief in its God or Demiurge. A catechism or a book learned by heart is not an explanation, but an assertion. Making the children learn one of them is a practice which amounts carrying out the primacy of the faith over the reason and breaking every critical judgment in this field. Either you are a priest or a journalist.

To offer to the children become later adult , a more rational explanation, cannot be enough to repair the damage of this true rape of the consciences, carried out in the time of their youth.

Truth does not lie in the historical exactitude of the told facts, but in the adequacy between the told facts and the confessed faith, some people claim. In other words, an entirely subjective truth, it is the least which we can say!

But is it intellectually honest to preach to teach or simply to let believe, would it be to one of his faithful, and would it be the last one, with regard to questions as important as that of our origins; something recognized now as inaccurate by our greater scientists?

Mini-dictionary for beginners: “To tell the truth, it is to say what really occurred, it is not to invent.”

The truth, it is what is used to designate a thing objectively in conformity with the facts, or at least with an unquestionable principle, kind 2 + 2 = 4. What characterizes this kind of truth, the factual or scientific truths, it is their objective characteristic.

When they are more subjective things, for example, some lived feelings, we speak then of sincerity. But that is, of course, much more difficult to check.

When a person guilty of an accident acknowledge the facts, but declares: “I did not it consciously or purposely,” only him alone knows it.

It is generally admitted that the words “true” and “truth” can also be used for another thing than objective, faithful, complete and exhaustive, reports, of facts (and sayings). An image or a work of fiction can, for example, contain a share of truth, or can in its way express a truth (in the broadest sense of that term).

The fact is that these nonfactual and non-scientific truths are extremely subjective and are in no way comparable to objective truths. They are not in conformity with reality in a strict sense of the term and the authors of these works of fiction, intended to promote such subjective truths, have the moral duty to acknowledge it from the start. They have the responsibility not to let remain on this subject an ambiguity as for the facts, or as for the details, of the material reality to which they refer in order to

release their truth from it. To imply that an account is objectively in conformity with factual reality, even truncated, whereas it is only an image, or that this was only written in order to establish the link with another thing (midrash); it is to misuse the notions of true or of truth and it is to mislead, by means of an attitude being connected with that…of the lie!

As John Toland wrote it very well in the youth work which made him famous, “The professed defenders of truth for truth’s sake were to be a small handful with respect to the numerous partisans of error,” the guiding principle of this study will be therefore simple, it was provided to us and a long time ago already, by our Master to all in this field; the great Gaelic bard founder of the modern Free thought that we have just evoked under his anglicized name. There cannot be by definition things contrary to Reason in Holy Scriptures really coming from the divinity. If there is, then they are either error, or lies.

Either there is no mystery, or then it is in no way a divine revelation. There is no happy medium ! I acknowledge no ORTHODOXY but the TRUTH; for, I'm sure, wherever the TRUTH is, there must also be the CHURCH, of God I mean, and not any human faction or policy… I'm therefore for giving no quarter to ERROR under any pretense; wherever I have ability or opportunity, to expound it in its true colors, without making my labor ineffectual, by weakly mincing or softening of anything…

Because when people find themselves imposed upon in any part of religion, they are then ready to call the whole in question…. They are these contradictions and mysteries unjustly charged upon religion, which occasion so many to become only Deists even Atheists (Summary of the thought of John Toland on this subject). We could not better say!

The survival of the Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox, Reformist Muslim, religions prevented until our days any at the same time mythological and historical study of these texts, considering the taboos which were attached there.

But an unintelligible or absurd proposition is to be never the more respected for being ancient or strange, for being originally written in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew…as John Toland (Christianity not mysterious) saw it very well,

Reason is one of the only means we have to distinguish the oracles and will of God, from the impostures and traditions of men. Whoever reveals anything, that is, whoever tells us something we did not know before, his words must be intelligible, and the matter possible. This rule holds good, let God or man be the revealer. Because if we count that person a fool who requires our assent to what is manifestly incredible, how dare we blasphemously attribute to the most perfect being, what is an acknowledged defect in one of ourselves? As for unintelligible relations, we can no more believe them from the revelation of God, than from that of man; for the conceived ideas of things are the only subjects of believing, denying, approving, and every other act of the understanding: therefore all matters revealed by God or man, must be equally intelligible and possible; so far both revelations agree. We are then to expect the same degree of perspicuity from God as from man (Summary of the thought of John Toland on this subject).

Only a study removed from every theological prejudice can therefore release the meaning of these texts that it is advisable to approach in the same way that the Greek, Sumerian-Babylonian or Druidic, mythologies; because Bible and Quran are in fact only a vast compilation of various materials and in no way the word of a God or Demiurge who does not exist or at least who could not exist in the way in which he is described to us.

In connection with their God contradictions emerge each time that comes up the problem of his omnipotence or of his omniscience. Some think of evading the difficulty by speaking about only apparent contradictions, in the truths revealed by God to his prophets. See the case of the Satanic verses in the Quran.

From where the famous answer of Toland : we cannot otherwise discern his revelations but by their conformity with our natural notices of him, which is in so many words, to agree with our common notions…But what do they mean by "consisting with themselves, yet not with our common notions?" Four may be called Five in Heaven; but so the name only is changed, the thing remains still the same. And since we cannot in this world know anything but by our common notions, how shall we be sure of this pretended consistency between our present seeming contradictions, and the theology of the world to come…?

They impose upon themselves and others, who require assent to things contradictory, because God, say they, can do all things, and it were limiting of his power to affirm the contrary….

That every contradiction, which is a synonym for impossibility, is pure nothing, we have already sufficiently demonstrated.

To say, for example, that a thing is extended and not extended, is round and square at once, is to say nothing; for these ideas destroy one another, and cannot subsist together in the same subject.

To believe in the divinity of Scripture, or the sense of any passage thereof, without rational proofs, and an evident consistency, is a blameable credulity, and a temerarious opinion, ordinarily grounded upon an ignorant and willful disposition, but more generally maintained out of a gainful prospect. There is no different rule to be followed in the interpretation of Scripture from what is common to all other books (still according to John Toland).

So stop to the anti atheistic or anti-agnostic racism therefore! It is time to say no to this stupid and malicious racism from the believers against atheism or agnosticism.

Is it honest to preach or teach or simply to let believe, would it be to one of his faithful, and would it be the last one; that the base of any morality is in the Bible, the Decalogue, and in no way in the code of Hammurabi, the Buddhism or the Vedas? My answer to me is no, it is not!

For comparison, the Egyptian Decalogue, much less coarse, is in fact as for it composed of 42 sins enumerated negatively or by contrast in the so-called negative confession, which concludes the judgment of souls in the room of the two Ma'at according to Egyptian religion.

As certain believers themselves acknowledge it in connection with the Bible, men, including those who are chosen by God (we wonder well why?) appear in it as they are and sin is spread out unceasingly. There exists for example in the Genesis 3 cases of wives introduced by a husband as being his sister, in the country where he goes, in order to attract the good graces of the local princes.

Abraham * in Egypt (Genesis 12,13).

Abraham *still, but in Gerar (Genesis 20,2).

Isaac, still in Gerar (Genesis 26,7).

Nothing to do with some prostitution and (layman) procuring, but all the same!

Another case: the criminal adultery of King David and the assassination of the Aryan, Hittite more precisely, warrior, named Uriah, reported into 2 Samuel 11, 2 to 17.

*Answer of the believers of the kind Jehovah's or Allah’s Witnesses , " He only defended himself because he was threatened ."

ON RELIGIONS IN GENERAL.

TRUE GENESIS OF THE APPEARANCE OF LIFE AND MANKIND.

Explosion of the cosmic egg, of the cosmic snake, at the origin of our world: 14 billion years.

What was there before, nothingness another universe or God, impossible to know!

Earth formation : 5 billion years.

The oldest grounds of our planet conceal no trace of life; life therefore did not always exist on Earth; it was born from the matter. The more recent the ground is, the more the fossil is complicated. Life therefore changes unceasingly since it has time of it and there is no reason to think that this change, which is called evolution, ceased.

Approximately 400 million years ago, life left the “watery placenta” to develop slowly on the dry land, by selective changes. One hundred and sixty-five million years ago began the dinosaur era : some were vegetarians others frightening carnivores!

But at the end of Cretaceous, the dinosaurs disappeared from our planet, after to have reigned over it 100 million years.

- 7 million years. Approximately.

In Africa, it is the time when separation between the great apes and the humans was done.

The apes kept their thumb not opposable, while the first Hominidae could bend it to grasp food or to hunt.

- 7 M: Sahelanthropus tchadensis.

- 6 M: Tugenensis.

- 5,5 M: Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba.

- 4,5 M: Ardipithecus ramidus ramidus.

- 4 M: Australopithecus anamensis.

- 3,5 M: Australopitecus afarensis.

A female skeleton was found in Ethiopia close to the dried river called Awash. The scientists called it “Lucy.” It is currently the first human skeleton to have small legs connected with a broad horizontal pelvis, which enabled her to run while standing on her two legs. This detail differentiates her from our cousins the proconsul apes, which kept a small narrow pelvis going up vertically. The age of Lucy is approximately 3,5 million years!

Australopithecus baheng bazali. Paleontologists found a contemporary male to Lucy, named Abel, whose bones were unearthed in the North of the Chad. The place where the bones of Abel were found shows that the man could also adapt to other environments than the bush.

- 3M: Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi.

- 2 M: Homo habilis.

- 1,5 M: Paranthropus robustus.

- 1 M: Homo erectus.

Homo australopithecus walk upright then Homo habilis comes. The volume of the brain increases and Homo erectus appears. The man creates the first tools. From there, he will invade the whole Earth gradually.

Around - 950.000 years before our era groups of hominoids of approximately ten people each one, cross the Straits of Gibraltar (still welded to Europe) and go up until the south of France. These Homo Erectus settled in the French department of the Alpes-Maritimes, precisely at the place where the ice barrier caused by the Gunz glaciations began.

- 600.000 before our era. Time as from which we know with certainty that the man (at Zhoukoudian : China) can control fire.

- 300 00 before our era. Homo Neanderthalensis. Western Asia, central Asia, Siberia, and Europe. The man of Neandertal was red-headed and had the light skin. The conditions of his disappearance in favor of Homo sapiens remain mysterious. To the great displeasure (what a shame) of the White a certain number of genes of this primitive and cannibal man are found in the European populations in the veins of whom therefore run a few blood drops not being part of our species which is that of the Homo sapiens or modern man I point out it.

APPEARANCE OF RELIGION.

Contrary to the basic presupposition in the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, religions; the religion did not begin with a revelation apparition or commands, of God or the Demiurge, with a first initial Man created from scratch or almost (a little earth or a rib: Adam and Eve), a first human couple which then would have forgotten Him or betrayed Him ; but had much more unclear very progressive beginnings. What changes all and makes Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, anthropology, completely and seriously erroneous, from the beginning, as from its bases.

- 100,000. First burials. They are Neanderthal (- 60,000 at Shanidar in Kurdistan: a grave flowered). In France certain clues also evoke a worship of the bear (cave of the Regourdou in Dordogne).

Thus probably rose the first religions, since the worship of the dead is one of the very first religious signs. We found graves dating back to the year - 33.000 before our era, evoking the hunting and the daily life of the Neandertal man; who buried already his companions in graves, while adding to it food and weapons, to make the dead able to achieve his “long travel in the hereafter.” These signs are the precursory elements of a belief in another life after death. What also confirm the approximately 25.000-year-old drawings found in the caves of the Paleolithic era in the South-west of France ; which prove that worship was already performed in caves in the honor of the mother-goddess-or-demoness, source of life and protection. The oldest statue of a woman (probably a goddess-or-demoness, or a fairy if this term is preferred) is that of Brassempouy in the French department of the Landes, the age of which goes back to - 22.000 years before our era.

The unity of the community, identified with a god-or-demon or a totem, is formed through the exchanges of women and goods (gifts or potlatch); in the meticulous respect of the rituals and traditions which keep the order of the world; a breakable balance restored with sacrifices, dances, prayers, formulas. The original conceptuality (the uncivilized thought) is classifying with a systematic dualism (man/animal, man/woman, life/death, earth/sky, reality/dream), but the triad, a surpassing dualism, is also frequently attested in these archaic beliefs and thoughts.

Although implying the existence of a lord of the animals to whom they owe the renewal of their subsistence; there is not among these first humans the idea of a being, which would be compared to their “self” something radically other and higher (God or the Demiurge). Rather the idea that nature is as a set of forces at the disposal of man (to eat an animal, it is to take its force). A really great diversity in lived experiments exists, however, between the men who live on gathering and the hunters. Between the nomads and the settled populations, the inhabitants of the warm zones and the tribes which undergo glaciation (with undoubtedly in this case the focusing on fruitfulness: Venus and Black Virgins). But it is necessary to keep in our minds that, unlike today, these populations were then very few and scattered, what did not make really possible the development of complex and lasting traditions, safe exceptions; as shows it the very localized cave art of Lascaux.

The magic practices will obviously not be limited to prehistory. The identification of each chain of causes to a will, a genie or a god-or-demon, will remain in the various polytheisms, but organized in an order arranged hierarchically which will tend towards being unified. And will also remain even in the Hebraic monolatry of the beginnings of the biblical narrative (the elohim etc. the peoples of the Bible, chosen or not chosen in fact, are all polytheistic at best henotheistic until the return of the Jews from Babylon in the 5th century before our era, liberated by Cyrus the Great. Indeed, it took the shock of the deportation to Babylon and the use of its immense libraries for some of the members of the Jewish elite of Jerusalem in exile to understand that there is only one God and that he is the same for all the peoples of the Earth, their specificity being to think that this unique God does not behave with them as with the other men (cf. the notions of am nichvar, segullah, or mahallah) .

- 10.000 before our era. Approximately.

The end of the glacial period changes completely the climate and the landscape. The rarefaction of fauna obliges the hunters to settle on the shores of the lakes or the coastlines, and to live on fishing. It is also the time of the domestication of sheep, then of goats, pigs and dogs. In the Middle East, it is the beginning of the Neolithic agriculture (in Jericho and Mureybet). Villages are constituted which will prepare the true beginnings of Civilization and History, since the spreading of farming and breeding will be done starting from this territory; globalizing, at the same time as their new religion, the plants and the animals that men had domesticated there.

Farming fixed the nomads (from where local increase in the population), it became as religious as economic, and they are the annual recurrences of the phases of the working life which generated the dates of religious holidays.

We should not underestimate the radical innovation of this religious attitude, which indeed will lead to sanctuaries for the god-or-demons, compared to the fetishistic ideology of the hunters-gatherers.

The deities of the previous phase are still present, but the practice of farming will change radically the representation of the world ; by favoring the cycles of nature (from rising to setting, from generation to rotting, from seed to plant, from spring to winter). It will be the reign of the eternal return, the myth of the resurrection, the rejuvenation, the valorization of stability, the predictions (oracles), of the fertility. The concepts of incarnation and transmigration of the soul/minds have their roots in the experience of the farmer.

These problems led the theologians to make the god-or-demons go down on Earth in order to die, to come back to life then to transmit the virtue of resurrection to men. Who will be able therefore to reach an eternal life in a kind of Heaven after their death. The “Soter” i.e., the savior (in Greek language ) was each time killed by men after having undergone a Passion. A certain number of days after his death (he went down initially to the hell in order to show that he was the Master of the death) he came back to life in order to return in the world of the god-or-demons.

Each religion works out a story which tells the life and the sermons of its savior. The death of Marduk, Sumerian-Babylonian god-or-demon, was celebrated between March15th and March 20th .Same thing for Adonis, Ishtar, Serapis, Cybele, Mithra, Demeter, Ahura Mazda… People give to these saving god-or-demons the generic title of “lord” (kyrios in Greek language).

These ideas of farmer still form the content of all the current religions. The relative stability of the living conditions for this time has explained the unity of these superstitions. The beliefs often remain beyond the conditions which generated them, because the belief is supported by the tradition. And prehistoric local traditions were preserved besides until our days, by combining themselves with new beliefs.

The answer given by the Sumerian myth is that men escape the destruction only on the condition of serving the god-or-demons, of working for them, in their place (in the place of nature) in order to offer sacrifices to them. This new concept of original debt towards somebody, of culpability, will cause a relation of submission in which man having lost his natural “freedom” will have to repurchase it by work. The debt towards the savior and Master, founder of the order, will be founding, for these religions.

With the difference of the Sumerian and Canaanite tradition, which makes thework the service of the god-or-demons, the price of the life and of the access to knowledge; in the biblical mythology, the work becomes, on the other hand, a punishment, consequence of the knowledge, even especially of the freedom or of the revolt of mankind. But, basically, that amounts to the same thing !

SCIENTIFIC HISTORY.

The history (the true one) of the civilizations of the Near or Middle East.

The text which follows contains perhaps mistakes, but by no means it claims to be dictated or even only inspired, was this partially, by God or the Demiurge. These mistakes will be progressively rectified with the advances in historical knowledge.

As John Toland saw it very well in his Christianity not mysterious, the characteristic of the civilization is to accumulate knowledge; and to be never in the situation, except with regard to the mindset of each one, of course, of having to rediscover everything, by starting from scratch. The last comers benefit not only from all what their predecessors accumulated, but also add to it their own observations. (Quotation from memory.)

We tend often too towards isolating the Hebrews, then the Jews, from their Near-Eastern context, under the pretext of their later role in the world. They are on the contrary integrated perfectly into their time and coexist with their neighbors, according to the same religious rules as them. The crushing documentary source that is the Bible distorts our vision of the situation: the Hebrews began by being henotheistic before ending monolatrous: they did not deny the existence of the other gods. It was not until the first deportation to Babylon in 597 before our era that the Jewish elite of Jerusalem frequented the libraries of this first great civilization and gradually realized that their god could only be the god of all these countries of all these peoples.

In view of the place and date (- 571 at Tel Abib in Chaldea somewhere on the banks of the Kebar near Nippur) the vision of the Merkaba or Glory of God by Ezechiel is significant in this respect, as is that of the worship paid to Tammuz in the temple mentioned besides. One wonders what Ezechiel could have taken for the chariot of God. Still not an alien ship! The Chaldeans being remarkable astronomers, I would lean towards an observation instrument of the kind gigantic astrolabe, being moved, or not. The famous wheels that have caused so much ink to flow were perhaps a kind of astrolabe, a thesis developed by Luigi Chiarini in his "Fragment of Chaldean Astronomy" published in 1831.In any case, this professional translator had a high opinion of each other's science.

"Ezekiel, who...stands out among all sacred writers, as much by his genius as by his instruction, had to borrow from the people who held him in slavery, all that his arts and sciences offered him of remarkable value, and mix it with the traditions he had inherited from his fathers and the knowledge he owed to his education. We see him first setting the time of his mission, according to the Chaldean chronology and that of the history of the kings of Judea, and further appealing to the way in which Babylonian scholars recorded their celestial observations, and drew the map of a city or the map of an entire country, on baked bricks. The science of the stars, which flourished in his time in Chaldea more than anywhere else, had to strike his imagination early.

In short, anyway, let's go back to our brief panorama of the great religions of the region during antiquity.

THE ANCIENT ARYANS.

The word Aryan is the current form in our language of the Sanskrit word (language formerly spoken in the Indian sub-continent) Arya (free noble) and historically designates those of the speakers of Indo-European languages who spread these languages towards Asia, particularly towards the current territories in Iran and India…

- 7500. Somewhere in the steppes of the south Russia (according to the Yamnaya or pit-grave assumption).

The religion of these wandering stock breeders is partly made available to us by what we know of the Indo-European religions, although much later, and which is from Iran to India in (not forgetting the Scythians, the Celts, the Slavs). These wandering people were to protect their goods, objects of desire, unless they did not live on plunder like the first Greeks (according to Thucydides) or the first Romans. They formed therefore a class of warriors. The supremacy of the man in this organization, as well as the attention paid by these populations to the problems of reproduction, will be expressed in a patriarchal religion and the worship of heroes. The unity of life and death (if death leaves the life, the life, on the other hand, comes from the death) is marked in phallic ceremonies. Warrior initiations, the rites of the Soma or of the Ambrosia, give to the warriors the hope of immortality. The sacrifices evolve from their magic function to a formalist ritualism which is reduced to affirm the unity of the community. There were to be also banquets for this purpose. The banquet will remain besides among the Greeks or the Celts the principal rite of “devogdonion” communion.

The Bronze Age. - 5000. The break of the Hellespontus and the flood of the Black Sea (- 5500) speeded up the spreading of agriculture by causing some migrations of populations. The rise of the techniques, and especially those of iron later, accentuating specialization, will give rise to new designs well differentiated from shamanic and warlike initiations. But, from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age (iron remains a Hittite secret from - 3.500 to - 1100) the valorization of the (god-or-demon or hero) fighter will be being accentuated. What will involve the wars of the Mesopotamian cities, then the Indo-European invasions and armed robbery, the nomadism providing the logistics of the wars of movement, especially after the domestication of the horse and the invention of the chariot. The egalitarian structure of the first villages makes room to an increasingly marked hierarchization, being reflected in the tripartite ideology (Priests, Warriors and Producers) controlled by the priestly function of a Sovereign God or Demiurge.

We may not consider this religion as a religion of the writing (what it became later), because it refrained from it in the beginning (prohibition of the writing for the religion as among the Celts or the Scythians). It claimed rather to be based on the revelation, the ecstasies (Soma),the initiation, the oral transmission, before being collected in books ( the gathas and the rest of the Avesta).

We know by the old Vedas the religion of the first Aryans before their division between Indians and Iranians (and Mitannians in Palestine around - 1600). This Indo-European religion is characterized by the duality of the gods (Devas and Asuras) as by the duality of the first of them (Varuna king and magus) combined with the representation of three functions (Warriors, Priests, Workers); and is especially worried by the effectiveness of the sacrifices. This tradition goes back beyond the 3rd thousand years , with the wandering stock breeders of the Bronze Age. It is necessary to also take into account the local culture prehistoric of Jezirah (north Syria/Iraq), dating back to - 9.000 and devoted to the eagles or raptors; but especially the Hittite religion (primitive Indo-Europeans detached from their original religion and tending towards a monotheistic syncretism with Shamash).

PERSIA.

“HUMATA HUKHTA HUVARHTA : TO THINK WELL, TO SPEAK WELL AND TO DO WELL “(According to our brothers in paganism called Parsee or Parsis, Ahura Mazda indeed gave his Aryans this instruction).

Persia having been conquered by Aryan tribes, nobody will be surprised to meet the same god-or-demons there as those of the Pantheon of the Indian Vedic period, at the same time beneficial and frightening. But contrary to the Hindu views which believe in the reincarnation and in the cycles of the earthly lives, the Persian religion, itself, does not admit this theory, nor the cremation of the corpses; that it prefers to lay down in “towers of silence” to be used as food by the vultures (cf. the Parsis).

The primitive worship, very near to nature, was often performed outside , on a mountain, by magi charged with the keeping of the sacred fire.

The Mount Elbrus was regarded as the cosmic mountain that left the path which led the soul/minds to Heaven, where the donkey with nine mouths six eyes, and ten fish was, charged with keeping the Gaokerena tree; whose fruit juice produced a coveted elixir of immortality…

The worship of nature at that time it is also Vayu the god-or-demon of wind, who had formed the cosmic ocean beneath this sacred mountain by gathering there the rains represented by the water god-or-demon, Tishtrya.

In the beginning the god-or-demon ZURVAN AKARANA (infinite time) complained not to have a son. He offered a sacrifice to the Creator who granted to him two twins: the first was AHURA MAZDA who became the god of the truth as well as light, the second was named AHRIMAN (the destroying thought).

As in the Vedic religion, the god-or-demon of fire ATAR (son of Ahura Mazda/Ohrmazd) had a great importance; it is himself who transmitted the sacrifices to the gods, who enabled them to have the strength to fight the powers of evil and darkness.

The war god-or-demon was called VERETHRAGNA (like Vishnu). Ten avatars or interventions on Earth in a material aspect were recognized to him. He became thus successively a storm, a bull with gold horns, a white horse, an impetuous boar, a camel, a fifteen-year-old teenager, a raven, a ram, an aggressive stag and a man with a gold sword.

The female element of the Pantheon was represented by beautiful and noble goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, called Anahita even Ahurani, who drew from the fruits of a third sacred tree located in the limpid springs of the cosmic ocean, a liquor with hallucinogenic powers; the HAOMA (being equivalent to Indian SOMA) whose drinking was to get immortality!

The first man, Gayomart was born from the sweat of Ohrmazd. He died thirty days later, but his skin left a human couple: Mashya and Mashyoi. They had seven couples of children and thus gave rise to the fifteen tribes which (according to ancient Persia) peopled the earth.

The reform of Zoroaster, perhaps inspired from the Hittites, consisted of a reduction of the multiplicity of the god-or-demons to the unicity of Ahura Mazda (Asura/Varuna/Uranus) the eternal, omniscient, wise, good, just, Lord. The other deities were preserved but in the form of archangels, of emanations from Ahura Mazda, of which particularly the Holy Spirit: Spenta Mainyu (the devil, the Denier, Angra Mainyu/Ahra Mainnyu, constituting a case separate). What the Hindus call vyuha, and the Muslims shirk: (to condemn it).

The Reformation of Zoroaster or Zarathustra (Kurdish Zerdusht, Zartosht or Zardosht in current Farsi), founder of the first UNIVERSAL ETHICAL monotheism. We say well ETHICAL in order to distinguish it from that of Akhenaton/Akhenaten. It is called MAZDAISM.

It is difficult, given the time and the importance of the character, source of many fantasies, to give precise dates and places about him. It is supposed that he was born in north Iran, but certain traditions make him being born in Balkh in the North of what today is Afghanistan. We know some bits of his life, through the hymns of the Avesta, written in an archaic Indo-Iranian language, the Avestan, more than 2.500 years old. This one appears very near to the Indian Vedic texts of the Rig Veda, where the same type of grammar is found. We also know the life of this great prophet through a tradition which reports an epic account of him, such an exemplary scenario filled with supernatural events and miracles.

Zoroaster is generally considered e as a historical character, but the dates about it are very discussed. The most current version considers that he was born with around the year - 1000 in a priestly family, but many other assumptions make him being born earlier, and some make him live only around - 600 before our era.

We know that he was a priest, it is besides the only great prophet to have been such in all the history of the religions. He was married and had children.

When he was thirty years old, he had apparently a first vision, which encouraged him to preach a new message.

Because of the very democratic characteristic, at the moral level, of the latter, he was persecuted and had to flee. These new ideas were not to the taste of the established clergy and of the reigning princes. The concepts of justice and personal conscience of Zoroaster deeply ran up against the habits and mentalities of these old families. Ten years were therefore necessary to him before finding a first disciple, his cousin.

A local kinglet, Vishtaspa, allured by this religious reformation offered to him his protection. His success is therefore a little comparable with that of Martin Luther who, without the protection of the prince Frederick of Saxony, would have ended like Jan Hus: burned alive on a stake of the Catholic Inquisition!

Zoroaster’s intervention in order to regenerate and reinterpret the tradition are previous that of Jesus, but more still that of Muhammad, because he presented himself too, as a simple interpreter of God of whom he transmitted the revelation. It is, in fact, a questioning of the tradition, or its rationalization, like will be, at the same time, the Indian Brahmana and Upanishad .

Zoroaster never alleged being a prophet, he contented himself with indicating lines of thinking and in the beginning his doctrines were transmitted orally, like many others. Then when an adequate alphabet was found, a set of sacred texts was written: the Avesta or Zend-Avesta. But, of the initial text, the quarter only came to us. The manuscripts were lost or destroyed, first once during the invasion of Alexander the great, who made the library of the palace in Persepolis burned, and second once during the Arab invasion in the 7th century. Despite everything the equivalent of a thousand pages arrived nevertheless until our time.

In 1723, a Parsi of Surat in India offered a manuscript to an English merchant, who forwarded it to the library Bodleian Library in Oxford: Europe learned thus that the book of Zoroaster was not lost. Still was it necessary to have it entirely at disposal , then to understand it. It was the work of the French Anquetil-Duperron (1731-1805), the Champollion of the Iranian studies. Anquetil crosses with great difficulty and great risk an India torn by the French-English war, then, using the competitions which agitate the Parsi community in Surat skillfully, he overcomes the reserves, makes the manuscripts shown to him, makes their writing and their language explained to him. Back in the country on May 15, 1762, he has one hundred eighty manuscripts written in an old language difficult to interpret.

“Here what I ask you, O God (Ahura) answer me in truth, which was the founding father of the Order and Justice? Who dictated their way to the sun and stars? Who if not you even, made that the moon decrease? Here what I ask you, O God (Ahura), answer me in truth.”

The analysis of these documents will take ten years to him.

They were in reality extracts or selected pieces collected for the purpose in hand in two distinct liturgical anthologies.

The first anthology was the recitative of a long sacrifice combining, at least in its maximum version, three books called: Yasna, Vispard and Videvdad or Vendidad

The second anthology gathered sacrificial hymns devoted to other god-or-demons than Ahura Mazda (Yashts) together with few prayers of more private use (Khordeh Avesta).

It is in the part called Yasna that were, inserted in the body even of the text, the 17 songs or hymns ascribed to Zoroaster himself, called gathas. The interpretations of these poems are very divergent, sometimes biographical, sometimes cosmogonic and eschatological, which is explained by the antiquated and resolutely literary form of the language, then by the fact that the cultural context is practically unknown. All these hymns call upon a triad, the wise Lord, the Justice and the Good Thought and some remained famous among the Parsis; such the gathas of “the soul of the cow,” or “the marriage” (that of the junior daughter of Zoroaster in fact).

The teaching of Zoroaster was not limited to these 17 hymns, but they are the only ones which came to us. They were to be used as assistance to the memory at one time when the writing was little known and they are therefore now in the core of the Gueber (Persian), or Parsi worship. During centuries, this teaching nevertheless grew rich with various doctrinal explanations.

The Yasna (72 chapters) is therefore a ritual of sacrifice, where all the god-or-demons of the Mazdean Pantheon are called upon. It is in this part of the Zend-Avesta as we saw that we find the 17 hymns ascribed to Zoroaster.

The Vendidad or Videvdat (“law against the demons or the evil spirits”) is a collection of ritual and legal regulations

dating back only to the fall of the Achaemenid dynasty, i.e., probably the 3rd century before our era. Probable origin: the circle of the “Persian magi” (the former caste of the Median priests therefore).

“'A dog has the characters of eight sorts of people: he has the character of a priest, he has the character of a warrior, he has the character of a husbandman, he has the character of a strolling singer, he has the character of a thief, he has the character of a werewolf, he has the character of a courtesan, he has the character of a child. He eats the refuse, like a priest, he marches in front, like a warrior; he is watchful and sleeps lightly, like a husbandman; he is fond of singing, like a strolling singer, he is fond of darkness, like a thief, he prowls about in darkness, like a werewolf, he wounds him who gets too near, like a courtesan; he is fond of sleep, like a child.”

The yashts are a collection of 21 hymns in verses in the honor of the old Iranian god-or-demons. Taking over fragments of myths or legends known in a later and more complete form in the Middle Persian literature, or in the Arabic and Persian texts of the Islamic period. The tenth yasht for example, is entirely devoted to the glorification of Mithra.

The Khorda Avesta or Little Avesta is a prayer book.

As bases which we have at our disposal, stand currently, we can therefore release from the Zend-Avesta the following characteristics.

God is an Essence unknowable, even by the entities who assist him (aeons). The universe offers to Man one of the knowable aspects of the creation. This universe is at the same time physical and metaphysical (cf. the Bitos of the druids). In this universe (Bitos among the Celts therefore), there is the Earth of men, which is also physical and metaphysical. As in the case of Jesus, it is reported in it the temptation of Zoroaster to which Angra-Mainyu would have offered, one day, the domination of the world; in exchange for the abandonment of his task.

The teaching of Zoroaster boils down to a triad coming as a leitmotif in the hymns called gathas: Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta (“Good Thoughts, Good words, Good deeds”).

The life in the universe is founded on the principle: action/reaction. If in society, people devote themselves to bounty they will collect bounty. If they engage in maliciousness , they will be encircled by the evil.

God, also called the Wise Lord (Ahura Mazda) is the creator of all things and he is of an overflowing generosity. The evil is unfamiliar to him. This evil is the fact of the violent and negative Destroying Spirit (Angra Mainyu) , who reigns over the hell and, therefore, is the enemy of God. He is by no means a fallen angel (what would have as a consequence, as a last resort, to implicate the responsibility of God in the appearance of the evil). God created the world and the men in order to help him in his fight against the evil.

God also created many intermediate celestial beings, the Amesha Spentas or Bountiful Immortals, who represent abstract entities. Good thought (Vohu Manah), Piety (Armaiti), cosmic Order (Asha Vahishta), Power (Khshathra), Health (Haurvatat) and Immortality (Amererat).

Each one of these Bountiful Immortals must protect one of the six things constituting the Good Creation of God: cattle, fire, earth, sky, water and plants. In the same way, each one of these creations must represent a Bountiful Immortal at the time of the ceremonies.

It is in fact ideals to which every righteous man must aspire. While taking part in the power of God, by having a pious and ordered life, Man can reach immortality. God (Ahura Mazda) formerly created the man by equipping him with the free will so that he can always choose what he must do. Any man is therefore to some extent a workman of God helping him to transfigure the world, Ahura Mazda is his friend.

“Bounty” is something as a light which comes from the bottom of oneself, it is inherent in the man. But there are in any man two tendencies: one which carries him to the Good, the other which carries him to the evil. What Zoroaster proposes , it is always to choose the side of the good, but there is no obligation in this field. The most outstanding characteristic of the teaching of Zoroaster is indeed its insistence on the personal religious liberty. The choice of the good or of the evil belongs to any human being. The man will be judged according to the choice that he will have made, whatever his social status. (This new principle caused to him at the time many troubles with the established clergy and princes; who reserved to some extent the paradise for themselves).

The Faravahar (roughly speaking a human being with wings spread at the height of his waist) is one of the symbols of the doctrines of Zoroaster. It is the soul/mind of the man preexistent to his birth and which lasts after his death: a kind of equivalent of the karma Hinduist karma. Each man is accountable for his acts in virtue of the nature of his “Faravahar.”

For Zoroastrianism, the human nature has two faces, one material, the other spiritual one, both coming from God. From where the idea of two distinct judgments that the man will have to face.

A first judgment is after his physical death. The soul led by her daena (her spirit represented under the features of a beautiful girl) towards the bridge called Chinvat, the bridge of judgment. There, thoughts, words, and actions, are weighed. If Good wins over evil, the spirit of the man leads his soul to heaven.

If evil wins, it leads her in a hell called the House of Lies. This first judgment is a judgment which is not physical, because the body remains on earth.

The second judgment will take place at the time of the resurrection and will be a judgment of the body. The man will return over once again to heaven or hell , to be rewarded or punished there, but bodily this time. Each one, body and soul, then thus flushed out, will be able to join God, in all the perfection of his purified being, his ultimate destiny being to be with him.

The Zoroastrians admit consequently a life after death and a judgment of the soul/mind; any man being judged according to his merits.

But one day Hell itself will be purified then the kingdom of God will move on Earth. Therefore there always exists a possibility of redemption, even for the most “malicious ones.” The hell of the Zoroastrians is rather a purgatory where man expects for his resurrection.

But this one will occur only at the end of times, with the advent of a kind of Messiah called “Saoshyant,” who will restore justice by a regeneration of the world (erdathe in druidic terms).

Many precepts of Zoroaster about morals and the bonds which link men are always topical, whereas the majority of the other religions, except for the druidism, hardly attached importance to them.

- The equality of men and women for example was emphasized many times in the hymns (and realized in the history of ancient Persia by the accession to power of princesses such as Purandokht).

- These doctrines also stress the importance of personal work and reject any idea of living at the expense of others, a fortiori to steal the good of others. Each one must live on his efforts.

- Idolatry is prohibited. And even the fact of granting too much importance to sanctuaries or temples. God does not reside in wood or stone buildings but in the hearts and the spirits.

- No oppression can be allowed and if necessary man must rise to eliminate it. Slavery and submission are prohibited.

- No harm is to be done with regard to the animals and their sacrifice is to be regarded as a crime. (Zoroaster therefore condemned the rites and traditional sacrifices offered to the god-or-demons by Persians, but, on the other hand, he kept the fire worship, not as a god-or-demon having his own life but as an aspect of Ahura Mazda.)

The ritual of the sacrosanct fire is in the center of every blessing ceremony (jashan). Fire is Ahura Mazda’s own son. He must always remain away from eyes and light, so is it preserved in temples (afargans) where the priests supply the hearth with sandalwood ; while taking care that the flames never die out (cf. Noiba Brigit of Kildare and Minerva in Bath).

The rites are rather light: to pray five times a day in order to remember that uprightness is a good thing, that the good is a fine thing; to make a festival once a month, plus five days to prepare the New Year. While purifying, and taking his meal with a tablecloth, food, breads and flowers.

Cyrus the Great and the majority of the sovereigns of the ancient Persia always refused to impose a religion. On the contrary they left the peoples they had conquered free to practice the worships of their choice. After the conquest of Babylon, the charter that Cyrus granted to his new subjects stated as follows: “

“I sent back to their places to the city of Ashur and Susa…, the gods who lived therein, and made permanent sanctuaries for them. At the command of Marduk, the great lord, I returned them unharmed to their sacred place, in the sanctuaries that make them happy. May all the gods that I returned to their sanctuaries, every day before Marduk and Nabu, ask for a long life for me, and mention my good deeds, and say to Marduk, my lord, this: “Cyrus, the king who fears you, and Cambyses his son….The population of Babylon call blessings on my kingship, and I have enabled all the lands to live in peace.”

It is thus that this Persian emperor put an end to the exile of the Jews and released Jerusalem of the Babylonian domination, even encouraged the construction of the Second Temple.

From passages in the Bible referring to this period (the 3rd book of Ezra), we can deduce the following diagram.

In - 520 some personalities of the Jewish community in exile in Babylon were sent on a mission to Jerusalem by Cyrus the Great to rebuild repopulate and administer this outpost of the empire which was facing the Egyptian forces stationed not far away (Pelusium to the north-east of the Nile delta).

They thus led a caravan of 50,000 people no longer speaking Hebrew but Aramaic.

-In the role of the priest who became high priest ipso facto we find a man named Joshua.

-In the role of satrap or governor we find first Sheshbatsar. He brings back to Jerusalem what Nebuchadnezzar took from the Temple...

Then Zerubbabel, grandson of the last king of Judea.

But it could be the same character.

Then Nehemiah. Empowered or almost empowered (tirshatha) by the Persian emperor in place at the time.

But let us not forget that all these governors of the Yehud Medinata or province of Yehud must deal with the neighboring satraps, including the Persian governor of Samaria on which Jerusalem depended before the return of the exiles.

And take into account the opposition of the descendants of the Jewish people who remained on the spot at the time of the exodus, who are called the Samaritans but who simply consider themselves the only true Jews not contaminated by the Babylonian heresies or novelties.

- To conclude, in a role that does not correspond to any official title, Ezra. In Babylonia he was to be a sort of secretary of state for Jewish affairs (he is called a scribe). After a long absence (perhaps he had gone back to Persia), he was in Jerusalem in - 444 to make a public reading of the Torah. He will be therefore also the founder of the future Sanhedrin, because at that time, given the passage from Hebrew to Aramaic, it was necessary to make permanent textual analyzes of the Torah.

Certain components of Judaism were probably consequently borrowed from the Zoroastrians.

The influence of the Iranian religion on the Jews, and therefore subsequently on the Christians, was indeed considerable: the Savior, the Providence, the Resurrection of the dead, the Hell, the Heaven, the angels and the demons, the list is long! But there is especially our design of God as a father, as this thousand-year-old fight of the good against the evil, which ruins the agricultural cyclic representations, and founds a linear time. The great difference lies in the merry positivity of the Iranian religion, rejecting the mortifications, what justified in the eyes of Nietzsche the return to Zarathustra, i.e., the rejection of the Jewish culpability, of its unhappy conscience. But it is, however, Zoroaster which introduced the religion of morals: to want the good, the justice and the respect of the given word!

The majority of the texts of the Old Testament dealing with the life after death belong to the period of Persian domination in Palestine. They are attested in the Jewish writings only subsequently to the captivity of Babylon (597 to 538 before our era). A period during which the Jewish elites, in exile or back from this exile, got in touch with the other great religions in this part of the world.

The primitive Zoroastrianism more commonly called MAZDAISM endeavored to eliminate the negative entities than it compared to demons (see the part of the Zend-Avesta called Vendidad or Videvdat) and worshipped A Higher God. Thereafter its doctrines diversified by reintroduction of several old god-or-demons and even a day of Zoroaster himself, deified (frequent phenomenon in the religions. See the case of Imhotep in Egypt).

From where the later dilemmas in connection with the true teaching of Zoroaster. For Martin Haug for example, since the Avesta begins with the hymns called gathas, the Mazdaism starts with monotheism. This one is the work of an exceptional historical personality, but his disciples let it “be degraded” either in dualism (Zurvanism) or in polytheism arranged hierarchically.

The dualism which was to be strengthened in the Zurvanism (opposition of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the first being a distortion of Ahura Mazda and the second of Angra Mainyu/Arya-Man, the god-or-demon of the Aryan warriors and of the ancestors); is a consequence of the dogmatization of the truth, of the binary choice that the True God, the True Religion, substitutes for the multiform polytheism. By rejecting the old luminous-god-devas as demons demiurges, and by condemning as well the old excesses of the sacrifice as the warlike intoxication of the Soma or the agricultural orgies.

The bases of the Zurvanism, however, are also themselves contained in the teaching of Zoroaster himself, since he admits that the Good and the Evil Spirit were twin in the beginning. Achaemenids wondered who was their father. Some thought that it was Space (Thwasha inAvestan), others that it was Time (Zurvan). The second opinion imposed itself and the Sassanids adopted it at the beginning of their dynasty. The Zurvanism is therefore a philosophical doctrine resulting from the Zoroastrianism, but which was pervaded by myths. It is said that Zurvan, the primitive god-or-demon, made sacrifices in the hope to get a son. As he got nothing during a thousand years, he doubted their utility. The so much hoped son came finally. It was Ahura Mazda, whose name was pronounced Ohrmazd in the Sassanid time. But the doubts of Zurvan equipped Ohrmazd with a twin, Ahriman (Angra Mainyu).

The Iranians consider whether that Zurvan only gave birth to the twins, or that it is his wife Khwashkhwarrik who brought them into the world. Ahriman left the first. His father asked him: “Who are you? ” Ahriman answered him that he was his son, but Zurvan retorted: “My son is sweet-scented,

he is bright, and you, you are dark and stinking.” Ohrmazd having appeared in turn, as he was sweet-scented, Zurvan therefore recognized him as a son.

But since Ahriman had left the first, he could dominate the world and Ohrmazd was obliged to fight against him. It was thought then that his victory should take place 9.000 years later.

The Zurvanites therefore have a pessimistic design of the world. Contrary to Zoroaster besides; they attribute an evil nature to women.

The Zurvanite theology is known through texts like Bundahishn and by accounts from Arabs. Zurvan is also combined with a tetrad: Ashoqar “he who makes virile,” Frashoqar “he who makes excellent ,” Zaroqar “he who makes old” and Zurvan who gathers these three aspects since he includes puberty, maturity as well as old age. Sometimes also, people give him two aspects, which are the boundless Time (Zurvan akanara) and Time of long duration (Zurvan daregho-khvadhata) matching a 12.000 year period.

The Manichaeism, partial (since it is also a variety of Christianity) prolongation, of the Zurvanism, and of its fatalism, took sides against the primary unity by accentuating the dualism of the Devil and the Good god. It competed with Christianity in its beginnings (Augustine) and influenced Gnostics, Bulgars and Cathars.

But let us return to our sheep. In any event, the Muslim invasion put an end to the orthodox or heretic Zoroastrianism, and the majority of the Iranians living the Sassanid ex-empire converted. But certain components of Islam were probably also borrowed from the Zoroastrians. Particularly the refusal of the interest-bearing loan equated with usury. We can read indeed in the chapter 138 of the Book I of Herodotus, speaking about Persians: “… They hold lying to be the most disgraceful thing of all and next to that debt; for which they have many other reasons, but this in particular: it is inevitable (so they say) that the debtor also speaks some falsehood .”

Several Muslim authors and thinkers, such Suhrawardi (1155-1191), initiator of the current of the “Ishraqiyun,” tried to integrate Zoroaster in the Abrahamic prophetic line, but vainly.

Today there is no longer Zoroastrians in a strict sense of the term! Various elements of this religion survive nevertheless in the Parsism, an autonomous development of the Zoroastrianism, especially established today in India.

In the 10th century, with the exile in India of a certain number of Zoroastrians precisely, following the Islamization of their country, an intense literary activity took place. It was intended to encourage and inform the faithful ones, and was recorded in the language of the time, the Pahlavi. The Avesta was then preserved in a language which was understood only learned priests. People therefore made of them translations and commentaries intended to defend the Zoroastrian faith facing the other, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu, doctrines. From where the Zend-Avesta.

The cosmic fight between Asha “Truth” (Pahlavi: Ahlaw) and Druj “Lie” (pahlavi: Druz) is the basis of any existence. It is a paradigm comparable with the fight between the “good” and the “evil,” “the shade” and the “light.”

The two involved forces are also called Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd), or God, and Angra Mainyu (Ahriman). In other words, Good and Evil.

Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu, or in Middle Persian Ohrmazd and Ahriman, fight each other on Earth a merciless and perpetual battle. The material world is good because created by God. The evil with its consequences violence, chaos, the will to destroy, misfortune, diseases… is the work of a completely independent evil spirit, Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). It is only used to harm to the divine perfection. Angra Mainyu got busy to cause chaos in an at the beginning well ordered creation. The earth which was flat was shaken by the creation of mountains and valleys, the smoke disturbed fire… the primeval Man and bull die. But by dying, the bull gives birth to the cattle and the primeval Man gives birth to a plant whose leaves, while growing, form the first human couple. The evil failed in its work of destruction! Angra Mainyu is then taken in his own trap and fights battle. During 3000 years the forces will be balanced, but then will be born Zoroaster who, having had the revelation, will tip the scales in favor f the good. A new 3.000 year fight will begin during which will have to be born three saviors, each one intended to destroy a part of the evil. The third will bring back the dead to life and will present them to the last judgment. But even the worst will remain only a time in hell, because the Earth will return one day to its original heavenly state, Ahriman having lost all his power. It will not be the end of the world, because that would imply the end of the creation of God, but a restoration of the creation.

In short, for the Zoroastrians the world is basically good, though still subjected to the attacks of evil, and one day it will return therefore to its original perfection.

MITHRA’S WORSHIP.

Mithra is an Indo-Iranian deity whose we can date back the origin to the second thousand years before our era. His name is mentioned for the first time in a treaty between Hittites and Mitannians, signed circa - 1400. In India, Mithra appeared in the Vedic hymns as god-or-demon of light, combined with Varuna. In the Iranian Avesta, he is a beneficial god-or-demon collaborator of Ahura Mazda, and receives the nickname of “judge of souls.” The later reintroduction of Mithra (god-or-demon of contracts) in the Iranian religion does not constitute nevertheless a return to polytheism, nor even to dualism (Varuna/Mitra, Law/Contract); but prefigures rather the Christian Trinity, the unitY of the father and of the son, in the heaven and on earth.

In the Achaemenid Persia , the official religion was the Zoroastrianism, which postulated the existence of a single god, Ahura Mazda. It is the single divinity mentioned in the preserved inscriptions of the time of Darius 1st (- 521 - 485 before our era). There, however, exists an inscription preserved in Susa, dating back to the time of Artaxerxes II (- 404 - 358 before our era), on which Mithra is represented with Ahura Mazda and another deity called Anahita.

It is possible that his worship is come into the Roman Empire from Iran thanks to the spreading of the Zoroastrianism of which it would be a form of heresy. However, the current studies rather tend to consider that we cannot admit direct family ties between this Indo-Iranian Mitra and Mithraism, because of the use of the Greek form “Mithra” instead of “Mitra” to differentiate him.

In a strict sense of the term, the Mithraism or worship of Mithra is a mystery cult , probably appeared during the 2nd century before our era, in the oriental part of the Mediterranean. At the end of the 3rd century, a syncretism occurred between the Mithriac religion and certain solar worships also of an Eastern source, which crystallized in the new religion of Sol Invictus or “unconquered sun.” This religion became official in the Empire in 274 thanks to the emperor Aurelian, who set up in Rome a splendid temple dedicated to the new deity; and created a body of State clergy to carry out his worship, whose leader was called pontifex solis invicti. Aurelian ascribed to the Sol Invictus his victories in the East. This syncretism, however, did not spell the end of the Mithraism which continued to exist. A large number of the senators of the time practiced at the same time the Mithraism and the religion of the Sol Invictus.

There were some attempts intended to give again life to the worship of Mithra carried out by Julian “the apostate” (361-363) and by the usurper Eugenius (392-394), but they did not have much success. The Mithraism was formally prohibited in 391 as besides all other pagan worships, but its clandestine practice was maintained a few decades. It survived until the beginning of the 5th century in some areas of the Alps and returned to life, but in a transitory way, in the Eastern areas of the Empire which had seen its appearance. It had a big role in the development of the Manichaeism, religion which was also in competition with Christianity.

The rather fragmentary information, which exists about the worship of Mithra, relates to its practice during the Roman Late Empire. It was a worship with mysteries, of initiatory type, founded on the oral transmission and a ritual from comrunos to comrunos, from initiate to initiate, but not on sacred writings. This is why the written documentation concerning the worship of Mithra is practically non-existent. The study of this religion is consequently mainly founded on the iconography.

The worship of Mithra was performed in temples called mithraeum (plural mithraea). These places were at the beginning natural caves, or later artificial constructions imitating them, dark and without windows. They were exiguous: the majority could not receive more than forty people.

Mithraea could be discovered in many provinces of the Roman Empire. Some were converted into crypts hidden under Christian churches. Some of them were in places as distant from each other as in the rth of England or in Palestine.

Franz Cumont, author of a study on the religion of Mithra, interprets the taurobolium in the light of the Iranian mythology. He connects this image to texts referring to the sacrifice of a bull by Ahriman, the god-or-demon of evil. From the bloody remains of the bull will be born later all the beings. According to the assumption of Cumont, Mithra would have been then substituted to Ahriman in this mythical relation, and it is in this form that he would have then come in the Eastern Mediterranean.

For the faithful, the sacrifice of the bull was undoubtedly salutary, and the participation in mysteries guaranteed immortality.

With regard to the reconstitution of Mithriac rituals, we can count only on the texts of the Fathers of the Church who criticize the worship of Mithra, and on the iconography found in the mithraea.

The language used in the rituals was the Greek, mixed with a few formulas in Persian language (certainly incomprehensible for the majority of faithful), then Latin was gradually introduced in them.

It seems that the principal rite of the Mithriac religion was a ritual banquet of “devogdonion” communion, that we can compare with the Eucharist. According to the testimony of the Christian Justin , the food offered during the banquet was bread and water; but the archeological discoveries show that it was rather bread and wine, as in the Christian ritual. Other rites were to be in relation to the initiation ceremony of initiation. Thanks to Tertullian, we know the initiation ritual of the “Soldier” (Miles): the candidate was “baptized” (probably by immersion), he was then marked with a red-hot iron and finally he was put to the test with the “crown rite.”

In short!

* Mithra would have been embodied on Earth on a… December 25th!

* He would have been born from a virgin in front of shepherds who witnessed his birth!

* He was regarded as “the Path , the Truth and the Light.”

* He was regarded as “the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.”

* His sacred day was Sunday, the “day of the sun.”

* After his death he would have ascended to heaven where he would have been welcomed by Apollo.

* Its worship included/understood a baptism.

* The priests of Mithra celebrated the divine service with bread and wine then put honey on the tongue of their followers.

N.B. It would seem that Freemasonry took as a starting point certain rites and myths of Mithriac origin. Some thought also that the worship of Mithra had inspired the Christian religion.

INDIA.

Hinduism is the oldest set of religions in the world, its origin goes back to the Indus civilization which was born circa 2500 before our era. We write religions in the plural because there is actually Saivism Vaishnavism Shaktism Tantrism….

Below their common points according to the definition of the supreme court of 1966.

Is regarded as Hindu whoever....

- Accepts the Vedas the highest authority on the religious and philosophical subjects and endeavors to live in agreement with dharma.

- Understands that the Truth comprises several appearances

- Admits as valid the 6 philosophical systems (darshanas) and the belief in the cycles of the world ( yugas).

- Admits the belief in the preexistence of the beings and the rebirth.

- Admits that the means of reaching the Salvation are multiple.

- Admits that the worship of the idols is not an obligation.

With more than 1 billion faithful, Hinduism is currently the third most widespread religion, after Christianity which has approximately 2,2 billion faithful, and Islam with 1,35 billion. Contrary to the other principal religions, Hinduism was not founded by a prophet and does not depend on a central dogma. Therefore heresy does not exist in it. It is a dynamic religion, a set of philosophical concepts resulting from a tradition dating back to the Indian proto-history, endowed with an extraordinary capacity to assimilate beliefs, and philosophies, without opposing them. Hinduism evolved much during time, passing from the polytheistic Aryan Vedism , to the triadic Brahmanism. The old Hinduism went beyond the simple religious framework, beyond the theological syncretism, Hinduism was a support for all sciences; law, politics, architecture, astrology, philosophy, medicine, etc.;, as so many other knowledge which had the religious substrate in common.

For lack of space , we can hardly enlarge on the subject, our essay not being devoted to Hinduism. We will content ourselves therefore to quote here a small text illustrating wonderfully, at least, according to us, this admirable philosophy.

According to an old Hindu legend, there was a time when all men were God-or-demons, but they so abused their divinity that Brahma, the Chief God-or-Demon, decided to take man’s divinity away from him and hide it where they would never again find it. Where to hide it became the big question.

When the lesser god-or-demons were called into council to consider this question, they said, “We will bury man’s divinity deep in the earth.”

But Brahma said, “No, that will not do, for man will dig deep into the earth and find it.”

Then the god-or-demons said , “Well, we will sink his divinity into the deepest ocean.”

But again Brahma replied, “No, not there, for man will learn to dive into the deepest waters, will search out the ocean bed and will find it.”

Then the lesser god-or-demons , “We do not know where to hide it, for it seems that there is no place on the earth or in the sea that man will not eventually reach.”

Then Brahma said, “Here is what we will do with man’s divinity. We will hide man’s divinity deep down inside man himself, for he will never think to look for it there.”

Ever since then, the legend concludes, man has been going up and down the earth, climbing, digging, diving, exploring, searching for something that is already within himself.

EGYPT.

- Three thousand one hundred before our era: birth of the first dynasty of the Egyptian civilization (which will last until -333).

What was not given to Sumer, the duration, was the element of Egypt, protected a long time from the invaders while the other civilizations disappeared regularly. The other crucial factor being, of course, the Nile. The true power is in the hands of the priests who keep the thousand-year-old tradition and are the guarantors of the cosmic order, of the scrupulous execution of the rites and of the devotion to the god-or-demons. The immortality, allotted originally to the Pharaoh as a son of God or of the Demiurge, intermediary with the divinity, will be democratized, by guaranteeing thus a continuity that death cannot stop.

The Egyptian religion is the religion of the mysteries par excellence (Maspero). Egypt is the country of the syncretism, of the creation of new gods or demons by juxtaposition of primary qualities which are united without being mixed up; like the two banks of the Nile, or the two kingdoms of the Upper (South/Seth) and Low (North/Horus) Egypt (Pharaoh is twice king).

A man called Imhotep played a decisive role in this process.

From where did come this man with an exceptional genius whose name means “the one who comes in peace?” (from Sumer? ? ?) Nobody knows exactly.

What is certain, on the other hand, it is that he played a considerable role in the evolution of the religious conceptions starting from the 3rd dynasty.

Imhotep has all at the same time: mathematics, the chart of the stars, the art of curing, of mummifying the dead, the architecture: the art of the plans, the calculation of the masses, the art of cutting enormous stones and of moving them; he knows the means of closing galleries with sand and many other things still…

But he especially learned to Egyptians the alphabet by images (hieroglyphs) that Champollion will decipher 4.500 years after its first inscriptions!

Imhotep went one day to the court of the king Djoser in Abyydos. From there, the things will come one after another very quickly. The king gives up his capital and even his funeral mastaba already half built in BeIt Khallaf close to Abydos. This tomb copied on those of the previous kings appears tiny compared to the enormous funerary complex which will be built in Saqqara! Subjugated by his theses and his declarations, the king then would have invested him with highest functions in the kingdom, those of vizier or “Prime Minister and high priest” chief of the clergy and doctors of the time, who doubled up the two professions.

We tend too much to consider only the enormous work of architect and professor in medicine of Imhotep! But its greater work was of a spiritual nature.

In the New Kingdom, the priests continued to equate the Single God-or-demon of Imhotep with the great Amun, Master of all the god-or-demons in the former Egypt. Particularly at the time of the death of the people’s shepherd, the Pharaoh, who aspires to become an Osiris and a star.

Osiris was regarded as a saving god-or-demon in Egypt because he was brought back to life by Anubis, at least according to Egyptian mythology.

During almost two thousand years, Imhotep was regarded as a guide by whole generations of Egyptians, who remembered his writings and his pieces of advice more than the worship of his personality. But as from the period known as Late Kingdom and a little like in the case of Zoroaster, we will see epitaphs and inscriptions to the glory of his new divinity in practically all the largest temples in Egypt. Karnak, Edfu, Philae… where a temple will be even devoted to him close to that of Isis, and also in Nubia as far as the Sudan… Only these some messages of the Late Kingdom remain which by their repetition give us a small outline of the greatness of this mere mortal whose fame crossed thousands years ; to end (against his will) in his deification (today we would say his sanctification) as a healer.

THE BOOKS OF THE DEAD : SOME OPTIMISTIC BOOKS.

The great specialist in the nineteenth century of Irish literature, d’Arbois de Jubainville, has very strangely, quoted in one of his books (the first volume of his study on Celtic law) a very amazing and very flattering analysis of the Egyptian religion.

Here it is below.

"In Egypt, from the earliest times we can go back, we see established the notion of divine justice in the other life, and that of royal justice in this one. The Book of the Dead, of which we have copies written in the sixth, perhaps even in the seventh century before our era, gives us the official text of the plea which the dead, coming before the supreme judge, should pronounce before him. The dead man was not only to prove that he had fulfilled his obligations towards the gods; it was also necessary he has also fulfilled his duties towards men.

"I did against men," he said, "no cunning or deception, I did not oppress widows, I did not lie in court ... I did not let fasting anyone, I did not shed tears, I did not kill, no assassination was perpetrated on my order, ... I did not distort the measure of wheat, I did not deceive of the breadth of the finger on the alnage, I did not infringe upon the neighboring field, I did not hurt somebody by weighing with the scales, I did not deprive the baby's mouth of milk " .

The court over which the great god Osiris presides, and in which the souls of the dead appear, is represented by a figurative monument of the fourteenth or fifteenth century before Christ; it is the ideal court of justice of which the judges of this world are only poor imitators, and whose idea penetrated only much later in the Greek world.

The Egyptians had in this world a supreme court, which judged on written procedures and without argument. It was this court that punished the murderers; it dates back to the same period as the book of the dead. Private vengeance was forbidden in Egypt from this remote time. "I did not kill," said the dead, when on the threshold of the other life he finds himself face to face with the formidable court which must decide his destiny. He says in an absolute way: "I did not kill," he does not say, "I did not kill unjustly."1)

The Mosaic law, which undoubtedly has been influenced by Egyptian law, is, however, the expression of a much less advanced civilization: the nearest relative is the "the avenger (of blood)”, he lawfully kills the involuntary murderer who goes outside the limits of the city of refuge (Numbers XXXV verse 27), and kills the involuntary murderer after having proven by witnesses the murder before the judge.The Christian law of pardon - irreconcilable with the primitive law which imposes the nearest relative of the deceased the duty to kill the murderer - could only see the light of day in a society where the "avenger of blood" was the magistrate, and where, except in the case of the private right of self-defense either of the public right (the war) the executioner alone killed lawfully.

Here below some other excerpts from these books quoted by Gaston Maspero, Doctor of Civil Laws, and Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford; Member of the Institute (Cf. his History of Egypt, volume 1 part C).

"Hail unto you, ye lords of Truth! hail to you, great God, lord of Truth and Justice! I have come before you, my master; I have been brought to see your beauties. For I know you, I know your name, I know the names of your forty-two gods who are with you in the Hall of the Two Truths, living on the remains of sinners, gorging themselves with their blood, in that day when account is rendered before Onnophris, the true of voice. Your name which is your is 'The god whose two twins are the ladies of the two Truths”; and I, I know you, ye lords of the two Truths, I bring unto you Truth, I have destroyed sins for you. I have not committed iniquity against men!

I have not oppressed the poor! I have not made defalcations in the necropolis! I have not laid labor upon any free man beyond that which he worked for himself! I have not transgressed, I have not been weak, I have not defaulted, I have not committed that which is an abomination to the gods.

I have not caused the slave to be ill-treated of his master! I have not starved any man, I have not made any to weep, I have not assassinated any man, I have not caused any man to be treacherously assassinated, and I have not committed treason against any! I have in nothing diminished the supplies of temples! I have not spoiled the shewbread of the gods! I have not taken away the loaves and the wrappings of the dead!

I have not pulled down the scale of the balance! I have not falsified the beam of the balance! I have not taken away the milk from the mouths of sucklings! I have not lassoed cattle on their pastures! I have not taken with nets the birds of the gods! I have not fished in their ponds! I have not turned back the water in its season! I have not cut off a water channel in its course! I have not put out the fire in its time! I have not defrauded the Nine Gods of the choice part of victims! I have not ejected the oxen of

the gods! I have not turned back the god at his coming forth! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure! I am pure!

"Hail unto you, ye gods who are in the Great Hall of the Double Truth, who have no falsehood in your bosoms, but who live on Truth in Aûnû, and feed your hearts upon it before the Lord God who dwells in his solar disk! Deliver me from the Typhon who feeds on entrails, O chiefs! in this hour of supreme judgment; grant that the deceased may come unto you, he who has not sinned, who has neither lied, nor done evil, nor committed any crime, who has not borne false witness, who has done nothing against himself, but who lives on truth, who feeds on truth. He has spread joy on all sides; men speak of that which he has done, and the gods rejoice in it. He has reconciled the god to him by his love; he has given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothing to the naked; he has given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath offered sacrifices to the gods, sepulchral meals unto the manes. Deliver him from himself, do not speak against him before the Lord of the Dead, for his mouth is pure, and his two hands are pure!"

The rolls of papyrus which the Egyptians put in the tomb of their late testify therefore to an extraordinarily high ethical code.

Of all the peoples in Antiquity, none apart from the Celts, expressed such an impassioned interest for the mystery of death. Leaning on this enigma since the dawn of its civilization, seeking solutions, organizing all its political, social and religious, life, according to this problem.

It is obvious that the peoples in the valley of the Nile believed thoroughly death opened to them the gates of a new life well before the foundation (around 3100 before our era) of the kingdom of the Pharaohs.

This mysterious favor nevertheless was initially reserved to the kings, the texts of the pyramids of the 5th and 6th dynasties (2500 before our era) testify some to it. The pyramid was the key symbol of Ra and the Pharaohs who made Cheops, Chephren and Mycerinus built, behaved as zealous believers of the sun-god-or-demon. Of all these solar monuments, that of Unas is the first to have been upholstered with a catalog of instructions including incantations, hymns, prayers… Aiming at ensuring the late sovereign a happy second life, similar as for its contents to what will be the Books of the Dead thousand years later.

The literary tradition related to the funeral rites evolved as the regime became “more liberal.” From now on accessible to the least fortunate, the support of the scribes was to benefit popularity of the worship of Osiris, at the expense of that of Ra, the sun-god-or-demon; who kept his benefits in the hereafter only to kings, considered as half-god-or-demons, invested with the same magic powers as the deities with whom they align themselves. With the collapse (between 2250 and 2050 before our era) of a very centralized power up to that point, manuscripts appeared whose customers were recruited among the nobles and the public figure, who did not have the means of affording a pyramid. The parents of the dead ordered from scribes a more or less abundant selection of texts. This selection of texts was limited, generally, to a three or four meters long roll.

Most copious that we had, the Turin Papyrus, has approximately a hundred and sixty “chapters.”

Lastly came the Books of the Dead , more popular because cheaper.

We have today some 190 fragments of these texts, of dimensions and values very unequal. In 1842 Richard Lepsius gave the first edition of it, under the name of “Book of the Dead.” Though inaccurate, this name was adopted by official Egyptology.

Papyri of Ani, Hunefer and Anhai.

Nobody knows exactly how the papyrus of Ani was laid down in a tomb. What is sure, it is that, when this long document was unrolled, it was in an excellent state of conservation.

Ani was a royal scribe, attached to the service of the Masters of the city, appointed to the accounts of the revenues of the gods and superintendent of the granary of the lords of Abydos. His wife, Tutu, had the title of Mistress of the House and Singer of Amen-Ra , i.e., she was one of the priestesses assigned to the celebration of the religious services. Hunefer, as for him, occupied the post of a supervisor in the palace of the king Seti I.

Lastly, Lady Anhai, too, was a singer of the “choir” consecrated to the God-or-demon Amen-Ra.

Being about 24 m long, the papyrus of Ani is the greatest work of the Theban era that we know. That of Hunefer is hardly more than 5,50 m long and the litanies intended for named Anhai, 1 m less long. Many were the papyri which were lost because of the place that was assigned to them near the

mummies. Those which were in the tombs of Anhai and Hunefer were preserved because they were slipped into the cavity made inside a statuette.

What constitutes the specific, and single, characteristic, of these Egyptian Books of the dead, it is the singular and surprising intervention inside, of a at the same time present and absent Osiris.

We also meet very often in these books the mention of the divine eye of Horus (sometimes called “Eye of Ra,” or “Eye of Atum”). It was a vision image of most fascinating. Its equivalent on the earthly level was the disk of the sun. The eye of Horus, an emanation of Horus, was a powerful deity, who avenged ridiculed justice.

The funeral literature, such as it appears in this Book of the Dead, reveals the confidence with which is considered the life in the hereafter; after the heart of the man will have been weighed up, in its advantage, on the symbolic balance represented by the feather of Maat. Then, he will enjoy the happiness of the Elysian Fields and Ra will take him along in his heavenly cruising… But in the contrary case, no word is said of the possibility of his stay in hell! Nothing either as for the rules which govern the evaluation of the weight of the soul/mind, compared with that of the divine feather… Ammit herself (the monster eater of dead), seems quite inoffensive; she contents herself with sitting close to the balance beside the scribe-god-or-demon Thoth and awaiting for the result of the operation!

The late appears in front of a kind of court (the hall of truth justice) chaired, nominally, by Osiris. He is brought by Horus or Anubis in front of a Divine Areopagus of 42 judges. The Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of truth justice, Maat, is, of course, present, but does not participate in the debates. Thoth acts as a clerk.

The applicant swears to these 42 god-or-demons, to have never done harm to somebody and recites his famous “negative confession” or “protest of innocence”.

In other words, he enumerates the sins the faults or the crimes… that he has not committed!

Below the protestation of innocence or negative confession of the Papyrus of Nu, written many centuries before the Hammurabi’s Code of Moses (Decalog).

“Hail great God, lord of the place of the Two Goddesses of What is Right.

I have come before you so that you may bring me to see your perfection.

I know you, I know your name, I know the name of these 42 gods who are with you in this broad court of the Two Goddesses of What is Right, who live on the henchmen of evil, and eat of their blood on that day of calculating characters in the presence of Wennefer.

See, I am come before you, I have brought What is Right to you, I have removed. What is Wrong for you.

I have committed no crime in place of What is Right;

I have not known (explored) nothingness;

I have not done any evil

I have not made a daily start in labors over what I did (previously);

I have not orphaned the orphan of his goods;

I have not done the abomination of the gods;

I have not slighted a servant to his master;

I have not caused affliction;

I have not caused hunger;

I have not caused grief;

I have not killed;

II have not caused pain for anyone;

I have not reduced the offerings in the temples;

I have not harmed the offering loaves of the gods;

I have not taken the festival loaves of the blessed dead;

I have not reduced the measuring vessel, I have not reduced the measuring cord;

I have not encroached on the fields; I have not added to the pan of the scales;

I have not tampered with the plumb bob of the scales;

I have not taken milk from the mouths of babes;

I have not concealed herds from their pastures;

I have not held back water in its time;

I have not dammed a dam at rapid waters;

I have not put out the fire in its moment;

I have not transgressed the days concerning meat offerings;

I have not turned back cattle from the property of a god;

I have not blocked a god in his processions;

I am pure ! I am pure ! I am pure ! I am pure !

My purity is the purity of that great Phoenix.”

If, following this test, the late one was condemned, he was to remain (for how long? We are unaware of it) in the kingdom of Duat. If, on the other hand, he was exonerated and declared “just individual,” and the papyri which accompany do not consider other possibilities, he became a iakhu (a Sanctified Spirit).

As from this moment, a new life, a divine life, began for him. He became free of his acts, of an absolute freedom. He could traverse at will the heaven, the Earth and the lower World; to comfort the damned people , to bring his help to desperate ones, to visit the Fields of Peace and the Fields of the Blessed (the Heaven), to sit down in the boat of Ra, to sail on the heavenly Ocean, to thwart the tricks and the traps of the demons, to converse on an equal footing with all the deities, to visit the most distant stars, to change, at will, into a bird, flower, snake….

Note on the warships of Isis Osiris and Horus.

Massey, Kolpaktchy and the quite mysterious Lloyd Graham “Deceptions and myths of the Bible” wrote about it disconcerting things. (El Osiris = El Azarus = Lazarus.) In what concerns us, we will stick to what is sure and recognized.

Osiris is the Greek name of a god-or-demon of Egyptian mythology. The translation of this name presents difficulties and several assumptions were proposed.

His Egyptian name is Usir or Asir; he was also called Wennefer (“The beautiful one ”) or Khentiamenti (“the Foremost of the Westerners,” i.e., of the late ones).

The legend makes Osiris and Isis, his wife, benefactor kings . Osiris would have taught to humans the rudiments of farming and fishing, while Isis would have taught them to weave and medicine. Osiris’s brother, Seth, himself, ruled over desert and hostile regions as over the foreign lands. Jealous of his brother, he therefore planned to murder him. Osiris died drowned. Seth cut up his body in fourteen (or sixteen) pieces that he scattered in the Nile. Isis found the scraps of the body of his beloved, except the phallus, swallowed by a fish. She reconstituted it out of clay, then she undertook to gather the injured body of her late husband, with the assistance of her sister Nephthys. When it was revived, temporarily by Isis, who breathed life into him, Osiris could thus fertilize her and she gave him a son, Horus, that the Greeks will call Harpocrates, or Harsiesis (Horus son of Isis).

It is therefore one of the oldest Egyptian deities, the falcon-God-or-demon hr, whose name means. He who is above or the Distant one. Horus is a god-or-demon with multiple facets, to the extent that specialists wondered whether the name does not designate in fact distinct deities.

To avenge the death of his father Osiris , Horus faces his uncle Seth, beats him and inherits the throne of Egypt. It is therefore consequently the first of the Pharaohs. His legitimacy nevertheless will be unceasingly disputed by Seth. At the time of the fight which opposes him to Seth, Horus loses his left eye, which is reconstructed by Thoth. Called Udjat, this eye, that the Egyptians carried in the form of an amulet, had magic and prophylactic powers.

Therefore opposite to Seth, who represents violence and chaos, Horus incarnates the order and, just like Pharaoh, he is one of the guarantors of the universal harmony. However, we should not reduce the complex theology of Egyptians to a dualistic idea of Good and Evil, because, in another myth, Seth is the essential auxiliary of Ra in his fight against the snake Apophis . Good and evil are complementary aspects of the creation, both present in any deity.

Isis is the Greek name of Aset (or Iset),the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, protective and saving, of the Egyptian mythology. She is probably the heiress to a prehistoric mother-goddess-or-demoness, venerated in the delta, where, according to the myth, she would have raised the little Horus. At the end of the 5th dynasty, she is mentioned in the Pyramids texts, where she preserves the late king from the rotting. At the Greco-Roman time, she became a universal, goddess-or-demoness, called upon as well in Egypt as in the Mediterranean basin or beyond. In the Osirian myth, she is the wife and the exemplary sister who, thanks to her magic powers and with the assistance of her sister Nephthys , succeeds in bringing back to life Osiris, her brother and husband: the time of a sexual union from which will be born the God-or-demon Horus.

As a magician having brought back Osiris to life, she is therefore the goddess-or-demoness, healing and guardian of the children. The patients sometimes wore amulets in her effigy.

As the mother of Horus, she is life dispenser and goddess-or-demoness, or fairy therefore, guardian, taking care of her child. In this role, she is besides often represented in Isis lactans at the Roman time , i.e., in Isis having the child Horus in his arms and breast-feeding him. The Virgin breast-feeding Christ is certainly not without relation with this iconography.

The base of the Western tradition, the influence of Egypt did not cease being felt through the mysteries of Isis, the writings of Hermes Trismegistus, the alchemy. The hieroglyphs representing the lost language were supposed to hold the secret of the original revelation, until their deciphering by

Champollion, which was to disappoint so much this foolish hope. Because from Khepri-Ra-Atum, or Osiris-Horus-Ra (the heavenly mystery of the cyclic return, the Holy Sepulcher in Abydos) to Ptah (the earthly mystery of the embodiment, creation by the word); and Amun (the median vacuum which separates, the hidden one, the no expressed, the soul/mind of the world, the breath, the Mana); it is, as of before Akhenaten and the syncretism of the new kingdom (in spite of its failure), the mystery of the unity of the dissimilar one.

1) As is so often found in the Old Testament or the Quran. See, for example, verse 32 of Chapter 5. "Whosoever kills a human being it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.”This verse is very interesting. But it is to be read in full: "For that cause (the crime perpetrated by Cain) We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever kills a human being for other than manslaughter (retaliation law) or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.” What changes everything is the mention or reservation: "other than manslaughter or corruption on the earth.”

These words take away the absolute nature of the murder prohibition ; they even suggest that it is lawful or necessary to kill to defend God's order on earth. Of course, one may wonder if they were not added later (they come badly in the text). But as this text is authoritative today, this verse can only have the following meaning: murder is an evil unless it is to avenge a murder or the besmirched honor of God on earth (that is to say, ultimately the honor ... of Islam). Murder is lawful in this case.

THE EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM.

Monotheism not to be confused with that of Zoroaster 4000 km more in the east and a few centuries later. This monotheism will be exclusive and intolerant. That of Zoroaster will be inclusive (it will keep the old gods but changing their roles) and more pacifist.

We know now much more than our predecessors about Egypt or the origins of the religion of Moses; and time had put an end to the imposture of their spiritual heirs (or so-called such: Jews, Christians and Muslims). Bible did not invent monotheism!

As we already had the opportunity to see it, the Mazdaism, religion of the Persia between the 2nd and the 1st millennium before our era, was polytheistic. But Ahura Mazda, the main deity, little by little monopolized all the powers of the other gods who, although existing in the Pantheon, were no longer venerated : it is what is called henotheism or almost monotheism.

Circa 700 before our era this Mazdaism reformed by the prophet Zoroaster, became monotheistic under the name of Zoroastrianism.

The solar worship of the god Aten, imposed by the Pharaoh Akhenaten during his reign, in the 14th century before our era, was also a henotheism. But a form of henotheism in which Aten, the dominating god, like the god of the Bible, didn’t accept that the minor gods were also worshiped.

The religions which preach the worship of a single god, indeed were often, initially, polytheistic: they admitted in fact the existence of several gods. One for their faithful, others for the other communities.

In Antiquity, the word god indeed had a very general acceptation. It was usually applied to the natural elements like a rough sea, strong winds, flashes, an erupting volcano, even to the coming of men having unknown characteristics or powers (for instance Imhotep, Zoroaster)… Among Egyptians, it was also usual to equate the name of a god with a city, with that of a famous man or of an animal emblematic of the area… Even if later the name and the worship of the city were changed, the name of the local god remained, even if people had forgotten the origin of it for a long time! Starting from the 3rd dynasty Ptah became the great God or the universal creating Demiurge. He was always accompanied by the god-or-demon of wisdom, Thoth, become the god-or-demon of the truth which appears in all things through a permanent aspiration to perfection.

Atum-Ra, Ptah and Sokar, merged slowly into the symbol of a composite and creating God-or-demon single since the origins, to whom in the New Kingdom a fifth entity was added: Amun, the hidden god-or-demon of Thebes.

This careful reformation of theology was done without violence, the temples of each area evolved slowly towards the new worships without rejecting their former divinities. Some disappeared little by little, others lost gradually of their importance.

The example of the Egyptians is all the more interesting since, apart from the historical example of the Mazdean or of the already Zoroastrian Cyrus, liberator of Babylon, and therefore of the Jews, most religious reforms have ended in massacres, tortures, and terrible repression!

The great Egyptologists were not mistaken there, from the end of the 19th century, they found in the Egyptian religion a tendency more monotheistic than polytheistic.

Conference on the religion of the ancient Egyptians, by Viscount Emmanuel de Rouge, 14 April 1869.

"Man," said a great philosopher, " is a religious animal"...so I am sure that I will interest you by telling you about the religion of the Egyptians...we will not stop at all this polytheism full of allegorical characters and symbols...so I have explored the sacred texts, hymns and funeral prayers.... ...no one has contradicted the fundamental meaning of the main passages by means of which we can establish what ancient Egypt taught about God...I said God and not the gods....

First character: this is the most vigorously expressed unity: God one, alone, unique, no others with him. He is the only one living in truth. You are one, and millions of beings come out of you. He has done everything, and alone he has not been done...

It's always the same doctrine that returns under different names. One idea dominates it: that of a one and primordial God: it is always and everywhere a substance that exists by itself and an inaccessible God. But - first deviation - religion, from the beginning of historical times, passes to Sabeism. The sun, at first considered as visible light, symbol of the ideal light, is soon taken for the manifestation of the god himself; his birth each morning is attributed to his own intimate energy. This is the first application of the doctrine of emanation ...

But in the midst of all these new gods it produces, the idea of unity persists, always in Thebes one will worship Ammon, hidden god, father of gods and men, with Ammon-Ra (sun god), the first form where the materialization of the divine idea appears.

The second cause of deviation is a mystery that honors the theological mind of the Egyptians: God exists by himself; he is the only being who has not been begotten. They design God as the active causation, the perpetual source of his own existence; he perpetually begets himself. God making himself God and perpetually engendering himself, hence the idea of having considered God under two faces: the father and the son. In most hymns we find this idea of the double being who begets himself.

Notwithstanding the differences in detail with Emmanuel de Rouge, exactly the same appreciation of the Egyptian religion can be found in Eugene Grebaut's 1873 translation and analysis of the longest and most complete of the Hymns to Ammon-Ra, transcribed on a papyrus preserved in the Boulaq Museum in Cairo.

Translation and commentary published in volume 25 of the Archeological Revue New Serie.

Below is what Eugene Grebaud wrote.

"To reconcile with the multiplicity of divine forms the unquestionable monotheism 1) of the Egyptian religion, very illustrious scholars have...

Far from being an obstacle to monotheism, the fullness of the divine qualities and the independence attributed to each god become, on the contrary, the natural consequence of it. It is the same god, always identical to himself in the developments of his action .

For the writer of our hymn, the gods or divine manifestations are none other than the word of God: His word becomes the gods. When he utters his word, the gods occur. ...

Now this word, by which God manifests himself, is the Truth (Ma, True and Good)...

To sum up, according to my interpretation, the writer of our hymn is a member of a school which designs the gods of Egypt as the successive roles of the one and eternal God, author and providence of all that exists. This life-giving God, who enlightens bodies and minds, manifests himself in the physical order by the Light, and in the moral order by his Word the True and the Good (Eugene Grebaud).

The famous Egyptologist Erik Hornung in his book entitled "Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, the One and the Many " ( 1986) takes over exactly the analysis developed by Grebaud since he writes in black and white the following, for example.

“We shall be able to comprehend the one and the many as complementary propositions, whose truth values within a many-valued logic are not mutually exclusive, but contribute together to the whole truth: God is a unity in worship and revelation, and multiple in nature and manifestation.”

“The large number of the gods is itself an aspect of their diversity. The essence of the primeval god is that at first he is one and then, with creation and the diversity it brings, he is many. In the New Kingdom, “the one, who made himself into millions” is a common epithet of the creator which renders this characteristic explicit. “

The essence of the primeval god is that at first he is one and then, with creation and the diversity it brings, he is many. In the New Kingdom, “the one, who made himself into millions” is a common epithet of the creator which renders this characteristic explicit.

Atum, Ra, Ptah, Amun, Neith (nothing to do with the Celtic god-or-demon having the same name), Isis and Osiris, are only the local and temporary representatives of the eternal High God or Demiurge who governs the Universe. All these deities , who correspond to different times and places, are the reflection of him .

The first true monotheism, in the bad sense of the term like always besides, in the area, will be nevertheless that of Akhenaten.

Neferkheperure Amenhotep (Amenophis IV - 1730 - 1354), destined by his parents to Ra as well to Amun, was indeed the first sovereign to decide to found the worship of a single god-or-demon, Aten; symbolized by the sun disk (previously named Ra then Amun-Ra).

The frontal eye of Ra (or third eye of the god-or-demon) symbolized for the Egyptians the universal power of the hidden god-or-demon. Like Ra, this invisible great god-or-demon drove out darkness and created t life each morning.

All probably in agreement with his wife Nefertiti. Her Aryan (Hittite?) origin indeed predisposed her particularly to such religious designs (the Egyptian polytheism was to be without interest for her). Neferkheperure Amenhotep thusdecided to devote himself only to one God-or-demon, Aten, considered as essentially positive. For marking the cut with his past well, he took another name and was called from now on Akh' n Aten. In order to devote himself to the things of the new religion, he also gave up to his son-in-law Smenkhkare the management of the lay businesses.

N. B. This first monotheism was, alas, of exclusive type (that of which the Bible could remember) and not of inclusive or tolerant (monist) type.

The statues representatives of the polytheistic devotions were not destroyed, proof of a certain tolerance! The break-up of the clergy of Amun, itself, was an act before everything political; just like the abolition of the sacrifices. Sources of influence and profits for any clergy as we will see it in the case of the true commands of the true god of the true religion revealed to its true people by Moses. And their replacement by offerings of flowers outside the temples.

All that was not without influence, it is the least which we may say, on the religious ideas of the future Jewish people even though he never left Chanaan, and, of course, contributed to preparing its evolution. Some specialists like C. S. Lewis recognized in the Psalm 104 of David long passages, translated into Hebrew, of a canticle for Aten, found in Tall el Amarna, and probably composed by Akhenaten himself. In any case even if this latter did not write inevitably himself this text, it takes over the words from previous texts to the glory of Osiris or Amun.

N.B. Miriam Lichtheim refuted any link of derivation with psalm 104 by explaining that the resemblances were more the result of a vaguely generic similarity (lexical field, for example; religious nature of the text; poetic description of nature) between the Egyptian hymns and the biblical psalms. All in all we would be there before the same phenomenon which could make us believe in the existence of a perennial tradition.

1)The writer of our hymn affirms his monotheistic faith in the clearest possible terms. His God is the "One who has no second"; it is the "One Form, author of all forms," etc.; he who is "One in his role as with the gods" (ua her sep-f ma m-ma nuteru). It is impossible to express more energetically that not only the god is one in his role as a divine person, but that all the gods of Egypt are only the denominations of the same God....

GREAT HYMN FOR ATEN.

You appear beautifully on the horizon of heaven,

You living Aton, the beginning of life!

You are gracious, great, glistening, and high over every land;

As you are Re, you reach to the end of them;

Though you are in their faces, no one knows your going.

When you settle in the western horizon,

The land is in darkness, in the manner of death.

Darkness is a shroud, and the earth is in stillness,

At daybreak, when you arise on the horizon,

You drive away the darkness and give your rays.

Trees and plants are flourishing.

The birds which fly from their nests,

The fish in the river dart before your face;

O sole God, like whom there is no other!

You did create the world according to your desire,

Everyone has his food, and his time of life is reckoned.

Their tongues are separate in speech,

And their natures as well;

Their skins are distinguished

(But) All distant foreign countries, you make their life (also),

For you have set a Nile in heaven,

That it may descend for them and make waves upon the mountains,

Like the great green sea,

To water their fields in their towns.

How effective they are, your plans, O lord of eternity!

The Nile in heaven, it is for the foreign peoples

And for the beasts of every desert that go upon (their) feet;

While the true Nile comes from the underworld for Egypt.

Your rays suckle every meadow.

You make millions of forms of yourself alone.

For you are the Aton (the sun) of the day over the earth....

You are in my heart,

And there is no other that knows you

Save your son Nefer-kheperu-Re

For you have made him well versed in your plans and in your strength.

N.B. It seems that Akhenaten was overthrown by the former clergy and the general Paatenemheb (future Horemheb) then sequestered until his death, which has occurred a few years later.

He was replaced by his second son-in-law, husband of his junior daughter, the young Tutankhaten, was renamed for the circumstance Tutankhamen (- 1354 - 1345) and the former Egyptian polytheistic worship despised by Nefertiti was restored.

P.S. The Egyptian cosmogony is quite complex, and this is due to the fact that there were in reality several of them, the most widespread being the Heliopolitan cosmogony centered on the sun god in all his forms . However, a passage in the teaching or instruction for Merikare, written around 2050, clearly makes this sun god, and regarding the human species in any case, a creating god, or demiurge and this even before Abraham or even Moses. This text is in a way the testament of Pharaoh Cheti III for his son. Known by a papyrus hieratique published by Golenischeff . Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg (Papyrus 1116 A).

Below is the quotation in question."Men, God's flock, have been well provided for. The sun-god made heaven and earth for them... He made the air to enliven their nostrils, for they are the images from his flesh. He shines in the sky, he makes for them vegetation and animals, birds and fish to feed them... »

It couldn't be more creationist. Jehovah's Witnesses will be the ones to be pleased.

By the way, this text is remarkable, imbued with great philosophy, making it a fine example of what is called wisdom literature.

"The man who walked in accordance with Maat shall depart. Just as he whose life was pleasure filled will die.”

We don’t find better in the Book of Ecclesiastes or Qohelet (2,5).

THE SUMERIANS.

Appeared between 3500 and 3000 before our era, the Sumerian civilization is the result of the slow evolution of non-Semitic populations settled on the lands of Low Mesopotamia (south Iraq) since the end of the 6th thousand years. Established on the banks of the Tiger and Euphrates, those group in small villages such Eridu (Abu-Shahrein), Ur (Tell Muqayyar), Uruk (Warka), Tell El Obeid or Tell el-Oueili.

The Civilization of Ubeid.

The Ubaidians practice irrigated agriculture, cultivate barley and wheat, know the date palm, breed Bovidae, Swine, Caprinae and practice fishing. They produce a house ceramics consisting of painted with geometrical or figurative patterns, vases and utensils. They also make with clay small anthropomorphic figurines 15 cm to 20 cm high and whose covered with bitumen heads present a very marked reptilian aspect. Not having metal resources, they use clay sickles equipped with quartz as well as stone hoes. Their contacts with the external world are limited to a modest bitumen and obsidian importation.

Low Mesopotamia being deprived as much of timber than of stone of good quality, its inhabitants use local materials: earth, reeds and probably wood of palm trees. In the field of architecture the invention of the arch, dome, column and even of the barrel vault are ascribed to them. In Eridu and Tell el-Oueili, archeology revealed a similar architecture, little differentiated graves and funerary artifacts.

The Neolithic Ubaidian civilization lasts during nearly a thousand years then changes.

The excavations of Eridu and Tell el-Oueili make it possible to grasp its first signs of evolution of the civilization around the end of the 5th thousand years. Previously similar, architecture begins to become differentiated. Large buildings with a tripartite plan, which could be temples, are set up. In the same way, important brick terraces are made, some works probably intended for a collective use. Even if these changes remain limited, they probably represent the rise of a social hierarchization within these first village communities of low Mesopotamia.

At the beginning of the 4th thousand years, the extent of the change is such that archeologists do not hesitate to see there the starting point of a new cultural stage. This one, called Uruk period (3750-3150), continues and accentuates the previous tendency towards urbanization and confirms the gradual passage from the domestic community to a more complex social organization. The Villages, before of reduced size, become little by little important urban areas. In addition, on all the sites of the Mesopotamian South, the painted ceramics of the Ubaid period gives way to a monochromatic production of bowls, handmade, starting from molds which make it possible their mass production.

In architecture, the evolution started in the previous time seems to be accentuated. On the site of Uruk, were discovered the remains of large buildings sometimes more than 70 m long and which seem to derive from the tripartite structures of the Ubaidian civilization. Their frontages decorated with projections and hollows have mosaic decorations. New architectural methods appear: Concrete blocks , some kinds of brick containing gypsum, are thus used. Craftsmen use mortars and make wall mosaics starting from stone or clay cones. The design of built space follows from now on precise rules. The urban perimeter is often deployed within raw brick ramparts, the habitat is denser and better ordered. In relation with his space layout , the society itself becomes to be organized on a hierarchical basis.

In the Sumerian iconography a bearded and wearing a diadem character appears then, sometimes representing a warrior flooring his enemies, sometimes a minister of religion. The archeologists see in him the single chief of the city, a kind of “priest-king.” At this point in time, true methods of management develop. Thus, as a prelude for writing, some calculi, tokens out of terra cotta, are used with accounting purposes. The metallurgy, another witness of the vitality of low Mesopotamia, also realizes noticeable improvements. The craftsmen work out the first voluntary alloys and, in addition to the copper imported from the peninsula of Oman, they use lead, silver and gold. In the same way, the innovation reaches farming. Around the late Uruk period (3500-3100), they adopt a swing-plow-seeder, of which the use probably aims at increasing wheat sown surfaces.

The changes continue at the following time (3150-2900), known as Uruk III, or Jemdet-Nasr, from the name of a site located about fifteen kilometers North-East of Babylon. The sites, up to that point dispersed, tend towards gathering along the waterways, and many villages disappear in favor of larger and better structured urban areas. This urbanization is accompanied by a larger stratification of

the Sumerian society. From the point of view of the material civilization, the period of Jemdet-Nasr is that of the working out of a new type of ceramics, with trichromatic decoration made of geometrical patterns. The use of the writing begins to be spread, and the cylinder seals being used to sign the documents replace the simple seals. The social hierarchization, having begun at the time of Uruk I seems to crystallize and “classes” take shape, such those of the priests, the scribes, the craftsmen and the soldiers. It is in this context of cultural ferment and economic and social changes that begins to be opened out the Sumerian civilization.

At the dawn of the 3rd thousand years, the low Mesopotamia is divided into as many territories as there are important cities. Those radiate each one on a periphery made up of small villages and constitute multiple independent units, kinds of capitals which function in the image of the city-States. We find there a central power, with a single holder, around whom gravitate priests, officers and administrators. Their chiefs bear the titles of king (lugal), prince (ensi), or, like in Uruk, that of lord (En). The Sumerian political system of the city-States prevails from 2900 to 2340 before our era. This long period of more than six centuries is called by the archeologists the protodynastic period, or the period of the archaic dynasties.

However, the political diagram of a well-established kingship is perhaps not constant for all the Sumerian period. Oldest of the royal inscriptions - that of Enmebaragesi, king of Kish - date back 2700. Beyond, neither archeology nor epigraphy makes it possible to clarify the period of formation of the kingship. The interrogation still relates to the way in which the power, probably of theocratic nature at the time of Uruk, ended up falling to sovereigns. There are strong reasons to believe that, at the beginning of the 3rd thousand years , without knowing too much how, the religious leader (high priest or king priest) shares the power with a temporal chief. This one, sovereign, nevertheless makes sure of a religious legitimacy and acts as an agent of the main god of the city. Dispossessed from the political power, the temple does not keep less a great economic importance.

In Girsu, the archives of the temple of the goddess Baba (towards 2500-2400) informs us that the sanctuaries had maintained control over the economy of the city. From the 4,500 ha of cultivable grounds that they manage, the quarter is used for the own needs of the worship. The three remaining quarters are subdivided in fields: the ones are intended for the support of the staff, while the others are leased or sometimes allocated as for the usufruct to some categories of dignitaries, civil servants and employees. The temple keeps a part of these incomes for the years of food shortage and exchanges another one for imported raw materials. It redistributes lastly, a third part in the form of rations for the population, but also to the sovereign and his family, to the craftsmen, the soldiers, the civil servant and various other government officials.

In order to do such a task well, the temple has a true administration with accountants and “bureaucrats.” The archives of Girsu inform us thus about the precision and the complexity of the rules of management adopted by the religious administration. Under the authority of a priest administrator (shanga), scribes, supervisors (ugula),overseers (nu-banda), stewards (agrig) and administrators (mashkim) take care of the good running of the exploitations.

Did this hybrid system, where a political power reserved for laymen and a controlled by the temple economic power cohabit, prevail in all the Sumerian cities? Some contracts coming from Shuruppak (today Tell Fara) give a very different image of the land distribution in the city: it seems that the private individuals could acquire there some fields and exploit them themselves without any intervention of the temple. Does that mean that, unlike the south, the center and the north of the country of Sumer knew the private property? Nobody knows it, but what can be considered as certain and to what archeology and epigraphy attest in an obvious way, it is that temple and palaces cohabited throughout the Sumerian period.

However, we still know very little thing of the nature and reality of the relationship between the politics and the world of the divine one. It is probable that at one time or another, in such or such city-State, there was competition between these two forms of power. In Lagash, for example, the inscriptions of Uruinimgina explain why at the time of King Lugalanda, the temple had its goods despoiled by the sovereign.

Like all the political histories, that of Sumer was a succession of armed conflicts which opposed the principalities the ones against the others or, more rarely, linked them against a common enemy. The Sumerians were excellent in the art of war. They were the first to have organized troops and to work out true military techniques.Generally, their conflicts with the neighbors had economic motives: needs for raw materials, incidents related to the layout of the borders, problems of water sharing …the glory, the personal ambitions of the kings, even the religion, also caused competitions.

It seems that the first war is that which around 2680 before our era, opposed Enmebaragesi of Kish to his Elamite neighbors (South-west modern Iran) . A little later around 2600 before our era, another Kishian, the ensi Uhub, makes inscribed on a vase dedicated to the god Zababa that he is the winner of Hamazi, city located north of the Diyala river. Around 2550 before our era, Kish is still distinguished. This time, its sovereign, Mesilim, extends his authority on the towns of Lagash and Adab. The Kishian hegemony nevertheless must yield to that of Ur. This river port, located upon the Euphrates, experiments its first height in the reign of Mesanepada. This one grabs Nippur, takes Kish and becomes master of most of the low Mesopotamia. His influence seems to extend to Mari, on the upper Tigris.

In the 25th century before our era, it is Lagash which will have in turn its days of glory. Its king, Eannatum, would have overcome the Elamites and captured Mari, Ur, Uruk and Kish. One of his exploits on which we are well informed is related to a border dispute with the city of Umma. Umma will be avenged later, in the reign of Lugalzaggesi. This one conquers Lagash, Uruk,Ur, Kish and succeeds, for the first time in the Mesopotamian history, in uniting all the country of Sumer.

In a country mainly made up of water, of silt and clay, the Sumerian economy, as at times of the civilization of Ubeid, was entirely constituted around the irrigated farming and the breeding. Irrigated by canals derived from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, the alluvial grounds of low Mesopotamia lend themselves extremely well to the cultivation of cereals. In addition to the einkorn (wheat species), present as of the 5th thousand years before or era, the Sumerians cultivate emmer wheat, durum wheat and especially barley. Beside cereals, the texts mention the pea farming, broad beans, cucumber, garlic, onion, leek, dates and mention bovine and ovine breeding. This agro-pastoral system ensures the Sumerians exportable or at least exchangeable against foreign products, surpluses.

Many tablets mention Sumerian imports of wood, gold, copper, silver, tin, lapis lazuli and other precious stones. Recent archeological discoveries came to confirm this opening on the outside of the Sumerian world. The discovery of early dynastic ceramics in the cairns of Abqayq (in modern Saudi Arabia), in Tarut and Hili (today in the United Arab Emirates) attest to the relations between Sumer and the Gulf countries.

Many vases out of chlorite, steatite, alabaster, discovered in the Mesopotamian sites, seem to come from Iran, from the coasts of Arabia and perhaps even from Egypt. The lazurite, highly popular at the time of the proto-dynastic time, was according to any probability imported from the Badakhshan, on the territory of modern Tajikistan. The data of archeology come also to back up the assumption of contacts and exchanges with the cities of the Indus Valley. Harrapan seals and pearls were found in low Mesopotamia. In the same way, one would have discovered jewels of Sumerian manufacturing in Mohenjo-Daro.

Imported materials are used in the manufacturing of prestigious goods intended for an increasingly dominating urban elite. To meet needs come from the differentiation of the society, the craftsmen develop new methods. In the field of the metallurgy, their innovation capacity was such as they outclassed all their contemporaries. This supremacy is materialized at the same time by the control of the alloy processes and by those of the techniques of manufacturing. The first, confirmed by archeometric research, is based on the multiplication of voluntary alloys: binary (copper-arsenic and copper-lead), ternary (copper-arsenic-tin) and even quaternary (copper-arsenic-tin-lead). From the point of view of the techniques, the variety of the processes (hammering, molding, lost wax casting) made it possible the manufacturing of a broad product range: weapons, tools, statuettes, figurines, vases, etc.

The Sumerians were also excellent goldsmiths. They controlled the techniques of chasing, engraving, enameling and repousse. We owe them the invention of two remarkable techniques: filigree and granulation. Previously unknown, the manufacturing of gold threads and grains made it possible to the Sumerian goldsmiths to make jewels of a remarkable beauty. Among the unearthed pieces, for the majority from the royal tombs of Ur, some are true masterpieces. This is the case of a gold dagger equipped with a handle in lapis lazuli set with gold nails, of its sleeve with decoration in granulation and filigree, of a helmet known as “of King Meskalamdug” and of many other objects now deposited in the museums of Baghdad, Philadelphia and London. The Sumerian craftsmen also expressed their creativity on less noble materials. Thus, among the works of minor arts, we find plates of shells engraved with drawings of which the lines were filled with a black or red paste. Embedded in gaming tables or the sounding boards of the lyres,they were used as mosaic. These artisanal productions met the ordinary needs for the Sumerian society.

As regards architecture, the innovation consists in the use of a plano-convex brick (a plane face , the other convex) dried in the sun and laid following a fishbone pattern. In the same way, the habit was

made of building the sanctuaries on platforms. The temples with a tripartite plan were gradually replaced by buildings with central court surrounded by many rooms. In Khafadje, in Al Ubaid and Lagash sanctuaries within egg-shaped enclosures were built. Changes also affected the glypti

New topics became then dominating then in the iconography of the seal cylinders: ritual banquets and fight scenes where appeared some monsters, sometimes hybrid beings (lion-headed eagle, man-headed bull, bull man). The early dynastic period also sees the evolution of the ceramic art. The, boney and extremely stylized in the beginning of the proto-dynastic period, statues ,are humanized then and become more realistic. The Sumerians distinguish themselves also in the art of the low-relief. However, the most widespread Sumerian low-reliefs seem to have been small square chalky plates, having a hole in their center and probably being used as bases for the offerings that the faithful brought in the temples. These pieces, in accordance with their destination, represent scenes of piety and mention the dedications of the worshippers.

After the reign of Lugalzaggesi, which lasts twenty-five years, the entire low Mesopotamia falls in the hands of the Semite Sargon of Akkad (2340 before our era). Consequently, the Sumerian city-States give way to a new political system characterized by the emergence of unified and relying on centralized administrations, true States. This change marks, for sure, the preeminence of the Akkadian Semitic element . However, it is necessary to take care not to see there the sign of a sudden change of the ethnic composition of the region. The Semites were largely represented there around 2500, and the tablets of Abu-Salabikh, signed as of this time by scribes having Semitic names, seem well to confirm it.

Around the end of the 3rd thousand years, after the long reign of Naram-Sin (2254-2218 before our era), grandson of Sargon, the Sumerians of Ur build a Neo-Sumerian kingdom (2110-2004), which disappears under the blows of the Amorite and Elamite invaders. This period, which continues the Sumerian civilization , leaves the framework of a strict definition of the early dynastic civilization. Politically, socially, it sanctions a break with the Sumerian former world. The town of Ur is destroyed in 2004 before our era.

HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER.

The Sumerians created the first great human civilization. The Sumerians invented the writing, the boats, the art to build with bricks, the wheel, the school, the justice, the currency, the taxes.

The Sumerians bequeathed to Mankind the concepts of law, government and urban life. We also owe to them an astronomical and mathematical system which makes it possible to graduate time and space. What would , later, lead to our hours, our minutes (it is them who invented the sexagesimal system of the hour, minute and second) and to our units of linear measure.

Let us not forget either the pottery and the use of the wheel for transport. These two leaps forward in the field of the daily life are of Sumerian origin.

Just like the first rudiments of medicine probably.

The cradle of the civilization indeed is not the Sinai of Moses, but the Mesopotamia of the Sumerians. To write, say, or imply that the Code of Hammurabi of Moses (the ten commands) forms the first moral code of History, therefore that the human beings before could only live as animals; is a racist untruth that we must not let pass. The Decalogue of Moses speaks to men in the 2nd person of the singular and is in no way intended to the entire Mankind, but only to his people. If not they are the 7 laws of Noah. You shall not kill, yes, but what is prohibited it is the individual and villainous murder, not capital punishment or the war. Cain is guilty of murder, he killed his brother, but Joshua is a hero, in the Bible he exterminates the Canaanites in thousands. What the Decalogue wants to say, it is: you shall not kill… A co-religionist! A member of your people. On the other hand, you will be allowed to kill behind the mountain, behind the dune, the idolatrous false friends, the apostates, the witches, and, of course, the Philistines.

At least it is still the interpretation given by some today rabbis as Isaac Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the Jewish settlement of Yitzhar in Cisjordan. We will return on that in our chapter about Orthodox Judaism and war.

The Sumerian civilization, itself, had therefore worked out a complex moral code of which there is an ultimate echo engraved in the stone two hundred years before the legendary or mythical Moses: the Code of Hammurabi precisely, a stele found in Susa where it had been transported during Antiquity. Many elements of this code are indeed of Sumerian origin, Hammurabi having only validated some quite former to his reign and dating back to the Sumerians, uses.

Sumerian proverbs.

The lion had caught a helpless she-goat: "Let me go! I will give you my fellow ewe in exchange!" "If I am to let you go, tell me your name!" The she-goat answered the lion: "You do not know my name? "I set you free is my name!" When the lion came to the fold, he cried: "I set you free! I set you free!" Then the she goat answered, "You did the right thing, but there is no sheep here!"

"Give me!" is always what the king says.

As long as you live, you should not increase evil by telling lies.

Let the poor man die, let him not live. When he finds bread, he finds no salt. When he finds salt, he finds no bread. When he finds meat, he finds no condiments. When he finds condiments, he finds no meat.

Control the dog, but love the puppy!

The Sumerian language is unclassifiable. The lion was unknown for them (they called him big dog : ur mah) and they attached much importance to cattle in their accountancy (had they practiced the breeding before settling in Low Mesopotamia?)

The Sumerian economy was based on a system of taxation of villages according to their farming surpluses. This taxation had been organized to help the ruling classes of the cities in their program of public work, particularly those which are devoted to irrigation.

What characterizes the Sumerian political organization, it is its structuration “in the Greek way?” Indeed, just like the ancient Greece much later, the country of Sumer was subdivided in zones of influence grouping themselves around some flagship cities, such as Ur, Uruk, Kis, Eridu, Lagash, etc. which developed quickly. The Sumerian society was a society in which the villages were gathered around larger cities.

Each one of these cities had its own ziggurat. This one housed governmental administrations, as well as a temple. The latter was on the last floor, i.e., on the highest platform of the ziggurat. This kind of

ziggurat caused, of course, the jealousy of the people which did not have any (see the famous story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible). The ziggurat of Eridu dates back to 3,000 years before our era.

Generally, these cities were directed by a council of senators or warriors. This council was under the direction of a chief. This chief also served as a priest. Later these chiefs will become kings who will be regarded as the vice-regents of the main god-or-demon of the city.

We know by the Code of Hammurabi (on the lower part indeed a jurisprudence concerning the duties and the rights of the doctors is engraved) that the surgeons of this time put back in place very skillfully the broken members; and that they did not hesitate to try serious operations on which sometimes the very life of their patients depended. But we are ignorant of almost everything of their method. Their art, indeed, if it required serious anatomical knowledge, was not a science learned in books.

It was by the clinical experience that the young doctor initiated himself in the operational secrets of his Master.

The question of the surgical treatment of the cataract is still discussed. The problem comes from the interpretation of a medical word used in two articles of the code in question.

Article 215: “ If a physician performed a major operation on a free man with a bronze lancet and has saved the free man’s life, or he opened the nakkaptu of a free man with a bronze lancet and has saved the free man’s eye, he shall receive ten shekels of silver.”

N.B. This sum of money corresponds to 84 grams of silver. But the fees are proportional to the status of the patient. If it is a member of a little lower class, it pays only five shekels.

Article 218: “ If a physician performed a major operation on a free man with a bronze lancet and has caused the free man’s death, or he opened the nakkaptu of a free man and has destroyed the free man’s eye, they shall cut off his hand.”

The word “nakkaptu” caused different interpretations. Sometimes it was translated by cataract sometimes by leucoma, then by dacryocystitis. Another specialist in the question thinks rather of the arch of the eyebrows or of a periocular , or orbital, tumefaction, incised, even removed.

It seems nevertheless established that it was the cataract. More especially as the text of an (unfortunately broken) tablet says this: “If the right or left eye of a man is covered with a shade, with the bronze lancet …”

The tablet stops at this place, but the indication of the operation is certain.

As we could see it, the ultimate great Sumerian invention is the Writing.

It is indeed in the middle of the 4th millennium before our era that appeared among them a pictographic writing which will evolve quickly towards the cuneiform writing.

The invention of the writing was done with the rise of the trade. It is no longer only a new stage, but a scaling up because if the population had been already multiplied by ten at the beginning of the Neolithic era, it is a new increase of factor 10 which will accompany the true beginnings of civilization. With cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants, a hierarchization of the society, the division of labor and functions, the specialization, the craft industry.

If the History begins at Sumer, it is also because the satisfaction of vital needs is essential so that the mind, released from the immediacy, rises to the reflection on itself, beyond its animality. The periods of progress are often those of prosperity.

The writing is a product from communication, from exchange. It is initially figure, contract and very quickly source of power. The written law protects from the arbitrariness of the whim of the sovereign. It exposes itself to the duration therefore implies the existence of a caste of specialists (scribes and priests) who rationalize its letter. The astrology which predicts (eclipses, etc.), but draws its knowledge from the writing of the past, establishes finally firmly that reality is quite rational, the law of the fate applying even to the god-or-demons which cannot change its accomplishment. There is no coincidence in the fact that there will be then traditionally 12 patriarchs 12 tribes of Israel 12 labors of Hercules 12 disciples of Jesus; Twelve being the traditional number of the astrological houses, or months, according to the Sumerians, and corresponding, of course, to no historical reality.

The Sumerians dominated this area of the world with regard to religion. We owe them the names of many god-or-demons and an important part of the ritual of their worships.

The death of Marduk was celebrated between the fifteen and twentieth day of March . His passion was told in a kind of Gospel. Captured by his enemies, he was led on a mountain and after having put on his head a crown of acanthus leaves, they instituted against him legal proceedings which ended in his death sentence. His enemies, to be sure that he had really died, speared him with a lance.

Dumuzi is a Sumerian god-or-demon, attested already around 3500 before our era. In Uruk, Dumuzi was linked with the bud of the date palm. His principal myth was that of a dying young deity. Tammuz

is his name in Akkadian language. He has a month for him in the Akkadian calendar, whose name passed in the Jewish calendar (Tammuz).

Sumerian cosmogony will be unceasingly taken over by many later religions (particularly by the Hebrews. See the first 11 chapters of the Genesis). The Sumerian language, become sacred (at the same time as diplomatic) language will start the tradition of a revelation through writing.

The connection of eternity, time and generation, the succession of the god-or-demons, their hierarchy (the kingship) as well as the claim for justice, continuing the former religion, take shape then.

The Trinity Anu (An = heaven), Enlil (air), Enki/Ea (the earth) replaces the mother of the god-or-demons (Tianmat? Belit-ili ?), but keeps the bull Marduk bull as well as Dumuzi.

We find among the Sumerians the topic of the descent into Hell, as well as the creation of Mankind starting from the mixture of a little clay with the spirit (blood) of a sacrificed god-or-demon. It is indeed for their myths of the creation of the world and of the birth of the civilization that the Sumerians are best known. We owe them, for example, the idea of a heroic period when the human perfection (the preternatural powers of man) gave way to the failure. The Eden, peaceful rural retreat where man lives happily among wild beasts, appears for example in the epic of Gilgamesh.

The Bible borrowed many passages from the Sumerians, like the topic of the earthly paradise or Garden of Eden described in the poem “Enki and Ninhursag” where the Hebraic Eden and the Sumerian Dilmun are as one. Same sufferings, same original sin at the origin of the evil: the first woman who, pushed by a snake to disobey the creating god-or-demon, convinces her companion to eat the fruit of the prohibited tree (legend copied such as it is in the Bible). Possible illustration: “The Temptation seal” British Museum, London. The Adam and Eve cylinder seal, also known as the 'Temptation seal' is a small stone cylinder of neo-Sumerian origin, dating from about 2200 to 2100 before our era.The seal depicts two seated figures, a tree, and a serpent.

Besides this poem (Enki and Ninhursag) explains in passing the odd history of the rib of Adam having given Eve. The story of the rib comes from the Sumerian play on words “Ti” (“rib” and “to make live”).

But the Hebraic version of this myth will impose a dramatic vision of the lost paradise, imputing to the disobedience of the creature this forfeiture of mankind.

The other great cultural contribution of these people as regards the founding myths is undoubtedly the concept of universal flood. They are the Sumerians who indeed designed the first the myth of the flood with Ziusudra or Shurupak (the Sumerian Noah).

This myth was then taken over by the Babylonians: God or the Demiurge warns Utnapishtim and advises him to build a boat in order to save a certain number of animals. Then a torrential rain falls during seven days; afterwards the boat berths the mount Nisir. Utnapishtim releases a dove and, a little later a swallow, but the birds come back. Finally, he releases a raven which does not return anymore.

All these stories as many others were taken over in the Bible.

A large part of the biblical material is therefore of Sumerian or Akkadian origin (the first 11 chapters of Genesis, in fact, everything until the legends of the cycle of the patriarchs and of Abraham) and more globally Babylonian (cherubs, Decalogue of Hammurabi, baptism and others).

HOLY HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER.

The Sumerians wrote sapiential texts (following the example of the Old Testament) the best example of which is the Shuruppak Instructions, which was a great success. Wisdom texts of great quality were elaborated in the midst of the temples of Babylonia at the end of the second millennium. They question the relationship between gods and humans, especially around the observation that people who behave well are sometimes struck by misfortune, unjustly, whereas according to ideology this should not happen. They come to realize that the divine will is incomprehensible to men. These works are the Monologue of the Suffering Righteous, and two dialogues, the Babylonian Theodicy and the Dialogue of Pessimism, which is akin to a sarcastic text.

The so-called sapiential texts have nevertheless a vocation which is above all moral. It is a question of dispensing precepts in conformity with Mesopotamian wisdom. The numerous collections of proverbs that have come down to us in this genre can therefore be classified. In a similar style, small fables depicting animals (each with a stereotypical character) also carry moral precepts.

LINGUISTIC SITUATION IN MESOPOTAMIA FROM - 5000 to -1000.

-VI millennia before our era: the proto-Euphratean: substrate difficult to determine. Some trade names of river or anthroponyms.

-IV millennium before era : the Sumerian, an unclassifiable language. It's a linguistic isolate.

-End of the III millennium before our era: Sumerian begins to decline but will keep its status as an intellectual language long after it has ceased to be spoken (like Latin in medieval and modern Europe) but no longer used for the creation of major literary works (unlike Latin in medieval and modern Europe).

-XX century before our era: A Semitic language, Akkadian, gradually replaced Sumerian .

New literary productions will be mostly in Akkadian but bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian versions of several myths circulate.

UR EXCAVATIONS IN CHALDEA.

Visited in the 17th century by the Italian traveler Pietro della Valle, who picked up some bricks and other objects bearing an inscription, Tell al-Muqayyar was first surveyed in 1854 by the British consul in Basra, J. E. Taylor, on behalf of the British Museum. Based on inscriptions Taylor found there, the site was identified by Henry Rawlinson as the ancient city of Ur, which according to the Bible was very close to Abraham's place of origin.

Some archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania performed a certain number of excavations there afterwards.

The site was surveyed in 1918 by R. Campbell Thompson at the request of the British Museum. The following year, H.R. Hall excavated there at the same time as at the nearby sites of Eridu and Al Ubaid.

In 1922, a joint operation by the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania organized new excavations of the site. It was directed by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley, who carried out twelve successive campaigns until 1934, when it was decided to interrupt the operations to carry out publication work. Woolley was assisted by his fellow citizen Max Mallowan from 1925 to 1931.

The main monuments of the sacred area of the city were cleared and one of the most spectacular archeological discoveries for a site in the ancient Near East was made, that of the royal cemetery and the luxurious archeological artifacts it housed.

The results of the excavations were gradually published over thirty years, in two different series, one for the archeological excavations themselves and one for the tablets covered with cuneiform writing, writing perfectly deciphered since 1857, while Woolley himself published several popular works on his discoveries.

URUK EXCAVATIONS.

The site of Uruk was located in the middle of the 19th century, thanks to its ruins, which remained imposing despite the sand that covered them, by the English geologist William Kennett Loftus. He undertook the first excavations in 1849 and 1853. Walter Andrae carried out some surveys in 1902. From 1912 onwards, excavations at the site were carried out under the responsibility of the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (DOG, "German Oriental Society"), a scientific society founded in 1898 in Berlin, following the interest shown from the end of the 19th century for discoveries concerning the "Bible countries.”

The first campaign, led by Julius Jordan and Conrad Preusser, focused mainly on the Eanna area, while exploring the remains of the walls that surrounded the city. It lasted until 1913.

Jordan returned to Warka in 1928, again on behalf of the DOG, but in association with the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (NG, "Emergency Association of German Science"). He stayed there for about ten years, before giving way to Arnold Nöldeke, then Ernst Heinrich until 1941. The remains of recent eras are left behind, to explore the old levels of the Eanna. Archaeologists carried out a soil survey in 1931 to better identify the different eras and reconstruct the general plan of the city. They excavated the two main areas, the Eanna and the Bīt Resh, and found numerous clay tablets covered with cuneiform writing dating from different eras from the beginning of writing to the end of Mesopotamian civilization. The first were published by the epigraphist Adam Falkenstein.

Interrupted in 1941, the excavations at Uruk will be continued by different teams under the aegis of the German Institute of Archaeology, led successively by Heinrich Jacob Lenzen, Jürgen Schmidt and since 1980 Rainer Michael Boehmer. From 1982 to 1984, a survey was carried out over the entire surface of the site. In 1989, the on-site research was discontinued. Thirty-nine campaigns had been carried out by then.

The results of the excavations at Uruk, including the tablets unearthed from the site, will be published in two successive series :

-Ausgrabungen der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft in Uruk (ADFU), 17 vol., 1912-1985;

-Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka, Endberichte (AUWE), 24 vol. 1987-2003.

BABYLON EXCAVATIONS.

Despite some possible confusions with the nearby sites of Birs Nimrud (Borsippa) and Aqar Quf (Dur-Kurigalzu) where the ruins of the ziggurats were reminiscent of the Tower of Babel, the location of the site of Babylon was never really lost, with part of it retaining its former name, Bābil. Several travelers from Europe visited its ruins: Benjamin of Tudela in the 12th century, Pietro della Valle in the 17th century, and in the 18th century the abbot of Beauchamp, a French diplomat.

The first to carry out truly scientific work there was the Englishman Claudius James Rich, who at the beginning of the 19th century established the first cartography of the site, a pioneering work in the scientific exploration of Mesopotamia. Several of his fellow countrymen followed him there, including Austen Henry Layard in 1850 and Henry Rawlinson in 1854, two of the principal discoverers of Assyrian capitals. But they stayed there for a short time because the site of Babylon delivered fewer spectacular discoveries than those in northern Mesopotamia. This also explains why it remained on the fringe of the main excavations in this period.

In 1852, Frenchmen began excavations on the site, led by Fulgence Fresnel assisted by Jules Oppert and Felix Thomas. The poor discoveries (mainly burials), which they made during excavations performed in a difficult context, could not be repatriated to France in 1855 because the river convoy carrying them (which was mainly carrying Assyrian bas-reliefs) was attacked in southern Iraq (Chatt el Arab) by hostile tribes and sank .

The site of Babylon was regularly visited by excavation workers in the second half of the 19th century after these first worksites.

In 1862, the French consul Pacifique-Henri Delaporte found a Parthian tomb richly endowed with archeological material, which was sent to the Louvre Museum. Local inhabitants who had been collecting bricks on the spot until then also kept the ancient objects they found there to sell them on the nearby markets.

Excavations organized by British teams led by Hormuzd Rassam in the 1870s, nevertheless succeeded in bringing back several precious objects to the British Museum, notably the Cyrus cylinder.

These British excavations resumed from time to time against a backdrop of a scandal linked to suspicions of collusion between clandestine diggers and Rassam, before the Germans were also interested in Babylon from 1897.

THE EXCAVATIONS OF NIPPUR.

The archeological site of Nuffar will be spotted by some of the main British rediscoverers of ancient Mesopotamian sites of the nineteenth century: Henry Rawlinson, Austen Henry Layard and William Kennett Loftus.

The first excavation work on the site was undertaken by a team of archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania in 1888, the Babylonian Expedition, financed by a fund raised for the occasion from private donors. Nippur is the first Mesopotamian site excavated by archaeologists from the United States. The first campaigns were led by John P. Peters, John Henry Haynes and Hermann Hilprecht, and lasted until 1900. These excavations focused first on the sacred area of the eastern tell, then on Tablet Hill, south of the same tell, and southwest of the western tell.

These campaigns will be especially the opportunity to make a real harvest of cuneiform tablets (more than 30,000).

The findings will be published in the Babylonian Expedition (BE) series and in the Publications of the Babylonian Section (PBS) series. The finds from this period will be divided between the University of Pennsylvania, and the Imperial Museum of Constantinople (now the Istanbul Archaeological Museum). A third part will be preserved by Hilprecht and bequeathed to the University of Jena after his death.

After an interruption of almost half a century, excavations will resume in 1948 under the direction of Donald E. McCown (in 1948 and 1951-52) and Richard C. Haines (in 1949-50 and 1953-62). The two researchers led a team of diggers from the University of Chicago associated with the Oriental Institute of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania (the "Joint Expedition").

Excavations are again focusing on Tablet Hill and the temple area, unearthing in particular the Inanna Temple and the North Temple. After 1962 the direction of the excavations was left to the University of Chicago alone with James E. Knudstad (campaigns in 1964-65 and 1966-67), who undertook to explore the Parthian period fortress and drew up a plan of the site.

NINEVEH EXCAVATIONS.

The Kuyunjik tell site, located just opposite the present-day city of Mosul, had long been known as the probable location of ancient Nineveh. For this reason, when the English explorer Claudius James Rich traveled to Iraq in 1820 in search of the ancient sites of Mesopotamia, he made a stop here and drew up plans for the site, discovering a few sculptures in the process. He was the first European to find traces of Nineveh, but it was not yet a question of excavation.

The first explorations on Kuyunjik were not very fruitful, and it took some time to confirm the identification of this tell as the acropolis of the former great Assyrian capital.

The rediscovery of Nineveh was the main objective of the pioneers of ancient Near Eastern archaeology when they began to excavate the sites of ancient Assyria, because of its prestige and that of the great Assyrian kings whose names were still known to a large part of the population of countries such as Great Britain and France, due to the importance of biblical culture, which explains why their discoveries were very well followed.

Close to the great city of Mosul and located in a place called "Ninuwa" by the local population who kept the memory of the ancient Assyrian capital, the tells of Nebi Yunus (a site that it proved impossible to excavate because of its sacred character) and then of Kuyunjik were logically the first destination of the local French consul, Paul-Émile Botta, in 1842, when he tried to find Nineveh. However, while he was in the right place, his findings were poor tablets and he doubted that he was on the desired site, so he moved a few kilometers further north to Khorsabad, where the ruins were more apparent. He excavated monuments which he thought for some time to be the ruins of Nineveh, before it was discovered that they were the ruins of Dur-Sharrukin.

Shortly afterwards, in 1847, his friend the young English archaeologist A. H. Layard, who was already working on the Nimrud site, which he thought to be Nineveh but was actually Kalkhu, supervised the excavations at Kuyunjik after his conclusive results at his first site. After revealing in London his first discoveries (mainly at Nimrud), he returned to Kuyunjik in 1849 to carry out more ambitious excavations there, with his assistant Hormuzd Rassam. They discovered the palace of Sennacherib and hundreds of meters of carved reliefs, including those relating to the taking of Lachish, and a campaign of Assurbanipal in Elam, as well as the first batch of cuneiform tablets from Nineveh, comprising part of the "Library of Assurbanipal" and the archives of the Assyrian kings. These finds

were sent to the British Museum, where they now stand. With these discoveries, it gradually became clear that the site of Kuyunjik corresponded to ancient Nineveh, the other Assyrian capitals having also been identified in those same years thanks to the beginning of the deciphering of the Akkadian cuneiform.

Layard later left the excavation sites in Mesopotamia to pursue a career as a diplomat, and Henry Rawlinson took command of British expeditions to the region. Rawlinson let the French explore the northern part of the Kuyunjik tell, while the rest was assigned to Rassam, who was not very accommodating to the situation. He secretly excavated the northern part of the tell in December 1853, and came across part of the northern palace of Assurbanipal, where new bas-reliefs were unearthed, including scenes of the king's lion hunt, his campaigns against Elam and the Arabs, and the second part of the tablets of the Library of Assurbanipal and the royal archives. These finds were therefore sent to London right under the nose of French archaeologists, who held a deep rancor against Rassam.

In 1854, the British shipyard was closed for lack of funds. William Kenneth Loftus then resumed the excavations of the palace of Assurbanipal from where the French had been ousted following the discoveries of Rassam, and found other bas-reliefs. His excavations are not well known because they were published more than a century later. The bas-reliefs discovered at that time, as well as other Nineveh bas-reliefs left by Rawlinson to the French or sold to the Berlin Museum, were lost in a shipwreck on the Chatt-el-Arab in May 1855, an accident that occurred following an attack on a river convoy led by the French, who were also transporting a large number of sculptures from Khorsabad.

ASHURBANIPAL’S LIBRARY.

The Royal Library, named after Ashurbanipal (-668-627) - the last great king of ancient Assyria - is a collection of nearly twenty-five thousand clay tablets (most of them fragmented) and fragments containing all kinds of texts from the 7th century before our era, mainly written in Akkadian cuneiform. This collection is of inestimable value as it represents the most important collection of literary texts of Mesopotamian civilization. Due to the careless treatment of the British Museum, a large part of the library is irreparably mixed up, preventing experts from discerning and reconstructing many authentic texts, although some have remained intact.

Most of the texts coming from the personal collection of King Ashurbanipal, the entire corpus was attributed to him, but in fact these texts form a disparate whole, as they come from different parts of the same site.

Ashurbanipal, who had been educated as a scribe and wrote in Akkadian and Sumerian, wanted to found a library that would serve to preserve the texts of all the scientific knowledge of his time and also serve as an archive for all the official texts. He was also interested in the way - indispensable in the spirit of the time - of communicating with the gods in order to properly administer his kingdom and how to predict the future, which is revealed by the tablets dealing with astrology or how to interpret the entrails of sacrificed animals. A significant number of tablets deal with predictions, omens, prophecies and magical or ritualistic rituals, as well as mythology. He sent scribes to the four corners of the kingdom to bring back Babylonian and Sumerian texts.

The king's collection also includes many medical texts, mostly of a magical nature, but also tablets dealing with mathematics, philosophy and philology. Epic or mythical texts, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh or the Enuma Elish, are of fundamental importance to the understanding of Assyrian civilization. There are also prayers, song texts, legal documents (matrimonial regimes, divorces, lawsuits, etc.) including the Code of Hammurabi, administrative or economic notes (contracts , fixing of royalties, organization of agriculture, etc.), missives, astronomical and historical works, texts of a political nature, lists of rulers and poems.

The texts are mainly written in the Assyro-Babylonian dialect of the Akkadian language or in Sumerian. Many of them are written in both Akkadian and Sumerian, including glossaries and encyclopedic texts. In principle, six copies of a text were required, which makes deciphering easier in this day and age.

Over the ages, the ancient capital of Ashurbanipal fell into ruins under the blows of the Medes and the Babylonians. The library was not plundered, as normally happens in such circumstances, but was buried under the ruins of the royal palaces where it had been distributed.

The English archaeologist Austen Henry Layard discovered most of it in 1849 under the ruins of the northwestern palace on the banks of the Euphrates. Layard's sidekick, Hormuzd Rassam, discovered the second part three years later in the opposite part of the palace. All the pieces discovered are deposited in the British Museum, making scholars from all over the world able to study them "first-hand.” Indeed, Assyrian civilization was previously known only through the texts of Herodotus and other Greek historians who had access to Persian sources.

The philologist George Smith, who was in office from 1873 to 1874, translated in 1872 from the first tablets brought back from Nineveh an account of a part of the myth of the Flood from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which had great resonance in demonstrating that the Bible had been inspired by an older text. Smith was funded by the Daily Telegraph to locate a missing part of the Flood story, an undertaking that was quickly crowned with success. But he was soon taken away by an illness contracted in northern Iraq.

MESOPOTAMIAN LITERATURE.

The thousands of cuneiform tablets discovered since the 19th century in this part of the world have therefore given a more precise idea of the religious ideas held by the men of the time.

There is no real uniqueness in the literary style of mythological texts. As is often the case in Mesopotamian literature, the long texts include several "genres" in the eyes of modern readers: narrative passages, dialogues, praises to the glory of the divinity concerned by the text. In the literary classification of ancient Mesopotamia (which appears notably in the colophons of the tablets), the stories that are considered mythological are often referred to as belonging to the genre of prayers and songs, which is, moreover, the only one to have been truly distinguished into several genres in the milieu of Mesopotamian scholars, no doubt according to the way in which they were sung and set to music. Some of them are presented as "songs" (shir in Sumerian, zamaru in Akkadian), for example the Lugal-e and the Atrahasis , others as particular types of Sumerian songs: Dumuzi's Death is, for example, a lament on the tambourine (ér-šèm-ma), Dumuzi and Enkimdu is a song in dialogue (bal-bal-e), the Journey from Ninurta to Eridu is a "long song" (shir-gida), etc.

The known Mesopotamian myths, whose possible oral aspect escapes us, fall within the domain of the literary production of Mesopotamian scribes. The latter has various specificities. Firstly, the texts that are considered to fall within the domain of "belles-lettres" (mainly myths and epics) form only a very limited number in quantity compared to the "technical" texts used by the clergy (religious hymns and prayers, treatises on divination, exorcism, etc.) or lexicographical works.

Secondly, these texts are known above all through copies made in the context of the schooling of young scribes, especially in the schools of Nippur and Ur at the beginning of the second millennium B.C., which document most of what is known about Sumerian literature. It was not until the first millennium before our era that libraries develop in the true sense of the word, in palaces ("Library of Assurbanipal" in Nineveh), temples (in Kalkhu, Sippar in particular) or in the residences of members of the clergy (in Sultantepe, for example). In all cases, myths are in small quantity in the places where they are found; the celebrity of the libraries of Nineveh is certainly largely due to the mythological and epic texts that were unearthed there in the nineteenth century, but this is only about forty texts out of the three tens of thousands of tablets that come from them.

The conditions under which these works were produced are therefore not well known, as their authors, as it is frequently the case with Mesopotamian literature in general. Moreover, it is difficult to speak of a single author, since the works we know are generally composite, the result of several more or less thorough rewriting and republications, which means that we have several versions of a work over time, with the change of certain passages, or even entire sections, or sometimes changes in the meaning of the work. From the second half of the second millennium before our era, however, the scribes of Babylonia proceeded with the "canonization" of several major works, which gave them a stable version, which is the one found in the libraries of the first millennium.

CONTENT OF THESE MYTHS.

While there are a variety of presentations in detail, if we stick to the generalities the ancient Mesopotamians had a vision of the cosmos based on the following principles.

The universe is made up of Heaven and Earth, and also other sets, the Abyss, the watery world below Earth, and the Underworld, also below Earth.

The universe is governed by the gods, who provide order, set the destinies; the main gods ruled part of the cosmos.

Men are destined to serve the gods through their work, providing them with food, drink, and more broadly anything that serves to sustain them through worship; the principal gods guide human life, offering knowledge and techniques, and deciding its destinies.

Creation myths, generally considered to be the foundation of ancient mythological systems, explain how this cosmology came into being. Those of Mesopotamia present a very diverse profile, since there was no unified tradition but the coexistence of several narratives, generally presented in a confused manner in texts that only deal with this subject in a secondary manner, including a mythological passage: introductions of hymns or songs, literary spars highly prized by Sumerian scholars opposing two entities constituting the world, or in divine lists, as well as in other types of texts. The coexistence of these different cosmogonic traditions was interpreted early on as a reflection of the political division that prevailed in South Mesopotamia during most of the third millennium before our era, and of the activity of the "theologians" of the most important religious centers in South Mesopotamia (first and foremost Eridu, which was perhaps the oldest Sumerian religious center, and Nippur, which gained primacy) during that millennium and the first centuries of the following one.

The only ancient creation myth developed in a narrative is Enki and Ninmah, relating the creation of man. It was not until the second millennium B.C., with the Atrahasis and then the Epic of Creation, that the scribes of the Babylonian kingdom developed narratives offering a coherent vision of the creation of gods, the world and mankind. The earlier creation narratives are thus reconstructed by modern scholars through the comparison of various texts of various kinds, of which only a few (often only one) are known, but it is possible to get an overall view of the elements they evoke.

Mesopotamian cosmogonic myths dealing with the birth of the universe do so repeatedly through an account of the separation of Heaven and Earth. In Gilgamesh's Sumerian epic tale of Enkidu and the Underworld, Heaven and Earth are the children of the primordial goddess Nammu, and they are separated, with An taking Heaven for himself while Earth returns to Enlil. In the tradition of Nippur, it was Enlil, the sovereign god, who was the actor of the separation (e.g., in the Song of the Hoe, a heterogeneous school composition ). In the introduction to the Enki and Ninmah myth, separation is evoked without mentioning who provokes it. Finally, other texts are content to evoke the creation of the world without even mentioning a separation of Heaven and Earth, putting it to the credit of the great Sumerian divine triad: An, Enlil and Enki. The Babylonian Creation Epic, for its part, presents a multistage formation of the world, the main setting in order being made by Marduk from the remains of the primordial goddess Tiamat (see below).

The creation of man.

Man's creation cannot be understood without their function, which is willed by the gods: to serve them, above all by working for their food maintenance. But this creation in itself is not enough; an institutional, natural, cultural and technical framework must be provided for this creation to enable it to play its role.

The creation of the human being is the main theme of the Enki and Ninmah myth. It begins with the creation of the world and the initial settlement of the Earth by the gods, who unite and proliferate, until they have to produce their own food to survive, which is highly unsatisfactory to them. They therefore complained to the goddess Namma, who asked her son Enki to develop substitutes for the gods who would work in their place and for their benefit. Enki made a mold, then gave it to his mother so that she could place clay in it to form human beings, who came to life with the help of a group of goddesses, foremost among whom was Ninmah, who assigned them their destiny to work for the gods. The exact way in which humans come to life is not known, the text that has survived to the present day being fragmentary where it may be mentioned.

It seems to have coexisted with the tradition of Enki as the creator of man, which attributed this action to Enlil. The Song of the Hoe, which seems to refer to a mythological background of Nippur, thus says that this god created man by taking clay with the hoe (the main subject of the text) and placing it in a mold from which the first of the men came out.

Another myth dating from the beginning of the second millennium before our era, in a bilingual Akkadian-Sumerian version, also makes Enlil the creator of men, born through the blood of two executed deities. The role of divine blood as the animator of humans formed from clay figurines made by the gods is found in the versions of the creation of man present in the Atrahasis and the Creation Epic. In the first case, it is Ea who creates him through the sacrifice of the god named Wê-ilu, while in the second it is the work of Marduk, who sacrifices the god Qingu, one of those he defeated during his

fight against Tiamat. The Genesis of Eridu was also supposed to recount the origins of mankind in its original version, but this part is lost.

The myth of the Flood occupies a special place in Mesopotamian mythological tradition because of its resonance in Western tradition, for which it refers to the biblical narrative. The myth of the Flood has a special place in the Mesopotamian mythological tradition because of its resonance in Western tradition, for which it refers to the biblical narrative. The myth of the Flood has a special place in Mesopotamian mythological tradition because of its resonance in Western tradition, for which it refers to the biblical narrative. As with many other original myths, it comes in different versions, which are very similar, making it plausible that the oldest text served as inspiration for the others. In the current state of knowledge, this first draft would be that of the Atrahasis, a story in Akkadian dating back to at least the 18th century before our era, when it takes its place in a vast composition also relating to the creation of the world and man. The catastrophe is brought about by the will of Enlil, king of the gods, who, like many of his fellow gods, is exasperated by the proliferation of men and the din it causes. He first unleashes against them an epidemic and then a drought causing a famine in order to reduce their numbers, in vain. He therefore decided on a solution with no return: annihilation by the Flood. Ea then decides to protect the human being, her creation, by warning the wisest of his devotees, Atrahasis (the "Supersage"), who builds according to his instructions an ark to save his species and others. The storm and precipitation triggered by Enlil for seven days and seven nights flooded the entire Earth, decimating humans, with only the Supersage and his relatives surviving. Once the waters were gone, the Supersage sets foot on the ground and offers a sacrifice to the gods, who had time to repent of the disaster. Enlil is at first furious when he sees that his plans have been thwarted by Ea, but after a plea from the latter, he changes his mind on the condition that humans will now face death and infertility, previously unknown, so as to avoid overpopulation.

Mesopotamian civilization is often presented in a dual aspect, as being composed of two large groups of people.

The first group the Sumerians, living in the extreme south of Mesopotamia and speaking a language with no known kinship, played a decisive role in the archaic periods, laying the foundations of the Mesopotamian civilization before disappearing somewhere between the end of the third millennium and the beginning of the second millennium, still before our era.

The second group some populations speaking a Semitic language, Akkadian, who are characterized as "Akkadians" when it is a question of the ancient periods during which they cohabit with the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia.

From the second half of the second millennium before our era, they are divided between two great kingdoms, Babylon in the south and Assyria in the north.

Sumerian myths are more numerous, and are generally considered to reflect an older state of the Mesopotamian religion, which has retained a decisive influence on its continuation, as the Akkadian (especially Babylonian) scribes drew on this material to elaborate their own myths. The themes are similar, the gods are mostly the same, sometimes with different names (Enki/Ea, Inanna/Ishtar, Nanna/Sîn) or are newcomers like Nergal and especially Marduk. They can be heavily reworked adaptations, as in the case of the Akkadian version of the Descent of Ishtar into the Underworld. The Babylonian compositions such as the Atrahasis and the Epic of Creation (or the Epic of Gilgamesh in the epic category) are characterized by greater ambition, giving a broader and more coherent vision of the world and of the destiny of mankind by combining several mythological themes generally taken from the archaic mythological stock.

However, the situation is complex and cannot be generalized to all myths. Few myths are known for the archaic periods, during which Sumerian was still a living language, as the tablets from these periods are very fragmentary and difficult to understand. Most of the "Sumerian" myths that are known actually stem from a context in which Sumerian was clearly a dead or dying language, and was mostly practiced among the literate community. This is the case for example of the numerous tablets from the first centuries of the second millennium before our era,found in the cities of the ancient Sumerian country where the literary traditions of that country were still alive. It is therefore often difficult to know the exact origin of these myths whether they stem from older Sumerian myths or are more recent creations.

THE ORGANIZED IN CITY STATES SEMITES.

Around 2700 before our era, Semitic tribes settle gradually in Sumer. The Sumerians disappear gradually, absorbed by these Semites having left Arabia, the Akkadians, more numerous and more vigorous.

About - 2500 the Akkadians impose themselves in the population. The concept of empire comes out. The Sumerian will be no longer spoken : the Akkadian, then the Assyrian-Babylonian, will replace it.

Sumerian religion and beliefs survived, however, and the Sumerian language remained for a long time the language of science, business, law, as well as the sacred language of the religion of the priests in Babylon (it was in a way their Latin to them).

As a literary language, it remained used until the final disappearance of the cuneiform writing.

The later Mesopotamian religion was therefore Sumerian-Akkadian and related with the other Semitic peoples of the area: Canaanites, Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arameans, Arabs…

- 2371 before our era.

The one who will become the great Mesopotamian king Sargon is found a little time after his birth, given up in a basket floating on Euphrates, and will be raised by the gardener Akki, then will become the cupbearer of the king in Kis, thanks to the intervention of the goddess-or-demoness Ishtar.

This history will be taken over in the Bible for Moses : it is, of course, and in both cases (Sargon and Moses), a legend.

- 2340 - 2284. Sargon becomes the uncontested king of the area of the Middle Euphrates and founds the town of Akkad. Conquering by temperament, he extends his power from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. Not being satisfied to be the representative of the god-or-demons, he claims to be the equal of those. The empire which he had set up breaks down around 2200.

Under the reign of Hammurabi (- 1792 - 1750), Babylon lives then its first height. It is the political center of the southernmost Mesopotamian empire. That will last from - 1894 to - 1594. Hammurabi makes build temples for the god-or-demons, dig irrigation canals, and supports the rise of the trade and industry (of the time). Contrary to Sargon, he acts not like a god-or-demon and applies a policy of good father while wishing before only peace reigns, as well as social justice (a kind of king Solomon!)

The first of moral codes. 150 or 200 years before the ten commands of Moses, the “Decalogue” of Hammurabi.

Written in cuneiform characters and Babylonian language, it contains, inserted between a glorious Prolog and an Epilogue filled with curses for the transgressors, the text of almost three hundred laws. N.B. In fact, 282 commands and not 10. This Decalogue was not simplistic.

Few monuments reached us from the time of Hammurabi, which, however, represents a peak in the civilization of Western Asia. In many regards, the most remarkable is the Code of Hammurabi. Engraved on a block of diorite for the temple of Sippar, it was taken as a trophy, during invasions of Babylonia, by the king of Elam, Shutruk-Nahhunte and transported in his capital; where the modern excavations of Susa in 1902 exhumed it.

This block of black diorite engraved has the shape of a stele, round at the top, and is 2.25 m. high in total.

In its upper part, a low-relief shows the king standing, with his hand raised , wearing a round skullcap, dressed in a long fabric: he stands in front of Shamash, the sun and justice God-or-demon, sitting on his throne.

All the lower part of the block is occupied by the engraving of a long tripartite text which begins with a prologue where Hammurabi says his glory and enumerates his conquests.

The following part, strictly legislative, is composed of 282 “articles” divided into matters which follow one another in an order at the very least disconcerting. We find so, after each other; chapters devoted to false witness, theft, royal fields, agricultural work, living premises, trade, deposits and debts, wives and families, aggravated assault, and so on.

An epilogue closes the document by a kind of will in which Hammurabi invites his successors to follow his example and to observe the same principles of equity and justice.

Although the countries of Sumer and Akkad did not miss legislative “texts” former to that of Hammurabi; the code which is named after him represents a system of regulation, astonishing insofar as it could, with some exceptions, to apply to the main categories of any modern legislation. Public law, private law as criminal law, are successively taken on there. A certain order can be recognized in the succession of these articles of law: charms and spells, kinds of theft, status and duties of the civil servant, farming, commercial contracts, family, aggravated assault, doctors, architects and boatmen, animals, slaves and rural property.

As we said it, it is not the oldest Mesopotamian legislation known, because this text generally does nothing but remind of what was already obligatory for a long time in the country. The Code of Hammurabi does nothing but take over the rules of the Sumerian tradition, which will apply to the Babylonian society, in a more or less renewed form.

Hammurabi’s code determines the penalties for a certain number of situations.

There exists a whole gradation of the damages. The resort to capital punishment and the law of retaliation are strictly regulated. The less serious offenses are punished with a fine.

Public peace is ensured by the repression of the armed robbery. The delegates of the king, in particular the officers, enjoy, as well for their people as for their goods, a particular protection. A similar protection is granted to the properties of the king and of the god-or-demons. As regards private law, the law defines with precision the women's rights and undertakes to defend her against the arbitrariness.

The Code of Hammurabi therefore seems a major legal stage, but nothing makes it possible to affirm that it is the fact of this monarch, and it does not constitute in oneself an exhaustive corpus. This code is, however, remained famous for its length and the elegance of its style. It seems to crown a long and glorious reign and was used as a literary model in the schools of scribes during more than a thousand years.

The social legislation.

It is the most original part, of the legal work of Hammurabi. It comprises two essential components: the fixing of the wages and the recognition of the professional responsibility.

The State intervenes directly to tariff the fees, wages or leasing price according to the cases. The fees of the doctors or veterinary surgeons vary according to whether the care given is intended to a free man, to a slave or to animals. The law tariffs officially the work day, the payable prices either in kind or in cash varying according to the carried out work.

The law introduces the principle of the professional responsibility. Are thus personally responsible; the doctor - who causes the death of his patient or makes him handicapped - the architect who built a house - when this house while collapsing causes the death of the owner -; the man who, having hired a work animal, makes it, or lets it, die; and finally the boatman who, by his fault, causes the shipwreck of the boat of which he has the responsibility.

“If a man rent his boat to a sailor, and the sailor is careless, and the boat is wrecked or goes aground, the sailor shall give the owner of the boat another boat as compensation.”

MYTHOLOGY AND PANTHEON.

The creation of the world was initially imagined in terms of procreation and not of manufacturing. Under the name of Inanna among the Sumerians (Ishtar among the Akkadians) the Mother Goddess-or-Demoness formed the central figure of it, before being driven back under the patriarchal civilizations into the rank of infernal and evil deity.

Chaos in the Hebrew myth of the Genesis is called Tohu wa-Bohu. The Bohu (or Behemoth) is a land monster and Tohu (Tehom) a sea monster. Its name is to be compared to the name of the Babylonian Mother Goddess-or-demoness, Tiamat.

Marduk, Baal, El or Elohim, therefore always begin with fighting the water, identified by the Hebrews with a monster: Leviathan, Rahab, the Big Dragon.

The creating deity that they oust is a goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, of fertility, i.e., a goddess-or-demoness or fairy, of water.

Although the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Inanna then Astarte (Asherah), was still venerated by the Hebrews before the ultra-sexism of the worship of YHWH strikes her with his curse, the woman remains clearly, in the biblical story of Creation, a symbol of disorder.

The myth of the “direct” creation by God or the Demiurge, of the first man, with clay, is attested in the epic of Atrahasis, dating back to 1635 before our era.

Here is the summary.

Before the appearance of the man on earth, the world of the Elohim (gods) is in the image of Mankind. There exists a hierarchy: high God-or-demons and young god-or-demons. The young god-or-demons are charged to work as slaves. One day they revolt, burn their tools and go on strike.

The great God-or-demon Enki understands the distress of the young god-or-demons and decides to create the man to support the labor which was hitherto theirs.

“Enki made ready to speak,

and said to the great gods:

Since Belet-ili, the midwife, is present,

Let her create, then, a man, a human,

And let him bear the yoke!

…..

On the first, seventh, and fifteenth days of the month,

let me establish a purification, a bath.

Let one God be slaughtered,

Let Nintu mix clay with his flesh and blood.

Let that same god and man be thoroughly mixed in the clay.

From the flesh of the god let a spirit remain,

let it make the living know its sign,

lest he be allowed to be forgotten, let the spirit remain…..

….

They slaughtered therefore Aw-ilu…..

Nintu mixed clay with his flesh and blood.

From the flesh of the god the spirit remained.”

The Sumerian -Babylonian myth is therefore intellectually more honest than the Biblical myth, man was not created one does not know why (out of love Christians say) but in order to work for the gods (to worship and pray God Christians say).

In the Babylonian Genesis which is called Enuma Elish, where El God wins the victory over the Mother Goddess-or-Demoness Tiamat , the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Aruru, also uses some blood, the blood of El, kneaded with clay, to form the Man. Here is the summary.

Aruru, goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of love, makes with clay a man called Enkidu, who lives in harmony with nature, seeking the company of the gazelles, and playing with the dolphins. A sacred prostitute sent by Gilgamesh manages to move him away from her natural environment, attracts him in the court of the god-or-demons (of the Elohim) and civilizes him. Consequently the wild creatures will avoid him. Gilgamesh, whose Enkidu became meanwhile the blood brother, will try to get to him the herb of life. He will discover it, but a serpent will steal it from him and thus will condemn Enkidu to remain mortal.

The myth of the lost Paradise is therefore attested in this epic going back to approximately - 2000, in other words, several centuries before the writing down of the first part of the Bible, the Pentateuch; which would have been according to the , first Jewish, then also Christian, tradition, made by Moses, or Joshua, that is to say between -1400 and -1250 (it is a slot). We shall say no more except to make it clear that, as far as the Babylonian epic in question is concerned, we are speaking of the date of its composition, not of the date of the supposed events which it relates….

The difference with the biblical story it is that life is symbolized in this account by divine blood or by the spirit of a god, and not by a breath, even divine too. What is as recognizing a kind of relationship between Man and Elohim or the god-or-demons (Isn't it usually said that the Man is half -angel half -animal?)

The other great contribution of the Babylonians is to have contributed as we already saw, to handing down to our folklore the concept of universal flood to that they held from the Sumerians.

Epic of Gilgamesh: eleventh tablet. Utnapishtim then said unto Gilgamesh: “I will reveal unto you, O Gilgamesh, the mysterious story, and the mystery of the gods I will tell you. […..] Forsake your possessions, take heed of the living! Abandon your goods, save living things, and bring living seed of every kind into the ship. As for the ship, which you shall build, let its proportions be well measured: Its breadth and its length shall bear proportion each to each, and into the sea then launch it [….] With living creatures of every kind, I filled it. Then I also embarked all my family and my relatives, cattle of the field, beasts of the field, and the uprighteous people [….] Six day and night the wind blew, and storm and tempest overwhelmed the country [….] To Mount Niṣir the ship drifted. On Mount Niṣir the boat stuck fast and it did not slip away […..] When the seventh day drew nigh I sent out a dove, and let her go. The dove flew hither and thither, but as there was no resting-place for her, she returned. Then I sent out a swallow, and let her go. The swallow flew hither and thither, but as there was no resting-place for her she also returned. Then I sent out a raven, and let her go. The raven flew away and saw the abatement of the waters. She settled down to feed, went away, and returned no more. Then I let everything go out unto the four winds, and I offered a sacrifice. I poured out a drink offering upon the peak of the mountain. I placed the censers seven and seven, and poured into them calamus, cedar wood, and sweet incense. The god-or-demons smelt the sweet savor.”

The archeologists found in Asia Minor translations of the epic of Gilgamesh in Hurrian and Hittite language, what proves that the text was translated and taken off a little everywhere; and that the similarity with the Bible is not therefore a result of the chance.

Among the Western Semites, in Ugarit for example, in Syria, the higher god-or-demon El was surrounded with sons or stars. The town of Ugarit also housed the temples of Baal and Dagon, and probably some others. The great temples, having herds and deposits of oil or wine, of course, left more traces than the small sanctuaries of the popular worships. The king and the queen presided over the State worship and took an active part in rituals, festivals or prayers, to guarantee the protection of the city. The religious civil servant called qdshm (what corresponds to the Hebrew kaddish) and the priests called khnm (what corresponds to the Hebrew kohen) were appointed for the temples and the ceremonies of the worship.

Ugaritic mythology deals primarily with the conflicts of sovereignty between El and Baal, and between this one and his adversaries. Among these conflicts, one of best known is the fight between Baal and the watery deity Yamm, represented sometimes like a human being, sometimes like a sea monster. Encouraged by his father El , Yamm is on the point of driving out Baal from his throne, but this one, using magic weapons manufactured by Kothar the divine blacksmith, will end up winning the duel. The fight points out, of course, the defeat of the sea monster Tiamat overcome by the Mesopotamian god-or-demon Marduk, according to the fourth tablet of the Babylonian Genesis called Enuma Elish; as well as the victory of Yhwh over the sea in certain Psalms and in Job 26.5 -13.

The Canaanite worship, such as we can reconstruct it according to the metal and terra cotta figurines, focused on divine couples. El and Asherah or Astarte, sovereigns of the other world, Baal and Anat their children, sovereigns of this world. Among Hebrews the expression “Bene Elohim ” also designated the Canaanite high god-or-demon surrounded by his sons, the other god-or-demons.

FIRST WARNING FOR THE READERS.

The religion of the ancient Hebrew AS THEY APPEAR IN THE BIBLE is obviously not monotheism but a henotheism. And yet! the Bible shows us over and over again to curse to ridicule or to stigmatize them, Hebrews or Jews worshipping other gods.

The ancient Hebrews AS DESCRIBED IN THE BIBLE, of course, believed in the existence of other gods than their tribal god.

They believed in the existence of as many gods (elohim) as there were peoples. A god for each people (= elohim).

Deuteronomy 32 :8 "When the Most High (Elyon) gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of Israel.”

Other manuscripts or former versions”: When the Most High (Elyon) gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided all mankind, he set up boundaries for the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.”

The Septuagint says: "According to the number of angels" and the Qumran manuscripts: "According to the number of the sons of God."

These two different expressions of the end of verse 8 suggest the existence of other deities of whom Masoretes have erased the mention.

There are several references to Asherah, the consort associated with Yahweh: Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions (Sinai) and dating from the 8th century before our era say: "I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah" or "I bless you by Yahweh our guardian and his Asherah."

There is also the mention "Yahweh and his Asherah" on an inscription dating from around 600 before our era, found in the Shfela region (Kingdom of Judah).

The only thing is that some of these Hebrews required from the members of their people to worship only their own god (= monolatry).

The most serious crime was indeed for them to worship a god other than that of their tribe. Exodus 20:3: You shalt have no other God before me.

Note in this regard that the first 5 books or Torah or Pentateuch in the Bible are not historical, they are only legends in the etymological sense of the word (what is to be read).

It should also be noted that historical science or archeology are very skeptical about the rest and particularly the history of the conquest of the Promised Land. The first of its characters who actually existed being apparently the great or little king called David (and therefore his son Solomon, a half-Jew born of his affair with a princess probably Hittite and therefore Aryan named Bathsheba). There too surrounded by a whole multitude of legends.

The exile in Babylon will be necessary so that the intellectuals of their last surviving tribe, that of Judah, gradually admit the idea that there could be only one God ruling the universe; and that the god who watched over their people should also rule over others. That he could only be one and the same god, valid for everyone.

The whole question then became for them "What this single god must do regarding the other peoples? The answer given to this question by Jewish eschatology was never very homogeneous.

Let us note finally that the last evolution of the ideas that will lead to current Judaism was that which followed a historical event somewhat similar to this exile in Babylon, the end of the half-independent Jewish state tolerated by the Romans until the year 70 of our era, episode commonly called "Destruction of the Second Temple.”

It was the work of the great Pharisee rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai having moved to Yabne. The crushing of the last Jewish revolt that of Bar Kokhba, and the destruction of his capital Jerusalem in 135, made this Pharisaic rabbinical school of Yabneh the only possible source of religious legitimacy for the Jewish diaspora that ensued.

But let us return to the religion of the ancient Hebrews.

The history of the Hebrews and therefore of their religion or religions IN THE PLURAL is historically certain only from what is known as the "Conquest of the Promised Land" and its archeology (which shows, moreover, no break between the Canaanite and Hebrew civilizations).

The Jewish population in Canaan then sees its main concentration move further north in the Shechem-Tirzah region. Tell el-Far'ah (Tirzah) is unoccupied at Iron Age I. In the period of transition from Iron Age I to Iron Age II A (from around -950 until around -900), it is occupied only in a relatively small stretch (1 has in the layer VII a, west sector, on a mound) and is not fortified. However, given the relatively large number of seals that have been discovered (in layer VII a, that is, in the period under consideration), the existence of a bureaucracy apparatus can be supposed. Tirzah, presented as the capital of Israel at his beginnings in the biblical text is actually used, it seems, at the time, as capital of the Omrid Kingdom. As for the area of territory that this administration controls, a certain parallel exists with that covered by the coalition around Shechem at the time of the Amarna Letters. In both cases it should be noted that the controlled territory is vast whereas, nevertheless, it is governed only from a small city, without any monumental architecture, without fortifications and without developed an administrative center. Such a paradoxical system, however, is not exceptional: it is even fairly constant at this time (it is found especially at Shechem in the recent Bronze Age, and in Gabaon 1) or Gibeah in the recent Iron Age I). One can think about the organization of Jerusalem, site in which the excavations did not bring to light, for this time, no monumental architecture, no important fortification, nor any trace of administration. Then the influence of Tirzah will gradually decline and will be replaced by that of Samaria, the city of Omri, with an important administrative function, a palace, a vast esplanade and a big casemate wall. Archeology will then show the organization of a true state, with monumental constructions and a centralized administration.

The history of this people is marked by splits, civil wars and defeats against its powerful neighbors in the south or in the north. From the 6th century before our era, the kingdom of Israel loses its independence. It is integrated in different empires (Babylonian, Persian, Seleucid Greek, Roman). It will be wiped off the map after a catastrophic defeat, during a revolt against the Romans in 70.

THE MYTHIC HEBREWS.

Let's start with the reality on the ground.

As we had the opportunity to see with Israel Finkelstein and Thomas Römer, Abraham is not the first patriarch of reference it would be rather Jacob (at least for the 10 tribes of the north) and the stay in Egypt followed by an exodus of forty years in the desert never took place. The first inhabitants of the kingdom of Israel and Judah were some Canaanites who had undergone a cultic and cultural evolution that separated them from the surrounding populations around – 1000 before our era (no consumption of pork).

Among the populations in question are the Phoenicians and the Philistines in the coastal cities of Gaza Ashkelon Ashdod Eqrôn.

The ancestors of the Israelites seem to have been nomadic pastoralists in the highlands of Samaria Galilee and Judea. The lack of characteristic writing does not make us able to say more.

The evolution of the designs of God has, of course, followed the social and political evolution of the peoples in question. There were different times and sometimes different peoples who all claimed to be descendants of the Hebrew people. This people over this long period passed from the nomadism to a settled lifestyle, from breeding to agriculture and from ethnicism to State ... Those who believe that religion has not been changed because of that are mistaken . Moreover, there has never been one Hebrew religion, but several, depending on the region.

Yahweh, El, and Adonai are the three major names of the God of the biblical texts, and are originally different gods.

The god Yahweh of the Israelites and Midianites was in fact a god worshiped by many Semites: The oldest reference is a text of Ugarit, dating from the 14th century before our era, which says that the god EL had a son called YaW. But it is possible that this YaW is only a distortion of YaM, the sea god of the Canaanites.

At that time there existed in southern Jordan, in Transjordan, a semi-arid zone made out of deserts and oases, where lived a Bedouin people, the Shasus. Moreover, this place is well known in the first part of the Bible, the Pentateuch, since it is here that the text invented during the reign of King Josiah (-639-609) and falsely attributed to Moses (first imposture) places the land of Midian, that this pseudo-Moses would have met the god of the Hebrews in the form of a burning bush and that he would have found a name for him based on a pun with the stem h-y-h meaning. ??? Opinions differ, Julius Wellhausen suggests "the one who blows, the one who makes the wind come,” the whole pronounced Yah Yaho Yahweh and so on. Yhwh = I am, being another theological "innovation" of the time of Josiah based on a play on words with the old Semitic stem meaning "to be, to exist" in Hebrew. Evidenced by contrast with the exploitation of the papyri found during the excavation of the Egyptian Jewish military colony of Elephantine near Aswan. Tetragrammaton is unknown, they only know the trigram Y H W, Yaho has in it a consort (Anath) and two other gods Herem Bethel and Eshem Bethel are worshipped in their temple...

Now, it is interesting to note that the Egyptians referred to this same land of Midian as the "land of YHW" (pronounced Yahwu or Yahu). These Bedouin Shasus also worshipped a god named YHW. You don't have to be a linguist to notice that this name resembles strangely he name Yahweh, which is written in Hebrew, let's not forget, YHW or YHWH.

Yahweh is therefore a West Semitic deity of the ancient Near East. It is more particularly favored by some of the ancient Israelites. Through inscriptions, we know a Yahweh of the South, a Yahweh of Samaria and a Yahweh of Jerusalem. This Yahweh is frequently mentioned together with his Ashera, i.e., his consort goddess.

In the Hebrew Bible as we know it today, YHVH is presented as the national god of the Children of Israel, but the transition of Yahweh god of a polytheistic pantheon to a single god defining monotheism did not happen at once on Mount Sinai. It was the object of a long conflict within the people of Israel between monotheism and polytheism.

Today's Bible unwittingly and in a way reluctantly,relates the incessant comings and goings between both.

It has become classical since John Astruc (1684-1766) to distinguish in the text which has come down to us four types of narrative, the Yahwist and the Elohist, but also is it added today the deuteronomist and the priestly narrative. To stick to the first two that John Astruc identified, let us not forget that Elohim is a plural designating "several gods" and it is a view of the supreme divinity quite different from that which puts forward the god of Sinai and his trigram or tetragrammaton .

We have already seen with the papyri of the Jews in Elephantine that the worship of Yahweh still coexisted with other cults in the 4th century before our era. But the same is true with the discovery of inscriptions in Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el Qom which mention the worship of other gods at the same time as Yahweh among the Hebrew people.

Even taking into account only the forgery or rewriting of the time of Josiah, it is to be noted therefore that the theology of these pseudo-ancient Hebrews is indeed "henotheistic,” that is to say, at best, that worship was paid only to Yahweh alone, while admitting that other gods existed for other peoples.

Andre Lemaire will even write, however, starting only from the present text WHICH IS A FORGERY as we have said ...

The patriarchs (19th-18th century before our era) are some polytheists, worshipping concurrently a local El god and clan gods. Their cult, which lasted until the 8th century before our era, is marked by the presence of an open-air sanctuary, a sacred tree, a stele and an altar. It is with Moses (13th century before our era) that Yahwism of Midianite origin, aniconic and monolattrous, appeared. The first proofs of the tetragrammaton date from the end of the 9th century (steles of Mesha and Tell Dan), even from the 14th century (before our era), on the list of a temple of Amenophis III. Yahweh is depicted here as a warrior god of the mountain and of the storm. He is besides also reminiscent of Baal. His worship includes prayers (especially blessings), sacrifices (of communion), an altar, steles and a sacred bush.

From the reign of David to that of Jehu (10th-9th century before our era), a policy of assimilation of the local gods (especially El) to Yahweh developed. Monolatry (or henotheism) asserts itself, as was the particular bond uniting Yahweh to Israel, just as shown by the conjugal metaphor. With the schism consecrating the break between the kingdoms of the North and the South (-931), the worship of Baal underwent a revival, favored by the economic and cultural prestige of the Phoenicians, then Yehu eliminated the cult of Baal and starting with Elijah, the prophets would not cease to proclaim the extraterritoriality of Yahweh's action.

The fourth period, covering the reigns separating Hezekiah from Josiah (VIII-VII century before our era), is marked by an opposite inverse religious policy of uprooting local Yahwist cults: the local sanctuaries are suppressed in favor of the Temple of Jerusalem, the sacred trees and steles disappear in favor of a now "empty" aniconism.

It will be necessary to wait for the Babylonian exile (586-538 before our era) to see the emergence of monotheism in the strictest sense, that is to say, of a self-conscious movement of thought, as testified by various passages in the Deutero-Isaiah (Book of Isaiah XLIII, 10-11; XLIX, 6,8).

R. Debray writes: "Monotheism is a creation of the exile, of the Babylonian deportation which is much later. From this moment of defeat before the Babylonians dates the destruction of the first Temple of Jerusalem (-586.). Even if the Persians, who defeated the Babylonians in -539, authorized the reconstruction of the Temple and granted a large religious autonomy to the Hebrews, the religion is thoroughly changed. It then became what is called precisely today true monotheism.

1) Place of an impossible miracle that insults the intelligence and the moral sense of the entire generations who have believed in it. Joshua 10,12. A miracle barely worthy of the druid Mog Ruith in the Imtheachta Moighi Ruith (He mutilated one of his eyes when he was killing a calf in great snow in the Alps mountains. And the other eye was blinded when he was holding the sun for two days in Darbri, so that he made two days to one. Book of Ballymote 265 b65 and YBL 190 a10).

SECOND WARNING FOR OUR READERS.

THE RELIGION OF THE TRUE ANCESTORS OF THE ANCIENT JEWISH PEOPLE.

Our only source of information on the Hebrew religion (s) IN THE USUAL MEANING OF THE WORD is therefore the Bible, which is not without arousing some problems because in this respect the Old Testament is more like a founding or foundation myth than to a historical chronicle. Tautology: our only source of information on these ahistorical or mythical Hebrews being the Bible, we will therefore say below nevertheless some words of these Biblical Hebrews thus defined. Let's not forget, however, that the Jerusalem Bible is not “the” text" of the religion of all Hebrews, it is only the text of the religious people of the southern desert region of Judah, which is much more restrictive. This excludes the Hebrews of the Northern State (Israel) and the Samaritans.

The part of the Bible ascribed to Moses is an imposture, the biggest religious imposture of all times even, and Moses an impostor (as a historical character having really existed).

There exist any no trace of the Hebrews of the Bible in the Egyptian archeology. No archeological trace makes it possible to affirm that the Hebrews would have massively left Egypt by crossing the Sinai. The archeological traces in Canaan show that they did not settle in it by an express military conquest, eliminating the Canaanites massively. No archeological trace makes it possible to affirm that the Hebrews would have been slaves in Egypt: the excavations in Egypt show besides that slavery in the strict sense of the term did not exist: the non-free men kept the right of taking legal action (to present themselves in a court as plaintiff or defendant) and to make a will (to state his testamentary will). The workers of Deir el-Medina, builders of the Valley of the Kings were not slaves, but minor officials profiting from a single-family housing and from the right to go on strike. Sorry Hollywood.

Let us repeat it once again, unlike Buddha (and perhaps the Nazarene high rabbi Jesus) Moses never existed and the three mass religions (Judaism Christianity Islam) founded on his pseudo-revelation are therefore as many impostures. As a historical character having really existed, Moses is only an impostor.

Archeology contradicted all this part of the Bible. We have for example no trace of a proto-Jew or pre-Jew community in Egypt before the Babylonian exile. The first archeological trace of a Judean community in Egypt is very late and is located in the island of Elephantine (during the Persian domination). This community is very well known thanks to the many Aramaic papyri which were found in Elephantine.

These discoveries are, of course, badly received, especially for political reasons and the Israeli archeologist Zeev Herzog is in the middle of an intense controversy since he wrote his first article calling into question this part of the Bible.

The archeological discoveries of the last years, however, agree to him: there was no exodus from Egypt, Joshua did not the walls of Jericho fall and Solomon reigned only over a small territory. But these truths shock, because they attack the founding myths of the State of Israel.

The archeological excavations show that the walls of the Canaanite fortress of Jericho did not fall down in a few days, to the sound of the trumpets of Joshua because in fact they fell apart over a much longer period. As for the true origins of the first Jewish State, they go back to the 9th century before our era, when two groups of shepherds founded the rival kingdoms of Judea and Israel.

But this last assertion is disputed, other archeologists supporting that in the absence of being sumptuous, the State over which David and Solomon reigned, was substantial.

However this chapter will thus relate to the settlement and the origin of the first Jews who settle at the beginning of the iron Age I (-1200 to -1000) in the mountains of the Jordan Valley, a population of which one of the characteristics is not to eat pork and who is called Israel on the stele of Merneptah in -1200.

The settlings develop gradually starting from the foothills which overlook the Jordan River, they are in the beginning wandering populations which peopled the territory of Canaan to in the late Bronze Age. Far from the main communication roads on which the city-States are, the Highlands of the West Bank of the Jordan River in the late Bronze Age (-1550 -1200), were therefore peopled only by nomads or semi-nomads.

A first wave of settling in the early Bronze Age (- 3500, -2200), will be followed by a desertion of the majority of the sites in the end of the early Bronze Age (- 2200, -2000), then a second wave of settling in the Middle Bronze Age (- 2000, -1550), will be followed again by a desertion of the majority of the

sites in the late Bronze Age (- 1550, -1150). The third wave of settling is carried out consequently on a territory practically deserted.

The archeological explorations carried out since 1990 on the Highlands of Canaan show, at the beginning of the Iron Age , the settling of little communities of nomads which probably begin to farm cereals, settling marked then by the appearance of small villages.

This settling can have begun at the end of the late Bronze Age (end of the 13th century or beginning of the 12th century before our era), to culminate in the Early Iron Age (end of the12th century to middle of the 11th century) to culminate at the end of Iron Age I (end of the 11th century and first half of the 10th century). According to Finkelstein (The Bible unearthed), one observes on the central Highlands in the late Iron Age nearly 250 sites occupying a surface of 220 hectares against 30 sites occupying a total surface area of 50 hectares in the Late Bronze. With 200 inhabitants per hectare (commonly accepted density), this population of the Highlands is estimated at 45,000 inhabitants. W. Dever himself counts 12,000 people around -1200, 55.000 in the 12th century and 75,000 in the 11th century. This settling is observed mainly in the central hills, but also in Transjordan (220 sites in the beginning of the Iron Aga against about thirty at the end of the Bronze Age) and in the Negev. In the 11th century before our era, it is continued in Galilee (Hazor XII, Dan VI).

Most of the first zones of settling dating from the beginnings of Iron I are located at the east (Jordan side), what makes it possible to the inhabitants to make their herds of goats and sheep feed while starting the farming of wheat and barley. The establishments extend then to the west, less favorable to breeding, but more favorable to the farming of the olive tree or vine. As of the beginning, the development is much faster in the northern half, more watered and crossed by the communications routes, that in the southern half, dry and not very accessible. Beginning in the form of small rural communities, this last wave develops gradually in a system of small villages, villages of average size, to reach the valleys and to form large cities.

The first small villages, that we can observe when the later dwellings did not destroy the ruins, are oval organized, in the manner of the Bedouin encampments, showing a wandering origin: Izbet Sartah, Beersheba, Tel Esdar. Thereafter, certain large villages like Jerusalem will be fortified. In the Middle Bronze, we find already imposing fortifications on certain sites: Shiloh for example.

This population uses many silos, cisterns and agricultural leveling, showing the agrarian evolution accompanying the settling.

The question arises of the continuity of this period with the following one, Iron II (from approximately -1000). Of all the sites of Iron I, only five present a continuous activity from Iron I to Iron II: Jerusalem, Bethel, Gibeon, Tell el-Ful and Tell er-Rumeideh. This desertion could be due to an economic strategy and to the fear of the Philistines or correspond to the increase in the urban population of the lowlands and of the coastal towns. In Fact, most sites are deserted at one time, in a temporary or final way, but other sites develop and we note a geographical evolution of the whole of the population of the Jews in Canaan. This wave of settling goes on continuously in Iron II A (when the Kingdoms of Israel and Juda are formed).The population will be mixed, made up partially of Jews and of Canaanites.

Characteristics.

The absence of breeding of pigs and of consumption of pork remains most determining: unlike their neighbors, the first Jews do not raise pigs and do not eat pork, which makes it possible for archeology to track them, through the analysis of the waste (bones). This criterion is, however, not absolute. According to Lidar Sapir-Hen,: “In Iron Age I Philistia the exceptionally strong appearance of pigs characterizes the main urban sites, while the situation in smaller settlements and in the rural sector seems to be different. This dichotomy between the urban and rural sectors cannot stem from better economic conditions in the cities, as larger numbers of pigs are correlated with lower economic status. Conversely it may be related to the ethnic origin of the inhabitants – higher percentage of the Aegean-origin population in the urban centers versus a higher percentage of the local population in the rural sites, although pork consumption never served as a marker of ethnic behavior in the Aegean. In the highlands there is indeed clear avoidance of pig husbandry, but this is similar (or almost similar) to the general pattern documented at Lowland sites. All this makes it difficult to use the presence or absence of pigs as an indicator of ethnic identity. Therefore, correlating pork consumption and avoidance with cultural differentiation processes between the Philistines and the “others,” whether they are Israelite or Canaanite, is somewhat insecure.” (Pig Husbandry in Iron Age Israel.)The breeding imposes constraints and the wandering populations, for example, favor the breeding of goats and sheep whose herds can move quickly.

In the period of Iron I, the settlings are very simple and there are no monuments, neither public buildings, nor fortifications. They resemble the circle shaped wandering camps. The burials are rudimentary.

The potteries are simplistic and very utilitarian and continue the style of the Bronze Age. A kind of pottery is typically associated with these sites they are the collared rim earthenware containers or pithoi. These potteries differ from that of the direct neighbors (Canaanites then Philistines) by the absence of decoration and a simplistic style, which according to Avraham Faust, reflects an egalitarian dimension and perhaps religious regulations.

To summarize, it is a nonurban settled population divided into small communities of a dozen persons forming an egalitarian society trying to live in the difficult conditions of the mountain forests and of the semi-arid areas. For Amihai Mazar the socio-economic structure of this population matches that the biblical texts of the period of the Judges describe.

THE VARIOUS RELIGIONS PRESENT

IN THE AREA.

From polytheism to henotheism or monolatry through idolatry (worship of the mana), we find a little everything in the area at the time, except for the true monotheism, that which is excellently described in the Bhagavad Gita and which can be defined as follows: Bhagavad Gita 9, 23-29. “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with faith actually worship only me, O son of Kunti, but they do so in a wrong way because I am the only enjoyer and master of all sacrifices. If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I accept it. I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto me in devotion is a friend is in me, and I am also a friend to him.”

Let us repeat it once again, if there is a design of the divinity which is conspicuously absent at the time in the area it is true monotheism. In the area we find in a pinch some henotheisms or monolatries.

The history of the Hebrews and therefore of their religion or of their religions IN THE PLURAL is historically sure only since what it is agreed to call the “Conquest of the promised land” and of its archeology (which besides shows no break between the Canaanite civilization and that of the Hebrews). We put therefore the word conquest between quotation marks because there never was a military invasion of the territory of Canaan by a Hebrew army organized on the model of the Egyptian or Mesopotamian armies.

To speak of it certain historians therefore prefer to use the word of “first Jews” or “proto-Jews.” In what concerns us and in order to avoid every ambiguity, we will speak of the ancestors of the Jews of the Antiquity.

Around the year 2025, certain texts mention a people up to that time unknown which say to venerate a god quite as unknown as it, “Assur.” The god and the people have concluded an alliance so close that these people is defined by the name of “Assyrians”: the faithful of the god Assur, and that it gave the name of its god to its capital: “Assur.” A little later, in the same region, the Babylonians adopt for protector the god “Marduk.” However, as well the inscriptions as the remains of the sanctuaries prove that these two people venerated at the same time other deities. Therefore we deal with a form of polytheism that we name today, with a word which is not yet in the dictionaries, the “monolatry.” The monolatry is the worship paid to a god preferably to others, without denying for as much the existence of the other gods, whose some also have a favored relationship with other people. The ancestors of the Jews of Antiquity therefore have only imitated what they saw practiced around them by binding some their fate to a god as obscure as Marduk or Assur but from whom they expected the same protection: men always hoped indeed that an unknown or marginal god will be able to devote himself entirely to them, whereas a famous god, solicited by many other people, would be likely to neglect them or to give his preference to others.

The civilization of the Hebrews of then is very similar to that of the Canaanites and their language, although containing some Sumerian or Assyrian words (saris for example, which comes from the Assyrian sha-reshi: officer, chief) presents many similarities with the Canaanite language. The practices of religious mourning (to shave one’s hair and beard) continue those of the Canaanites. As well on the Canaanite sites in the Bronze Age as on sites of the Jewish time of the Iron Age iron, in the north as in the south, various objects of worships were discovered: goddesses of fertility, some partners of God (cult of the goddess Ashera) and animal representations of deities. According to Amihai Mazar who found a beautiful specimen of them coming from the hills in the north, “In Canaanite religion, the bull was related to both El, the head of the pantheon, and Baal, the storm god.”

Therefore it results from it that these populations did not have a religion different from the other peoples in Canaan.

We know relatively well the mythology of the Canaanites thanks to the discovery of the tablets of the library of Ugarit (Ras Shamra, north of Syria). This mythology was as opened out as that of the Greeks. An allegorical and esthetic analysis of their epics gives the feeling that old Canaanites endeavored to sing the wonders of nature, the virility of men and lightning, the fertility of women and plowed grounds.

It is true that the peoples in the area regarded sexuality as a function as natural as the nutrition or the sleep, and therefore had no complex nor taboo in its respect. Besides they used it also for the needs for the worship (sacred prostitution).

But the remark seems nevertheless of a somewhat excessive positivism. The things were not as simple according to the somewhat anxious text of the Canaanite prayer which follows.

“May the fury of my lord's heart be quieted towards me.

May the god who is not known be quieted towards me;

May the goddess who is not known be quieted towards me.

May the god who has become angry with me be quieted towards me,

May the goddess who has become angry with me be quieted towards me.

The transgression which I have committed; indeed I do not know;

The sin which I have done; indeed I do not know.

The forbidden thing which I have eaten; indeed I do not know;

The prohibited (place) on which I have set foot; indeed I do not know;

Although I am constantly looking for help, no one takes me by the hand;

When I weep they do not come to my side.

I utter laments, but no one hears me;

I am troubled; I am overwhelmed, I cannot see.

O my god, merciful one, I address to you the prayer

I kiss the feet of my goddess, I crawl before thee.

Man is blind, he knows nothing;

Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know.

O my lord, do not cast thy servant down;

He is plunged into the waters of a swamp, take him by the hand.

The sin which I have done, turn into goodness;

The transgression which I have committed, let the wind carry away;

Remove my transgressions and I will sing your praise.

May your heart, like the heart of a real mother, be quieted towards me.”

Little question now.

Did these “idolaters” of Biblical times believe that the idols they worshipped were actually gods or spirits, or did they believe that their idols only were representations of these gods or spirits?

Yehezkel Kaufman holds that in some places, some Biblical authors did understand well that idolaters worshipped gods and spirits that existed independently of idols, and not the forms of the idols themselves. For instance, in a passage of 1 Kings 18:27 , the Hebrew prophet Elijah challenges the priests of Baal atop of Mount Carmel to persuade their god to perform a miracle, after they had begun to try to persuade the Jews to take up idolatry. The pagan priests beseeched their god without the use of an idol, which in Kaufman's view, indicates that Baal was not an idol, but rather one of the polytheistic gods that merely could be worshipped through the use of an idol. Kaufman thinks nevertheless that the Biblical authors interpreted well generally idolatry in its most literal form: according to them, most idolaters really believed that their idols were gods.

The biblical authors therefore sinned through hubris or racism by making the immense mistake to suppose that all idolatry was of this type, when in fact in most cases, idols may have only been representations of gods. Kaufman writes that "We may perhaps say that the Bible sees in paganism only its lowest level, the level of mana-beliefs...the prophets ignore what we know to be authentic paganism (i.e., its elaborate mythology about the origin and exploits of the gods and their ultimate subjection to a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal power representing Fate or Necessity). Their whole condemnation from the Biblical authors revolves around the taunt of fetishism." Isaiah, 41.23-24: Do something good or evil, so we can be amazed and terrified. You idols are nothing, and you are powerless.

CONCLUSION.

As these populations which occupy the highlands of Iron Age I will become the Israel of the 10th century, there is thus a continuity of the population and it is not useful to speak about proto-Jews like W. Dever does it.

The archeological discoveries thus describe the settlement in Iron I (around -1200) of tribal groups which followed a wandering or semi-nomad pastoral lifestyle before. Because of this nomadism, there is no archeological evidence of the existence of this population prior to its settlement. The wandering populations leave little, even no archeological traces, unless being mentioned in old texts. In the late Bronze (approximately -1550 to -1200), Amenhotep III (approximately -1391/-1390 to -1353/-1352) then Amenhotep IV (- 1355/-1353 to -1338/-1337), who rules over Canaan, maintain with the governors of the city-States in Canaan an abundant correspondence: this diplomatic mail coming from Canaan forms the majority of Amarna Letters (- 1391 to -1337). It describes in a precise way the role

of the Egyptians, Canaanites and of the fringe elements. These fringe elements are, according to Ann E. Killebrew, “ apiru and shasu”. The Apiru, particularly, are mentioned many times in these letters. The stele of the Pharaoh Merneptah, -1207, quotes finally the country of Canaan and a population named Israel among the defeated. It is the only time that this name appears in Egypt at that time. The inscription specifies that they are men and women who do not live in a city, in other words, a wandering or semi-nomad group. At least a population which is not related to a State or a city-State, living in the region approximately a half-century before the noted settlement.

THE CASE OF JERUSALEM.

According to archeologists Jerusalem was founded in the middle of the 4th thousands years before our era on the hills of Zion, very close to the West Bank of the Jordan River. At that time it had a very modest size, a large village similar to those with which the area was strewn. We can very strongly doubt that this rock is exactly the one where Abraham went up to sacrifice his son, the area being filled with similar places. It was necessary to wait for the 19th century before our era so that a written record of this ancient Jerusalem is discovered.

The name of Jerusalem is attested in Egyptian documents of the 2nd thousand years before our era (The Amarna letters). Archeologists indeed found six texts, in the form of tablets engraved with Akkadian cuneiform , and mentioning the name of Abdi-Heba, (where specialists recognize the name of the Hurrian goddess Hebat); governor of a small Canaanite city of the 14th century before our era called Urushalim (town of Shalem. Shalem was a god of the time) as well as the name of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, of whom he was the subject. This inscription mentions several cries for help, sent to Akhenaten to defend the city against tribes of nomads called Hapiru. The denomination Hapiru tends to remind us of the name that the Egyptians gave to the old Hebrews. It would have been at the time only a grouping of dispersed buildings, center of such a restricted area that we should speak about it of a fiefdom rather than of a kingdom, according to Zeev Herzog.

Jewish myths and etiological legends.

An etiological legend is a legend invented to explain a natural phenomenon or situation.

The Tanakh portion of the Bible contains the only surviving ancient text known to use the term Jebusite to describe the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Jerusalem. According to the Table of Nations at Genesis 10, the Jebusites are identified as a Canaanite tribe, which is listed in third place among the Canaanite peoples, between the Hittites and the Amorites. Edward Lipinski, professor of Oriental and Slavonic studies at the Catholic University of Leuven, identified them with the group referred to as Yabusi'um in a cuneiform letter found in the archive of Mari, Syria.

According to Ezekiel 16.3, Jerusalem was founded by the Amorites and the Hittites and Joshua 15.63 just like Judges 1.21 admit that the Jebuseans who lived in Jerusalem continued to live there.

According to the Genesis the king of Jerusalem in the time of Abraham was a priest-king called Melchizedek.

Another king de Jerusalem named Adoni Zedek is mentioned as having been defeated by Joshua (Joshua 10,1-3).

The stems Melk and Adon mean respectively king and lord and Zedek is undoubtedly a name of deity.

According to the books of Samuel, around the year thousands before our era the Jebuseans still controlled the most important of the fortresses in the country namely Jebus (Jerusalem). The traditional accounts of the capture of this fortress by a surprised attack led by Joab are not very probable, the water supply of the fortress having obviously been secured at most (it was one of the most fortified parts).

The Books of Kings state that once Jerusalem had become Israelite, the surviving Jebusites were forced by Solomon to become serfs;though since some archeologists believe now that the Israelites were simply an emergent subculture in Canaanite society, it is possible that this is only an etiological explanation for serfs in Jerusalem than a historical one. It is unknown what ultimately became these Jebusites, but it seems logical that they were assimilated by Israelites. According to the "Jebusite Hypothesis,"nevertheless, the Jebusites would have persisted and comprised an important group in the Kingdom of Judah, including such notables as Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Bathsheba, the queen and mother of Solomon. According to this hypothesis, after the disgrace of a rival faction in the struggle for succession, the family of Zadok would have become the sole authorized Jerusalem clergy, so that a Jebusite family would have monopolized the Jerusalem Clergy for many centuries.

N.B 1. Julius Wellhausen first espoused the theory that El Elyon was an ancient god of Salem (i.e., Jerusalem), who after David's conquest circa 1000 was equated to Yahweh, and that the Zadokite priests of Jerusalem were or claimed to be descended from Melchizedek.

N.B 2. Specialists call etiology a kind of story or tales completely invented in order to answer the who when where what how concerning various subjects, in the absence of every historical or scientific document.

Another Jebusean remained famous is that who would have sold to King David the threshing floor of wheat intended to become the heart of the temple in Jerusalem. His name Araunah (Adonijah? Ornan in the book of Chronicles?), which means lord (Aryan) in Hittite language. One of the first high priests of the temple having borne the name Zadoc (at the origin of the Sadducees) it is a safe bet that he was a Jebusean who was made later and against any historical probability a descendant of Aaron. The temple of Jerusalem would have been in the beginning therefore only an extension of the sanctuary devoted to the god Zedek.

The history even of Israel and Judah shows that there were other temples besides that of Jerusalem. There was for example also the Bama. Plural Bamot. Sacred hillocks or mounds.

The Canaanites , but also the former Hebrews, INDEED used sanctuaries generally arranged on small heights to venerate the local deities or the local designs of a greater deity, almost single. These sanctuaries were made up of an altar, a stele and of a post or sacred tree ( ashera). The trees were indeed often combined with this kind of “ecological” sanctuary before the word is invented, thus changing them into true sacred groves. The theocrat Josiah will make a large part of them razed (2 kings 23.5 to 15 and 19 to 20).

The very history of Israel and Judah shows consequently that there was no authentic monotheism in the area (at least until the time of the protectorate of the Aryan emperor Cyrus).

People indeed also worshipped in the area Baal, the great Canaanite god-or-demon of storms, fertility, therefore of farming. Baal is the savior god-or-demon of nature and of its fertility.

- God-or-Demon of fresh water, he fights against Yam, God-or-demon of salt water, disorder, chaos.

- God-or-Demon of life also, he fights against Mot, the god of death. Mot makes that the sun burns everything, but Baal waters unceasingly.

- Baal dies in June and nature becomes dry. He is resurrected in autumn, kills Mot and resumes his creating activity.

The plural baalim undoubtedly refers to the local designs of this great pan-Canaanite god-or-demon. About his worship to see Judges, 2.11 to 17; 3.7.

The worship of Baal, primarily religious, is without ethical connotations. The believer in Baal gets involved in the action of the god-or-demon who acts independently of him. Certain passages of the Torah kept the trace of the traditional characteristics of Baal that the biblical authors thought to attribute to God. Example, Psalm 89.10.

You rule over the surging sea;

When its waves mount up, you still them.

You crushed Rahab like one of the slain.

Not forgetting:

-- Astarte, Asherah, or Ishtar, the Semitic name of the great goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, called Inanna, of the Sumerians. She was the wife or the consort (shakti it is said in Hinduism) of the high male god-or-demon of the time and, as such, mother of the different baalim or elohim. She is also a war deity. She has sea attributes. Her merging with a powerful goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of love (Anath), makes her a complex personality : a female divinity of war, but also of love and fertility, combined with the worship of the stars. (About her worship see Judges 2.13 and 3.7.) By shift in meaning (metaphor) , the word ended up designating the trees or the wooden posts erected in her honor.

- Chemosh, the single god of the Moabites (great rival of Yhwh: Judges 11.24).

- Dagon (the at the same time single and multiple God-or-demon of the Aryans in the area: the Philistines).

The word dagon means fish. It is probably necessary to represent his statue with a human head and chest, the lower part of the body being fish-shaped, what makes a little think of the gigantic anguipedic wyverns called in Irish Fomorians, Andernas on the Continent. Or of the mermaids.

The Philistines are part of the Sea Peoples. The names of these peoples approach those of the tribes of the Aegean world. The language of the Philistines is certainly related to those which were spoken in Greece and in the west of Asia Minor. The biblical text gives for example to the princes of the Philistine cities the title of seren (singular) or seranim (plural, to see 1 S 5.8; 6.4 and 16), whereas a king is said melek in Hebrew. It is therefore undoubtedly here the transcription, in Hebrew of the word tyrannos (tyrant), a Greek word designating a chief who exerts his power in an absolute way.

- Milcom and Molek, Ammonite God-or-demons (1 Kings 11,1-8, 2 kings 23,13).

- Yah, Yahu, Yahve, Yhwh etc.etc….Name of Midianite pagan origin corresponding, by play on words, to an old Semitic stem meaning in Hebrew: to be, to exist (YHWH).This god-or-demon is therefore, of course, in the beginning a place god-or-demon, that of the country of Midian (a volcano? See Exodus 18.5). To Baal the farmed lands, to Yah or Yahu the desert. A large sanctuary was very early linked to him in the North, in Bethel, a place initially dedicated to the god-or-demon of Abraham and especially of Jacob (Genesis, 35.1 to 15 and 12.8). It will remain there very long time active. His consort (shakti it is said in Hinduism) will become Asherah in the oldest layers of the Bible.

- Tammuz (Dumuzi in Mesopotamia).See Book of Ezekiel 8.14. Deity of the first vegetation (of Akkadian origin) whose disappearance in summer at the time of the hot seasons, before his return (resurrection) in spring, caused each year a kind of collective or national deep mourning.

- Were also worshipped according to the sources (Isaiah 65.11) a Phoenician deity of fortune called Gad and one called Meni.

- Many other superhuman entities besides were also feared and honored in this area of the world. The Seraphes and Cherubs for example.

- The Cherubs seem to be entities of semi-animal form, with two or four faces, having for function to protect. They result from the winged bulls of the Sumerian-Babylonian paganism (the famous kerubim).

The worship of the spirits of the ancestors (home God-or-demons penates, called teraphim) left in the dark and lugubrious hereafter of the Sheol, moreover, was also practiced by the Hebrews.These manes of the ancestors left in the kingdom of the shades were represented by small domestic statuettes also being used for the divination (people consulted with them, the soul/minds of the dead). Jacob and his wife Laban : Genesis 31,19-35; David and his wife Michal : I Samuel, 19-13.

Let us note in passing that there existed in the Antiquity some peoples or men doubting radically of such a kind of survival of the individual after death.

Example the Bernese scholia commenting on the Pharsalia of Lucan.

Hermann Usener. Scholia in Lucani bellum civile/Commenta Bernensia. Liber I (1869).

454: “Manes esse, not dicunt: they do not say that the Manes exist.”

CHRONOLOGY THEORETICALLY COMMON

TO ALL THE HEBREWS IN THE PALESTINE OF THIS TIME.

- 1250 before our era. Country of Canaan, Egyptian province.

- 1200 before our era. The Philistines (who will give their name to Palestine) settle along the coastal plain of Canaan. Appearance of the nazirites (from Hebrew sanctified , devoted): kinds of monk soldiers. The word nazir designates men especially devoted to the God of Israel and subject to very strict rules as regards food or hygiene. The nazirite is somebody who voluntarily withdrew from the society (Numbers 6.2) who claims holiness because dedicating oneself to a perfect observance of the Law which will be later, much later, ascribed to Moses. The nazirite does not have his hair cut and does not must drink alcoholic beverages. The most famous case is that of Samson (Judges 13), but Samuel too was perhaps one of them.

- 1208. First mention of the people of Israel. It is a stele, the stele of Merneptah, where is mentioned for the first time this people (following others like the Hittites and Canaanites). The various translations agree on the general meaning of the text.

Hatti is pacified.

The Canaan has been plundered into every sort of woe.

Ashkelon has been overcome.

Gezer has been captured.

Yano’am is made non-existent.

Israel is laid waste and his seed is not.

The mention of Israel is in the 27e line (the penultimate one), in a list of peoples of Canaan defeated by Merneptah. It consists of hieroglyphs with phonetic value that Flinders Petrie interprets as israr and of hieroglyphs with determinative value designating foreign peoples. It is not therefore the mention of a State nor of a city but of a people.

- 1030. Introduction of the kingship by a small lord of these tribes, Saul, with the support of priests and religious people.

- 1020. After elimination of the son of Saul, David captures Urushalim (Jerusalem) and becomes the king of this small city. The Aramaic basalt stele of the 9th century discovered at Tel Dan in Galilee comprises an inscription probably evoking this king (almost two hundred years after his reign, it is true). It is the expression “house of David” or “city of David.” This stele, like that of Kurkh speaking about Ahab, puts forward the figures of 2000 chariots and 2000 cavalrymen for the Jewish army. It is, however, according to Israel Finkelstein, and Neil Asher Silbermann, a kingdom without any economic nor military power, and of a great cultural poverty, no monumental or other architecture; no imposing decorative art, even no right wall.

Jerusalem at the time was not as powerful and splendid as the text of the Bible suggests it, of course. The Jerusalem of the 10th century before our era is hardly but a large village. As regards demography and according to the calculations of the population which apply at that time, there are 5,000 inhabitants scattered between Jerusalem, Hebron and about twenty villages in Judah, not counting some scattered groups of semi-nomads. A largely rural country, therefore, and which left no trace of documents, of inscriptions, no sign of the minimal literacy that would have required the functioning of a monarchy worthy of this name (Summary of the works of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silbermann on this subject entitled The Bible unearthed).

- 950 the Hebrews adopt the Phoenician writing. Appearance of the trade of scribes. They are attached to the palaces of these politicians in order to note everything for them. But they also recorded (perhaps on their own initiative) the major events of their reign (2 S 8.17; 20.25; 1 K 4.3).

- 931. The great schism. The lack of elementary psychology of Rehoboam divides the confederation. 10 of the 12 tribes refuse to admit him as their king and by contrast form the kingdom of Israel. The small rest, composed of the tribes of Judah and Simeon, will constitute the kingdom of the South, that of Judah (still with Jerusalem as capital).

This break in two rival kingdoms, one in the north and the other in the south, may have had religious causes. The divine figures of El and Yahweh and their worship, therefore, were known throughout the kingdom of Solomon, but El was better represented in the northern part, and Yahweh in the southern part, for different reasons. Older, more numerous and more important contact with the Bedouin Shasus of Yhwh as for the southern part perhaps.

On the eve of the split between north and south, between Samaria and Judea, we would have had the following situation.

A polytheistic religion but centered on El clearly in the majority in the ten tribes of the North .

A cult and religion of YHWH clearly in the majority, almost exclusive, in the two other tribes, Judah and Benjamin

The role played by the Shasus of Yhwh in the process remains to be explained. The settlement in the territory of several of their influential or numerous, members ? Or acculturation. Following conversions?

For more details read the excellent book by Thomas Römer entitled "the invention of God.”

THE KINGDOM OF ISRAEL.

The kingdom of Israel, which is north, on the richest lands of Samaria and Galilee, especially not to be mixed up with that of the Judean Hebrews; is the first to have grown significantly (whereas Judea, still remained almost uncultivated). Besides it ended up escaping the Egyptian control.

The great god or demon of the northern kingdom was perhaps El (plural Elohim), Yah, Yahu, Yahve, Yhwh etc.etc….being that of the kingdom of Judah more in the south, around Jerusalem.

- 931. Jeroboam. Takes Tirzah as capital. It was at Bethel and Dan, and not in Jerusalem that are located the temples of this Israel, which practiced the worship of the gold bull or calf (they sacrificed ritually cattle there).

- 885. Omri's accession to the throne of Israel.

- 880. Construction of the new town of Samaria to be his capital.

- 874. Ahab king of Israel. Height of the kingdom.

As a precaution, toleration, politics, love (of his wife) or agnosticism, this great king, somewhat ahead of his time, was also attending religious ceremonies (called litter, shikutsim in Hebrew) other than those of the worship of Yahu (1 Kings 21-26).He helps especially the construction of temples in the honor of Baal.

- 841. Bloody coup of Jehu who becomes king of Israel, instead of Ahab. Regarding religion, he will begin by continuing the prudent policy of toleration of his predecessor (2 kings, 10, 29-31).

- 790. Jeroboam II. We can finally find all of the criteria forming a state: widespread literacy, administration, specialization of economic production and maintenance of a professional army. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Syria, Jeroboam II pushes the boundaries of his kingdom and finds again that of the ten original tribes.

- 750. Menahem, king of Israel defeated, becomes a tributary vassal of the Assyrian Tiglath-Pileser III.

- 741. Short interregnum of Pekahiah. Continuation of the policy of open secularism , it's the least we can say, and respect for all religions.

- 740. Pekah makes Pekahiah assassinated and succeeds him.

- 739. Syro-Ephraimite War. At the request of the king of Judah, Ahaz, attack of the Assyrian king Tiglath Pileser III against Israel. Pekah is defeated. Part of the kingdom is devastated, but Samaria escape the occupation.

- 731. Hoshea is made king of the rest of Israel by Tiglath Pileser.

- 724. Hoshea was taken prisoner by the king of Assyria Shalmaneser V.

- 722. Shalmaneser V and Sargon II invade Israel again and take its capital Samaria. What will make room thus to its small rival in the south, Jerusalem.

Part of the population is deported to Nineveh, according to the practices of the time in this region of the world ( the Aryan Cyrus the Great will be necessary to stop them.

An exodus which will be with no return for many Hebrews of the kingdom in the north of which the ten tribes will end being assimilated with the other peoples, while others will go abroad in various countries of the East to escape Assyrian slavery.

Editorial Note.

The biblical texts composed after the return from exile by the descendants of the Judean elite deported to Babylon in – 587 show us that in Judea much of the population remained then (in fact all the common people). So there is no reason to think that it was not the same thing for the kingdom of the north in - 721. An important part of the population remained on site.

Our intention being not to take a position for or against the Samaritans, let us conclude thus about them.

The history of the Samaria will be characterized until the end (-731) and even beyond, by a great religious toleration, or more precisely by a large freedom of worship.

Will coexist in it the religion of YHWH, but also many others. Those of the god-or-demons called Benoth, Nergal and Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech and Anammelech (2 Kings 17: 30-34).

JUDAEAN KINGDOM.

- 931. Reign of Rehoboam.

- 912 to - 871. Reign of Asa.

- 776. Uzziah or Azariah. Judaea continues to profit from a certain religious freedom of thought (2 kings, 15.4).

- 736. Ahaz.

- 735. Beginning of the Syro-Ephraimite war. Israel and Syria invade Judaea.

Ahaz requires from Tiglat Pilezer III some assistance and as a sign of allegiance brings closer the worship that he pays (to Yhwh?) to that which is practiced in Damascus (2 Kings 16.7 to 78); with regard to the temple (of Syrian model, i.e., rectangular) the divinatory altar and the sacrifices… Total freedom of worship therefore in the reign of this king who, by prudence or diplomacy, takes part also officially in the ceremonies of the other religions (particularly the sacrifices).

- 716. Hezekiah.

The fall of the kingdom of Israel makes the fortune of Judah. The destruction of the cities of the North as Hazor brings a flow of cultivated populations towards the cities in the South and especially west of Jerusalem, which makes “a great leap forward.”

Thanks to this grouping, Jerusalem becomes the single capital of the Hebrew kingdom. King Hezekiah makes build ramparts all around the city, thus including the newcomers in order to protect them from Assyrian attacks. The city gets in this way a much more substantial surface in comparison with the cities around, but still quite reduced compared to the Assyrian large capital: Nineveh.

At the same time as this extraordinary social transformation, around the end of the 8th century before our era, develops an intense religious fight, whose direct consequence will be the emergence of the Bible. The religious unification around “Yahu the single one” and focused on the temple in Jerusalem, indeed has reasons obviously political. It is not yet, however, a true monotheism, but well rather the worship paid to an exclusive and jealous god-or-demon.

Hezekiah prohibits the religions and the worships other than those of Yhwh, makes the bamot, the traditional sanctuaries of hillocks comprising steles, sacred woods, and altars, close, and focuses the worship on the temple in Jerusalem.

- 700. Hezekiah rebels against his suzerains and joins an anti-Assyrian coalition led by Egypt, in order to get his independence. The calculation will prove to be disastrous and will cause the response of Sennacherib in 701. In spite of the defensive efforts deployed, the Assyrian attack will be a hard blow. The town of Lachish in Judaea is entirely destroyed, the population of the country deported, and Jerusalem besieged. But the Assyrians will come back, an epidemic in the camp or palace quarrels in Nineveh forcing them to return urgently). Hezekiah, his fingers having been burnt, will prefer nevertheless to be subjected.

- 699. Manasseh.

- 645. Amon. Return to the respect of all the religions, to the sharing, to agnosticism.

The largest religious toleration (an open secularism before the word is invented) reigns in Judaea and with Manasseh just like with Amon, prosperity just like polytheism (religious liberty) return.

These two kings multiply the altars where the standing stones raised in honor of the baals, or of their consorts, the asherahs, what our Hindu friends call the shaktis (2 Chronicles, 33). And thus Yahwe will also be endowed with such a asherah.

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THE TRUE AUTHOR OF THE BIBLE.

Josiah (Hebrew Yoshiyyahu), the son and successor of Amun, 16th king of Judah from -639 to -609, the year in which he was killed by Pharaoh Necho II in Megiddo. He is the father of three kings who succeeded him on the throne of Judah: Jehoahaz, Joakim and Zedekiah. He is a contemporary of the prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah, and is considered a "new" David.

According to the Second Book of Kings, in the eighteenth year of his reign, Josiah ordered that the damage to the Temple of Solomon be repaired. On this occasion, the high priest Helkias declared (surprise surprise) that he had found a copy of the "Book of the Law" in the Temple (see 2 Kings 22-8). After hearing the reading, Josiah weeps and sends men to consult his God, for he feels that his kingdom has long since been living outside the divine Law.

His servants then go and question the prophetess Huldah. She replied that God had indeed condemned the kingdom of Judah, but Josiah, who had reacted well to the reminder of the Law, would not witness this misfortune. Josiah then organized a public reading of the book in the Temple of Solomon, and then ordered the eradication of all worship that was not his own.in the kingdom.

To this end, he even attacked the priests the places of worship and the statues. This persecution forms what would be called later the reform (revolution would have been a more judicious term) of Josiah. In particular, he attacked the cult of Baal, the main deity of his former powerful rival in the north, defeated by Sargon II king of Assyria in -722, the kingdom of Israel in the strictest sense of the term.

And first to its symbol, the bull or calf, on all the lands of the former kingdom of Israel that the rapid collapse of the neo-Assyrian empire after the death of Assurbanipal (civil wars, uprising of the Medes and of the Babylonians) had made him able to recover.

Thus, Josiah, who had become virtually independent again at that time, was able to make the sanctuary of Bethel and its famous golden calf destroy.

He then ordered all the people under his resurrected authority to celebrate the feast of Passover in Jerusalem every year.

JOSIAH’S RELIGIOUS REFORMATION.

The mysterious "Book of the Law,” opportunely rediscovered during the restoration of the temple, is to correspond to what is known today as the Pentateuch. It remains to be seen whether it was indeed due to Moses (what would be astonishing) and complete.

We have the choice between three hypotheses.

Authentic text of Moses and complete.

Authentic text of Moses but embryonic.

Deuteronomy, for example. An early version of Deuteronomy.-

Text invented for the purpose.

In any case, what is certain is that Josiah made this Book the basis for his reform of the Jewish religion and the eradication of the bamoth or "high places" (apparently sanctuaries installed on heights) and deities surrounding YHWH.

This religious reform is presented by the present Bible as a return to the original monotheism partially forgotten by the Israelites. Conversely, many historians consider Josiah to be the true creator of modern Hebrew monotheism, having imposed a vision of YHWH as a single god, and no longer only as the supreme god of the Israelites. In this hypothesis, Josiah is not the creator of this vision (which can be seen in the older sources known as the Yahwist and in the Elohist of the Documentary Hypothesis), but his spokesman in the theological struggle against the Elohist tendency.

Israelite polytheism is indeed well attested before Josiah. "The 8th-century inscriptions found at the site of Kuntillet Ajrud in north-eastern Sinai ... apparently refer to the goddess Asherah as the wife of Yahweh. There is also the mention, 'YHWH and his wife Asherah on an inscription dating from the late monarchy (about -600) in the region of Shefelah (Kingdom of Judah).

DOWN WITH THE OTHER GODS.

The present text shows Josiah as a fighter against these cults: he "ordered ... to remove from the sanctuary of YHWH all the objects of worship which had been made for Baal, Asherah and all the host of heaven ...". He removed the false priests whom the kings of Judah had installed and who sacrificed [...] to Baal, to the sun, to the moon, to the constellations and to all the host of heaven. ... He demolished the dwelling place of the sacred prostitutes, which was in the temple of YHWH.”

THE COUNTER-EXAMPLE OF THE JEWISH TEMPLE OF ELEPHANTINE IN SOUTHERN EGYPT A GENERATION LATER IN THE VI CENTURY BEFORE OUR ERA.

The Jewish community which returned to Jerusalem in -459 to stand guard for the Persian Empire was not the first to find itself in this situation, namely, to be officially at the service of a foreign empire after the capture of the city in -597.

In -587 a number of Jewish families had already left for southern Egypt to serve the armies of Pharaoh Apries stationed in the region to guard the border.

It is difficult to know when this Jewish garrison settled on the island of Elephantine then called Yeb,

The papyri only stipulate that it was "before Cambyses,” what would then refer us to Cyrus the Great, but this is impossible, as Cyrus never conquered Egypt.

On the other hand, after the conquest of Egypt by his troops, his son Cambyses would have enlisted this Jewish garrison in the service of his cause, and it would have collaborated with the Achaemenid Persian authorities. What the Egyptians will reproach them when they have regained their independence.

The immense interest in the history of this Jewish colony of Elephantine lies not in the number of its members but in the number of its papyri,175, concerning them or coming from them which were discovered during the archeological excavations of their quarters on the island.

These documents, written in Aramaic, deal with a little all subjects and thus provide us with very valuable and even fundamental information in the field of religious Judaism.

For example, there was a temple and a priest in Elephantine.

Three other gods were also worshipped in the temple, Herem Bethel, Asham Bethel and. Anat Bethel or Anat Yahu.

The group of letters symbolizing the name of Yahweh is symbolized by three letters, Y H W, and is therefore a trigram, whereas there are four of them in the tetragrammaton we know today.

Published by Cowley in 1932 and then by Grelot in 19721, these papyri have been the subject of various studies including, recently, a detailed book by Joseph Meleze-Modrzejewski .

We learn, for example, that the Jews who returned to Jerusalem made contact with them a few years after their return from Babylon.

A document, called the "Paschal Papyrus,” dated -419 or -418 attests to this. It is a letter sent to Yedonyah, the nephew of Mibtahyah, by Hananiah (perhaps Nehemiah's brother or one of his collaborators). This letter asks that from now on Elephantine be respected, for the celebration of Easter and the feast of Azymes, the fixed date of the 15th to the 21st of the month of Nissan as in Jerusalem, and no longer a local date linked to the beginning of the harvest.

It is not known how this attempt by the Jerusalem community to bring religious practices into line with the ideas they had brought back from Babylon was received.

BACK TO JERUSALEM 30 YEARS EARLIER.

After having installed Yahweh - and him alone - in the temple at Jerusalem, Josiah continued his revolution in the rest of his kingdom.

-He forbade the burning of incense for Baal

-and sacrificing children to the god Molek (who may have been nothing more than a manifestation of the god of the deceased kingdom of Israel to whom human sacrifices had been offered in order to obtain victory).

-He had the sacred poles cut down, symbols of the goddess Asherah (a female deity who was frequently associated with Yahweh).

-He had the priests of the "false gods" slaughtered on their altars, before defiling the places dedicated to the goddess Asherah.

-Josiah did not limit his religious cleansing to the traditional borders of his kingdom: he extended it northwards as far as Bethel, where the much hated King Jeroboam I had built a temple that had become a rival for that of Jerusalem.

On these steaming ruins - after having, in a way burned the golden calf of his time - Josiah "revolutionizes the ritual, and laid down the fundamental principles of the biblical monotheism, which come down to the exclusive worship of one God in one place (that of Yahweh in Jerusalem), to the national observance of the main feasts of the Jewish Year (such as Passover and the Feast of booths), and finally he added a series of various regulations.

Rewriting of history.

This first "Deuteronomy" was completed by the king's scribes, who gathered and rewrote some of Israel's most valuable traditions. They combined the accounts of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, placing them in a context resembling that of the seventh century (they have, for example, made camels appear, an anachronism that betrays them, editor's note). And they put the emphasis on Moses resisting an authoritarian pharaoh whose empire

was as alike as two peas in a pod, in its geographical details, that of Psammetic I, the threatening ruler who reigned over Egypt at the time of King Josiah.

Compilers of ancient traditions, the authors of this first "Deuteronomy" also added a new chapter to the saga, an episode they invented. It is "The Book of Joshua,” which tells the story of the military conquest of Canaan and the battle of Jericho, where the people of Israel went around the besieged city seven times carrying the Ark of the Covenant, waiting for God to strike down the enemy walls.

The Book of Joshua is atypical; it is one of the only biblical texts to claim that the people of Israel took possession of the land "by force.” Elsewhere in the Bible, it is more simply said that Yahweh found the people in the desert, and led them to these lands, without fighting the natives.

Book of Joshua Book of Joshua and after? What about the other Prophets (Neviim) and other writings (ketuvim)?

One can think that a good number of these works will be introduced into the canon after the return of the exile in Babylon, perhaps by Nehemiah but more likely by Ezra, who was giving public readings in the squares of Jerusalem and….

(a) Had to choose the right texts for that.

(b) Had to make textual analyses.

c) Thus became behind the great assembly ancestor of the Sanhedrin.

d) Is considered as a second Moses by some intellectuals of Judaism.

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RECAP OF PREVIOUS EPISODES.

- 622. Josiah. Theocracy. Manasseh as Amon will be, of course, disparaged by the latter. Religious Revolution and increase in power of the kingdom of Judah. Josiah benefits indeed from the defeat of his great competitor IN the North to extend his territory into the south of the Samaria, up to the famous temple of Bethel, of which he will make massacre the priests (2 Kings 23). Hello, the toleration! Come back of the religious racism (“rediscovery” of the law of Moses. 2 Chronicles 34 and 2 Kings 22.8 to 10). Josiah prohibits the worships other than his.

- 609. Vassal of Assyria, King Josiah must face the Egypt of Nekho. He is defeated and killed in Megiddo. Jehoahaz succeeds to him. Three months hardly later, Nekho summons him in Riblah and sends him, tied with chains, in Egypt. He replaces him on the throne of Judah by his brother Jehoiakim, of whom he makes his vassal, of course.

- 605. The Pharaoh Nekho is beaten in Carchemish by Nebuchadnezzar and the area passes under the control of Babylon. The Babylonian calendar starts to be introduced in Judaea.

Jehoiakim revolts and refuses to pay the tribute. His son Jehoiachin succeeds him in - 597.

- 597. Nebuchadnezzar II loses patience against his vassal. He attacks the kingdom of Judah, takes Jerusalem, takes along in captivity King Jehoiachin and his family, and orders the deportation of several thousands of Jews chosen among the members of the high society in the kingdom (of Judah. Between 4,000 and 8,000 people perhaps, especially nobles and members of the clergy). Then he puts in place on the throne an uncle of Jehoiachin, Zedekiah.

- 597 - 587 in Jerusalem: Zedekiah . Resumption of the worship (2 Chron. 29.30 to 36). But Zedekiah cannot manage the situation, let himself involved by the inhabitants, and joins a league formed against Babylon by the Egypt. His refusal to pay the tribute due to the Babylonians will start the war which will be fatal for the city.

- 588. Nebuchadnezzar II besieges again Jerusalem, and this for two years. Zedekiah tries to flee, but will be made a prisoner. Nebuchadnezzar II makes his sons killed in reprisals, and also makes his

eyes put out then deports him in captivity in Babylon. After what he makes Jerusalem razed. The city is destroyed and its temple too. Nebuchadnezzar carries even the candle trees. Jerusalem passes under Babylonian administration. The event puts an end to the dynasty of the kings resulting from David. From there, the term “mashiach” will designate nothing any more but a hypothetical return to power of his line.

Many inhabitants of this city having no longer a shelter follow the Babylonians of their own initiative and without being really prisoners. Others will flee (again) in the countries around to escape slavery and this third deportation. For example, in Egypt.

The rich documentation, made up by papyri in Aramaic language found in the island of Elephantine, just after the first waterfall of the Nile, informs us in a detailed way about the life of a Jewish community established in Elephantine and Syena (today Aswan). They are soldiers who live, with their family, in the garrison charged to supervise the southern border of Egypt. These papyri do not make it possible to know precisely when these Judean soldiers come to settle in Egypt, but it seems that it is at the time of the Exile in Babylon. The community built, formerly, before Cambyses according to the papyri, a Temple with holocausts, incensing and meal offering.

These documents are extremely invaluable, because they provide us a quantity of information on the daily life of these Jews, who are the only Jews of whom we have an objective and sure trace in Egypt. Thanks to them we know everything for example, about the life of Mibtahyah, born circa - 475, married when she was 15 years old and died circa - 430 when she was 45 years old.

We will notice the very modern characteristic of the legislation about women in ancient Egypt, as well as the complete lack of anti-Jewish racism or xenophobia in the Egyptian population (the mixed marriages are current in Elephantine) as in the Egyptian courts. At least in Elephantine.

The existence of the Temple in Elephantine arises a double religious problem, with respect to the Jewish worship on the one hand (the deuteronomic principle of the monopoly of the worship in Jerusalem is not respected), and with respect to the Egyptian worship, on the other hand. The worship of Khnum, ram- God-or-demon in Elephantine, potter-God-or-demon of the children to be born, adapts itself badly with the ram sacrifice of the holocaust. Circa - 410 a revolt will destroy the temple which will be rebuilt, but we lose the trace of this community, the only Jewish community historically attested in Egypt, let us remind of it, in - 399, with the expulsion of the Persians by the Egyptians. Complete translation of these papyri on the website of K.C. Hanson.

They prove that five centuries before our era that is to say in the time of the deportation to Babylon (in another temple that this of Jerusalem) some Judeans worshiped a god-or-demon named Yahu and two female deities, of whom one was called Anath.

All these documents (Elephantine, Hermopolis) are all the more fundamental as they finally enable us to have a point of view other than that of the Bible on the true religion of the Jews of the time. Because to stick only to the Bible to have an objective idea of the true religion of the Judeans of the time is, of course, to go round and round in circles.

Because letters of Judean tradesmen found in Hermopolis show also the worship of “Anat-Yaho,” where Yaho is combined with the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, called Anath, what is all the less monotheistic that many other deities are combined with their blessings.

The rue Judean pantheon of this time, of before the deportation in Babylon, is very finally well summarized in the beginning of the book of Job (1.6): there are Yhwh, his sons or servants the Elohim and the Great Satan.

Yhwh being the (single?) god-or-demon of Judaea (whose temple in Jerusalem was the spiritual center) also preached and worshiped, but with less success apparently, in Samaria and Galilee.

At this stage, it is, however, still only a monolatry and not a god of philosophers, a jealous, sectarian and cruel, tribal, avenger and warrior; God-or-demon, the god-or-demon of a people of which the unity is problematic (opposition of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, of Judaea, of Samaria; or of Galilee). Even at the time of the kings the State worship of Yhwh (who is not the god of the philosophers, let us remind of it) will not be able to impose itself completely.

-587. Judaea is partly emptied with its inhabitants. The others remain as vassals of Babylon. In the North the common people, left on the spot to work the ground, will be designated then (by the Repatriates back to the country) by the name of Samaritans, because of their beginning of

Assyrianization. (As if the families deported in Babylon had not been also more or less influenced by its civilization or its population: mixed marriages, and so on.)

- 586. Godolias. (Guedaliah.) the son of the chief scribe of King Josiah. Is appointed governor by Nebuchadnezzar.

The remaining Judeans will be managed by him. Mizpah north of Jerusalem, becomes the capital of this new Babylonian province. Godolias will be quickly victim of a bloody palace revolution which will also force the prophet Jeremiah to flee in Egypt, out of fear of reprisals.

The deportation in Babylonia will last fifty years. In - 560. Awill Marduk (name which means “servant of Marduk”) the king of Babylon son of Nebuchadnezzar, pardons King Jehoiachin who is released. Jehoiachin nevertheless will remain under house arrest in the city where he will live peacefully until his death, supported by his winners.

THE DEPORTATIONS IN BABYLON.

Notice about the two deportations: that which affected a part of the population of the North kingdom and that which concerned a part of the population of the South kingdom (Jerusalem).

In -722 before our era. Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom (Israel) was taken by Sargon II and its population, or at least part of it, was deported to various places in Assyria, thus giving rise to the legend of the ten lost tribes of Israel. But if certain tribes of Israel did not return from deportation, it was perhaps because they preferred to remain in Mesopotamia.

The tribe of Dan, for example. It worshiped statuettes more or less adapted to the worship of Yahu (Judges 18,30-31). The worship of Yahu was in reality only one of the many worships practiced by the Jewish tribes of this time, but as returned to Jerusalem, after the deportation in Babylon, only the diehards of his worship; it was therefore him who held the number one position in the mind of the priests who then composed the Bible (Ezra Nehemiah and so on).

The latter idealized the reign of Josiah (- 622, the time of independence) and made it retroactively a lost golden age (Deuteronomy 30. These words are, of course, not from Moses himself, but were put in his mouth by postexilic Jewish intellectuals back from Babylon). If the Jews had been defeated, it was because Yahu had chosen to join the other god-or-demons, his brothers, to punish them and to chastise them.

That exiled ones, unlike those of the other tribes, will keep intact therefore the feeling of their national identity as well as a portion of their religious rites focused on Yahu. Fifty years, it is not an enough long period of time to completely lose them through assimilation. But they will feed largely on the Babylonian civilization, which is the most advanced of the time, to the extent that their religion will be made unrecognizable for their fellow-men remained on the spot, the Samaritans or the similar populations in the vicinity of Jerusalem. The experiment of the exile instituting the domination of the priests and putting the elites in touch with many libraries, accentuates the development of a corpus intended to preserve the singularity and the unity of the exiled ones. It is still not the widening of the Judaic faith, which remains practically reserved to circumcised men and to the people chosen by Yahu, but the rise, in Babylonia, of new forms of ideas. Inspired by the basic principles that the Judeans discover in touch with these foreign cultures and with their libraries.

The sectarians of Yahu deported in Babylon were not monotheistic in a strict sense of the term, since their belief was not based on philosophical premises. Yahu was not the god of the philosophers. The exile in Babylon was therefore for them a true clash of civilizations.

The conquest of the Babylonian empire by the great Aryan king Cyrus and his careful policy of overall religious toleration a few tens of years later will make a big difference.

The edict of Cyrus releasing or more exactly sending back for obvious political reasons certain Jews in Jerusalem after his victory in - 538 was partially preserved to us by Ezra.

It goes without saying that the great Cyrus was neither monotheist nor monolater and that the god of the Jews was for him only a god among others. All this part of the Bible and more precisely of the book of Ezra is therefore due only to the racism or the hubris of the disciples of Ezra or the will to make pleasure to their new Master and is absolutely not objective.

It was a question for Cyrus, in addition to his obvious concern for getting angry with any god, of establishing in Jerusalem and facing the eternal Egyptian danger, a population won over entirely to his cause.

That Cyrus wanted to help and encourage this process arises clearly from the very beginning of the text in the book of Ezra and particularly in its 4th verse. Here below.

“And in any locality where survivors may now be living, the people are to provide them with silver and gold, with goods and livestock, and with freewill offerings for the temple of the god in Jerusalem.’”

In spite of such an eminent patronage, there was not a crowd and even less material means put at the disposal of this handful of “pioneers.” The proof of that is the myth of the ten lost tribes.

Most of the deportees whose fate was little by little largely improved since Awil Marduk (Evil Merodach) the son of Nebuchadnezzar had pardoned king Jehoiachin and who were well integrated within this cosmopolitan empire (many mixed marriages) preferred to remain. Not very eager to try the return in a ruined and without defense city, they preferred to remain in the core of this gigantic empire. Some had even reached positions of high responsibility there.

From where the Talmud known as “of Babylon.”

But, of course, they intend well to continue to press with all their weight on the destinies of the part of their community returned to Jerusalem.

Following this official decision of the great Cyrus, a small group of sectarians of Yahu therefore undertakes to return to Jerusalem.

The city is in rubble and has no longer walls to protect it. Initially, only the altar of the Temple could be put back into service. Under the impulse of Haggai and Zechariah, the persons in charge of the aforesaid group named by Cyrus, the priest Joshua and the prince Zerubbabel will undertake to rebuild the Temple. Work will start into 520 and will be completed into 515.

As we have had the opportunity to see it, the big problem they are the Jews who remained on the spot that whether it is in the north or in the south around Jerusalem and who did not leave in deportation. Between the two groups, racist reactions will multiply .

The deportees back to Jerusalem were members of the elite. They were princes, priests, scribes and scientists. They consider therefore with some condescension those who remained on the spot, and who, for lack of chiefs and priests, did not evolve in the same direction as them.

Conversely many of those who had remained look unfavorably the return of these deportees arrogant and boasting the authority of the Persian emperor, suspects, moreover, to have been infected by their touch with the pagans in Babylon. The theology of the newcomers evolved indeed much during the exile and appears incomprehensible and even heretic to those who think of having kept the genuine Judaism of their forefathers.

Moreover, Jerusalem is from now on part of the administrative unit of Samaria what does not help because the governor of this district accepts badly that one encroaches on his field of authority.

With regard to the discussed question of the Samaritans, here what we can say.

The dominant thesis among the historians is rather than 80% of the inhabitants of the former kingdom of Samaria remained well on the spot at the time of the deportations having affected their country, and became the Samaritans (in the religious meaning of the term) quoted by the Book of the kings.

Accordingly, the 10 mysteriously disappeared tribes of Israel would be only a myth invented to justify the exclusion of the Samaritans from the Jewish community: they did not break with other Jews, they noted only their disappearance and their replacement by foreigners. That’s all!

The reasons for this final break would be mainly:

-the question of the monopoly of the temple on the Mount Gerizim or that of Jerusalem, regarding the worship.

-The place of the oral Torah (compiled later in the Mishnah Gemara then Talmud) among the Judeans, and refused by the Samaritans.

The previously quoted study tries to shed a light through the genetics. His authors lean finally in favor of a mixed approach between replacement and continuity: the Samaritan genetic characteristics correspond to a subgroup of the original Jewish cohanim priests who did not leave in exile when the Assyrians conquered the kingdom of North but who married Assyrian and exiled women moved from others conquered lands.

But let us put aside these Jewish or Samaritan painful nauseous racist considerations and let us return to the determining fact.

PERSIAN PERIOD AND COMPLETION OF THE JEWISH BIBLE.

The two predecessors of Cyrus II the great , the kings Astyages and his father Cyaxares , will make themselves known for the following feats...

- Assassinations, blood baths, heaps of heads cut at the entrance of fortifications.

- Impaled or skinned alive prisoners.

- Atrociously mutilated corpses left to the mercy of the wild beasts and vultures.

- Fierceness on the women and the old men and enslavement of the girls and boys after having made them undergo the worst outrages!

- 546. Cyrus II the great conquers Asia Minor and beats Croesus king of Lydia of whom he annexes the kingdom. Croesus had become rich thanks to the gold nuggets which were found in the Pactolus, the river which crossed Sardis his capital. As Cyrus had sentenced Croesus to the pyre, this one pointed out to him: Most people made me the most blessed man in the world, but “no man can be counted happy until the end is known!” Cyrus reprieved him and made him his friend.

- 540. Cyrus was highly reputed for his wisdom and respect to the foreign populations! This reputation had even preceded him before he enters Babylonia because Gobryas, the governor of Gutium, chief of the armies of Nabonidus, who had received the command of the troops having to stop the advance of the Persians; put quite simply his army at the disposal of Cyrus the great ! The town of Sippar, where Nabonidus had his general headquarters, was captured the fourteenth day without fight as was also taken, two days later, Babylon, without the least bloodshed!

Better, Cyrus ordered to put until the end of the month guards around the doors of the temples so that in no time there is an interruption of celebrations and prayers. It is thus, underlines the tablet engraver of the time, that Cyrus entered Babylon, where the people expected him with joy, was greeted on his passage by a jubilant crowd.

Conclusion of the cylinder of Cyrus.

“From Babylon to Assur and from Susa……… as far as the region of Gutium, the sacred centers on the other side of the Tigris, whose sanctuaries had been abandoned for a long time, I returned the images of the gods, who had resided there in Babylon, to their places and I let them dwell in eternal abodes. I gathered all their inhabitants and returned to them their dwellings. In addition, at the command of Marduk, the great lord, I settled in their habitations, in pleasing abodes, the gods of Sumer and Akkad, whom Nabonidus, to the anger of the lord of the gods, had brought into Babylon.

May all the gods whom I settled in their sacred centers ask daily of Bel and Nabu that my days be long and may they intercede for my welfare. May they say to Marduk, my lord: "As for Cyrus, the king who reveres you, and Cambyses, his son, [lacuna]…. The people of Babylon blessed my kingship, and I settled all the lands in peaceful abodes.”

Cyrus II the great therefore makes himself admitted as king, but does not annex the country and he reconciles the subjected populations by restoring to them their deities.

- 539 consequently. End of the deportation in Babylonia.

This return from exile is commented on variously in Isaiah (44 and following ones) Haggai , Ezra and Nehemiah.

However their books present the reality such as the returned from Exile Jews wanted to see it, and not such as it was (from where a certain schizophrenia, which will span centuries).

In total it was perhaps the return in Judea of several tens of thousands of people, 60,000 perhaps, in three successive waves. The description of their return in the country, of the rebuilding of the ramparts, of the houses and of the temple, is true to life, like also this drama: the repudiation of the foreign wives and the segregation of the first true Jewish community… It is well here the rise of the diehard Judaism.

- 538. Cyrus having released the Judeans from their captivity for also to counter the aims of Egypt on the area, he sends back a part (30 000 ? The followers of the exclusive worship of Yahweh, with their wives and their children) in order to rebuild Jerusalem and to live there under his protectorate. With a governor appointed by him to apply in it his decree making the law of Moses the law of this reconstructed Jerusalem and of the area around: Sheshbazzar.

- 538 still. and if it is not the same character, Sheshbatsar, as before, but someone different (there is indeed a doubt); Zerubbabel , grandson of the last king of Judah, Jehoiachin, and therefore descendant of David, is appointed satrap (governor) of Jerusalem and Judea, commissioner for the repatriation of the Judeans in the country. His name means “heir to Babylon” in Akkadian. The Persian authorities entrust him with the responsibility for the administration of police and army. Adoption of the Aramaic language and of the official calendar of the Persian Empire, as well as of the Babylonian lunisolar calendar with months having names and not numbers. Consecration of the new altar in the honor of Yhwh.

- 522. In a series of administrative reforms in the Persian Empire. Darius sets up new institutions (language calendar…), but continues the same policy as his predecessor: help and support for the Jewish religious revival, in exchange for an unfailing political collaboration. Beginning of the Greek influence. Merchants and colonists settle in Palestine and start to trade with the populations of the area. 24e day of the 9th month of the 2nd year of the reign of Darius, laying of the first stone of the Second Temple by Zerubbabel.

-515. Consecration of the second temple, which will make this one again the official center of the worship of Yhwh.

Joshuah, grandson of the last priest having managed the Temple before its destruction, and thus distant heir to a long priestly line going back to the time of King David (Zadoc), is appointed high priest. His descendants will direct the Temple until the Maccabees found the Hasmonean dynasty around - 140.

- 457. The Persian government (Artaxerxes) asks the priestly aristocracy of the second temple of Jerusalem to develop new national laws (Ezra chapter VII, 12 to 20).

The high priest Ezra makes the Pentateuch the normative book by definition, and creates this new local customs (the Torah) on a model close to the Code of Hammurabi, but by rejecting the distinctions of castes. He reworks the Deuteronomy and all that is previous, and also ascribes to the Moses of Josiah these various changes. The text will be solemnly stored in the new temple of Jerusalem. He also reorganizes the worship at the expenses of the Persian Treasury (Ezra chapter 8, 20). The priests become the center of the power in Jerusalem. New somewhat schizophrenic prophetic texts are written. The greatness of Jerusalem exalted by these texts does not correspond, of course, to the real situation of the city at the time, but to a traditional mechanism of compensation falling within the most elementary psychoanalysis.

We come thus to a kind of bicephalous government for Judea.

The legislative and legal power belongs to the high priest, assisted by the Sanhedrin, the executive power belongs to the satrap appointed by the Persians.

- 444. Nehemiah is appointed satrap of Jerusalem by the Persian emperor Artaxerxes 1st and rebuilds the walls of the city.

- 425. Second mission of Nehemiah in Jerusalem.

- 350. In the reign of Artaxerxes III, the Judea is recognized as an autonomous theocratic State, having its own currency, and an independent religious life (high priests, Sanhedrin). But still under Persian influence.

HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIOD.

- 334. Alexander crosses the Bosphorus, crosses Asia Minor, Syria.

- 332. He captures Tyre, massacres 8,000 of his inhabitants and makes sell 30,000 of them as slaves. Then he marches on Egypt and is welcomed there as a liberator. He enters the temple of the god –or-demon Amun and gets his approval. Besides a little later he will make himself recognized by everybody as “Son of God,” an example which will be followed by the emperors of Rome.

Foundation of Alexandria.

Passage of Alexander in Jerusalem, which becomes a Greek protectorate managed by the high priests.

At the time certain Jews wondered even if Alexander were not the Messiah. Alexander crosses Mesopotamia, seizes in Susa the immense treasure of King Darius, continues through Persia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and stops only in front of Indus. The Greek temples and colonnades emerge everywhere, as far as the sands of Afghanistan.

A new universalism opens under the influence of the thought of the philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Diogenes. In all the crossed countries, Alexander organized great games of the Greek type, with demonstrations of gymnastics, literary and musical competitions. He got dressed personally with the local costumes and looked for the sympathy of the populations.

- 331. Alexander calls some Jews in Alexandria. Ptolemy sends some of them in Cyrenaica and about at the same time Seleucus establishes some of them in Antioch.

- 320. The area passes under the Greco-Egyptian domination of the dynasty of the Ptolemies.

- 285. The Jewish sacred texts , at Alexandria, in Egypt, are translated into Greek language, a translation known as Septuagint (according to the legend indeed, seventy translators would have worked on it day and night, separately). The work will last in fact more than two centuries and will comprise several additions.

The Septuagint sometimes translated a Hebrew text different from that which is preserved in the Jewish Bible. Or it introduces certain variants into the original text, in order to adapt to the mentality of the readers marked by Greek culture. It will also preserve some texts of which the Hebrew original had been lost and, especially, will add new ones, directly written in Greek language. The Deuterocanonical books that are for example the Greek book of Esther and the Greek book of Daniel. The initiative will cause the disapproval of the Jewish fundamentalist circles. The translation of the Bible in Greek will, however, have a decisive importance, because it will make possible the spreading of this tradition in all the Mediterranean basin, where the Judeans formed already a numerous Diaspora (which will still gain in importance later).

- 180. The area passes under the Greco-Syrian domination of the dynasty of the Seleucids.

- 175. Reign of Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Onias III High Priest of the Temple. Jason (of his true name Joshua) succeeds him. The Hellenization progresses. According to Toland and his famous Christianity not mysterious, the rabbis, divided at the time into various sects, Stoic, Platonic or Pythagorean, and others; using then an incredible allegory freedom, adapted the Writings to the most incredible speculations of a certain number of their Masters. And they made accepted by the people which understood nothing in the Cabala that they were unfathomable mysteries, thus teaching it to follow pagan rites. John Toland exaggerates a little and mixes up Cabala and Talmud, but what is certain, it is that many Judeans are integrated then in the Greek world and give up circumcision.

From where a strong xenophobic reaction in a contrary direction from certain religious circles. The high priest of the time, Menelaus, is even obliged to protest against a Law “which teaches hatred of the human race, prohibits to sit down at the table of strangers or to show good will towards them” (BERNARD Lazare).

- 175 still. Onias III deprived from his functions of the high priest. His son having taken refuge in Egypt will build a new Temple, in Leontopolis, with the assistance of the king Ptolemy VI. Together with that of Elephantine Island, the Temple of Leontopolis, today Tell el-Yehudiya, the "Hill of the Jews,” in the eastern part of the Nile Delta, is therefore the second-known example to challenge, this time in full knowledge of the facts, the principle of the monopoly recognized at the Temple of Jerusalem regarding worship. The experiment will have a mixed success.

Onias IV, leading his Judean soldiers, asked for protection from the king of Egypt. He fled his country, which had been in great political turmoil since the assassination of his father, Onias III, by the Syrian king Antiochos Epiphanes. Onias IV was a military man of great worth and the Judean army remained loyal to Egypt. To thank him for this loyalty Ptolemy granted him the right to settle on the site of Leontopolis, dedicated to the goddess Sekhmet.

Onias gave his capital an important development and built there a magnificent temple copied from that of Jerusalem. The current name of Tell el-Yehudiya, "the mound to the Jews,” confirms the importance of this community whose dwellings, located next to the temple, are defended by a rampart. Other houses are built outside, in the palm groves.

As for the temple, defended by a castle, it is accessible by a long ramp from outside the enclosure to a forecourt that serves both buildings. The temple of Yahweh, composed of courtyards and rooms in a row, is enclosed in its temenos (sacred enclosure that protects the temple). It is made of boss stone and crowned with merlons decorated with rosettes. At the end of the ramparts, a fortified gate opens onto the countryside and the fields.

To the east of the town is the necropolis whose tombs are dug into the rocky ground. The stelae and epitaphs found on the site also attest to the importance of the Jewish presence in the city. In the tombs, the bodies, in accordance with Jewish law, are not embalmed. This highly Hellenized and cultivated settlement seems to have played a great role in this region of the Delta, Jewish scholars being part of the intellectual elite of the time.

The Temple of Onias functioned until the year 73, when, following the great revolt of the Palestinian Jews in the years 66-70, it was closed on the orders of the Roman Emperor Vespasian.

- 167. Interruption of the worship in Jerusalem. Antiochus IV Epiphanes destroys the temple, shocked by the pornography of this one. The cherubs appearing in the first temple were in the beginning two female figures, but they had been replaced in it by the image of two coupled cherubs, of whom one was male and the other female. In December, he makes therefore set up instead of the altar formerly dedicated to the holocausts in the temple, a new altar, dedicated to Zeus Olympian this time. Some people compare Yahweh with the Greek Theos Hypsistos. What was important for the philosophers of the time, it was to worship the true God-or-Demon. Whether he is called Zeus, Yahweh, El or Baal, had no importance for them.

The revolt of the Zealots and of the Maccabees which will follow will put an end, of course, to this ecumenism before the word is invented, because it protests against this Hellenization attempt (by suppression of the former worship and of the religious power). The revolt of the Maccabees will constitute literally the Book religion (the zeal against the Law created the zeal for the Law; appearance of the Hassideans), true commitment for the letter, sanctified, against the vulgarizing of the writing. The tragic destiny of the Maccabees will also give rise in the country to a new idea, that of redeeming death. It is indeed at the time of the revolt of the Maccabees against this Hellenization and the Sadducean passiveness that the idea of a national Messiah doubled up as a spiritual Messiah, appeared, the national salvation being in harmony with the individual salvation. What will not prevent besides the penetration of the Platonizing Greek philosophy (especially in Alexandria with Philo) from continuing.

- 164. Release of Jerusalem by the Maccabees. Judas Maccabee purifies the temple and restores it.

- 160. Jonathan high priest.

- 142. Simon, his brother, as a high priest, heads an almost independent Jewish State and becomes ethnarch of the Jews.

Foundation of the sect of the Essenes (result of the splitting of the congregation of the Hassideans) close to the Dead Sea.

- 134. John Hyrcanus 1st, son of Simon, succeeds him.

- 128. John Hyrcanus makes the Sanctuary of the Samaritans on the Mount Gerizim, destroy .

- 104 to -103. Aristobulus 1st his son succeeds him. He also takes the title of king that he will hold concurrently with his role of high priest, and Jerusalem will consequently be managed by an entire series of priests- kings.

- 103 to - 76. The Pharisees declare impure the visits between Jews and Greeks. And as they reproached him for being a Greek clothed in the Jewish way, to dishonor the high priesthood by holding it concurrently with the role of war leader (of a king); Alexander Jannaeus makes 800 of them hanged or crucified after having made their throat cut in front of their wives and their children.

- 76 to - 69. Salome Alexandra.

- 69 to - 63. Aristobulus II.

- 63 to - 64. Hyrcanus II.

- 64. Pompey captures Jerusalem. Syria and Judea become Roman province. The Romans appoint the kings and intervene in the choice of the high priests.

- 61. Pompey brings back to Rome many Judean slaves, freed thereafter.

- 60. The Essene teacher of Righteousness (too) has twelve disciples , he his considered for the Messiah descending from David, but he is persecuted by the official Jewish authorities, is arrested, tortured and executed.

- 40. Herod the great, son of Antipater the Idumean, seizes the throne of Jerusalem.

- 37. He is confirmed by Rome as a king ally of the Romans as regards Judea, Samaria and Galilee.

- 20. Birth of Philo in Alexandria (- 20 to + 65). He was an intellectual who dealt particularly with religion and philosophy. He endeavored especially to link Judaism and Hellenism. He thus constituted Platonic doctrines of the “Word” or “Logos,” having much resemblance with that of the Gospel known as of John. Philo wrote fifty volumes where he quotes all the events, all the great figures of his time and of his country, even not forgetting Pilate, but without mentioning Jesus. He knows and describes with many details the sect of the Essenes, which lived around Jerusalem and on the banks of the Jordan.

- 4. Death of the king of Jews Herod supposed to reign at the time of the birth of Jesus according to Matthew (2, 1). His kingdom is divided into three tetrarchies.

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Year I. Since such is the official reference (selected in the 6th century) of the Christian calendar. It is in reality the birth date of the myth Jesus of Nazareth, chosen by the monk Dionysius the Humble according to Luke who affirms that J.-C. was thirty years old the fifteenth year of the principate of Tiberius. What nevertheless contradicts Matthew (Herod) and Luke (Quirinus).

At all events, this first century of our era is a time when the apparitions of angels, the premonitory dreams, and the celestial voices, are frequent, at least according to the legends and the myths of the time. Many impostors or conjurers… took the title of Messiah (Christos/Chrestos in Greek language). In the Roman province of Galilee, the Essenes announce the nearest coming of a savior, then the end of the world.

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+6. Revolt of Judas the Galilean. Varus crucifies 6,000 Jews before Jerusalem. An Essene messiah named Menahem, is executed by the Romans. Annas, high priest. Quirinius, governor of Syria, takes up duty (supposed to govern at the birth of Jesus according to Luke 2.2. This date mistake testifies to the ignorance of the writers of the Gospels in this field: they didn't live these events).

The Roman Emperor Octavianus occupies the Palestine definitively, deposes Archelaus, the son of Herod, from the throne of Jerusalem (he will be exiled in Gaul) in order to put on it at his place a named Caponius (who is not Jew). For the believers, this substitution represents the achievement of the prophecy of Jacob: Genesis 49,10: “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh (the messiah) comes; and to Him shall be the obedience of the people.” In other words: “Once Shiloh (i.e., the Messiah) comes, then the scepter and the giving of laws will depart from Judah…”

The consequence of this apparent realization of the prophecy is that Messiahs then began to emerge from a little everywhere. They were regarded by the Romans as dangerous agitators and were arrested by them, like Theudas, Dosithus of Samaria, John of Gamala, Simon. The taking into account of this prophecy by the authors of the Gospels led Matthew to place the birth of Jesus in the reign of Herod in - 4 and Luke when Quirinius was governor in + 6. This, embarrassing, contradiction, is still not solved.

+18. Caiaphas (son-in-law of Annas) high priest.

+26. Pontius Pilate prefect. Do not reside in Jerusalem where he comes only from time to time, but in Caesarea, a new town. Beginning of the preaching of John the Baptist.

+35. The first of the anti-Christian persecutions. Execution of Stephen for heresy.

+37. Pontius Pilate exiled in Vienna Gaul.

+39. Jewish revolt in Alexandria. Herod Antipas exiled in Lugdunum Convenarum in the Pyrenees. A city dedicated to the god-or-demon Lug. Creating so a piece of historical irony for a Jew practitioner?

+66. Revolt of Judea against the Roman occupier. In reprisals, the Roman legions plunder and crucify thousands of Jews (5 000 per day?) One of the worst disasters of the history of Judaism. At the Time of the siege of Jerusalem by Titus, the Jews, divided into three camps (zealots, followers of King Herod, party of the Temple) spent more time in massacring themselves than to face the Roman soldiers.

+70. Capture of Jerusalem and fire of the Temple.

The Roman troops seized the city, razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple, putting an end to four years of war between the revolted Jews and the Roman authority. The ruin of the Temple involved the suspension of the sacrificial worship and of the pilgrimages. A general dispersion followed.

The danger of dissolution in the ambient conditions which threatened the Judaism deprived of its Temple was very quickly fought thanks to the initiatives taken by an old rabbi Pharisee from Jerusalem, Johanan Ben Zakkaï. He was locked up in the city besieged by the Roman army, although opposed to the uprising against Rome. His legend tells us that he escaped the city in a coffin, by pretending to be dead. Come in the Roman camp, he asked for the favor of being allowed to establish

a rabbinical school in the occupied territories, in order to teach there his doctrines, which made a large room for the obedience to the civil authorities. He was therefore allowed to be established in Jamnia/Yavneh, a village located at about forty kilometers in the North-West of Jerusalem, in the coastal plain.

The rabbinical sources therefore attribute to a group of deserters the merit to have established a new Judaism, without weapons nor soldier.

Josephus (War 4.444) provides us another version and another version more probable: the Romans decided to confine on the periphery of Judea, or even far from it, all those who surrendered voluntarily. At all events, it would be therefore with the agreement of the Romans, and before their eyes, that this group of wise would have laid the bases of the rabbinical Judaism.

+80. Yohanan decides to begin the collection of the traditions to respect, accompanied by the named Hillel and Shammai. The Shammaites went as far as proposing a complete separation between Jews and pagans.

The School of Jamnia / Yavneh, was a great success and tried to give back to the new Judaism a religious center worthy of the name. In any case it is back to this period that dates the official list (canon) of the books having to be an authority in Judaism. Some texts were kept after long and heated debate, others rejected because considered as being in no way inspired by God, despite their intrinsic value. What besides sanctioned the separation between Jews and Christians, the latter based on other writings and thus becoming schismatic compared with the majority Judaism. Johanan ben Zakkai was a Pharisee, so they are therefore Pharisaical ideas which were, through this channel, offered to synagogues. They found there an increasingly favorable welcome. So we can say that rabbinism has taken over many of the ideals of the Pharisaism. To the extent that it has often been regarded as a mere continuation of the Pharisaism of the Second Temple period. This process which will last several decades, in spite of the opposition of the Hillelites, will lead nevertheless to fix the eighteen blessings of the Amidah, whose twelfth, the birkat ha minim, tackles the apostates and the nozerim, the nozerim being besides, at the beginning, only the Jews having given up their religion to convert with Christianity.

SHORT ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST JUDEO-ROMAN WAR IN 66.

More than a century after the establishment of Roman domination over Palestine, a widespread insurrection of Judean Jews against Roman rule took place. Of this event, which went down in history as the "First Judeo-Roman War" or the "Great Jewish Revolt," the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem by Titus, which caused trauma in the minds of the Jewish people, was the most memorable fact. But it is also important to understand why and how this revolt took place, what also helps to explain the brutality of the Roman reaction. In fact, hostility to Rome has been latent in Judea since the conquest, and was reinforced and encouraged by the activism of the Zealot party at the beginning of the first century. The uprising of 66 is therefore both a nationalist and religious movement, with the aim of getting national independence. But Roman suppression, led by the future Emperor Titus from 69 onwards, would tighten Rome's grip on the country and leave Judea devastated, while removing one of the pillars of Jewish identity as well as diaspora Judaism by the destruction of the Temple in 70.

The conquest of Syria by Pompey between 64 and 63 before our era opens a new period in the history of Palestine by inaugurating the era of Rome's domination over this part of the world.

In the first decades of Roman rule over Palestine, Judea keeps a relative autonomy: the Romans, as often in the new provinces, left the traditional institutions in place - notably the Sanhedrin, the legislative assembly and supreme court of Judea - and even recognized from time to time kings of Judea - the most famous being Herod the Great (-37-4 before our era). However, Judea was just emerging from a rather long period of independence, corresponding to the reign of the Hasmonean dynasty which had come into being after the Maccabean revolt in 152 before our era, and therefore looked unfavorably on the establishment of a new foreign power on its territory. Moreover, the Roman conquest arouses again the problem already met a century earlier and which had provoked the Maccabean revolt: that of the specificity of the Jewish people within a very vast world which is tending to become more and more harmonized. The hatred aroused by the very Hellenized Herod, who had hippodromes, aqueducts, stadiums and amphitheaters built, and even changed the names of certain cities - the Tower of Straton thus became Caesarea - is a revealing testimony to this. The Jews of Judea, bearers of a specific history which forged the unity of a people for whom religion is also a foundation of identity, are deeply attached to the keeping of their traditions, their worship and their institutions and fear seeing themselves "swallowed up" within an immensely vast Roman Empire with a universal vocation, physically present in Judea through the person of the procurator and the garrisons stationed in the large cities.

This latent hostility is known to the Romans, as it is shown by the fact that the procurator, usually resident in Caesarea, goes to Jerusalem with his troops on Jewish feast days to prevent a possible riot. It grew from the beginning of the first century under the influence of the Zealot party, founded by Judah the Galilean in + 6, when he orchestrated a first revolt on the opportunity of the census ordered by the procurator Coponius, promoting the idea that God being "the only leader and the only master," obeying mortal and, what is more, pagan masters, is an infamy bordering on blasphemy. After his crucifixion by the Romans, his sons carry on his ideas, develop a vast network throughout the country and encourage resistance and hostility towards Rome in all its forms. The declared aim was the conquest of national independence.

Anti-Roman agitation became endemic in Judea in the 50s under the double effect of zealot activism and the strengthening of Roman authority following numerous armed uprisings. It gained momentum in 66, under the government of the procurator Gestius Florus, for two reasons: firstly, the death of Jews in clashes between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations in Caesarea without the Romans intervening; secondly, the procurator's decision to take from the Temple treasury a sum corresponding to the amount of taxes owed by the Jews.

A riot breaks out in Jerusalem and, for the first time, spreads to the whole country: the revolt becomes a general popular uprising, which catches the Roman authorities present on the spot unaware, they were defeated at the battle of Beth-Horon in 66. From then on, the country officially goes to war. A few attempts at mediation, notably from the king of Chalcis Herod Agrippa II, supported by the public figures and the Pharisees, failed: it is truly a popular uprising. The rebels proclaim the independence of the Jewish state in Jerusalem, kill the pro-Roman high priest Ananias, abolish the sacrifices to the emperor (instituted by Herod) and minted coins bearing the inscription "Year I of Liberty." However, very quickly, dissension resurfaces within the revolted Jewish people: the new government in Jerusalem, which was predominantly Pharisaic and moderate, was soon opposed by charismatic leaders who continue the armed struggle in the rest of the country - notably John of Giscala, in Galilee, and Simeon bar Ghiora, who was close to the Zealots. They refused any appeasement, fearing that

they would once again become a "false state" controlled in reality by the occupier, as under Herod, and at the same time try to re-establish strict respect for religious obligations. Simeon bar Ghiora is even, according to Flavius Josephus, "obeyed like a king" by his soldiers, probably because of the messianic pretensions he would have had. These different factions clashed on several occasions, changing the nationalist revolt into a civil war: first in 68, when Galilee having been reconquered by Vespasian, the Galileans of John of Giscala and their zealot companions took power in Jerusalem, overthrowing the Pharisees and multiplying the provocations against the Sanhedrin. In April 69, the priestly faction in Jerusalem call Simeon bar Ghiora - who had been ousted at the beginning of the revolt - to fight against the Zealots and the Giscala faction. Between personal rivalries and political disagreements, however, the Jews of Palestine managed to reach an agreement on the defense of Jerusalem in the spring of 70, when the Roman legions led by the son of the new emperor, Titus, were already laying siege to the city.

In spite of the seriousness of the situation, the Jews still do not get along and John takes advantage of the fact that Eleazar lets the pilgrims come to the Temple to celebrate the Passover, to introduce his men there and seize it, thus eliminating Eleazar.

Titus then had the land at the foot of the ramparts leveled to make it easier to approach and built rolling towers that make his army able to attack the new city wall, the lowest of the surrounding walls, located north of Jerusalem. On 25 May 70, the Roman troops were able to cross it, then five days later, on 30 May, they captured the second rampart and the new city up to the foot of the Antonia fortress, held by John of Gischala.

Jerusalem had provisions to withstand the siege for years. However, to "motivate" the inhabitants to fight, the zealots set fire to these provisions. So the famine begins therefore to take its toll.

In spite of this, the civil war continues in Jerusalem, where the zealots still execute summarily many people, especially among the priests.

On July 20, the Romans succeed in breaching the rampart, only to find themselves in front of a new rampart that had been hastily built by the besieged. The Romans then seize the Antonia Tower, which was razed to the ground.

Once again, Titus sent Josephus to John of Gischala in order to ask him to surrender, « to stop defiling the sanctuary and offending God" while allowing him to resume the sacrifices. If John does not hear him, others of the public figures choose to flee the city.

From the Antonia Tower, the Romans build a ramp to access the Temple esplanade and progress despite the resistance of the Jews who, in order to repel them, set fire to the various porticoes surrounding the Temple. At this moment of the end of the siege, when the daily sacrifices had ceased in the Temple, the famine reaches its peak in the city. Josephus mentions a case of cannibalism where a mother cooked and devoured her baby.

The fighting intensified in the last days of August 70. Finally, on August 29th when the Romans approach the Temple, a legionary throws a brand into the Temple, which catches fire, and despite Titus' orders, the Romans were unable to extinguish the fire.

The destruction of the Temple does not give the Romans control of the city. Once again, according to Josephus, Titus addresses the Jews, especially Simon and John, and demands their surrender in exchange for their lives. But as the Jews set their conditions and demand to be allowed to flee into the desert, Titus order to take and pillage the city that the Romans storm on September 25 by massacring the population and setting the city on fire. Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala are taken prisoner.

The city is razed to the ground, only what remains of it is the western wall and the towers Hippicus, Mariamme and Phasael, now called the Tower of David.

According to Flavius Josephus, the number of prisoners of war comes to 97,000 and the number of dead during the siege to 1,100,000, what may seem exaggerated even if it should be remembered that the siege began shortly before the Passover, a feast of pilgrimage when the Jews used to go to Jerusalem. Seven hundred prisoners, including Simon bar Giora and John of Gischala, are taken to Rome for the triumph of Titus. John of Gischala dies in prison and Simon bar Giora is executed after the triumph.

The fall of Jerusalem does not quite mark the end of the war because some strongholds remain in Jewish hands. Titus instructs a legate, Lucilius Bassus, to capture the last pockets of resistance. Herodion, a fortress palace not far from Bethlehem, where Herod is buried, quickly falls, followed by Masheronte, on the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. But 3 years will be necessary before Lucilius Bassus' successor, Flavius Silva, can take over Masada, another fortress palace of King Herod, located on a peak above the Dead Sea, where the defenders, under the leadership of Eleazar ben Yair, commit suicide with their wives and children to avoid surrendering.

A brutal suppression then fell on the Jews of Palestine, who find a country devastated by the fighting, see the authority of Rome strengthened when Vespasian, in 70, makes Judea a propretoriann imperial province separate from the province of Syria, and above all lose one of their main components of identity with the destruction of the Temple. The fall of this place, the center of the religious life of the Jews of Judea as well as of the Diaspora, also means the disappearance of political Judaism, that is to say, of the Jewish State of the Hasmoneans; it was not until 1948 that a Jewish State once again exist. The Sanhedrin and the function of the high priest disappear with the Temple. The country just reconquered is taken away from the Jews to be annexed to the ager publicus, that is to say, it becomes the property of the Roman people; in 72, Vespasian orders the lease of individual lands as a particular estate of the Emperor, of which he leaves only the usufruct to the farmers who are not expelled. The Jews as a people are also, as a result of this revolt, subjected to relative persecution for some years: many Jews of the Diaspora are arrested throughout the Roman Empire and reduced to slavery, and a new tax reserved for Jews, the fiscus judaicus, assigned to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, is created.

The Great Jewish Revolt also had the consequence of leading Judaism to reconfigure itself, especially around the Pharisees, the only Jewish movement to emerge almost intact from the civil war. The destruction of the Temple and the Roman surveillance instituted in Jerusalem led them to choose the city of Jamnia as their new religious and cultural center, where they found a rabbinical school and a great council, the Beth-Din, which replaced the Sanhedrin, especially as far as judicial and religious functions were concerned. It is this branch that will give birth to rabbinic Judaism.

The Great Jewish Revolt is therefore a decisive event in the history of Judaism, which opens a difficult period for Judean Jews, while diasporic Judaism gains more and more importance on the cultural and theological levels. It is commemorated in Jewish tradition by the fast of April 9, and the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem reminds of the destruction of the city by Titus. A painful moment which removes the possibility of national independence, it starts the time of the Pharisaic rule, which contributed greatly to the formation of the present-day Jewish theology.

THE AMIDAH OR SHMONEH ESREH.

The Amidah, Tefilat HaAmidah, or" Standing Prayer,” also called the Shmoneh Esreh "The Eighteen,” in reference to the original number of constituent blessings( there are now nineteen), is the central prayer of the Jewish liturgy. This prayer, among others, is found in the Siddur, the traditional Jewish prayer book. As Judaism's prayer, surpassed only by the Birkat Hamazon. The Amidah is the only prayer that is designated simply as tefila, "prayer") in rabbinic literature.

Few Esreh or prayers for the unfortunate victims of a genocide tsunami or earthquake on the other side of the world; on the other hand, many repeated manifestations or affirmation of a powerful ethnocentrism: "forgive us, heal us, save us, spare us, have pity on us, etc." This is in fact a series of 18 (shmoneh) blessings (Esreh) to which was added a 19th "blessing" in fact rather a curse, the number twelve, called Birkat Haminim.

Below is a summary of the main themes of this prayer of which there are many variations (it is not easy to find a way in them).

1. Blessed are you, O Lord our God and God of our fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob, the creator of all things, who remembers the good deeds of the patriarchs and in love will bring a redeemer to their children's children. Blessed are you, O Lord, the shield of Abraham.

2. You revive the dead, you have the power to save. Blessed are you, O Lord, who revives the dead.

3. [Reader] We will sanctify your name in this world just as it is sanctified in the highest heavens,

[Cong.] 'Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.'"

4. Favor us with the knowledge that comes from you, blessed are you, O Lord, the gracious giver of knowledge.

5. Cause us to return to you. Blessed are you, O Lord, who delights in repentance.

6. Forgive us, O our Father, for we have sinned…

7. Look upon our affliction and plead our cause….Blessed are you, O Lord, the redeemer of Israel.

8. Heal us, O Lord, and we will be healed; save us and we will be saved….Blessed are you, O Lord, the healer of the sick of his people Israel.

9. Bless this year for us, O Lord our God, together with all its produces, for our larger welfare. Blessed are you, O Lord, who blesses the years.

10. Sound the great shofar for our freedom, raise the ensign to gather our exiles, and gather us from the four corners of the earth. Blessed are you, O Lord, who gathers the dispersed of his people Israel.

11. Restore our judges as in former times, and our counselors ….Reign over us, you alone, O Lord…..Blessed are you, O Lord, the King who loves righteousness and justice.

12. FOR THE DESTRUCTION OF APOSTATES AND THE ENEMIES OF GOD:

Let there be no hope for slanderers, and let all wickedness perish in an instant.May all your enemies quickly be cut down….Blessed are you, O Lord, who smashes enemies.

13. May your compassion be stirred, O Lord our God, towards the righteous, the pious, the elders of your people the house of Israel, the remnant of their scholars, towards proselytes, and towards us also. Grant a good reward to all who truly trust in your name. Set our lot with them forever so that we may never be put to shame,for we have put our trust in you. Blessed are you, O Lord, the support and stay of the righteous.

14. Return in mercy to Jerusalem your city, and dwell in it as you have promised. Rebuild it soon in our day as an eternal structure, and quickly set up in it the throne of David. Blessed are you, O Lord, who rebuilds Jerusalem.

15. Speedily cause the offspring of your servant David to flourish, and let him be exalted by your saving power, for we wait all day long for your salvation. Blessed are you, O Lord, who causes salvation to flourish.

16. Hear our voice, O Lord our God; spare us and have pity on us. Accept our prayer in mercy and with favor, do not turn us away from your presence empty-handed, for you hear the prayers of your people Israel with compassion. Blessed are you, O Lord, who hears prayer.

17. Be pleased, O Lord our God, with your people Israel and with their prayers. Restore the service to the inner sanctuary of your Temple, and receive with favor both the fire offerings of Israel and their prayers. And let our eyes behold your return in mercy to Zion. Blessed are you, O Lord, who restores his divine presence to Zion.

18. We give thanks to you that you are the Lord our God and the God of our father s forever and ever. Through every generation you have been the rock of our lives, the shield of our salvation. Blessed are you, O Lord, whose Name is the Beneficent One, and to whom it is fitting to give thanks.

19. Grant peace, welfare, grace, loving kindness and mercy to us and to all Israel your people. ….Blessed are you, O Lord, who blesses his people Israel with peace.

Let us pass over the incorrigible ethnocentrism that characterizes this prayer (us ... .us ...... us ....) and over the usual and too human selfishness of the applications No. 16 and 19 and let us focus on the case of the prayer No. 12 the birkat Haminim which is often translated as "Blessing of the heretics." A blessing provided, of course, not to be a member of the people who are targeted by it.

The Birkat Haminim was improved or composed in the late first century, time from which its recitation became mandatory. This is an imprecation against the minim ( "heretics") the perushim and the malshinim calling for their prompt disappearance. In one of its variants of the third century, it targets particularly the notsrim.

The perushim in question, of course, are not the Pharisees.

As for malshinim it is a Hebrew word meaning "betrayers, informers).

But who are the Minim ??? The term "minim" is used in the Talmud to designate all kinds of dissidents from the Pharisaic orthodoxy, for example those who claimed to give the Ten Commandments pre-eminence over the rest of the Torah. If in the twelfth century, Moses Maimonides enumerates five kinds of them in his Mishneh Torah, the Jerusalem Talmud itself maintains the existence of twenty-four kinds of minim.

The fact that the different versions of the Talmud emphasize the obligation for every Jew to utter this twelfth "blessing" shows that it was to exert a strong moral pressure on every Jew able to be inclined to follow some of the groups from now on called minim.

CAUSES AND REASONS FOR THE APPEARANCE OF THE BIRKAT HAMINIM IN THE SHMONEH ESREH (EIGHTEEN BLESSINGS).

Some people, and particularly Christian criticism, have long claimed that this word targeted Christians specifically. It appears that it then designated any heretic or dissident from the point of view of the Talmudic School in question.

From an unknown date, but located after the destruction of the Temple (70) and probably after 90, the Birkat haMinim will explicitly target notsrim in addition to minims. But rather than concluding, as did the Fathers of the Church, that this proved the hostility of the Jews towards Christians, it is necessary to analyze the stages, the modalities and the reasons for this separation.

N.B. François Blanchetiere believes that this measure was imposed only very gradually because the Pharisees Rabbis of Yavne were far from controlling all Palestinian Judaism and a fortiori the Judaism in Diaspora.

The Birkat Haminim, of course, is therefore an addition that the context of the time explains, the relations increasingly strained between Orthodox Jews and Christians.

As far as we can judge from the Jewish tradition, around 90-95, the Chief Rabbi of the Yavneh School in Palestine, Gamaliel II, would have wanted to reactivate the text of the Birkat Haminim then fell into disuse.

The simplest version of this curse is that contained in the "Palestinian" writings of the geniza or "sacred dustbin" in Cairo.

"For the apostates let there be no hope. And let the arrogant government be speedily uprooted in our days. Let the noẓerim and the minim be destroyed in a moment. And let them be blotted out of the Book of Life and not be inscribed together with the righteous. Blessed are you, O Lord, who humbles the arrogant.” In the[Jewish] literature of Palestine, both at the time of the Tannaim as that of the Amoraim, the word min was used to refer sectarian Jews, that is to say opponents to the Pharisee or Tannaite Judaism never non-Jews, while in the literature of Babylonia this word was sometimes used to designate non-Jews.

A passage of the tract Berakhot mentions that the "blessing" of the minim was then merged with that of the Perushim ( "separated dissidents"). In short, the 12th blessing, called today "of the minim" therefore existed previous to this rewriting.

Its rewording contributed thus, and that was certainly its goal, to create an orthodoxy in Judaism which, before the time of Yavneh, was composed of multiple tendencies and movements. The "Heretics,” whatever they are, being now faced with the choice either to curse themselves by saying Amen at the end of the prayer, or not to come to the synagogue.

From an unknown date, but after the destruction of the Temple (70) and probably after 90, the Birkat Haminim will explicitly target the Nozerim in addition to the Minim.

According to testimonies of the third and fourth centuries, especially those of the Fathers of the Church, the curse would have particularly targeted the "Christians" of Jewish origin, the Nazarenes called Notsrim in Hebrew. "Notsrim" is indeed the plural form of "Nazarenes” in Hebrew (Greek nazoraioi), as Yeshu ha-Notsri is the Hebrew form of Jesus of Nazareth (Greek Iesous ho Nazôraios) and Matthew, 23, 13-32, would have been a both ironic and polemical response to this Birkat Haminim.

In reality the word Notsrim refers to any possible type of "sectarian,

” knowing that then each yeshiva could excommunicate another.

+ 90. With Yohanan ben Zakkai and his followers, the synagogues in Palestine and in the Diaspora remain united by rallying to a pharisaical interpretation of the Law and of the Scripture. The whole at the price of the elimination of many centrifugal tendencies, hitherto tolerated, and of the return to translations of which the literalism was intended to supplant the Septuagint (compromised by the use that the Christians made of it).

As the other parties of the Palestinian Judaism had been destroyed by war (Sadducees, Zealots and Essenes), it was therefore a pharisaical form of the Jewish religion, focused on the sacred text, which then spread throughout the Diaspora.

Around 90, it seems, this reformation had imposed almost everywhere, and the dissidents, starting with the disciples of John the Baptist and Jesus, forced to leave the synagogues that had previously

made to them a place within them. The adoption by them of new reference writings will take into account the separation.

131. Rabbi Akiva is the last to proclaim "Messiah," a military leader, Simon, nicknamed by him Bar Kokhba.

134. After a three-year war the Jews were crushed by Hadrian, Jerusalem was razed. 600,000 dead according to Tacitus.

135. The Jews are banned from Jerusalem renamed Ælia Capitolina. Establishment of the first Christian Bishop of non-Jewish origin. The Jewish nation disappears from (Palestinian) history. Break-up of the Jews everywhere in the ancient world (Jerusalem being from now on prohibited to them). Talmudic comments on the Torah and observance of the rituals become the only basis of the Jewish community. The messianic hope abandons its earthly claims for a mystic of the Law and of the text, again become obscure, and which is to be constantly reinterpreted (Mishnah and Gemara, Kabbalah). The last known and globally spread version of this religion will be called "Judaism" from the name of the country, Judah, where it was founded and developed around the Jewish religious hierarchy in Jerusalem.

This people will not have a racial, biological, basis, but a sectarian basis, founded only on the common law which is an authority, and accepting at least until the twelfth century the conversion of many strangers ( Ashkenazi). Modern Judaism begins.

THE VARIOUS BRANCHES OF JUDAISM

IN THE FIRST CENTURIES.

There were Jewish colonies a little everywhere in Asia Minor and several tens of thousands of Jews lived in Rome. The Jews of Mesopotamia, those of Egypt also, were more numerous as those in Palestine. These people, deprived of any political unity, was very divided on the cultural level, the ones speaking Aramaic, the other Greek. Even in Palestine, where the Aramaic prevailed, the Jews were scattered in very divergent groups. The members of these groups represented only a minority and in practice seem to have felt a deep contempt for the majority of the population, considered by them as too lukewarm in the practice of the mosaic religion.

The themura, on the basis of a permutation table, makes it possible to replace a Hebrew letter by another, in order to reveal a different meaning. A Hebrew text thus has always two senses, a normal exoteric meaning and an esoteric meaning founded on the Kaballah.

The gematria brings into play the figures allocated to the letters of the Hebrew of course, alphabet , Hebrew of course, (from the Aramaic alphabet, itself from ... the Phoenician alphabet?)

The notarikon is the method by which the initial, medial or final letters of several words, are grouped to form one or more others of them.

Such verbal acrobatic feat often justify what is called in Hebrew the midrashim, i.e., some bringing together, artificial and forced, poetic imagination helping, between, however, very different situations. To some extent typical profiles. The midrashim were written in Hebrew or Aramaic language. They are various texts, reflection and comment, or other work about the Jewish biblical texts. They should not be mixed up, of course, with copies, extracts or quotations, from the Jewish Bible, but some of them, many, were then included in the corpus of Christian texts known with the name of Gospels.

The Bible being in fact only a compilation of very diverse literary kinds and containing contradictions; the Bible being only a more or less well-successful syncretism (from the Sumerian Babylonian myths to the Persian myths through those of Egypt, Midian or of elsewhere); there is no one of its texts which did not feed a considerable mass of interpretations as divergent as peremptory. This heterogeneity of the sources (the Bible having been, moreover, reworked many times over centuries) is the cause of innumerable interpretations or comments.

The idea of a savior delegated by God to help men (the Messiah, in Greek Christos) entered Judaism very early, since it is found in Samaritanism under the name of taheb. The taheb must return to earth to put an end to the present period of decay known as Fanuta. The new Moses will live 120 years and will found a new kingdom marked as the first time by the divine favor (Rahutah). It will last for centuries.

This idea was to circulate among the Jewish people BEFORE THE EXILE TO BABYLON. Probably coming from Egypt or Persia.

But about this Messiah, the savior of mankind, or only of believers, two theses will quickly clash.

For some, this savior must be a mere mortal, although guided, inspired and helped by God to come to the aid of his people. Samaritan and Orthodox Jewish design of the Messiah.

For others this savior must have only the appearance of a man, for he will be in reality a being of a purely spiritual nature, a kind of angel. Gnostic idea of the angel-messiah or angelos christos...

This idea, which will thus appear before the Christian era, will dominate all the thought of nascent Christianity (Marcion) until the appearance, in the 3rd century, of a resolutely hostile current which will endow this messiah with a body of man to justify the crucifixion (Irenaeus and Tertullian).

THE SAMARITANS.

People of the area of Samaria, north of modern Israel.

The problem when we talk about Samaritans is that we very quickly come up against very different and even contradictory notions or images.

The first series is what we could call the Samaritans of the Four Gospels, a series which has its coherence, but coherence perhaps due to the mere fact that they are characters of the New Testament.

The second series are the Samaritans as they appear in the testimonies provided by this micro-religious community (800 people) itself: the last true Hebrews or Israelites descended from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh :

The third way of seeing things is that provided by present-day Judaism, which speaks of them under the name of Shomronim or Cutheans in the Talmud, they are half-breeds of Hebrews and non-Jewish foreigners who settled in Samaria after the fall of the northern kingdom called for all complicate " Israel " and who mixed everything from the religious point of view (paganism Moses, etc.).

Let us now try to see things from above in order to draw a portrait that can explain the appearance of these three different series of testimonies, each with its own problems, and we are thinking here of the Samaritans or she Samaritans besides who appear in the Christian New Testament....

The worship of Anat Yaho, become later Yhw the single, borrowed from the pagans in the country of Midian, was more firmly established in the South, in Judaea, whose temporal and spiritual capital was Jerusalem, that in the regions of the North, Samaria and Galilee. Whereas the nebiim and other visionaries of Judaea exalted the greatness of Yhwh continuously; Samaria, itself, had kept a at the same time single (El) and multiple (Elohim), God, the worship of Astarte, and agrarian deities, even some others; equated with foreign divinities by the Judeans repatriates coming back from their Exile in Babylon in - 538. (Benoth, Nergal and Ashima, Nibhaz, Tartak, Adrammelech and Anammelech, according to 2 kings 17, 30-34.) These Samaritans were the descendants of the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh remained on the spot after the deportation of the other Hebrews in Babylon. Their temple, of which that of Jerusalem was the great rival, was located on the Mount Gerizim.

The Judeans come back from Babylon having become very different from those who had left in exile fifty years earlier, their return therefore could not lead to a reunification of the from now on two separate peoples.

Whereas the Jews of Judea, Sadducees and Pharisees, will make their faith in a single God or Demiurge the token of the salvation that he will bring to their people; the Jewish Samaritans, often less hostile to the Hellenization of their country, will attach more significance to the woman, to the individual, and to knowledge (Simon of Samaria and more precisely of Gitta, died in Rome circa 65).

THE OFFICIAL RELIGION (THE STATE RELIGION).

The Sadducees (from the Hebrew Tseduqim. From Zadok last “Aryan” priest of Jerusalem). 2nd century before our era - 1st century after.

The fullest of its privileges group composed by priestly families exerting their functions in the Temple of Jerusalem and descending from the last Hittite pagan priests of Jerusalem (Zadok). The gifts offered to the Temple and the sacrifices of animals whose blood likes to YHWH (the legend on the motives of the murder of Abel by Cain was invented only to justify this practice) had enriched them considerably. This very conservative group was, however, that which was opened the most to the Hellenistic influences.

There does not exist strictly speaking a Sadducean theology apart from a cosmogony fixed by the Genesis.

In their eyes, the regular celebration of the worship in the sanctuary chosen by God, was enough. II was therefore essential that the persons in charge of the Temple and of its management remain in close relationships with the political authorities, so that those respect and protect the pertaining to worship life, including the pilgrimages. The other aspects of the Law were understood especially as ritual rules intended to preserve the purity of the people for worship. The moral and social interpretation of the commands seemed to them hardly justified. Moreover, the Sadducees accepted only partially the authority of the writings of the prophets, and regarded only the Pentateuch as true Holy Scripture.

For the Sadducees, whose temporal power was exerted thanks to the functioning of the Temple and the sacrifices which were achieved there, the worship was therefore as a government. Let us say that they were civil servant priests, a little as in the Roman Vatican currently.

Literalistic and conservative Jewish theologians, the Sadducees do not accept the oral tradition and the freer or more intellectual interpretation of the Pharisees. They believe neither in the immortality of the soul nor in the resurrection of the dead. The soul survives the death of the body in no way and disappears with it. The notion of individual salvation therefore does not exist. Or more exactly it merges with the salvation of the chosen people that God admits for the Jews as a nation.

But the rules of behavior fixed by the Deuteronomy are often circumvented by the priests of the temple of Jerusalem, as by those who offer sacrifices to YHWH. Many prophets therefore remind of the fact that such failures cause the anger of God. The nature very largely no longer sacred of the Sadducean priests is implied by the charge of Epicureanism that in their connection the Pharisees utter, as by the remarks ascribed to the new Joshua (Jesus).

The role admitted for the woman seems to be more important among the Sadducees than among the Pharisees, the Essene-Baptists, or the proto-Christians.

The Sadduceism does not neglect the care it is licit to have for her pleasure and her freedoms.

Against this Sadducean Epicureanism will rise up the ascetic movements, kinds of fundamentalism for which the only sacrifice pleasant for God is the immolation of the desires in the name of the faith and of religious enthusiasm. This current will be continued in the Essenism and the Baptist doctrines.

The movements of religious piety which revive against the Sadducees a faith in YHWH of which they would have been unworthy (we know very few things about them in reality) will make the Palestine of this time a chosen ground for the religiosity in search of a Messiah having to restore Israel in his obedience to Yhwh.

THE OTHER CURRENTS. GNOSIS AND DUALISM.

The word “gnosis” (“gnosis” in Greek) means “knowledge.” But it is not a question here of a simple knowledge. In a rather general way, those who are called “Gnostic” formed groups or Schools which thought they held a revealed knowledge, at the same time saving and secret. Intellectuals having more or less studied philosophy, the Gnostics sought this “knowledge” with obvious mystical or religious concerns. The Gnosticism is a philosophical –religious doctrine whose members sought the most complete knowledge possible of God. For the gnosis the salvation lies initially in this knowledge and then only in a certain morality.

The Gnostics have a place separate in the history of the thought. Very free with the sacred texts, they were neither philosophers nor priests. They did not have less, at their time, a large influence, considering the fierce combat that the future official Christianity will fight against them later, as of the 2nd century.

The Gnosticism is attached to the general movement of syncretism which wanted to melt together the various philosophical or religious systems of paganism. Doctrines of “release” through knowledge, therefore reserved for the only comrunos (initiated), the Gnosticism is connected with the secret “mysteries” of the Greeks or of the Eastern ones. The spiritual world emanates from a primary principle (God) through abstract beings, the aeons, Greek word which means time, eternity or power. As for the matter, as in the Greek philosophers, it remains unintelligible, unexplainable: it is a scandal for the thought. It comes either from a mistake, or from a fall of the last spiritual aeon. It is therefore mainly bad, as then the Manicheans will claim it besides. But a redemption, with return to the primary principle, can restore the lost harmony.

The distant origins of Gnosticism are very badly known. It is a phenomenon former to the beginnings of Christianity and which still causes many interrogations. In the 19th century, it was thought that these orientations had their source, either in Greek philosophy, or in the religion of old Iran. Today, although admitting the possible importance of the Greek or Eastern sources, one is more circumspect and more moderate.

It seems that we may speak at the beginning of an Iranian-Babylonian gnosis, but there was also very early an Egyptian , or Alexandrian, gnosis.

The Egyptian group offers more varied and more ambitious doctrines; it finds in Alexandria a favorable background ,with philosophical culture major than in Syria, and a freedom of teaching much larger. Is attached indeed to this gnosis all the hermetic literature, which, to be generally later in Egypt it is believed , should not have had less, in this country, very distant origins.

When the sources of certain speculations are sought, for example the character of the primordial Man, or of the “monogenes” Son, of the Only Son, we notice some analogies with the other systems. There is the trace, in other circles, some philosophical circles for example, particularly in Alexandria, and well before Christianity, of somewhat similar speculations; who could come from Iran or from certain philosophical movements, and of which the goal is to answer the fundamental questions that Theodotus expressed quite before us.

Who are we? What we have become??

Where we have been cast out ??

Where are we hastening to? Of what we have been redeemed??

What are the generation and regeneration??

The answer to these questions is precisely the contents of the gnosis.

The Jewish Gnostic current will defend the idea that there exist two gods, A bad God creator of the missed world which is ours (the demiurge), and a good God, higher, unknowable and inaccessible.

The Gnostic Jews were characterized by their reinterpretation of the Genesis, particularly of the chapters I to IV (the myth of the creation and of the fall). There exist several versions of their cosmogonic concept of emanation, variants in which we find many common elements.

The original uncertainty between El, the shape of God in the singular, and Elohim the form in the plural, could indeed only cause many and many speculations blaming the monolatry of the Jewish orthodoxy, whether it is Sadducean or Pharisaical.

This Jewish Gnosticism is distinguished from the Greek philosophy, and by its starting point, which is not the pure reason, and by its form, which is a symbolic mythology. It also differs from Eastern wisdom…

The creation according to the Sumerian -Babylonian myth, even re-examined and corrected by the Jewish intellectuals in exile at Babylon, does not remain less completely illogical and the demiurge

who took the initiative of it is basically in this fable only an odd and cruel being (lead us not into temptation isn't? Still indefatigably repeats the Christian prayer called “Our Father”).

There is nothing to expect from first, and neither the sin, nor its discharge, have a sense, since, cause of the evil, his justice is only a cynical claim.

The dualism, object of horror for every State religion , fatally monolatrous, will develop among Hebrews as a dispute of the social monolithism, starting from two basic reflections.

God is not single since he is, as Elohim, several divinities (Elohim is indeed a plural).

Part of these deities of angel type was led to rise against his authority, and he precipitated them, like Adam, in the state of forfeiture which is the earthly condition.

This current of thought, dualistic in fact, therefore will maintain, as we saw it, that there exist two gods.

One of bad nature, the demiurge, created a bad and completely missed world. It is the creating god of the Bible or the deposed archangel called Lucifer, Satan, etc.

The other, of a perfect kindness, is a higher god, foreign to the world, unknowable and inaccessible, located out of every reach and of every knowledge. It is in no case the God mentioned in the Bible as having created this world.

This idea of good God, located out of the world, and of bad God, creator and Master of the universe, encourages, of course, to design a multiplicity of intermediaries. The benevolent angels and the savior Messiahs; kind Seth, Cain, the new Adam, the snake Nahash, Sophia the Wisdom (Greek version of the Jewish Achamoth or chokhmah, i.e., of the spirit, the word ruhah being feminine in Hebrew), or Prunikos, Jesus, Melchizedek, or the God-man of Simon Magus (whereas the true Jews, themselves, will be still hostile to this idea).

It can happen indeed that an emanation of this God of goodness is detached from him, and goes down on Earth in order to bring to men the comforting light of a hereafter they can reach by giving up the bad and cruel world. A Messiah incarnates is then embodied in a human appearance, then, dying to his earthly envelope, ascends back in order to sit at the right-hand side of God. This resembles much obviously, the future ideas of certain Christians on the subject.

THE HEDONIST GNOSTICS.

Called thus because they do not reject systematically the pleasures and regard sexuality as natural, what makes them, of course, considered as immoral in the eyes of those who consider on the contrary that the “flesh” is the source of every sin. Contrary to the Gnostic Christians, the Hedonist Gnostics do not preach martyrdom. The philosopher Simon Magus, a contemporary of Jesus, is considered as having been the initiator, but it is undoubtedly inaccurate.

SIMON OF SAMARIA OR MAGUS AND THE SIMONIANS.

A Samaritan philosopher of the first years of our era died in Rome circa 65.

A series of fragments of the 2nd century quoted in the Philosophumena by Hippolytus and grouped together under the name of "Apophasis Megale" or "Great Revelation" is attributed to him, but some historians believe that Hippolytus describes here rather a later and more developed version of Simonism. According to them, the original doctrines were simpler, closer to the image given by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus.

Let us confine ourselves for the moment to the fragments that Hippolytus (Philosophumena) has preserved for us.

His system did not correspond to a religion in a strict sense of the term and was even passably irreligious. The fragments of its work which were preserved suggest that he identifies God with an uncreated flow of life and that becomes similar to God the one who becomes aware of such a presence in him.

This great Samaritan philosopher did not make a literal reading of the Genesis, but interpreted it as a description of the conception of the child in the womb of the mother.

His teaching, without being atheistic, fell more within philosophy than within religion, a kind of Nietzscheism where the will to live would have supplanted the will for power. In Simon the magician, the Faith is indeed only a phenomenon of possession, a feeling of power that we can translate by the Polynesian word “mana” (See his concept of Megale Dynamis, or Great Power, in Greek).

His cosmology, such as it is released from the quoted extracts, to disparage them, by the early Christians, reveals a thinker concerned with rationality; but also concerned to find for Mankind a liberating path based on his design of the descent of the soul/mind in the matter. A gravity of the soul/mind that he equates with love.

When we read the Bible and especially the Genesis, we learn in it that Yahve, Jehovah or Elohim, in short that the God-or-Demon of the Jews, is the creator of this world.

However this God-or-Demon to what does he spend his time? To harass Man and mankind. He creates Adam then Eve, places them in the Garden of Eden, but to prohibit at once to them the main thing: the knowledge of Good and Evil. After what, once the first human couple driven out of this Paradise, he does not cease tracking their descendants, multiplying the prohibitions for them, threatening mankind with his wrath, until the day when, through the Flood, he will destroy it. But that is not enough for him and he will again spread fire, blood and calamities, on the second mankind descending from Noah. It is a "vigilante" god-or-demon, i.e., a god who punishes any violation of the laws, some of which are incomprehensible or scandalous, that he himself has enacted, sometimes punishing them himself, a cosmic tyrant whose intransigent authoritarianism indisposes the angels themselves (for instance Lucifer), and who intervenes on Earth only to thwart human evolution. In reasoning in this way, Simon neither doubts nor questions the reasons for this aggressive behavior; he simply notes that this image of a vengeful God-or-demon, hammering on the human race, is incompatible with that of a good God, a friend of man, creator of the life. He therefore concludes from that - since this world and this Mankind , whose history is inaugurated in crime and blood, are the obvious work of the god-or-demon of the Jews -; that the latter is not the true God of Mankind, but a false god, or a demiurge, a sadistic and wicked demiurge; that the Bible describes well besides as a vindicatory, bad-tempered, easily offended and malicious, being.

Simon of Samaria was in his time a prophet as famous as Jesus. He drew crowds he was listened to and he was followed.

We have of his end two versions, quite as false and untrue one than the other.

In one of these versions St. Peter, jealous to see him succeeding in flying, assassinates him by making him crash on the ground through his prayers.

In the second one, challenged to rise from the dead like Jesus at the end of three days, he makes himself buried alive at the foot of a tree, but does not come out from it.

We can doubt the veracity of this heinous Christian propaganda (the prayer of St. Peter to make this great competing philosopher die can be equated only with difficulty to love); because many people continued to ponder or follow his teaching (the Simonians).

ADAMITES OR ADAMIANS.

As we saw it, there always existed in the Judaism a Gnostic current refusing to recognize, in the creation of this world of sound and fury, the work of a good and judicious God. A world so bad that it could only cause the revolt of the snake of the Genesis, which will come then helping Adam and Eve, but will also undergo the anger of the divine tyrant.

There existed therefore in the Palestine of this time a current of thought for which the savior was to be a reincarnation of Adam returning voluntarily on Earth in order to save the souls of his descendants, and to lead them towards the light.

This idea will be recovered by the Pauline Christian current, or at the very least by its disciple Marcion: they consider indeed both Jesus as a second Adam, bringing salvation by his exemplary atonement.

SETHIANS OR ONOLATERS..

For the Sethians the Messiah son of Man was to be a reincarnation, not of Adam, but of the son of Adam and Eve, named Seth, voluntarily gone down again on Earth in order to save the souls and to lead them towards the light. Their main figure was an ass-headed god , the donkey symbol of wisdom. From where the famous Alexamenos graffito (it represents a man in prayer in front of an ass headed crucified).

This graffito discovered in the imperial palace of Rome and dating from the 2nd century was therefore not particularly insulting. The cult of the ass or onolatry was indeed practiced at that time and even before Christianity . In Ancient Egypt, the animal was represented under the features of the god Seth and ass is called "Yahu" in Egyptian... Hence the pun with Seth son of Adam...

Tacitus attributes to the Jews a cult of the ass and gives the reason for it according to him (Histories Book V chapter 3). From the Jews this reproach, of course, passed on the heads of Christians since the first Christians were Jews...

CAINITES OR NICOLAITES ACCORDING TO TERTULLIAN..

They are known to us only through Christian sources, which obviously attribute to them as a sacred text an apocryphal gospel of Judas, dating from the second century, and which is unquestionably Gnostic.

They attributed an important role to a Celestial Mother, creator of the demiurge himself.

For the Cainites, the Redeemer Son of Man was to be a reincarnation of the son of Adam and Eve named Cain, which made them appear depraved.

If we consider them Nicolaite then we have more information about them, but are they the same men? The imposing and fascinating sum not by Thomas Aquinas but by Raoul Vaneigem our favorite Belgian author (Resistance, etc.) says little more.

THE NAASSENES also called Ophites or Perates).

More extreme still, and for whom the expected savior was to be therefore, neither Adam nor one of the sons of the first man (Seth or CaIn), but straightforwardly the snake of the Genesis (Hebrew nahash) are the Naassenians Ophites or Perates. Hippolytus preserved us a fragment of their doctrines, based on the concept of incarnation and of triad (water-fire-earth).

This sect, probably of Samaritan origin (for them indeed the Jews are a people which was chosen not by the true good god, but by the bad one, called by them Ialdabaoth Yaldabaoth Jaldabaoth); and which remained under the name of Ophites until the 4th century; attribute to the snake, avatar of the Mother Goddess-or-Demoness, a function of creation and redemption.

The creation of a bad world revolted the snake of the Genesis. By coming in the assistance of Adam and Eve, he also underwent the anger of the God-or-Demon responsible for all this waste.

The Naassenes therefore refuse to regard as good the God-or-Demon who drove out Eve and Adam from the Garden of Eden because the snake revealed to them the knowledge OF GOOD AND EVIL. These Gnostics consequently regard on the contrary the snake as the true redeemer of Mankind; since he wanted, by an initiative of really Promethean type, to reveal to men the link between the knowledge (the gnosis) and the blossoming , particularly sexual, which form, in their unity, the paradisiacal condition.

The Ophites or Naassenes went as far as paying a true worship to the snake.

One of their branches, Christianized, will identify the crucified snake with Jesus Christ, from where the representation, sometimes, of a crucified snake, in their documents. For the record, among the Sethians it was an ass, an ass-headed man.

For them, the god-or-demon of the Jews, Ialdabaoth (Son of chaos ??) is a being limited as much as selfish, father of Ophiomorphos (the serpent-shaped sdemon of all that is basest in matter. ). He orders six other evil angels… The matter gets in touch with the light through Achamoth or Chokhmah, i.-e. the spirit, the word Ruah being feminine in Hebrew, Achamoth.mother of Jaldabaoth therefore. When Achamoth went down into the chaos, the snake raised her, through disobedience, up to freedom and science. The theory of eons becomes a little more complicated among them , because they form then, with the Eternal father, a holy quaternity or holy tetrad (1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 1).

The Naassenes or Perates or Ophites become Christian, seem to have had kinship with the writers of the Gospel according to John.

THE ESSENES.

Greek Name of the “Men of the Community” or “sons” of Zadok, Baptist and Messianist.

A certain number of priests (perhaps Hassideans) secede as of the 2nd century before our era, in circumstances which are badly known for us, but undoubtedly in reaction to the evolution of the Maccabean high priest of the time: Jonathan.

Scandalized by the abuses they noted in the life of the Temple, by the compromises of the high clergy with the most various political authorities, by the concessions made to the spirit of the times, as regards liturgical calendar particularly; these monks had withdrawn in the desert of Judea, not far from the Dead Sea, and led here an ascetic life ; of which the discoveries of Qumran give us an idea much more precise than that we knew up to that point. Organized in a true monastic order with a rigorous discipline, obsessed by the need for preserving their ritual purity, the Essenes refused to join the worship of the Temple become illegitimate in their eyes. They devoted all their efforts to the meditation of the Scriptures , in which they included the writings of the prophets. Even if an Essenian movement seems to have existed in the main cities of Palestine, particularly in Jerusalem; such a movement was basically sectarian and was isolated from the mass of the Jewish population that its eschatological and

Messianic speculations overtook or that its austerity discouraged. However, its abundant literary production guaranteed to it an influence extended as far as in the Diaspora. The Essenes had probably a little everywhere various communities . There were some of them in Judea, in Samaria, in Galilee, in Syria (Damascus was perhaps one of their hotspots), in Egypt (Philo described them there under the name of Therapeutae) and perhaps also in the whole Diaspora.

Certain Samaritan beliefs influenced perhaps the Essenian doctrines.

In any case the discovery of the Essenian manuscripts in Qumran known as “Dead Sea Scrolls” in 1947, gives us of it an enough good idea. These manuscripts had crossed two thousand years of History in earthenware jars, themselves hidden in caves. In spite of the time which had devoured the contours of the scrolls, specialists succeeded in reconstituting texts and fragments of text.

To note: these manuscripts which go back roughly speaking from - 200 to + 63 of our era, and which were discovered four or five km away of the supposed place of the baptism of Jesus, never mention him.

The Essenes attached great significance to the comments and interpretations of the biblical text from where probably the spreading in their communities of many midrashim, i.e., in Hebrew, some kinds of typical profile of the Messiah to come.

We find for example in the Servant Songs (which appear in the Book of Isaiah and inspired the qumranian hymns) the following sentence: “The servant was pierced for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities….yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors “(Isaiah , 53,5-12). For the Essenes their Teacher of Righteousness will be therefore the Servant in question, persecuted by the impious priest, brutalized, executed, betrayed by his. Even if it is not completely thus that the things actually occurred.

The personal works due to the Essenes or at the very least very read in their community can be classified in two different categories.

In the first category, we find texts expressing a very orthodox thought, requiring the compliance with the rules going to the least detail. The scroll of the temple states the sacrifices (13, 9), the requirements, and claims from the monks a very rigorous respect of the law. This same rule involves, in the event of non-observance, very strict punishments, ranging from the prohibition of speaking during a certain period of time, to the banishment during several years.

In the second category, there are, on the other hand, manuscripts supporting a more astonishing thought, focusing on the essential points of the religion. They are original compositions. We find there the principal ideas founding Christianity: the preached circumcision is for example that of the heart and not of the body (Community rule 5.5, Commentary on Habakkuk 11.13), what will be a leitmotif of Saint Paul. These manuscripts also conceal other so typical sentences of the Christianity that it seems that they are drafts of epistles or of Gospels.

The scroll 4Q521 mentions for example the resurrection.

Others mention the crucifixion, the “poor in spirit.” The Essenes expect the coming of a Messiah, the Redemption and the happening of the “Kingdom.” The end of time is close when will come a perfect world. They call themselves “sons of light” and believe in the “Holy Spirit.” The Gospels therefore borrowed much from the writings of the Essenes: “He will honor the pious upon the throne of His eternal kingdom, release the captives, open the eyes of the blind ... He shall heal the critically wounded, He shall raise the dead, He shall bring good news to the poor.” Such are some of the topics found in their texts.

In the same way for the Beatitudes the scroll 4Q525, written around - 150 (an example among others) presents striking resemblances with the Gospel of Matthew 5,3-12 which reports the history of Jesus, however, theoretically born much later!!

Let us also quote the scroll 4Qbeat:

Blessed is the man who has attained Wisdom -and walks in the Law of the Most High- Blessed is the man who tells truth with a pure heart -and does not slander with his tongue….Blessed are those who seek her [wisdom] with pure hands-and do not pursue her with a treacherous heart…”

Such examples show that the later message that we will find in the Gospels is the result of an elaborate continuous midrashic reflection in Essenian circles or at least in a circle made receptive to their preferred topics.

In the texts of Qumran, indeed the Messiah according to Essenes must be “He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the bent… And the Lord will accomplish glorious things which have never been for He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good news to the poor.” (4Q521 fragment 2: Messianic Apocalypse).

The “Good News,” it is what is called Gospel in Greek language. As for the new “covenant ” about which certain texts speak otherwise, it is nothing else only the concept of New Testament, which will

also be that of the Christian Marcion later. And the common points do not stop with these simple philosophical resemblances.

The Christians think that Jesus must return at the time of the Apocalypse and in the Gospel according to John the intervention of Christ is again announced: he will be the last Pastor of Mankind. However such a character is also mentioned by the Essenes in the manuscript 4Q534-536.

Four manuscripts, the Damascus Document, Habakkuk's Pesher, the Pesher of the Psalms, and Micah's Pesher,

evoke a central character, but that it is difficult to identify given the state of the texts and who is referred to as Moreh ha-tsedeq. This master seems to have been a historical figure who really lived and came to a tragic end at a date that is there also difficult to determine, especially if there are several masters of justice and not only one. Certain texts discovered in Qumran therefore contain a “Christology” before the word is invented referring to the Teacher or Righteousness, this Christ of the Essenes crucified by the impious priest, and whose return is to coincide with the end of time.

As the Essenes consider, moreover, that the soul is immortal, for the author of these texts , there will be therefore also resurrection of all the righteous persons, who will then be rewarded for their virtue, in the New Jerusalem.

The Hymns in the glory of the Essenian teacher of Righteouness do not present his sufferings explicitly as what will redeem the sin of the other men, but it is incontestably a fundamental doctrine in the sect. Their Christ to them was executed circa - ? before our era, but the Essenes expect his return, “and times are closed.”

The Essenes also believe in the concept before the word is invented of Antichrist or Anti-Christ.

Their doctrines seem - and that in absolute opposition with the Jewish orthodoxy of Judea - marked by a certain dualism, let us say a mitigated dualism, that which we guess in the Gospels and the Epistles from James and John. The Essenes consequently will postulate the existence of a good God, mandator of a savior bearing the Good News (Gospel) and of an evil God, demiurge, creator of the universe.

Material organization.

The Teacher of Righteousness was a great founder of Churches. “And you will set the foundation [of my qahal, Hebrew word for Greek ekklesia therefore for church] on a rock ” says the Hymn 14 of Qumran (1QH14). Expression that will take over the team of Christians of the second generation having worked out the Gospel ascribed to Matthew (16.18) through a play on words with the baldness of Simon-Peter – his head was bald like a stone -; wrongfully ascribed, afterwards, to Jesus himself (you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Qahal = Church).

The Essenes assemblies gather the faithful ones under the authority of an overseer, assisted by the old ones, presbuteroi, or presbyters =priests therefore, in Greek language.

As among the Pharisees, the first places among them are indeed reserved for the elderly people. One of them is “Supervisor.” He has to behave like a shepherd. It is besides the title which the Judeo-Christian text ascribed to Hermas uses, the “Shepherd,” written around 150. The supervisor or Shepherd is also designated by the words of Greek origin: archon or episcopus (bishop). “Wherever there be ten men who have formally enrolled in the community, we also read in the Manual of discipline or Rule of the community, of the Essenes, one who is a priest is not to depart from them. When they sit in his presence, they are to take their places according to their respective ranks.”

The Essenes also attached great significance to the sacred banquet, during which bread and water (or wine) were offered in division, or as a token of commensality, to the members of the assembly. A meal in honor of the Teacher of Righteousness of whom they expected the return. The Christian symbolic system will make it the Last Supper.

It could not be a question, for the Essenes, to revoke the rituals of circumcision and of Sabbath, of the Jewish religiosity, but they rejected nevertheless the traditional sacrifices offered to the temple of Jerusalem by the established priestly caste; they thought that the only sacrifice pleasing to God was that the individual agrees, following the example of their Master crucified around - ?.

The baptism is not specifically Christian. Jewish orthodoxy always had recourse to baptism. The converts were circumcised then were immersed in a bath which purified them.

But among the Essenes the baptism was already a true rite of passage, a conversion to another life, turned towards the renouncement. Archeologists discovered in Qumran a large number of swimming pools for the neophytes choosing to rejoin the community.

Johanaan known as John the Baptist, had to be one as of them (at least in the beginning).

The Essenes, on the other hand, excommunicated the persons guilty of serious errors according to them (blasphemes, heresy), the thing is mentioned quite plainly in the Manual of Discipline or Rule of the community, i.e., concretely drove them out of their community.

For the Essenes, the bad likings, the predisposition to sin, is in each man, it is the “flesh.” They grant to the pleasure of the senses only the rudimentary exercise of the nutritive and reproductive function. With the Essenism (and the Baptist doctrines which will follow), the fear of the woman and of the physical love will reach this height which is often found in the fundamentalist movements. The Essenian current makes abstinence and continence, or prohibition of any sexual intercourse, the condition through which the impure man reaches holiness. Society without money nor loves, the Essenes require an absolute chastity, and tolerate the coupling only with an aim of procreating, to perpetuate the group. Christianity will remember it.

Come in the area of the Dead Sea (in Qumran) in the 2nd century before our era, as we saw it; the Essenes were dislodged from it by the Romans between 66 and 70 of our era, during the crushing of the revolt of Judeans against the Roman Empire.

Some of them, called in Hebrew out of mockery the ebbyonim or ebionites (“the beggars” John Toland writes excellently in his Nazarenus of 1710) were in favor of a voluntary poverty, just like the Nazarenes (whose Johanaan known as John the Baptist was one of the most outstanding figures, but the apostles James and Simon-Peter were also members of them).

This radical current of the Essenism (we find indeed in the Dead Sea Scrolls very clear allusions to the ebbyonim); is therefore the source , through the Baptist, one of their dissidents, of the Christian movements also called and just like them, later, Ebionites or Nazarenes.

Preaching asceticism, chastity and voluntary poverty, the Essenes formed a dissidence of Judaism, hostile to the Pharisees, stigmatized by them for their laxism, and to the Sadducees, to whom they reproached their wealth.

The idea to organize oneself in a community made of faithful giving up the possession of the tangible properties goes back to the Essenes who were the first inspirers of it.

The Essenism of the first half of the 1st century was undoubtedly divided into several branches.

There were the pacifists, but also the members, or at the very least the sympathizers, of the Zealot guerilla, fighting against the Romans and the Jews collaborating with them (Essenes scrolls were found in Masada).

The Essenes lived as a community, they observed chastity, they did not have wives. They practiced the blessing of bread and wine (Manual of discipline or Rule of the community); they were baptized; they prohibited any animal food except fish.

All that resembles extremely the Christian practices of Antiquity.

There is therefore already in this end of the first century before our era a forking towards the almost -Christianity. Between the end of the Essenism and the beginning of Christianity, there is such a disconcerting coincidence that certain people think that some Essenes, since they ceased being officially called “Essenes, were regarded as “Christians.”

Some deny or minimize the resemblance and coincidences completely , and want to see in them only ultra-orthodox Jews, having relationship with the early Christians.

Others like the great Irish bard John Toland want to see in these Essenes the early Christians, and to make purely and solely the Jesus of the Gospels an ultimate echo of the “teacher of Righteousness” of this sect, executed around....B.C. in any event.

Others finally think that this identification with the Essenian “Teacher of Righteousness” would be better appropriate to the first pope of the Judeo-Christian Church: James, the brother of Jesus.

The barbarian druids of the West that we are, have in no way to enter these Byzantine bickering. It is up to each one to form an opinion for himself in this quest for the Grail.

What is certain, it is that many aspects of Essenism strike particularly by their resemblance with Christianity, and that you cannot claim decently that it is due to the simple chance. There was at least influence of the Essenism on the first founders of the Christianity and particularly on Johanaan, known as John the Baptist.

Most plausible indeed is that this John was a dissident of Essenism, and that it is therefore the Essenism which would explain the passage from Judaism to Christianity.

THE EBIONITES.

We find in the Dead Sea Scrolls allusions to the ebbionyim or the poor, in Hebrew. “Beggars” John Toland says excellently in his Nazarenus of 1710. It is perhaps a particular sect of Essenism, or halfway between the Essenes and the proto-Christians, practicing the voluntary poverty.

It seems indeed, as we saw it, that there existed within the Essenism a radical current attached to this kind of life.

The great Gaelic bard makes the Ebionites or Nazarenes some Judeo-Christians (some Christians from the Jews John Toland writes textually) but considering the plan adopted for our work we will speak again of all this in our opuscule about or more exactly against, Christianity).

THE NAZORENES.

To avoid mixing up with the city of Nazareth which did not exist as such in the time of Jesus, we will not repeat here the word Nazarenes used by Toland in his edition of 1710, but we will use instead that of Nazorenes which seems to us more judicious.

In reality, contrary to what John Toland affirms, nazir (or Nazirite or Nazarite) simply means "consecrated" or "separated.” This is the name given to the Jews who took a vow of asceticism, according to Numbers (6.1 to 21). The most representative figure of the Nazirship in the Bible is Samson. At the beginning of our era, among Jews, those requirements, although seeming (numerically) little followed are still in force and those who follow them, do it with zeal.

In all pious families (and many were so), one of the children had to be a nazir. Was nazir usually the first-born child (girl or boy). He was so for a longer or shorter period, to tell the truth as he had not revoked this vow. If the elder refused or could not, the following child took over and so on. Because this vow involved many obligations: to be white dressed, to absorb no wine nor meat, to wear no leather, to have hair or nails never cut, not to fornicate, not to commit violence through acts nor in words, etc. This particularly binding requirement for young or even for mature people (especially over time); seems, over the centuries, to have gone backwards, to a mere custom, more or less neglected over time (to take one example, a little like religious processions today). John the Baptist was undoubtedly one of them.

The Hebrew word nazir produces "naziraios" in Greek then "Nazorene" then "Nazarene.” The sect is evidenced by a writing of Pliny the Elder as of the years - 50 (Book V, Natural History). It was perhaps also a movement close to the Essenes.

Around - 100 before our era, the Nazorenes work on the Hebrew Bible and get to extract a proto-Christian midrash i.e., a profile of the savior or messiah who is to come and save Israel ( even Mankind?) Their production of texts is abundant and spread everywhere. They are the primitive proto-Christians (out of Christianity). These wordings will be used in the writing of the Gospels. The original Christianity will sometimes be designated by the (Sadducees) Orthodox Jews or the Pharisees, as the heresy of the Nazorenes. When the word Nazorean, applied to the first Christians (John 19,19) will cease to be understood in the fourth century, it will be written Nazarene, and sensed as meaning "from a town called Nazareth," what changes everything.

The Greek form Nazoraios is explicitly applied to Christians in the person of the first of them in some texts. Noticeably in John 18,7; 19,19: Jesus the Nazorene , King of the Jews. Nazorene is also used by Peter himself about Jesus in Acts of the Apostles (2, 22; 3, 6; 4,10). It also appears in Matthew (2, 23; 26, 71); Luke (18, 37) as well as in Acts 6,14; 26, 9; 24, 5. In the plural this time: the sect of the Nazorenes.

St. Paul in Acts 24, 5, is indeed considered as one of the leaders of this movement by the Jewish high priest of Jerusalem-Caesarea, Ananias.

This episode is one of those most overshadowed by later Christian generations, starting from the very term nazOraios (NazOrene) who was quickly distorted in NazArene.

One of their Judeo-Christian branches (Christians from the Jews writes John Toland in the 1710 version of his Nazarenus) lasted until the fourth century of our era under the name of Elcesaites, while continuing to claim to be the followers of James and Peter.

THE MOVEMENT OF JOHANAAN KNOWN AS JOHN THE BAPTIST.

A major figure of the Nazorene movement is the enigmatic John the Baptist, a historically attested character, in non-Christian literature (a passage of the Antiquities of Jews by the historian Flavius Josephus, work completed around 93-94 of our era) but also in several passages of the New Testament.

If he enjoyed the admiration of the "common people" (he was considered a reincarnation of Elijah), he was also feared by the spiritual and political authorities. In addition to the canonical Gospels, the Jewish literature (Josephus) confirms the danger that the "Baptist" represented for the priestly caste that ruled over the temple at the time.

The origins of the Baptist are disputed. The Gospels present him as a son of the priest Zachariah officiating in the Temple (therefore member of the Sadducean class) and of Elizabeth, aunt of Mary, mother of Jesus. Thus, according to Christians, Jesus and the Baptist would be parents, "cousins" in some way. If the Baptist is of aristocratic ancestry through his father Zachariah (priesthood attested in a text mentioning him as a member of the clergy of the Temple), it is likely then that he was at odds with his social and religious original environment.

Johanaan was born a few years before our era and withdrew in the desert around the year 25 to answer atop-down call and to lead in it an ascetic life.

In circumstances that we don’t know, he got an extraordinary reputation and drew in the Judean Desert large crowds, to which he began to announce the impending visit of God to Israel. John called his hearers to an immediate repentance and offered them as a token of the forgiveness that God guaranteed them in return, a purifying bath in the Jordan. This "baptism" was to be followed by a reformation of the behavior of those who had received it.

The baptism does not mean for Johanaan the remission of sins, but an act of faith, a commitment to a life of penance, responsible for preparing the reign of God.

As we have seen it, Johanaan has certainly been a member of the Ebionite tendency of "Community of the Pure" i.-e. the Essenes, and joined their design of a clergy "dissident" of the Temple, illegitimate in their eyes. John has largely used their baptismal practices in almost identical scenes, but in a more universal vision of the baptism, since he invited all the people of Israel to the repentance and the "turnaround" of their life in order to welcome the coming Messiah . In this, the chances are high that the Baptist was at odds with the Community, and that he had been expelled from it for refusing to share the “elitist” beliefs of the Essene movement ...

Less sectarian than the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Zealots, or the Essenes, John issued to the Jewish people of Palestine a call to repentance and baptism, making everyone to benefit from the divine forgiveness. In short, he gathered all the people in front of God. But it is not a conflict between a new religion and the Judaism. A popular awakening in the Palestinian Judaism tackles vigorously the sectarian claims of the Jewish leadership groups. That is all !

There was around him a whole restlessness that endemic revolts kindled.

Around John had indeed gathered a lot of people, when hearing him speaking, were seized by the largest excitation (FLAVIUS Josephus. Antiquities of the Jews. XVIII, 116-118).

The idea reiterated by John the Baptist, as later the millenarians, that the end of time was imminent, united in the same dereliction the taste for the penance, the martyrdom and the purification at the very least moment.

Johanaan baptized in the ford of Bethabara (Aenon according to John) on the Jordan River, a few kilometers away from Qumran.

On the death of the Baptist - executed in the early thirties at the instigation of Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch of Galilee - his body was buried by his disciples in Machaerus, and his movement will break. Some remained independent. Though ignored by the Talmudic tradition, John the Baptist has a place in the Quran which reveres him as a great prophet whose the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus claims to house the grave. (There would have been in this case then transfer of the body from Machaerus to Damascus.)

DIFFERENT BAPTIST MOVEMENTS.

In the 1st century before our era existed for instance in Samaria a Baptist movement that the prophet Dosion, Dosthion or Dostan (Greek Dositheus) claimed to be a disciple of John the Baptist, whom he regarded as the true Messiah. They ate only products from the ground and lived in caves or caverns. Dositheus denied the resurrection of the body, the future destruction of the world, the last judgment, the existence of angels.

There are few years still, Mandaeans (who call themselves Nasoraye, i.e., Nazoreans) and who regard John the Baptist, known by traditions which do not come from the New Testament as their founding prophet; performed still baptisms in the Euphrates River, in Iraq and Syria.

There remain of them, scattered in southern Iraq, in the marshy areas of the Shatt al-Arab, encroaching on Iran (Khuzestan Province), three or four hundred. Mandaeans speak an archaic Eastern Aramaic dialect which is peculiar to them.

Mandaeans had, even today, a hereditary priesthood with three levels: acolytes (or deacons), priests and high priests. The baptism is their essential rite that can be renewed and that is always given in running water, or white water points as did John (the Baptist) and the disciples who followed him. After the consecration of the water, the catechumen is immersed three times. The priest then shakes the hands of the baptized person as a sign of communion then marks him with an anointing of

consecrated oil, before making him receive communion with a piece of consecrated bread and a cup of water. The Mandaeans baptize the dying and the dead to protect their souls in their ascent towards the light.

They are not Christians and are even hostile because they regard Jesus as a false disciple and Christians as heretical dissidents from the movement initiated by John.

The sacred book of this Mandaeism, that the tradition relates to St. John the Baptist, is yet very Gnostic, and this is rather amazing, but reflects a general evolution of the ideas in this part of the world.

THE HELLENISTS AND THE SEPTUAGINT.

When they study the Jewish culture of the first two centuries before our era, and particularly the attitude of the Jews with regard to the Bible, the historians used to distinguish two main tendencies. The Jews more or less recently emigrated of their original homeland, and filled with Greek influence, and the Jews remained in Palestine, whose civilization had been, for this reason, more preserved from Western influences. All and sundry looked into the Bible with as much zeal and veneration, but their interpretation showed important differences, especially in the use of allegorical interpretation. Indeed, the second ones did not practice or practiced little allegorical interpretation. It is that rabbinical mentality is little prone to allegory: the rabbis by no means seek to release from the Bible a system of wisdom which remains unfamiliar to it; they only study it to get the science of the divine word and to deduce from it all the legal regulations that it conceals. However the legal spirit routs the poetic spirit inherent and necessary to the allegory. The same does not apply to Alexandrian Judaism where an often wild allegory was the norm. This one could be as well moral as physical.

A Greek influence seems to be at the base of this mode of interpretation. Several clues show it: the fact that only the Jews become in touch with the Hellenic civilization practice this allegorical interpretation, the presence, among the Jewish allegorists, of a noticeable knowledge of the Greek thought… But there is, of this determining influence of the Greek allegory on the Jewish allegory, more eloquent and more positive clues. Indeed, several Alexandrian Jews took themselves care to note the relationship which connects the figurative interpretation that they give of their sacred texts, with the allegorical treatment that the Greeks applied to their first poets. Two nuances then are noted. Certain Hellenized Jews compare their own mysteries to the Greek myths, their allegory to the Greek allegory, to conclude that it is to themselves that the glory of the discovery comes down and to the Greeks the shame of the plagiarism. Other authors keep comparison between their own allegorical interpretation of the Bible, and the Greek interpretation of Homer and Hesiod, without claiming to have been the initiators of the Greece. To tell the truth, they do not profess more to have been the initiates of it. But their familiarity with the traditional Greek myths, the spontaneous approach through which they evoke them each time the Scripture presents with them some analogy; in a word the feeling that they give to believe in the existence of an old common mythical collection which would have received a double formulation, Homeric-Hesiodic and biblical; all these reasons result in thinking that their allegorical interpretation was influenced, not to say caused, by the Greek literary process, of which they could not be unaware. The goal that these authors pursued by amalgamating the biblical account with episodes drawn from the Homeric and Hesiodic poems was naturally to reconcile the Greek readers; by showing them that the Genesis is not the history of an imaginary people, nor even of a separate world; but that the most incredible chapters, such those of the flood and of the tower of Babel, are overlapped by the mythical data of the Greece. To complete to capture the benevolent attention of the Greeks, the surest thing, of course, was to transpose to the Bible the allegorical method that they took such an amount of pleasure to see applied to their poets.

Another form of reading is that which is attached to the signs, not initially in their relation with a signified, but in their very materiality, as signifiers. We will classify under this heading various processes. Oldest, and which does not rely only on the signifying besides, is the etymology, which will seek “the true” meaning of a word in the depths of the origin or in another language seen as original. It is a question with this process of proving by the language, categorical evidence if ever there were one.

We can also consider the words as agents of a knowledge which appears only after transposition of the letters in their numerical value. The Greek Heliodorus, who lived in the 3rd century of our era, informs us in this way that if we replace each letter of the name of the Nile by the corresponding figure (the Greeks noted the figures by means of letters of the alphabet); we find 365 , which is the number of days of a year. The gematria can therefore reveal the hidden meaning of a text. The gematria can therefore reveal the hidden meaning of a text. This research of luminous coincidences will appear all the more justified since it will be applied to sacred texts to which a divine coherence is supposed,

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coherence able to include all the dimensions of the text. It will form one of the important aspects of the interpretation of the Writing in the Talmudic tradition or among the Fathers of the Church, later.

The Septuagint.

Translation of the Jewish Bible in Greek language, which would have been carried out, according to the tradition, by 70 (or 72) Jewish well-read men in Alexandria.

Many Jewish immigrants knew no longer the Hebrew language, and wished to read their sacred texts in the language of their commercial transactions, the Aramaic remaining their daily language. A unified translation therefore was probably made at the request of the Lagid sovereign Ptolemy , anxious to know the rules of the various people which were subjected to him, as part of a reorganization of his kingdom.

The translation of the Septuagint in the 3rd century before our era was therefore marked by the passage from a Semitic language, with its shifts in meaning through alliteration and its tense particularities (Hebrew does not know the past, present or future times, but knows aspects, that is to say the difference between what is called "completed,” sometimes "perfect" and "uncompleted sometimes “imperfect”"; the completed can correspond to a present which keeps the memory of a past and which has enough to last...), the uncompleted can refer to something that has begun, something that is beginning, something that is in the process of happening or finishing, and therefore it can be translated as well by a past as by an imperfect, a present or a future) by the passage therefore to a language of the Indo-European type, more based on a rational logic than on the analogical virtue of sounds, images, or kabbalistic processes.

Behind the questions of semantics, there are the differences of structures of the thought or of its expression among Hebrews and Greeks. The same word pronounced in these two cultural universes can have a radically different meaning . From where sometimes irreducible divergences.

The Septuagint enters a vision initially stripped of its nature of sacred Jewish writing and sometimes meeting the Greek mythology, with which certain syncretisms equate it, then sanctified again when the Judeo-Christianity will undergo a Hellenization which will lead to Christianity. The Latin Translation or Vulgate will move it still more away from its origin, but will keep to it its nature of revealed and intangible truth.

However it contains very many mistranslations, having serious consequences.

The West, and it is almost comic because of that, has the extreme characteristic to be based , as far as its mentalities, its modes of feeling, thinking, judging, and acting but, perhaps also especially imagining; on a language to which it never had access, if not marginally, through translations: the Hebrew. And Christianity, core and center of this discomfort, takes on and develops almost with pleasure all the aspects of this paradox. Resulting from two corpuses not belonging to it, the Jewish one initially, then the one that Byzantium collects, it replaces them by a third one, Latin that one: no longer Hebraic, Judaic, bible, no longer a Septuagint, but a translation adaptation of both. And we witness then the incredible : the establishment of a whole ideological and fantasmatic building whose foundations were acquired on a market for used concepts or q second-hand market (by the means of a translation or of a translation of translation as regards the New Testament).

Some examples of mistranslations made by the Septuagint.

Genesis 14.13.

The Hebrew text calls Abraham a Hebrew.

But the translation of the Septuagint makes him “a migrant.”

It is not at all the same thing, but the Fathers of the Church and the modern bishops built on this word all kinds of speculations.

Isaiah 28,9-11.

The Hebrew text is a succession of syllables, perhaps some apocopes, that most modern exegetes prefer not to translate: “sav lasav sav lasav / kav lakav kav lakav ze’ er sham, ze’ er sham.”

Those who try to translate propose generally something like this:“Order on order, order on order, line on line, line on line, a little here, a little there.”

In the Septuagint that gives:

“Expect you affliction on affliction, hope upon hope: yet a little, and yet a little!! ” Origen based on that a whole theory in connection with martyrs.

In Judges 15,16-19, Samson kills his enemies with the “jaw” of an ass. The name of “jaw” was given thereafter to the place of this victory: Lehi.

Normally one should not have to translate this noun, become a proper noun, it is, however, what the Seventy did and that gave us, instead of “Then God opened up the hollow place in Lehi and water came out of it.” “And God broke open a hollow place in the jaw, and there came thence water.”

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The allegorical interpretation, with spiritual value, that the Fathers will give of that (the jaw prefigures the bones of the saints, etc.) therefore is getting to be a bit ridiculous.

The equating of Jesus with the sun which rises comes from the translation of the Hebrew word tsemah (literally what comes up, the germ) by the Greek term Anatole, which means “rising” but in the meaning of “place where the sun rises = East.”

In Isaiah 45.23b, whereas the Hebrew text is (intellectually) punctuated as follows:

“….every tongue will swear.

In YHWH alone etc.etc.”

The necessary to comprehension period, having been omitted by the Seventy that becomes for them

“… and every tongue shall acknowledge YHWH alone…” .

Editor’s note. With regard to the various names of God - and, therefore, the various designs about him - the translation of the Septuagint completed the unification and, therefore, the mixing up ; by translating by a single Greek word, theos (deus then in the Latin Vulgate) these various levels of the divine reality. And all that followed about it (theology, etc.) was therefore based on this double or triple or quadruple misunderstanding.

Idem with the Hebrew term malach which means messenger.

But there is messenger... and messenger: the messengers of God who more or less take part of his nature, and the messengers of the simple world ruler.

However in both cases, the Septuagint translated by “aggelos” from where a certain mixing up between the true “angels” and the simple ambassadors from the world rulers.

It is impossible to appreciate very precisely the role that all this could play in the formation of Christianity, but it had to be considerable.

The Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and strengthening their propaganda, gave themselves especially to adapting [to forging BERNARD Lazare says] all texts which were capable of lending support to their cause. The verses of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, the pretended oracles of Orpheus, preserved in Aristobulus and the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria were thus made to glorify the one God and the Sabbath much to the Pagans’ total amazement. Historians were falsified or credited with the authorship of books they had never written. It is thus that a History of the Jews was published under the name of Hecataeus of Abdera. The most important of these inventions was the Sibylline oracles, a fabrication of the Alexandrian Jews, which prophesied the future advent of the reign of the one God……… The Jews would appropriate to themselves even the Greek literature and philosophy. In a commentary on the Pentateuch, which has been preserved for us by Eusebius, Aristobulus attempted to show that Plato and Aristotle had found their metaphysical and ethical ideas in an old Greek translation of the Pentateuch.

The Alexandrian Jewish devoted particularly to an extraordinary work of adaptation (of falsification Bernard LAZARE) of the texts suitable to become a support for their cause.

Philo of Alexandria, about contemporary of the Christian era, practiced on a large scale the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament; either that he produced new interpretations, or that he simply took over and amplified those which were already in force in the Judeo-Hellenistic circles. According to Philo, the recourse to the allegory is essential when the literal meaning of the sacred text alone presents an insoluble difficulty, an ineptitude, a contradiction and especially an assertion unworthy of God (that is not missing in the Bible indeed). One can notice that this Philonian rule is only the transposition of a stoical principle whose best expression is due to the pseudo-Heraclitus, according to which the allegory is the indispensable antidote of the Homeric texts which, without it, would be only impiety. It should besides be noticed to what extent Philo knows the allegorical exegesis that the Greeks gave of their principal myths, either that generally, he agrees to it and takes it over, or that he rejects it. Moreover, he produces, of passages of Homer and Hesiod, various allegorical interpretations of which he seems well to be the inventor. He vows to the poets of the first centuries the greatest admiration, he defends them against the charge of impiety, he thinks that the surest means of justifying this admiration, like of ensuring this defense; is to emphasize, through allegory, the teaching hidden in their poems. But Philo does not limit himself to interpret these Greek myths according to traditional stoical patterns, nor even to propose new uses of them. He mixes them with the biblical accounts. The intimacy of Philo with the Greek culture is so deep and his desire to give of the Jewish message a presentation suitable to allure the Hellenistic reader, so powerful, that he almost comes from there to dissolve the specificity of the mosaic revelation. To merge it with the legendary data of Homer, in a single universal mythical collection , that only allegorical interpretation can save.

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THE PHARISEES.

Direct ancestors of today's Judaism given the subsequent disappearance of the Temple.

As we could see it, they also expect the Messiah (Christos/Chrestos in Greek language) who must free them from the Roman Empire.

Appeared in Palestine as of before the end of the 2nd century before our era, the Pharisees had given up only little by little to impose the Law of Moses on all the Palestinian society. We know little about their history and their ideas of before the destruction of the Temple, in 70. But it is clear that, for lack of being able to give back to the mosaic Law its eminent place in the organization of the society; the Pharisees had undertaken to make the Torah a moral law suggested to each Jew anxious to obey the divine will. They gathered therefore in a fraternity the people eager to conform to it their life. In this double intention, they made of the commands an interpretation applicable to the daily life of each one. This large effort of moral and ritual seriousness brought to them a certain admiration from the mass of the Jewish population in Palestine. But it comprised a very visible scorn with regard to the people of the country, considered by the Pharisees as neglecting its religious and moral duties. People of cities, like the puritans of the 18th century, the Pharisees scorned the farmers readily, whom they considered locked up in superstition and moral laxity. In Short, themselves too adopted a sectarian attitude.

The Pharisaism, with its angelology and its heavenly or hellish hereafter , does not go beyond a rudimentary theological stage, with an exception.

Whereas the Sadducean party, formed by the priestly civil servant, attached to preserve their privileges, under some regime in which Israel falls, is hardly concerned about resurrection or salvation, the rival party, that of the Pharisees, itself professes a new idea. Each one, after a last judgment, will recover one’s carnal envelope in the hereafter. On this point, Christians are therefore perfect Pharisees.

The Pharisees are indeed the only, in the Judaism of the time, to imagine at the same time a survival of the soul and a resurrection of the bodies; in a heavenly place, where the Righteous people are rewarded for their zeal and their sufferings on Earth (or will go to hell of course).

The Pharisaism in Palestine and in the Diaspora is not the first religion to democratize the joint reincarnation of the bodies and of the souls, the righteous persons and the unrighteous persons, whatever their social status; since the druidism in the other end of the Roman Empire also professed these doctrines. “One of the precepts they teach—obviously to make them better for war—has leaked into common knowledge, namely, that souls/minds are immortal and that there exists another life at the Manes.” (Pomponius Mela. In his book entitled in Latin De chorographia 3.2).

“But the same soul/mind governs the limbs in another world.” (Lucan. In his book entitled in Latin “Pharsalia” or “Bellum civile,” I, 450-458).

The Pharisaism is only the first religion to have placed behind all this a frightening alternative, that of the heavenly salvation or of the eternal damnation, and to have attached an essential significance to the final retribution of actions.

The Pharisees indeed chose the change of an impracticable social Law into a moral Law suggested to each member of the people.

They believe in a hereafter where each man, summoned after his death to a last Judgment, is judged according to his merits and is intended to heaven or to hell. Idea completely absent from the other beliefs in the reincarnation of the souls after death. This belief implies that the Pharisean Churches (called synagogues), at the same time pertaining to worship and social places, will carry on as far as beyond the death of the faithful their role of protection and control.

By multiplying in the Diaspora the synagogues where their doctrines imposed themselves, the Pharisees will build in a way a stateless religion and soon, after the crushing of the Jews by Hadrian in 135, a nationless religion.

THE ZEALOTS.

The Zealots, fighting against the Roman occupier, compare Rome to a capital of the vice, “the Great Prostitute” about which the apocalypse ascribed to John speaks.

They had with the rest of the Jewish population in Palestine the relations that any terrorist organization supports with the background in which it is immersed. These men who, following the example of the priest Phinehas (Numbers 25.6 to 13), replaced the inadequate authorities, to eliminate by violence the violators of the Law; tried to impose to the people a more complete observance of the commands, by making themselves popular by their acts of Anti Roman resistance. We can compare them with the groups which, in land of Islam, endeavor to impose the “sharia” as the basis of the law. Inevitably devoted to the secrecy like to a rigorous discipline, to escape repression, they thought of acting for the

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benefit of all, but lived necessarily separately , in restricted circles whose contacts with the mass of the people were rare.

CONCLUSION.

While are multiplied, as we saw it, the quarrels on the personality of the Savior who must come or return, the various Messianic currents - Adamian, Sethian, Naassene, kainite, Essene, Nazorene, Hellenist, Pharisean, etc. form rival Ekklesiai or Churches (Hebrew Qahal assembly). Each one tries to be legitimated by establishing its derivation from “the true” Messiah to come, the Lord's anointed, that the Greek translated by Chrestos or Christos.

Each one of these prophets or visionaries wants to be the man chosen by God, chosen by him to reveal to the ignoramuses the true meaning of texts of which the profundity had up to that point escaped the previous exegeses.

We witness thus successive transpositions of formulas and expressions re-examined and corrected in the light of the time.

Following the example of Hosea, of Ezekiel, of Jeremiah, which equipped with new forms the objurgations and lamentations of the past, the Adamians, Sethians, Cainites, Naassenes, Nazorenes, Hellenists, Pharisees and Essenes (just like the Judeo-Christians after them); adapt to their Messianic concern the texts of the Bible where they perceive literally (if necessary by rewriting them: midrashim) the first steps of what they announce.

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THE DIASPORA PHENOMENON ACCORDING TO SHLOMO SAND.

Everyone believes it, undoubtedly, that the Jewish people exist since it received the Torah in the Sinai, and that it is the direct and exclusive descendant from it. Each one is convinced that these people, having left Egypt, settled in the “promised land,” where was built the glorious kingdom of David and Solomon, divided then in kingdoms of Judah and Israel. In the same way, no one is unaware of that he experimented the exile twice: after the destruction of the first temple, in the 6th century before our era, then following that of the second temple, in the year 70.

A wandering of almost two thousand years followed for it: its tribulations led it in Yemen, in Morocco, in Spain, in Germany, in Poland and in the middle of Russia but it always managed to preserve the blood relationships between its distant communities. Thus, its unity was not altered. At the end of the 19th century, the conditions matured for its return in the ancient homeland.

But can the Bible be regarded as a book of history? The first modern Jewish historians, like Isaak Markus Jost or Leopold Zunz, in first half of the 19th century, did not sense it thus. In their eyes, the Old Testament was presented especially as a book of theology constituent of the Jewish religious communities after the destruction of the first temple. It was necessary to await for the second half of the same century to find historians, initially Heinrich Graetz, bearing a “national” vision of the Bible. They changed the departure of Abraham for Canaan, the exit of Egypt or still the unified kingdom of David and Solomon, in accounts of an authentically national past.

The discoveries of the “new archeology” contradict the possibility of a big exodus in the 13th century before our era. In the same way, Moses could not make the Hebrews leave Egypt and lead them towards the “promised land” for the simple reason that at the time this one… was in the hands of the Egyptians. Besides we find no trace of a slave’s revolt in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, nor of a fast conquest of the country of Canaan by a foreign element.

There does not exist either sign or memory of the sumptuous kingdom of David and Solomon. The discoveries of the past decade show the existence, at the time, of two small kingdoms: Israel, most powerful, and Judah, future Judea. The inhabitants of the latter did not undergo either an exile in the 6th century before our era: only its political elites and intellectuals had to settle in Babylon. From this decisive meeting with the Persian worships will be born the Jewish monotheism.

In the same way, it was a long time admitted that the tragic events of the year 70 (the end of the rebellion against Rome, the fall of Masada in 72, the atrocious repression which had followed from the Romans of Titus and particularly the destruction of the second temple of Jerusalem) had ringed the beginning of the end of the Jewish people in the area. According to the historian of the time Flavius Josephus, hundreds of thousands of Jews would have perished during the siege of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country, and several thousand would have been enslaved.

The final blow having been dealt in 135 with the crushing at Betar in the southwest of Jerusalem, of the last Jewish revolt led by Simon Bar Kokhba (recognized Messiah and king of Israel by the rabbi Akiva); and the destruction of the entire Jerusalem this time. Following this defeat of Bar Kokhba, Jerusalem was razed, prohibited to the Jews, and a new Roman city, Aelia Capitolina, built on its site. Become emperor, Hadrian renamed the Provincia Judea Syria Palaestina, according to the Philistines, and this name exists besides still nowadays since the political and national entity concurrent of Israel is named Palestine.

Logical Conclusion: all the Jews of Europe or of North Africa would come more or less from these two forced exiles.

The Austrian historian Shlomo Sand (born in Linz in 1946) recently called into question this generally accepted idea in his work “the invention of the Jewish people.”

Did the exile of the year 70 of our era, really take place ? Paradoxically, this “founding event ” in the history of the Jews, from where the Diaspora draws its origin, did not give food to the least work of research. And for quite a prosaic reason: the Romans never exiled people on the Eastern side of the Mediterranean.

According to Shlomo Sand indeed the Diaspora was not risen from the expulsion of the Hebrews from Palestine, but of successive conversions in North Africa, South Europe and Middle East. He affirms that the existence of the diasporas in the Mediterranean and Central Europe is the result of conversions to Judaism. For him, the exile of the Jewish people is a myth, risen from a reconstruction a posteriori, without historical base.

What underlies the thesis of Shlomo Sand, it is that the Jewish people never existed as “race people” sharing a common origin; but that it is a variegated multitude of human groups which, at different times in History, adopted the Jewish religion.

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According to Sand, among certain Zionist thinkers, this mythical design of the Jews as old people leads even to a racist thought. Case for example of Jabotinsky founder of the Irgun and of his iron wall.

Since the years 1970, in Israel, a succession of “scientific” research endeavors to show, by all the means, the genetic proximity of the Jews of the whole world. The story of the famous chromosome of Abraham is part of these racist phantasms.

But therefore when was invented the concept of Jewish nation?

Answer of Shlomo Sand. In Tthe Germany of the 19th century, at a certain moment, some intellectuals of Jewish origin, influenced by the “volkisch” 1) nature of the German nationalism; gave themselves the task of manufacturing retrospectively a people, theirs, with the idea to create a modern Jewish nation. It is only starting from Heinrich Graetz that Jewish intellectuals will start to outline a history of Judaism as a history of people; who had a national characteristic in the strictest sense of the term at the beginning, then which became a wandering people and which finally turned around to come back in its original homeland.

As we saw it higher, one of the great Zionists thinkers, Ze’ev Vladimir Jabotinsky, born in Ukraine on October 18, 1880, published in 1923 a fundamental text on this subject. The core of his reflection is the Arab resistance to the Zionism, which for him will be only able to develop with the Jewish colonization. What answer has Zionism to bring to it ?

“Emotionally, my attitude to the Arabs is the same as to all other nations – polite indifference. Politically […..] I consider it utterly impossible to eject the Arabs from Palestine. There will always be two nations in Palestine.”

But people must have no illusions: “It is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority [….] I suggest that my readers consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonization being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.”

Jabotinsky makes fun of those who would take the Arabs for “ fools, we can deceive [….] they are just as good psychologists as we are. We may tell them whatever we like, they know what we want, as well as we know what they do not want.”

Those who believe possible an agreement with the Arabs, believe that those will give their country to the Jews in exchange for the promise of the equality and of an improvement of their standard of living. For Jabotinsky, it is ridiculous, and they have basically a fundamental “contempt” for the Arab people. They finally see in them only “a corrupt mob that can be bought and sold, and is willing to give up their fatherland for a good railway system “.

Therefore the Zionism will have to impose itself thanks to an “Iron Wall.” We find here the topic of the Jewish legion, which is in the core of the political analysis of Jabotinsky: the Zionism will have to impose itself by force.

To want to build a ratio of power in the field is not peculiar to Jabotinsky. The Zionists of any obedience perceive the Jewish immigration and the Haganah as the tools of this ratio of power. The specificity of Jabotinsky lies in the brutality with which he words the problem, and in his insistence on the military part of the ratio of power to create.

For Sand, the exile of the Jewish people is in fact, at the origin, a Christian myth, that depicted this break-up as divine punishment striking the Jews for having rejected the divine message.

“I started looking in research studies about the exile from the land – a constitutive event in Jewish history, almost like the Holocaust. But to my astonishment I discovered that it has no literature. The reason is that no one exiled the people of the country.The Romans did not exile peoples and they could not have done so even if they had wanted to. They did not have trains and trucks to deport entire populations. That kind of logistics did not exist until the 20th century.”

In the absence of an exile from the Romanized Palestine, from which come then the many Jews who people the circumference of the Mediterranean Sea as of Antiquity? How to explain the appearance of million Jews all around the Mediterranean basin in the 2nd and the 3rd century?

The Jewish people were not spread, it is the Jewish religion which was disseminated. The Judaism was a proselytistic religion. Contrary to a spread opinion, there was in the former Judaism a great thirst for converting. The Hasmoneans were the first to start to cause a crowd of Jews by massive conversions, under the influence of Hellenism. They are the conversions, since the revolt of the Hasmoneans until that of Bar Kokhba which paved the way for the massive spreading, later, of Christianity. After the triumph of Christianity in the 4th century, the movement of conversion was stopped in the Christian world and there was consequently a sudden fall of the number of Jews. We can suppose that many Jews appeared around the Mediterranean became Christians. But the Judaism then started to be spread towards other pagan regions - for example towards the Yemen and

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the North of Africa. See below the famous example of the Berber queen Dihya Al-Kahina. If the Judaism did not go ahead at this time, and didn't continue to made proselytes in the pagan world, it would have remained a completely marginal religion, even would have disappeared.

To read also on the subject and particularly about the Khazar hypothesis the book by Arthur Koestler entitled “the thirteenth tribe.” Arthur Koestler was, of course, an enthusiast Communist militant but it was before people discover the horror of the work camps (gulag) in Siberia. Until that date the Communism was an ideal able to fill youth with enthusiasm.

1. Völkisch. German word not easily translatable and being somewhere between the nationalism, and the racism in a strict sense of the term.

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EXAMPLES OF JEWISH PROSELYTISM.

The writings of Flavius Josephus do not form the only testimony of the proselytistic ardor of Jews. From Horace to Seneca, from Tacitus to Juvenal, many Latin writers express the criticism of it. Mishnah and Talmud allow this practice of conversion - even if, facing the increasing pressure of Christianity, the sages of the Talmudic tradition will express reservations later about it.

On the basis of this Judeo-Hellenic kingdom, the Judaism swarmed in all the Middle East and on the Mediterranean circumference. In the first century of our era, in current Kurdistan, the Jewish kingdom of Adiabene appeared. The Adiabene (from Aramaic Hadyab) was an old kingdom of Mesopotamia whose capital was Arbela (modern Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan).

Its sovereigns converted to Judaism in the 1st century. The queen of Adiabene at the time of the conversion to Judaism, Helena, settled even in Jerusalem and made palaces built for her and her son Monobaz in the northern part of the city of David, in the south of the Temple Mount. At The Time of the Roman conquest of Judea and Samaria (68 - 67 before our era), only the Adiabene sent provisions and troops to help the besieged Galilee. According to the Talmud, Helena and Monobaz gave important funds for the Temple. However the Adiabene will not be the last kingdom “to be Judaized”: others will do the same thing thereafter.

Dihya Al-Kahina who directed the Berbers of the Aures, in North Africa. Although she was Jew, little Israelis have heard of this exceptional woman who, in the seventh century of our era, unified several Berber tribes and even repelled the Muslim army which invaded the north of Africa. The reason is perhaps that Dahia Al-Kahina was born from a converted Berber tribe several generations before her birth it seems, around the 6th century.

According to Shlomo Sand, the tribe of this queen as some other tribes in North Africa converted to Judaism would be at the origin of the Sephardic Judaism.

“"I asked myself how such large Jewish communities appeared in Spain. And then I saw that Tariq ibn Ziyad, the supreme commander of the Muslims who conquered Spain, was a Berber, and most of his soldiers were Berbers. Dahia al-Kahina's Jewish Berber kingdom had been defeated only 15 years earlier. And the truth is there are a number of Christian sources that say many of the conquerors of Spain were Jewish converts. The deep-rooted source of the large Jewish community in Spain was those Berber soldiers who converted to Judaism."

But this author goes even further. They would be not only the Jews in North Africa who would be descendants from pagan converts for the most part; but also the Yemeni Jews (vestiges of the Himyarite kingdom, in the Arabian peninsula, which was converted to Judaism in the fourth century) and the Ashkenazi Jews in Eastern Europe (some refugees from the Khazar kingdom in the north of the Caucasus converted in the eighth century).

Shlomo Sand revisits the hypothesis of Arthur Koestler, already put forwards by the historians of the 19th and 20th century, according to which the converted to Judaism Khazars would be the principal origin of the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. “"At the beginning of the 20th century there is a tremendous concentration of Jews in Eastern Europe - three million Jews in Poland alone," he says. "The traditional historiography claims that their origins are in the earlier Jewish community in Germany, but they do not succeed in explaining how a small number of Jews who came from Mainz and Worms could have founded the Yiddish people of Eastern Europe. The Jews of Eastern Europe are a mixture of Khazars and Slavs who were pushed eastward."

According to Sand, the most decisive demographic contribution for the Jewish population in the world therefore occurred following the conversion of the Khazar kingdom; vast empire established during the Middle Ages in the steppes bordering the Volga and which, at the height of its power, dominated from the current Georgia to Kiev. In the 8th century, the Khazar kings adopted the Jewish religion and made Hebrew the language of their kingdom. Starting from the 10th century, the kingdom weakened and in the 13th century, it was completely defeated by Mongolian invaders, then the fate of its Jewish inhabitants is lost in the mists.

The Ribal (Rabbi Isaac Ber Levinsohn) said already in 1828, that the former language of the Jews was not the Yiddish. Even Ben Zion Dinur, father of Israeli historiography, did not fear yet to describe Khazars as being the origin of the Jews in Eastern Europe, and described Khazaria as the “mother of the diasporas” in Eastern Europe. But more or less since 1967, anyone who talks about the Khazars as the ancestors of the Jews of Eastern Europe is considered naive and moonstruck." 1)

Why do you think the idea of the Khazar origins is so threatening for Israel?

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"It is clear that the fear is of an undermining of the historic right to the land. The revelation that the Jews are not from Judea would ostensibly knock the legitimacy for our being here out from under us. Since the beginning of the period of decolonization, settlers have no longer been able to say simply: 'We came, we won and now we are here' the way the Americans, the whites in South Africa and the Australians said. There is a very deep fear that doubt will be cast on our right to exist."

Is there no justification for this fear?

"No. I don't think that the historical myth of the exile and the wanderings is the source of the legitimization for us being here, and therefore I don't mind believing that I am Khazar in my origins. I am not afraid of the undermining of our existence, because I think that the character of the State of Israel undermines it in a much more serious way. What would constitute the basis for our existence here is not mythological historical right, but rather would be for us to start to establish an open society here of all Israeli citizens."

In fact, you are saying that there is no such thing as a Jewish people.

"I don't recognize an international Jewish people. I recognize 'a Yiddish people' that existed in Eastern Europe, which though it is not a nation can be seen as a Yiddish civilization with a modern popular culture. I think that Jewish nationalism grew up in the context of this 'Yiddish people.' I also recognize the existence of an Israeli people, and do not deny its right to sovereignty.”

Jews worldwide have always tended to form religious communities, usually by conversion; they cannot be said to share an ethnicity derived from a unique origin and displaced over 20 centuries of wandering. The problem is that this historical fantasy has come to underpin the politics of identity of the state  of Israel. By validating an essentialist, ethnocentric definition of Judaism it encourages a segregation that separates Jews from non-Jews – whether Arabs, Russian immigrants or foreign workers.

Sixty years after its foundation, Israel refuses to accept that it should exist for the sake of its citizens. For almost a quarter of the population, who are not regarded as Jews, this is not their state legally. At the same time, Israel presents itself as the homeland of Jews throughout the world, even if these are no longer persecuted refugees, but the full and equal citizens of other countries. A global ethnocracy invokes the myth of the eternal nation, reconstructed on the land of its ancestors, to justify internal discrimination against its own citizens.

The corollary of such revisionism is, of course, that the Palestinians as well Christian as Muslim are mainly more direct descendants of the former Jewish population of Judea than current Israelis.

“No population remains pure over a period of thousands of years. But the chances that the Palestinians are descendants of the ancient Judaic people are much greater than the chances that you or I are its descendants. The first Zionists, up until the Arab Revolt [1936-1939], knew that there had been no exiling, and that the Palestinians were descended from the inhabitants of the land. They knew that farmers don’t leave until they are expelled.

Apart from enslaved prisoners, the population of Judea continued to live on their lands, even after the destruction of the second temple. Some converted to Christianity in the 4th century, while the majority embraced Islam during the 7th century Arab conquest.

Most Zionist thinkers were aware of this: Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later president of Israel, and David Ben Gurion, its first prime minister, accepted it as late as 1929, the year of the great Palestinian revolt. Both stated on several occasions that the peasants of Palestine were the descendants of the inhabitants of ancient Judea“. “Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, wrote in 1929 that, ‘the vast majority of the peasant farmers do not have their origins in the Arab conquerors, but rather, before then, in the Jewish farmers who were numerous and a majority in the building of the land.’”

If the myth of Zionism is one of the Jewish people that returned to its land from exile, what will be the myth of the country you envision?

"To my mind, a myth about the future is better than introverted mythologies of the past. For the Americans, and today for the Europeans as well, what justifies the existence of the nation is a future promise of an open, progressive and prosperous society. The Israeli materials do exist, but it is necessary to add, for example, pan-Israeli holidays. To decrease the number of memorial days a bit and to add days that are dedicated to the future. But also, for example, to add an hour in memory of the Nakba, between Memorial Day and Independence Day."

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According to Shlomo Sand. Professor Tel Aviv University.

1. But if the Jews of Eastern Europe did not come from Germany, why did they speak Yiddish, which is a Germanic language? Answer of Shlomo Sand to this objection. "The Jews were a class of people dependent on the German bourgeoisie in the East, and thus they adopted German words. Here I base myself on the research of linguist Paul Wechsler of Tel Aviv University, who has demonstrated that there is no etymological connection between the German Jewish language of the Middle Ages and Yiddish.”

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THE MORE TRADITIONAL THESIS BY BERNARD Lazare.

The deportation to Babylon was not equally hard for all and many Jews preferred to remain in this country (on the integration of Judeans into the Babylonian empire, see the case of Zerubbabel and the Babylonian Talmud). For the rest below some notes gleaned from the work of BERNARD Lazare.

Born in 1865 in Nimes in a rich Jewish family, BERNARD Lazare died in 1903. Contrary to what he had categorically requested, two rabbis recited the Jewish prayer called kaddish on the grave of this atheist; and in 1983 a nasty story opposed Mireille Cherchevsky (Carole Landrel), a distant heiress to BERNARD Lazare, to her new publisher when the book was reprinted. To help her, the Frenchwoman Francoise Giroud and a veteran of the Liberation of Paris even went so far as to claim that BERNARD Lazare had died intestate.

BERNARD Lazare, who nevertheless sees Jewish culture as the main cause of "antisemitism,’ speaks only of the Jews' desire to remain separated. At the beginning of his work (the first lines of the chapter), he writes:

« Wherever the Jews settled …one observes the development of antisemitism, or rather anti-Judaism […] If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. But this race (sic) has been the object of hatred with all the nations amid whom it ever settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races (again sic) , as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different laws and governed by opposite principles; as they did not have the same customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself, and not in those who antagonized it ."

N.B. Apart from the reservations or condemnations to be made about the use of the term race, it should be noted that BERNARD Lazare did not insist in his analysis on the devastating consequences of the notion of chosen people (am segullah or am nahalla).

EXTRACTS.

They were allowed to retain their national homogeneity, together with full powers of self-government. This was the case in Alexandria, in Antioch, in Asia Minor, and in the Greek cities of Ionia. In almost every city, they constituted corporations at the head of which was an ethnarch or patriarch, who, with the assistance of a council of leaders and a special tribunal, exercised all the powers of civil authority and of justice. The synagogues were “veritable small republics.” …………..

…………………………….

All the synagogues were closely connected in a vast federation which included within its scope the entire ancient world, progressing parallel with the expansion of the Macedonian power and Hellenistic civilization. They communicated with one another by messengers and kept one another in constant touch with events, the knowledge of which was likely to prove useful.In every city the Jewish traveler could count upon the aid of the community; when he arrived as an immigrant or as a settler, he was received as a brother, succored in his need and assisted in his designs, he was permitted to take up his home wherever he desired and he enjoyed the protection of the community which put all its resources at his disposal. He did not come as a stranger bound upon a difficult conquest, but as one well equipped and with protectors, friends, and brothers by his side. Throughout Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Cyrenaica and Egypt, a Jew might travel in perfect security; everywhere he was treated as a guest, everywhere he proceeded straight to the house of prayer, where he was sure to find a welcome. The Essenes carried on their propaganda in the same manner.

……… …. ……………

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At Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch, in Cyrenaica the Jews were allowed full freedom in the matter. They were not required to appear in court on Saturday; they were even permitted to have their own special tribunals, and were not amenable to the laws of the empire; when the distribution of grains occurred on a Saturday, their share was reserved for them until the next day,4 they could be decurions, being at the same time exempt from all practices contrary to their religion; they enjoyed complete self-government, as in Alexandria; they had their own chiefs, their own senate, their ethnarch, and were not subject to the general municipal authorities……

The Jew who followed these precepts therefore isolated himself from the rest of mankind; he retrenched himself behind the fences which had been erected around the Torah by Ezra and the first scribes, later by the Pharisees and the Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, deformers of primitive Mosaism and enemies of the prophets. He isolated himself, not merely by declining to submit to the customs which bound together the inhabitants of the countries where he settled, but also by shunning all intercourse with the inhabitants themselves. To his unsociability the Jew added exclusiveness.

At Alexandria they were quite numerous. According to Philo, Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two were inhabited by the Jews. The privileges accorded to them by Caesar were engraved on a column and guarded by them as a precious treasure. They had their own Senate with exclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and they were judged by an ethnarch. They were shipowners, traders, farmers, most of them wealthy; the sumptuousness of their monuments and synagogues bore witness to it. The Ptolemies made them farmers of the revenues; this was one of the causes of popular hatred against them.

……………….

At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony as early as the first year of our era. If Valerius Maximus may be trusted, they first came to the city about 139 Before Common Era , during the consulate of Popilius Loenus and Caius Calpurnius.

Certain it is that, in 160 Before Common Era an embassy from Judas Maccabee arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance with the Republic against the Syrians; other embassies followed, in 143 and 139.

The settlement of the Jews at Rome probably dates from that time. Under Pompey they came in numbers, and as early as 58 Before Common Era they had quite a settlement. Turbulent and formidable, they were an important factor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their support during the civil wars and lavished favors upon them; he even granted them exemption from military service. Under Augustus the distribution of free bread was postponed for them whenever it fell due on Saturday. The Emperor gave them permission to collect the didrachm which was sent to Palestine, and he ordered the sacrifice of one bull and two lambs to be offered in his behalf at the Temple of Jerusalem for all time to come. When Tiberius became emperor, there were at Rome 20,000 Jews, who were organized in colleges and sodalities.

…………

The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested by all the historians, and Philo justly says: "Our customs win over and convert the barbarians and the Hellenes, the continent and the isles, the Orient and the Occident, Europe and Asia, the whole world, from end to end."

The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeply attracted by Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its morals; many of the poor people were attracted by the privileges accorded to the Jews. These proselytes were divided into two great classes: those who accepted the circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish community, thus becoming strangers to their families, and those who, without complying with the requisites for admission to the community, nevertheless gathered around it.

These conversions, generally by suasion and at times by force, as when the rich Jews converted their slaves, were bound to create a reaction. It was this chief cause, together with the secondary causes previously referred to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their political influence, their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic demonstrations at Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek writers from Cicero on bear witness to this state of mind. Cicero himself …., feared them, and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, that he hardly dared to speak of them, so numerous were they around him and in the public place.

You know,how great is the multitude of the Jews, how firm their union and their sympathy, how striking their political skill and their sway over the crowd in the assemblies."

Nevertheless, one day he burst forth. “Their barbarous superstitions must be fought,” says he; and he accuses them of being a nation “given to suspicion and slander,” ……..

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Tacitus……….. “Those who embrace their faith,undergo circumcision, and the first instruction they receive is to despise the gods, to forswear their country, to forget father, mother and children….The Jews consider as profane all that is held sacred with us.”

………………

Seneca….. “The Romans have adopted the Sabbath….This abominable nation has succeeded in spreading its usages throughout the whole world .”

……..

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Counter-lay No. 1.

BERNARD Lazare's notes being totally insufficient on this subject, here is what we will allow ourselves to say about the Jewish diaspora in this part of the world.

A certain number of Jews had, however, remained in Palestine; since history has recorded in its annals the massacre of Christians, perpetrated in 614, at the Mamilla reservoir, not far from the so-called Jaffa gate, by Jews allied with the Sassanid Persians (during their conquest of the country). If we understand well what Israel Shamir tells us about it on his website.

When Jerusalem surrendered to the Persians in 614, thousands of Christians found themselves prisoners of war and were led, like a herd led to the slaughterhouse, close to the Mamilla reservoir. Archaeologist Ronny Reich says: "They were probably sold to the highest bidder. [According to certain sources indeed] the Christian captives in the Mamilla Reservoir would have been bought by Jews and killed on the spot. An eyewitness, Strategius of St. Sabas, gives us an even more explicit account: "The Jews paid a fat ransom to Persian soldiers to capture the Christians, and slaughtered them with delight at the Mamilla Reservoir, which was overflowing with blood. In Jerusalem alone, Jews are said to have massacred 66,000 Palestinian Christians. A few days later, having realized the scale of the massacre, Persian soldiers prevented the Jews from continuing their genocide. Ronny Reich did not seek to blame the massacres on the Persians, as is common today. Indeed, he admits that the Sassanid Empire was not based on religious principles and was indeed prone to tolerance in matters of worship. It is obvious that this brave man would have some difficulty publishing articles in the New York Times (Israel Shamir).

There were Jews all along the trade route from Palestine to Yemen.

There were Jews in some cities in Central Arabia (where Islam was born) with large communities. Two of the oases around Yathrib/Medinah were occupied by Jewish tribes: Taima, Khaibar. In these oases, the Jews were farmers.

Where did they come from? Some Jews were able to settle in Arabia quite early, as early as the 6th century B.C.E., during the Babylonian Exile. Others came later, fleeing from the Roman legions who, in 70, under the command of Titus, seized Jerusalem, as we have seen. Among these refugees were probably also Essenes, who had abandoned the site of Qumran, and Judeo-Christians.

At Yathrib/Medinah, there were three (or perhaps four) Jewish tribes: the Banu Quraiza, the Banu Nadir and the Banu Qainouqa.

Originally the city of Yathrib (the future Medina) even seems to have been a Jewish city. The few Arabs who lived there depended on the Jews. They were their vassals. Later two great Arab tribes settled there; the Aous and the Khazradj. In the beginning, they were entirely dependent on the Jewish tribes. By the time of the Hegira (622) this dependence had ceased, and the two communities seemed to be on an equal footing.

There was also a large Jewish community in Yemen which remained until 1948, when it emigrated to Israel. At that time it was the largest Jewish community in the Arab world. The influence of the Jewish population in this part of the world grew steadily during the fourth and fifth centuries, but according to Heinrich Graetz, Yemen did not become truly Jewish until the reign of Zorah Dhou-Nowas (520-530), the youngest son or grandson of Abu Kariba. Dhou-Nowas, who, in his zeal for the Jewish religion, added the name of Yossouf (Joseph) to his name, was indignant at the oppression of his fellow believers in the Byzantine Empire and resolved to retaliate against the Emperor of Constantinople. To avenge the mistreatment of Jews in various states by their fellow believers in his kingdom, he imposed heavy taxes on the Christians of his kingdom. The facts were completely distorted, the punishment of a few rebels became a persecution against the Christians, and the dead, whose numbers were exaggerated, were raised to the rank of martyrs. A Syrian bishop, Simeon, who was then on his way to northern Arabia, added faith to all these rumors; and he wrote to one of his colleagues, who lived near Arabia, to stir up the Christians against this Jewish king, and to urge the negus (king) of Ethiopia to declare war on him.

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There was no need to excite Elesbaa against Dhou-Nowas; for a long time, he had long displeased to see the crown of the Himyarite kingdom on the head of a Jew. So he eagerly seized the opportunity. He equipped a considerable fleet, joined by several Byzantine ships which Justin I's colleague Justinian brought from Egypt, and a large army crossed the Red Sea into Yemen. Dhou-Nowas tried to oppose the march of the invaders. But what could his weak troops do against the many legions of the king of Ethiopia? At the first meeting, Dhou-Nowas was defeated, and the city of Zafara (Dhafar) was taken with the treasures and the wife of the Himyarite chieftain. When he was lost, Dhou-Nowas rushed from the top of a rock into the sea (around 530). The Ethiopians set everything on fire and blood, looted, killed and took the survivors as prisoners. The Jews especially had to endure the fury of the victor, and thousands of them were massacred in atonement for the death of the "martyrs" of Nedjran. Such was the end of the Judeo-Hamiarite kingdom, which, as can be seen, was short-lived.

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RETURN TO BERNARD Lazare’s THESIS.

EARLY MIDDLE AGE.

More than once Spain came very near becoming Jewish, and ……The Visigothic conquest did not change their condition and the Arian Visigoths confined themselves to persecuting the Catholics. The Jews enjoyed the same civil and political rights as the conquerors; moreover, the Jews joined their armies and the Pyrenean frontier was guarded by Jewish troops. With the conversion of King Reccared everything changed; the triumphant clergy heaped persecution and vexation upon the Jews, and from that hour (589 Common Era) their existence became precarious.

……….

About the same epoch a better era dawned for them in France. They had established colonies in Gaul in the days of the Roman republic, or of Caesar, and they prospered, benefiting by their privileges of Roman citizenship. The arrival of the Burgundians and Franks did not change their condition, and the invaders accorded them the same treatment as the Gauls. Their history was subject to the same fluctuations and rhythms as in Italy and Spain. Free under pagan or Arian dominion, they were persecuted as soon as orthodoxy became dominant. Sigismund, king of the Burgundians, after his conversion to Catholicism enacted laws against them which were confirmed by his successors. The Franks, being ignorant of the very existence of the Jews, were wholly guided by the bishops.

……………..

Only towards the end of the eighth century the activity of the Western Jews developed. Protected in Spain by the Caliphs, given support by Charlemagne who let the Merovingian laws fall into disuse, they extended their commerce which until then centered chiefly in the sale of slaves. For this they were, indeed, particularly favored by circumstances. Their communities were in constant communication, they were united by the religious bond which tied them all to the theological centre of Babylonia whose dependencies they considered themselves up to the decline of the exilarchate. Thus they acquired very great facilities for exporting commerce, in which they amassed considerable fortunes, if we are to believe the diatribes of Agobard,and later those of Rigord which, with all their exaggeration of the property of the Jews must not, yet, be entirely rejected as unworthy of credence. Indeed, with regard to this wealth of the Jews, especially in France and Spain, we possess the testimonies of chroniclers and the Jews themselves, several of whom reproached their co-religionists for devoting to worldly welfare much more time than to the worship of Jehovah. "Instead of calculating the numerical value of the name of God," says the Kabbalist Abulafia, "the Jews prefer to count their riches."

Parallel with the general advance we really see this preoccupation with wealth grow among the Jews and their practical activity concentrating on a special business: I mean the gold business. Here we must emphasize a point. It has often been said, and it is repeated still, that the Christian societies had forced the Jews into this position of creditors and usurers, which they have for a long time kept: this is the thesis of the philosemites. On the other hand, the antisemites assert that the Jews, from time immemorial, had natural inclinations for commerce and finance, and that they but followed their normal disposition, and that nothing had ever been forced upon them.In these two assertions, there is a portion of truth and a portion of error….

………….

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The usury of the Roman feneratores had no limit any more than had their bad faith. They were encouraged by the very harsh laws against the debtors a worthy daughter of that law of the Twelve Tables which granted to the creditor the right of cutting pieces of flesh from the live body of an insolvent borrower. In Rome gold was absolute master, and Juvenal could speak of the "sanctissima divitiarum maiestas." As to the Greeks, they were the cleverest and boldest of spectators; rivaling the Phoenicians in the slave trade, in piracy, they knew the use of letters of exchange and maritime insurance, and, Solon having authorized usury, they never did away with it.

As a nation the Jews differed in nothing from other nations, and if at first they were a nation of shepherds and agriculturists, they came, by a natural course of evolution, to constitute other classes among them. And devoting themselves to commerce, after their dispersion, they followed a general law which is applicable to all colonists. Indeed, with the exception of cases when he goes to break virgin soil, the emigrant can be only an artisan or merchant, as nothing but necessity or allurement of gain can force him to leave his native soil. Therefore, the Jews coming into Western cities acted in no way differently from the Dutch or English when they established business offices.

Nevertheless, they came soon enough to specialize in the money business, for which they have been so bitterly reproached ever since, and in the fourteenth century they constituted quite a coterie of changers and lenders: they had become the bankers of the world………

………………..

The church had no moral power over them, it could not forbid them, in the name of the doctrine and dogma, to engage in money exchanging and banking. Thus a religious conception of the functions of capital and interest, and a social system which ran counter to this conception, led the Jews of the Middle Ages to adopt a profession cried down but made necessary; and in reality they were not the cause of the abuses of usury, for which the social order itself was responsible.

If they did not cultivate land, if they were not agriculturists, it is not because they possessed none, as has often been said; the restrictive laws relative to the property rights of the Jews came at a date posterior to their settlement. They own property, but had their domains cultivated by slaves, for their stubborn patriotism forbade them to break foreign soil. This patriotism, the notion which they attached to the sanctity of their Palestinian fatherland, the allusion which they kept alive in them of the restoration of that fatherland and this particular faith which made them consider themselves exiles who would one day again see the holy city all this drove them above all other foreigners and colonists to take up commerce. As merchants they were destined to become usurers, given the conditions which the codes had imposed upon them and the conditions they had imposed upon themselves. …

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More than that, under the constant menace of banishment, always acamp, forced to be nomads, the Jews had to guard against the terrible eventualities of exile. They had to transform their property so as to make it more convertible into money, that is, to give it a more movable form, and they were the most active in developing the money value, in considering it as a merchandise, hence the lending and to recoup for periodic and unavoidable confiscation ,the usury.

…………….

A series of prohibitions successively shut them out of all industry and all commerce, except that in odds and ends and in old clothes. Those who escaped this disqualification did so by virtue of special privileges for which they often paid too dearly.

However, this is not all; other more intimate causes were added to those I have just enumerated, and all joined in throwing the Jew more and more out of society, in shutting him up in the ghetto, in immobilizing him behind the counter where he was weighing gold.

………….

As for the mass of Jews, it had completely fallen under the power of the obscurantists. Hereafter it was separated from the world, its whole horizon was shut out; to nourish its spirit it had nothing but futile Talmudic commentaries, idle and mediocre discussions on the Law…

…….

Henceforth the Jew thought no longer. And what need had he of thinking since he possessed a minute, precise code,

the work of casuist legists, which could give the answer to any question that it was legitimate to ask ? For believers were forbidden to inquire into problems which were not mentioned in this code the Talmud.

The Jew found everything foreseen in the Talmud: the sentiments, the emotions, whatever they might be, were designated; prayers, formulas, all ready-made, supplied the means for expressing them. The book left room neither to reason nor to freedom, inasmuch as in instruction the legendary and gnomic

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portions were almost proscribed to lay stress upon the law and ritual. True, by the tyranny they had exercised over their flock they developed in each the ingenuity and spirit of craftiness necessary to escape from the net which closed without pity; but they also increased the natural positivism of the Jews by presenting to them as their only idea the material and personal happiness, a happiness which one could attain on earth if one knew how to bind oneself to the thousand religious laws. To attain this selfish happiness, the Jew, whom the prescribed ceremonies rid of all care and trouble, was fatally led on to strive after gold, for under the existing social conditions which ruled him, as they ruled all the people of that epoch, gold alone could give him the gratification which his limited and narrow brain could conceive.

He was prepared to be changer, lender, usurer, one who strives after the metal, at first for the pleasures it could afford and then afterwards for the sole happiness of possessing it; one who greedily seizes gold and avariciously immobilizes it. The Jew having become such, anti-Judaism became more complicated, social causes intermingled with religious causes; the combination of these causes explains the intensity and gravity of the persecutions which Israel had to undergo.

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When the first breath of freedom swept over the world at the dawn of the sixteenth century, the Jews were but a nation of captives and slaves. Cooped up in the ghettoes, whose walls their own foolish hands helped only to make thicker, they were retired from human society, and, for the most part, lived in a state of lamentable and heartrending abjection. Their intellect had become atrophied, as they had themselves barred all the doors and shut all the windows ……..

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All over Europe the Jews enjoyed the greatest tranquility during the eighteenth century. In Poland alone they fared badly for having once lived too well. They had been prosperous there up to the middle of the seventeenth century. Rich, powerful, they had lived on an equal footing with the Christians, treated as though of the people amid whom they lived; but they could not help giving themselves up to their usual commerce, their vices, their passion for gold. Dominated by the Talmudists they succeeded in producing nothing beyond commentators of the Talmud. They were tax collectors, spirit distillers, usurers, seigneurial stewards. They were the noblemen's allies …and when the Ukrainian Cossacks and Little Russia had risen, under Chmielnicki, against Polish tyranny, the Jews, were the first to be massacred. It is said that over 100,000 of them were killed in ten years, but just as many Catholics and especially Jesuits.

Elsewhere they were very prosperous. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire, they were simply liable to the tax on foreigners (or dhimmis ?) and subject to no other restrictive regulations, but nowhere was their prosperity so great as in the Netherlands and England. Marranos fleeing the Spanish Inquisition had settled in the Netherlands in 1593, and thence settled a colony in Hamburg, then, later on, under Cromwell, one in England, whence they had been banished for centuries and whither Menasse-ben-Israel brought them back. The Dutch, as practical and circumspect a people as the English, utilized the commercial genius of the Jews and turned it to their own enrichment. In France Henry II had authorized the Portuguese Jews to settle in Bordeaux, where, on the strength of the granted privileges, also confirmed by Henry III, Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, they acquired great wealth in maritime commerce.

MODERN EPOCH.

The decree of 1791 freed these pariahs from a secular servitude; it broke the fetters with which the laws had bound them; it wrested them from all kinds of ghettos where they had been imprisoned; from, as it were, cattle it made them human beings. But if it was within its power to restore them to liberty, if it was possible for it to undo within one day the legislative work of centuries, it could not annul their moral effect, and it was especially impotent to break the chains which the Jews had forged themselves. The Jews were emancipated legally, but not so morally; they kept their manners, customs and prejudices which their fellow citizens of other confessions kept, too. They were happy at having escaped their humiliation, but they looked around with diffidence and suspected even their liberators.

……….

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The events were favorable for them. In Alsace, for instance, they acted as auxiliaries to the peasants, whom they lent the funds necessary for the purchase of national property… Thanks to the Alsatian Jews, the new ownership continued, but they meant to draw profit from it with a plentiful, usurious hand. The debtors raised a protest…Napoleon lent ear to them, and suspended, for one year, judicial decisions on behalf of the Jewish usurers of the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine, and the Rhine provinces. His work did not stop at that. In the preambles of the decree of the suspension of May 30, 1806, he showed that he did not consider the repressive measures sufficient, but wanted the source of the evil done away with.

"These circumstances," said he, "caused us at the same time to consider how urgent it was to revive among those subjects of our country who profess the Jewish religion, the sentiments of civic morals, which have unfortunately been deadened with a great number of them through the state of humiliation in which they have languished too long…….

To revive or rather to give birth to these sentiments, he wanted to bend the Jewish religion to suit his discipline, to hierarchize it as he had hierarchized the rest of the nation, to make it conform to the general plan. When first consul he had neglected to take up the question of the Jewish religion, and so he wanted to make amends for this failure by convoking an Assembly of Notable Jews for the purpose of "considering the means of improving the condition of the Jewish nation and spreading the taste for the useful[ arts and professions among its members," and of organizing Judaism administratively. A list of questions was sent out among prominent Jews and when the answers had come in, the Emperor called together a Great Sanhedrin vested with the power of bestowing a religious authority upon the responses of the first assembly. The Sanhedrin declared that the Mosaic law contained obligatory religious provisions and political provisions; the latter concerned the people of Israel when an autonomous nation, and had, therefore, lost their meaning since the Jews had scattered among the nations; it also forbade making, in the future, any distinctions between Jews and Christians in the matter of loans, and entirely prohibited usury.

These declarations showed that the prominent Jews belonging for the most part to the minority I have mentioned, knew to adapt themselves to the new state of affairs, but could in no way make any presumption upon the dispositions of the mass……… It required the candor of Napoleon the lawgiver to believe that a synod could enjoin love for the neighbor, or forbid usury which the social conditions facilitated. The imperial prohibition for Jews against providing substitutes for military service this for the purpose of making them better realize the grandeur of their civic duties was bound to have the same effect as the prescriptions of the synod. The case was the same with the decree of March 17, 1808, forbidding the Jews to engage in commerce without a personal license issued by the prefect, or to take mortgages without authorization; besides, Jews were forbidden to settle in Alsace and the Rhine provinces, and the Alsatian Jews were forbidden to enter other departments unless to engage in agriculture. These decrees issued for ten years, did not turn a single Jew into a farmer, and if any of them became chauvinists, the obligation of serving in the army had something to do with it. These were the last restrictive laws in France; the legal assimilation was consummated in 1830, when Lafitte had the Jewish creed incorporated in the budget. This meant the final downfall of the "Christian State," though the lay state was not, as yet, completely established. The last trace of the ancient distinctions between Jews and Christians disappeared with the abolition of the oath More Judaico, in 1839. Nor was the moral assimilation complete.

……

The emancipated Jews scattered among the nations just like strangers, and, as we have seen, it could not be otherwise, since for centuries they formed a nation among the nations, a special people preserving its characteristics thanks to the strict and precise ritual, as well as owing to the legislation which kept it apart and tended to perpetuate it. As conquerors, not as guests did they come into modern societies.

…………. ………..

With the supremacy of the nobility the supremacy of landed capital disappeared, too, and the supremacy of the bourgeoisie brought on the supremacy of industrial and speculative capital. The emancipation of the Jew is linked with the growth of the prevalence of industrial capital. So long as landed capital retained the political power, the Jew was deprived of any right; the Jew was liberated on the day when political power passed to industrial capital, and that proved fatal. The bourgeoisie needed help in the struggle it undertook; the Jew was for it a valuable ally, whom it was its interest to emancipate. Since the days of the Revolution, Jew and bourgeois marched hand in hand, together they sustained Napoleon

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The Jews have lived in Roumania, i.e., the Moldau-Valachian lands, since the fourteenth century, but they came there in numbers at the beginning of this century only. ….For many long years, they lived undisturbed. They naturally depended upon the boyars who hold the power in this country, and they leased the sale of spirits from these noblemen, who held the monopoly therefore. As they were indispensable to the noblemen as tax collectors, fiscal agents and all sorts of middlemen, the nobles were rather inclined to grant them privileges, and they only had the excess of popular superstitions or passions. The official persecutions of the Jews began only in 1856, when Roumania adopted the representative system and the power thus fell into the hands of the bourgeois class.

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The national and the religious question are but one in Russia, the Tsar being simultaneously the temporal and spiritual head, Caesar and Pope; but to faith more importance is attached than to race, and the proof is that a Jew who is willing to be converted is not persecuted. On the contrary, the Jew is encouraged to embrace orthodoxy.

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Counter-lay No. 2.

Personal translation and Complements.

Any Israelite child, from the age of fourteen, could abjure against the will of his parents: a married convert was released from the ties that bound him to his wife and children, a convert broke his matrimonial engagements by the fact of his conversion, but unconverted spouses were still considered married. Finally, adult converts received a sum of 15 to 30 rubles for their abjuration, and child converts received a sum of 7 to 15 rubles. In order to encourage Jews to come to the Greek religion, rabbinical schools were abolished; the number of synagogues was restricted -- the Moscow synagogue was closed in 1892 as an indecent act -- and Jews were forbidden to gather for prayer.

Until 1920, the situation of the Jews in Russia vis-à-vis the people was absolutely the same as in the Middle Ages. The Russian peasant and the Russian worker were as miserable as the Jews. There was, however, one difference: workers were not systematically persecuted as such. For the rest, the Jews were in the same situation as a large number of Russian Orthodox people, who were forced by the social and economic state of Russia to do anything just to survive.

In the cities in the Jewish territories (shtetls), Jews were in the majority, but their living conditions were appalling. Piled up in unhealthy dwellings where they lived in the worst poverty, ravaged by unspeakable misery and reduced to unemployment or exploitation, to miserable wages, multiplying incessantly because of their very destitution; these unfortunate people died slowly and were doomed to all cholera, all typhus, all plagues.

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Anti-Judaism, which had been religious at first, became economic, or, rather, the religious causes, which had once been dominant in anti-Judaism, were subordinated to economic and social causes.

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This antisemitism has manifested itself since the beginning of Jewish financiering and industrialism. If we find only traces of it in Fourier and Proudhon, who confined themselves to stating only the role of the Jew as a middleman, stockjobber and nonproducer, it gave life to men like Toussenel.

…………...

Some modern Jews and philosemites have rejected with horror those aphorisms and axioms that had been national aphorisms and axioms. They say that the invectives against the goyim, the Minim, were directed at the Romans, the Hellenes, the Jewish apostates, but they were never aimed at the Christians. There is a great deal of truth in these assertions, but there is also a great deal of error.

………………….

Among the Jews who receive a Talmudic education, and this means the majority of the Jews in Russia, Poland, Galicia, Hungary, Bohemia and the Orient, the idea of nationality is still as alive at present as it had been during the Middle Ages. They still form a people apart, fixed, rigid, congealed by the scrupulously observed rites, by the unvarying customs and the manners; hostile to every innovation, to every change, rebelling against all attempted efforts to detalmudize him. In 1854 the rabbis anathematized the Oriental schools founded by French Jews, where profane sciences were taught; at Jerusalem, an anathema was hurled, in 1856, against the school established by Doctor

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Franckel. In Russia and Galicia, sects like those of the New Chassidim are still opposing all attempts made to civilize the Jews. In all these countries, only a minority escapes the Talmudic spirit, but the mass persists in its isolation, and however great its abjection and its humiliation, it ever holds itself the chosen people, the nation of God.

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The Western Jews are Jews still. They are Jews, because they have kept perennial and living their national consciousness; they still believe they are a nation, and, believing that, they preserve themselves. When the Jew ceases to have the national consciousness, he disappears; so long as he has this consciousness, he continues to be. He practices his religious faith no longer, he is irreligious, often even an atheist, but he continues to be, because he has a belief in his race. He has kept his national pride, he always fancies himself a superior individuality, a different being from those surrounding him, and this conviction prevents him from assimilating himself, for, being always exclusive, he generally refuses to mix through marriage with the peoples surrounding him. Modern Judaism claims to be but a religious confession; but in reality it is an ethnos besides, for it believes it is that, for it has preserved its prejudices, egoism and vanity as a people a belief, prejudices, egoism and vanity which make it appear a stranger to the peoples in whose midst it exists, and here we touch upon one of the most profound causes of antisemitism. Antisemitism is one of the ways in which the principle of nationalities is manifested….

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Though often exceedingly chauvinist, the Jews are essentially cosmopolitan in character; they are the cosmopolitan element of mankind, says Schaeffle. This is quite true, since they have always possessed in a high degree that mark of cosmopolitanism: the extreme facility of adaptation. On their arrival into the Promised Land, they adopted the language of Canaan; after a seventy-year sojourn in Babylonia, they forgot Hebrew and re-entered Jerusalem, speaking an Aramaic or Chaldee jargon; during the first century before and after the Christian era, the Hellenic tongue pervaded the Jewries. Once dispersed the Jews fatally became cosmopolites.

……………….

During this period Jewish bankers, Jewish manufacturers, Jewish poets, journalists, and orators, stirred perhaps by quite different motives, were, nevertheless, all striving towards the same goal. "With stooping form, unkempt beard, and flashing eyes," writes Cretineau-Joly, "they might have been seen breathlessly rushing up and down everywhere in those countries which were unhappy enough to be afflicted with them. Contrary to their usual motives, it was not the desire for wealth that spurred them on to such activity…..

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Many of the Jewish members of the International took part subsequently in the Commune, where they found others of their faith

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Counter-lay No. 3.

Karl Marx. In his essay entitled “On the Jewish Question.” “The Jew can behave towards the state only in a Jewish way – that is, by treating it as something alien to him, by counterposing his imaginary nationality to the real nationality, by counterposing his illusory law to the real law, by deeming himself justified in separating himself from mankind, by abstaining on principle from taking part in the historical movement, by putting his trust in a future which has nothing in common with the future of mankind in general, and by seeing himself as a member of the Jewish people, and the Jewish people as the chosen people.”

On what grounds, then, do you Jews want emancipation?

According to Bauer the only solution was that the Jew gives up the essence of the Judaism and preserves of it only folk or family traditions of them. (And the whole world also, Catholics, Protestants, Orthodoxes, etc. we will add. Editor’s note).

Certain Israelis enjoy thinking that they owe their socio-economic supremacy to their intellectual superiority. They owe actually their advance only to the fact that they come from a Europe having

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dispensed all kinds of formations to them. The proof is that one never could say the same thing of the North African or Eastern Jewish communities (Morocco, Ethiopia, Yemen).

The Talmudic obscurantism indeed continued in the twentieth century in certain countries, in particular Eastern, and only a minority, by the access to the universities then to the intellectual development which resulted from it, could escape the prejudices of the orthodox religious Jews; always plunged in alienation from which only a vigorously nonclerical instruction could save them.

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RETURN TO THE TEXT BY BERNARD Lazare.

Thus have I briefly depicted the Jew in his character as a revolutionist, or at least have attempted to show how we might approach the subject. I have described his achievements both as an agent in the dissemination of revolutionary ideas, and as an actual participant in the struggle, and have shown how he belongs to both those who prepare the way for revolution through the activity of the mind, and those who translate thought into action. The objection may be raised that, in joining the ranks of revolution, the Jew as a rule, turns atheist, and ceases practically to be a Jew. This, however, is true only in the sense that the children of the Jewish radical lose themselves more easily in the surrounding population, and that as a result the Jewish revolutionist is more easily assimilated. But as a general thing, the Jew, even the extreme Jewish radical, cannot help retain his Jewish characteristics, and though he may have abandoned all religion and all faith, he has none the less received the impress of the national genius acting through heredity and early training. This is especially true of those Jews who lived during the earlier half of the nineteenth century, and of whom Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx may serve as fitting examples.

Heine, who in France was regarded as a German, and was reproached in Germany with being French, was before all things a Jew. As a Jew he sang the praises of Napoleon, for whom he entertained a fervent admiration common to all the German Jews, who had been freed from their disabilities by the Emperor's will. Heine's disenchantment, his irony, are the disenchantment and the irony of the Ecclesiastes; like Koheleth he bore within him the love for life and for the pleasures of the earth; and before sorrow and disease ground him down, death to him was the worst of evils. Heine's mysticism came to him from the ancient Job. The only philosophy that ever really attracted him was pantheism, a doctrine which seems to come naturally to the Jewish philosopher who in speculating upon the unity of God by instinct transforms it into a unity of substance. His sensuousness, that sad and voluptuous sensuousness of the intermezzo, is purely oriental, and has its source in the Song of Songs. The same is true of Marx. The descendant of a long line of rabbis and teachers he inherited the splendid powers of his ancestors. He had that clear Talmudic mind which does not falter at the petty difficulties of fact. He was a Talmudist devoted to sociology and applying his native power of exegesis to the criticism of economic theory. He was inspired by that ancient Hebraic materialism, which, rejecting as too distant and doubtful the hope of an Eden after death, never ceased to dream of Paradise realized on earth. But Marx was not merely a logician, he was also a rebel, an agitator, an acrid controversialist, and he derived his gift for sarcasm and invective, as Heine did, from his Jewish ancestry. …..

……………

On the eve of the French Revolution, they saw him humble, timid, an object of general contempt, exposed to insult and injury. They found him after the tempest, free, liberated from every constraint, and from a slave, become a master. Such a rapid exaltation was offensive. People were affronted by the wealth which the Jews had now attained the right to pile up, and recourse was had at once to the old accusation of the fathers, the charge that the Jew was an enemy to society. The wealth of the Jew, it was said, is gained at the expense of the Christian. It is acquired through deception, through fraud, through oppression, by all means and principally by detestable means. This is what I shall call the moral charge of the anti-Semites, and it may be summed up thus: the Jew is more dishonest than the Christian ; he is entirely unscrupulous, a stranger to loyalty and candor………..

When the walls of the Ghetto were overthrown, the Jew, such as he had been made by the Talmud and the legislative and social restrictions imposed upon him, did not change all at once. Upon the morrow of the Revolution he lived just as he had lived upon its eve, nor did he alter his customs, his manners, and, above all, his spirit, as quickly as his condition in life had been altered. Liberated, he retained the soul of a slave….

In proportion as the nations became more hostile to the Jews, in proportion as persecution and oppressive legislation increased, their solidarity increased. The external and internal forces which

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tended to imprison the Jews within the narrow circumference of their ghettoes, only served to foster the spirit of union among them. Isolated from the world, they only tightened the bonds which held them together. Their common life nourished the desire for, and the need of, fraternal action. In other words, the ghettoes developed the spirit of Jewish solidarity. In addition, the synagogues had succeeded in preserving their authority, so that while the Jews were subject to the harsh laws of the king and of the emperor, they also had a government of their own, councils of elders, and tribunals, to whose decisions they submitted. Their general synods forbade, in fact, any Jew under the pain of anathema, from citing a fellow Jew before a Christian tribunal. Everything drove them to unity in those long years of horror and cruelty known as the Middle Ages. Had they been disunited they would have suffered still more. By common action they could defend themselves the more easily and escape some of the calamities that threatened them without end………….

…...

In the eleventh century, a rabbinical synod at Worms, forbade a Jewish landlord to rent out his house, occupied by a Jew, to a Gentile without the consent of the tenant and a council of the twelfth century forbade a Jew, under the pain of anathema, to bring a fellow Jew before a Christian tribunal. The Jewish community, or Kahal, made use of a powerful weapon against those who proved themselves lacking in the spirit of solidarity; it struck them with anathema and pronounced against them the Cherem Hakahal …. ….

In this manner, the action of time, the influence of hostile legislation and of religious persecution, and the need for mutual defense, have intensified the feeling of fellowship among the Jews. In our own day the powerful institution of the Kahal exerts its influence wherever the Jew is subjected to a rigorous regime, and even the reformed Jew, who has broken away from the narrow restrictions of the synagogue, and yields no obedience to the will of the community) has not forgotten the spirit of solidarity. Once having acquired the sentiment of union and fostered it by the habit of ages, they could not get rid of it in getting rid of their faith. It had become a social instinct, and social instincts, slowly formed, are slow to disappear…….

………….

A Jew will always obtain assistance from his co-religionists, provided he be found faithful to the ties of Jewish brotherhood; but, if on the contrary, he proves hostile to the sentiment of Jewish unity, he will meet with nothing but hostility. The Jew, even though he may have departed from the synagogue, is still a member of the Jewish Freemasonry, of the Jewish clique, if you will. United, then, by the strongest feelings of solidarity, the Jews can easily hold their own in this disjointed and anarchic society of ours. If the millions of Christians by whom they are surrounded were to substitute this same principle of co-operation for that of individual competition, the importance of the Jew would immediately be destroyed. The Christian, however, will not adopt such a course, and the Jew must inevitably, I will not say dominate, the favorite expression of the anti-semites, but certainly possess the advantage over others, and exercise that supremacy against which the anti-semites inveigh, without being able to destroy it, seeing that its reason lies not only in the middle class among the Jews, but in the Christian bourgeoisie as well…..

If we keep in mind, then, this conception of Jewish fellowship and the fact that the Jews at present, constitute an organized minority, we are not unjust in concluding that antisemitism is, in part, a mere struggle among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capital. In truth, it is the capitalist, the merchant, the manufacturer, the financier, among the Christians, who feels injured by the Jews, and not the Christian proletariat, who suffer no more from the class of Jewish employers than from their Christian masters; less, indeed, if we consider that in a case like this, where numbers count, the entrepreneur class among the Jews by comparison with the Christians amounts to little. This will explain why antisemitism is essentially the sentiment of the middle classes, and why it is so rarely met with, except in the form of a vague prejudice among the mass of the peasants and the working classes.

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Counter-lay No. 4.

Let us not forget that BERNARD Lazare wrote before the creation of the State of Israel. This is therefore no longer true of ultra-Orthodox Jewish schools such as those of Mea Sharim.

For example, here is what Israeli MP Shulamit Aloni told the press about the Judaism of the rabbis and Jewish settlers in one of the most resounding debates in the Knesset. At a time when man travels to the moon, religious schools continue to teach that the world was created in six days. What rights do you have as masters of Judaism? Is it by your erudition? It takes less learning to be ordained a rabbi than it does to pass the baccalaureate, but rabbis pose as dictators. Woe to the country where a

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doctor is brought to justice because he saved human lives by transplanting kidneys (quote from memory).

HOMAGE TO MAREK EDELMAN: SHAME TO VLADIMIR JABOTINSKY 1).

We thought that all that we had lived - the war, the genocide, the gas chambers – would influence the History and the walk of the world’s march towards peace,” declared Marek Edelman in an interview given in 2003 to the newspaper LeSoir of Brussels. “But it is enough to point out Kampuchea, Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, to understand that men are incurable. The nationalism, the chauvinism, the martyrdom of certain minorities, we witness without reacting, it is the posthumous victory of Hitler.”

Questioned about his relation with Poland, he answered: “We had dreamed of a better world and of better Poland, without antisemitism nor racism. Alas! the dreams are never realized. The Jews are left and the anti-Semites are remained.”

The biography of Edelman is only a succession of dramas. A year before his birth in Warsaw, in January 1919, twelve of his uncles had been then executed due to socialist opposition to the Leninist dictatorship. His parents had had to flee the Soviet Russia for the new independent Poland. When he was six years old, his father died. Like him, his mother was an activist of the Bund 2): general union of Jewish workers, the great socialist and not Zionist Jewish party of Eastern Europe, a party savagely opposed to the Hebraic revival in Palestine.

At the beginning of 1942, information about the existence of the gas chambers had ended up filtering in the ghetto. The persons in charge of the youth movements of the various Jewish parties in Poland had then decided to be killed in action, in armed combat. “We were ashamed of the Chelmno Jews' submissiveness, of their failure to rise in their own defense. We did not want the Warsaw ghetto ever to act in a similar way "points out Edelman in his book ( 2002). But the Jews had not managed to get weapons from their Polish comrades. The latter not being able to believe that the Jews would rise, they had not wanted to waste the few weapons they had. At the end of July 1942, the leaders of the Jewish youth movements had therefore set up the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) and their first actions had targeted the Jewish police of the ghetto, whose members had multiplied the abuses.

The Jewish police had "helped,” by charging incredible amounts of money, gold or valuables per "head" for a chance to escape.

[Isn't it logical that Jews do anything to survive? asks Eilat Nadav.

That, it is your philosophy of Israeli, hits Marek, that which consists in thinking that you are allowed to kill twenty Arabs provided that a Jew stays alive 3). As for me there is a place neither for a chosen people nor for a Promised land].

“They were traitors. They were not forced to collaborate with the Nazis, but they thought that it was a good way to earn money and to save their skin” 4).

The Germans had allowed the opening of an emergency aid station in the ghetto in order to treat the emergencies, but it was in fact for them a means of practicing there an upstream selection and of sending the patients in the extermination camps. Marek Edelman took advantage of the opportunity to be enlisted as a male nurse in order to recruit those he considered ready to join the resistance. Doesn't he feel that he has contributed in his way to send 400.000 people to death? “I do feel no guilt, only a huge sorrow.”

In the shadow of death, people endeavored to live as if nothing had happened : the rabbis celebrated marriages so that the couples sent to the death die married. In October 1942, more of the three quarters of the 400.000 Jews of the ghetto in Warsaw had already been deported then exterminated. Among the survivors, 30.000 people worked as slaves in the German factories, and 30.000 others hid in the underground.

Gathering the majority of the Jewish organizations of left-wing, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) of the time had elected at its head Mordechaj Anielewicz, a leader of the Hashomer Hatzair [the Young Guard, socialist Zionist movement, to which the Meretz is the heir]. His right-hand man was Antek Cukierman, the person in charge of the Zionist movement He' halutz; the chief of the intelligence was

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Marek Edelman, theperson in charge of the Bund; finally, the emissary to the “Aryan” [non-Jewish] part of Warsaw, was Jurek “Arie” Wilner. The Betar [youth movement of the Jewish nationalist right-wing] as for him had not been integrated into the Jewish Combat Organization, and had preserved its own clandestine organization: the Jewish Combat Organization.

The final chapter of the elimination of the ghetto in Warsaw was opened on the day before Easter Day, on April 19, 1943. When the Germans entered the ghetto, they encountered a strong resistance from the fighters who shot from the deserted apartments. The Germans then started to set fire to the buildings the ones after the others, and the shelters in which many civilians had taken refuge were changed into gigantic traps. May 8, 1943, thus, Anielewicz and several tens of fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) had withdrawn in the headquarters of the Mila street 18, encircled by special units made up of Germans and Ukrainians. The fighting lasted two hours, and when the Germans convinced themselves that they would be unable to take the bunker by storm, they tossed in a gas bomb. The majority of the fighters preferred to commit suicide. Anielewicz killed his partner, Mira, and shot a bullet in his head. Lutek Rotblat shot his mother and his sister then himself. A female fighter fired at herself seven times.

Today still, Edelman does not conceal his unease facing this collective suicide. “A chief does not have the right to commit suicide. He must fight until the end. The more so as it was possible to flee the ghetto, in spite of the roadblocks. The proof is that we are fifteen having succeeded in escaping. The idea of the collective suicide did not come from Anielewicz, but from Jurek Wilner. Little time before, Jurek had returned from a task in a concentration camp. Posing as Aryan, he nevertheless had lived there atrocious things and had failed to lose the use of his legs. Without the assistance of Henryk Grabowski, a Polish Socialist who financed the Jewish resistance, he would have died in deportation. Jurek was weakened physically and morally. When arrived the most difficult moment, he didn’t see another outcome only death.”

The fact remains that the suicide of Anielewicz and of his comrades was quickly integrated in the collective memory of the young Israel. Perceived as a Masada of the 20th century [the Jews besieged by the Romans in the fortress of Masada had committed suicide collectively], it gave rise to slogans as “We will not go like sheep to the slaughter” and “freedom or death.” But, for Marek Edelman, the collective suicide of the Mila Street 18 is only a fit of collective hysteria. It does not have rather harsh words against those he calls the “professionals of the memory” and that he accuses of glorifying a “ethics too Israeli” to his liking. It is undoubtedly not a chance if the French scenario writer Claude Lanzmann chose not to evoke him or not to give him the floor in his movie about the Shoah, in spite of the fact that Edelman played a determining role in the insurgency of the ghetto, and that he was the first to evoke it in a book published at the end of the war. At the same time and still while being opposed to the Zionists, Edelman considers that “those who didn’t rise are as many heroes as those who took up arms. The one who chose not to let his mother alone get on the death trains, showed as much heroism than the one who died in action and armed.”

When he is asked whether the insurrection, doomed to failure, was not a collective suicide, the answer bursts out. “By rising, we have reminded of our membership to mankind. By taking up arms against those who wanted to destroy us, we held on to life and we became free men. The best evidence of it is that many fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization could flee the ghetto after the battle. Those who fell thereafter, it was while fighting with the Polish partisans.”

Didn't the few hundreds of insurgent risk the life of the 60.000 Jews still present in the ghetto? “No, the dilemma did not exist. We were all sentenced to death, whatever happens. We knew that all those who were sent to Auschwitz or Treblinka were doomed to gas chambers.”

It is on the support received from the outside world that Marek Edelman is bitterest. Not only therefore towards the Polish government-in-exile, but especially towards the Jews of Palestine. “The Jewish Combat Organization of the time had informed Ignacy Szwarcbart [a Zionist leader and Polish deputy in exile] and the Polish government in London. The Mossad also knew what occurred here. Its agents, however, contented themselves with evacuating people having money, and yet, never during the war, and only towards Palestine. The base of the ideology of Ben Gurion and his, it was the break with the [Jewish] Diaspora. He came to refuse to express himself in his mother tongue, the Yiddish [Germanic language mixed with Slavisms and Hebraisms], the language of the 11 million Jews in Europe and America.” Ben Gurion had indeed declared, in a meeting of persons in charge of the Mapai [the workers’ Party of Israel, ancestor of the labor party], on December 8, 1942: “The Disaster of the European Jewry is not, in a direct manner, my business” [also quoted by Tom Segev in the Seventh million. The Israelis and the Holocaust ]. For Marek Edelman, these remarks are those of a leader who

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was ready to sacrifice one million Jews, as long as a Jewish State would rise from it. “Of course he could not have been able to save millions of us, but certainly thousands. Nevertheless he did nothing. Here, nobody loved Ben Gurion, not even the most enthusiastic Zionists.”

In 1943, Edelman has escaped the flames of the ghetto in company of Simcha Rotem, by reaching through the sewers the Aryan side of Warsaw. In August 1944, Antek Cukierman, Simcha Rotem, as well as the last fighters of the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB), joined Polish resistance. The war once ended, Edelman finished his studies of medicine in Poland, a country that he regards as his only homeland. His remarks become still cruder. “If the State of Israel was created, it is thanks to an agreement made between the Great Britain, the United States and the USSR. Not to atone for the six million 5) Jews assassinated in Europe, but to divide trading posts in the Middle East” 6).

As for the Jewish identity of the State of Israel, Edelman doubts it and he thinks it is mainly a Middle Eastern culture which prevails within it. “About what Jewish people is it spoken? Israel cut itself from Yitskhok Leybush Peretz [Yiddish writer and poet, 1852-1915], from Chagall, from the Yiddish language. Israel built itself on the destruction of this immense age-old Jewish culture which had opened out between the Vistula and the Don. The Israeli culture, it is not the Jewish culture.” How, under these circumstances, Edelman explains that the Jewish survivors did not remain, like him, in Poland? “They were afraid. They wanted to place an immense ocean between Russia and them. But only a minority of Jews emigrated in Israel: the crushing majority went into exile in Canada and the United States.”

The view of the world of Edelman is a typical product of the Bund. Before the war, the Bund believed in the possibility of building a Jewish socialist society in Poland. Supporter of a Jewish cultural autonomy, it opposed the emigration of Jews from Europe towards the Middle East or the American continent. More than the indifference of the Zionists in Palestine, didn’t the Bundist design, by campaigning against the emigration of the Jews towards this area of the world, give the latter up to their Nazi torturers? “Only those who had nowhere to go left for Palestine. Before the war, million other Jews had emigrated in Argentina, America or Australia, and it is that which saved them. I do not speak about the Halutzim [pioneers], who were a small group filled with determination.”

As expected, many Israelis were scandalized by an initiative which, coming from the hero of the ghetto in Warsaw, could only compare the Jewish insurgents with the Palestinian kamikazes.

Eilat Nadav, of the Yediot Aharanot, translation from Hebrew published in the International Courrier, April 13, 2006.

1) Born in Ukraine on October 18, 1880, and deceased on August 4, 1940, founder of the Jewish Legion during the First World War. He founded in 1925 the Revisionist movement, the main party of the Zionist nationalist right-wing, which claimed a Jewish State on both banks of the Jordan River, including also Transjordan, current Jordan. Opposed to the left wing which dominates the movement then, him and his party leaves the World Zionist Organization in 1935. He will be the principal political inspirer of the Zionist clandestine armed organization, Irgun.

2) From the end of the 19th century to the genocide, the Jewish villages in Eastern Europe are struck with full force by the industrial modernization, the explosion of the antisemitism, and the emigration (four million Jews flee towards Western Europe and America). It is in this context that is founded in Vilnius, in 1897, the Bund, General Union of Jewish workers in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. Social democratic, the Bund is fought by the Communists Bolsheviks and its executives will be eliminated under Stalin. Partisan of the doikeyt (in Yiddish “the hereness,” i.e., the refusal to flee) and of a cultural autonomy in Russia and Poland, the Bund opposes the emigration and the Jewish establishment in Palestine preached by the Zionist militants. This powerful political movement did not survive the extermination of its social base by the Nazi Germany and its allies.

3) There Marek Edelman goes too far. Let us not be stupidly Christian. The self-defense is perhaps not a moral obligation, but it is a right.

4) The role of Judenrate, between the organization of the survival and the application of the German directives, is the subject of many debates. They were machinery of the Nazi bureaucratic Nazi, even if the members of their directions were in no way paid by the occupier. The Jewish police force was hated because often brutal and including doubtful elements. In Warsaw, it was charged to lead the Jews to the Umschlagplatz (from which the trains left towards Treblinka), and tracked people in their hiding places to fill the deportation quotas imposed by the Germans. Within the Administration,

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benefits and corruption appeared, the more so as initially its members were protected from the deportations, even if they were then all, police force included, exterminated in turn. The debate about the participation in the Councils therefore divided the Jewish organizations. It appeared especially in the big cities like Lodz, where the leader of the Judenrat was hated, and Warsaw. In Warsaw, the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB) considered that these structures constituted an obstacle for the resistance, by being opposed to any collective action, and that they were objectively treason instruments which helped the Germans with their own hands. Actions were therefore carried out against the Jewish police force and certain most embroiled members of the Judenrate. The executions were made public. When, on July 22, 1942, the Germans decide the elimination of the ghetto in Warsaw (all the “unproductive” Jews, i.e., not working in the German companies, will be “moved” to the East, except for the employees of the Judenrat and of the Jewish mutual Aid), they ask the Judenrat to sign the notice which will inform the population of it, as were all the previous orders of the Germans sent to the inhabitants of the ghetto. The Judenrat is charged with the technical organization of this deportation. Adam Czerniakow, his president (he was already a recognized leader the Community in the pre-war period) refuses to sign. But the poster will nevertheless be affixed (without his signature). The second day of the great roundup, on July 23, 1942, he will commit suicide, by leaving a letter:"They are demanding that I kill the children of my people with my own hands. There is nothing for me to do but to die."

In 1945 Marek Edelman thus commented on this suicide: “He knew beyond any doubt that the supposed "deportation to the East" actually meant the death of hundreds and thousands of people in gas chambers, and he refused to assume responsibility for it. Being unable to counteract events, he decided to quit altogether. At the time, however, we thought that he had no right to act as he did. We thought that since he was the only person in the ghetto whose voice carried a great deal of authority, it had been his duty to inform the entire population of the real state of affairs, and also to dissolve all public institutions, particularly the Jewish police, which had been established by the Jewish Council and was legally subordinate to it.”

The whole problem regarding “collaboration” in such circumstances is there. We agree with Edelman, and it is besides what the French State should have done for its part, at the time: to be disbanded and let the Nazis do themselves directly the “dirty work.”

Later, in 1977, Marek Edelman will add that he held only one thing against Czerniakow: that he made death his own private affair. “It was necessary to die with fireworks.”

The publication of the diary of Adam Czerniakow resulted in moderating certain judgments about the Judenrat.

5) A little excessive perhaps, from Marek Edelman. As for the put forward figure for the number of victims of this amazing collective massacre, it is, of course, symbolic, specialists think that in fact it ranges from 5.100.000 to 5.800.000 dead.

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NEW AND FINAL WARNING TO THE READER.

Regarding religion, there is (among other things because there is also the difference/opposition between pure spirituality meditation personal conviction and way of life) regarding religion therefore there is a major alternative.

-The first category is that of ethnic religions, that is to say those handed down from parent to child, from father to son, or more often from mother to son, or daughter. The notion of conversion is unknown. They are only evolving. Slow by definition. This was obviously the case for all the first religions of Mankind.

-The second category is that of transethnic religions, based on an individual, personal, freely chosen approach, a bit like joining this or that association fraternity or brotherhood . Conversion is therefore admitted by definition

-As always, there is, of course, a third category, the one that more or less mixes the other two, in varying quantities and importance according to the times and circumstances.

An excellent example of ethnic religion is provided by the case of the Parsis. A religious group originating from Zoroastrianism. 100,000 followers mainly in India, 14,000 in the United States...You are of Parsi religion because you are born Parsi.

The case of the Samaritans in Israel is less clear because given their small numbers (800 people) and the resulting consanguinity they have recently accepted that the wives are some converts.

On the side of non-ethnic religions, two great examples immediately come to mind: Christianity and Islam. For the good and simple reason that these two religions, after a moment of hesitation, were then based only on conversions, often forced besides, it must be admitted.

The Roman Emperor Theodosius I decrees in Thessaloniki in 380, after having simply begun by forbidding the attendance of pagan temples and traditional sacrifices, " that all the various nations which are subject to our Clemency and Moderation, should practice (latin vsersai) that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter " (Theodosian Code 16.1.2).

The Frankish king Charlemagne (not yet emperor) forbade in Padenborn in 785 the practice of pagan cults (capitular De Partibus Saxoniae). The whole under penalty of death obviously and for that a simple denunciation will be enough.

Judaism is an example of the third category of religion.

The religion at the origin of Judaism is an ethnic religion since it is the religion of a very particular people (Israel) practicing endogamy.

However, there have been proven cases of conversion since antiquity and current rabbinic theory does provide for the possibility of conversion especially in the case of marriage.

The requirements are numerous and still vary greatly. Reformed Judaism has considerably relaxed them, Orthodox Judaism has not.

Orthodox Judaism, as structured around the Talmud, has codified the process of conversion.

The motives of the impetrant must be tested in order to refuse candidates who wish to convert out of interest.

The candidate must prove his knowledge of the Torah and commit himself before a Beth Din (court) to practice all the mitzvot (613).

After acceptance, the candidate must be circumcised and then submerge in a ritual bath in the presence of the court. He then takes a Jewish name and will then be referred to by that name followed by the mention Ben Avraham Avinou ("son of our patriarch Abraham") in the ritual.

Nowadays, the candidate for conversion must follow a program of study of Judaism and be integrated into a synagogue. The process takes from one to several years depending on the " quality " of the candidate and the requirements of the rabbi or rabbis who are leading the conversion.

The convert then has exactly the same duties and rights as a Jew by birth, except that a convert is forbidden to marry a Cohen.(priest).

THIS PARTIALLY ETHNIC VIEW OF THE JEWISH RELIGION, WHICH IS, MOREOVER,SUPPORTED BY CERTAIN MYTHS OR CERTAIN CURRENT RELIGIOUS SENSIBILITIES (SEE THE NAUSEATING RAVINGS ABOUT THE ABRAHAM CHROMOSOME AND THE FALASHAS), HAD AS A RESULT THAT THIS ASPECT OF THINGS IS ENCOUNTERED EVERYWHERE AND CONSTANTLY IN THE ARAB WORLD, INCLUDING IN THIS STUDY.

In order to leave no doubt about this, the author of this compilation thinks it is useful to clarify the following...

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1) The author of this compilation is personally in principle in favor of a single state where Muslim-Christian Jews...and atheists could live in harmony.

2) The author of this compilation is, on the other hand, well aware of the fact that the minds are not ripe for this in the Middle East.

3) The author of this compilation thinks particularly that one cannot avoid the risk …… that a premature return of the Jewish people to a minority position in Palestine …………. be immediately prejudicial to him and may even end in drama.

4) The author of this compilation can therefore only pray (work) so that the minds evolve and are one day ripe to accept without ulterior motive such peaceful coexistence in this part of our common spaceship, the earth.

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THE FOUNDATION OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

Law of Return (1950).Section 1. Right of aliyah. Every Jew has the right to come to this country as an oleh.

Law of Return (2006).Section 4B. Definition. For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.

Theodor Herzl, before founding the movement Zionist movement, though a certain time to solve the “Jewish question,” i.e., the eternal anti-Jewish hostility, by the massive conversion of the Jews of his country, the Austria-Hungary, to Christianity. For him, who was assimilated perfectly, like were then many Jews in the Germanic world, the Judaism, as a religious and cultural tradition, was no longer the bearer of specific values to be preserved. It hardly represented but one certain hereditary handicap. Not getting from the Sultan of Turkey the authorization to be established in Palestine, he considered for example an installation in Uganda, under the protection of the British Empire. Argentina, Russian Birobidzhan, the North of the Sinai, Mesopotamia, were also discussed localization.

What these first Zionists thought, it is that a Jewish State in Palestine:

- Would be a secular and democratic State, by neutralization of the religious dimension.

- Would make the anti-Jewish hostility disappear, with the modernization of the Jewish existence.

- Would ensure safety definitively to all the Jews.

- Would make the Arabs able to enjoy the technical and social benefits brought by the Jews, who in return would be well received …

For Jabotinsky, the other great theorist of the foundation of the State of Israel, on the other hand, it was a very different thing. In his letter on Autonomy, he tackles the question of the “blood” and advocates the idea that it is impossible for a man to be assimilated to people whose blood is different from his. To be assimilated, it would be necessary that he changes his body. Therefore there cannot be assimilation. We will not authorize things like the mixed marriages because the safeguarding of our national fullness y is impossible in another way than through the upholding of the purity of the race; and for this purpose we will have this territory of which our people will be the racially pure population. Such is roughly speaking , very roughly speaking, what Jabotinsky thought.

Among the Jews of the 20th century, even of the beginning of the 21st, it is indeed very often a question of the “chosen people.” The Jews themselves say themselves to be members of the Jewish people and even still today the way in which the Jews generally design Jewishness (through the mother) is of a biological nature. Such is the challenge to take up by the good will men of today.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL TODAY.

A long, long time ago, a famous poet of the Song Dynasty, Su Shi (1037-1101) climbed Mount Lushan. He discovered all its splendors except once he reached the summit, because of the fog. Hence his famous poem.

The mountain appears from different angles,

Far or near, high and low vary.

The true face of Mount Lu remains unknown

To whoever is in the very midst of the mountain itself.

Conclusion: Standing near a mountain prevents you from seeing the mountain. In other words, when you're on a mountain, you can't see the whole mountain, and you miss its beauty.

At least when the mountain is beautiful and if it is beautiful, of course, could have specified Jean Ferrat (an admirable song of the 1960s) but the same reasoning works if it is ugly, covered with detritus left by tourists, disfigured by concrete, useless roads and ski resorts.

Closer to us there is also the proverb which says THAT YOU CAN’T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES. Another well-known cognitive bias.Or the same.

Conclusion. The details make us lose sight of the whole. If one gets too close to any tree (the detail), one no longer sees the other trees in the forest (the whole).

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To call on emotion by speaking only of the victims (Israeli, Palestinian?) and never of the guilty out of fear of stigmatizing or conflating, starting misplaced manhunts or taking aim at the wrong target ; is certainly a laudable worry but this sophism CAN ....

-Only make impossible to arrest the culprit or at least delay it significantly; and therefore to give him the time to do even more victims; if such blindness is due to an excess of compassion for victims. But the victims should be only the vengeful or accusatory finger heading in the direction of the culprit. But now, as Confucius says, when the wise man points at the Moon, the idiot looks at the finger!

-And if it is voluntary it amounts simply to complicity.

The hardline Judaïsm or religious Zionism * is a religious ideology comparable to a serial killer of whom it is appropriate to draw up a profile if you want to succeed in removing him from society in the interest of public safety.

And for that, of course, the typology of victims (who are the first victims ? The Arabs or the Jews themselves?) is, of course, important; but this empathy for the first victims must not make the experts in profiling criminal religious ideologies that we are; forget that what matters ultimately in the end of the end: IT IS TO IDENTIFY AND REMOVE ... .the guilty! That is to say the criminogenic ideology in question.

* That is to say some verses of the Old Testament part of the Bible or Tanakh taken literally if not blindly, in any case with no interpretation leading us away from the original or traditional sense; the whole systematized and justified by some theorists of the Greater Israel or some ultra-Orthodox rabbis. God, or more precisely, a certain idea of God, has always been the greatest common divisors of Mankind.

The State of Israel is based on three fundamental and joint data of Judaism.

- A data of religious order: the biblical myth of the “Promised land” to a “chosen People.”

- A data of scriptural order: the texts glorifying the Jewish nation.

- A data of legal order: the law establishing the hereditary transmission of the Jewishness. Law of Return (2006).Section 4B. Definition. For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.

Basic Law of the State of Israel 19 July 19, 2018.

1. Basic principles

A. The land of Israel is the historical homeland of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established.

B. The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.

C. The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.

2 . The symbols of the state

A. The name of the state is “Israel.”

B. The state flag is white with two blue stripes near the edges and a blue star of David in the center.

C. The state emblem is a seven-branched menorah with olive leaves on both sides and the word “Israel” beneath it.

D. The state anthem is “Hatikvah.”

E. Details regarding state symbols will be determined by the law.

3 . The capital of the state

Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.

4. Language

A. The state’s language is Hebrew.

B. The Arabic language has a special status in the state; Regulating the use of Arabic in state institutions or by them will be set in law.

C. This clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.

5. Ingathering of the exiles

The state will be open for Jewish immigration and the ingathering of exiles

6 . Connection to the Jewish people

A. The state will strive to ensure the safety of the members of the Jewish people in trouble or in captivity due to the fact of their Jewishness or their citizenship.

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B. The state shall act within the Diaspora to strengthen the affinity between the state and members of the Jewish people.

C. The state shall act to preserve the cultural, historical and religious heritage of the Jewish people among Jews in the Diaspora.

7. Jewish settlement

A. The state views the development of Jewish settlements as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation.

8. Official calendar

The Hebrew calendar is the official calendar of the state and alongside it the Gregorian calendar will be used as an official calendar. Use of the Hebrew calendar and the Gregorian calendar will be determined by law.

9. Independence Day and memorial days

A. Independence Day is the official national holiday of the state.

B. Memorial Day for the Fallen in Israel’s Wars and Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day are official memorial days of the State.

10 . Days of rest and Sabbath

The Sabbath and the festivals of Israel are the established days of rest in the state; Non-Jews have a right to maintain days of rest on their Sabbaths and festivals; Details of this issue will be determined by law.

11. Immutability

This Basic Law shall not be amended, unless by another Basic Law passed by a majority of Knesset members.

In spite of the influence of his founder and of his first theorists, all very far away from the Judaism as a religion with its dogmas and its practices, and who hardly had as a concern but the protection of the Jews; it can be said that the Zionism gradually gave up - with the entrance of the religious men- all the respectful of the non-Jew elements that he included at the origin. To practically keep, since the creation of Israel and the war of 1967, only the potentially dangerous contents of the Judaism.

Before 1947 there was, in the speech of the Zionists, a “State of Israel.” Since the war of 1967, it is the “Land of Israel” (Eretz Israel); which is not a simple land like the others, but the land that God gave to Israel; a people which is not like the others. The first concept was only political, the second is national and religious.

Whereas they are Jews among most religious who opposed the Zionist ideology as of its rising , and during the first half of the 20th century, in the name of the spiritual vocation of Judaism; they are now the religious Jews, of Israel and elsewhere, who are indeed the fiercest to support the Israeli State, with its territorial and nationalist dimension. And to show their hatred with respect to the Jews who think differently, or to the not-Jews.

Increasingly unbearable data among many others for many Israelis, they are the rabbis (“men in black”) who decide; on nationality, marriage (of course, any marriage of a Jew with a non-Jewish woman or vice versa is impossible…) divorce, burials, conversions, contents of teaching. Who supervise strictly the Sabbat who take care of the observance of the kashrut (food religious laws) in the army, the State institutions or the aircraft. Whereas 22.000 couples marry religiously each year, 20.000 also go to be married in a consulate abroad, or will live in cohabitation, since the civil wedding does not exist. All that concerns the marriage or the divorce of the Jews in Israel, citizens or residents, falls indeed exclusively within the competence of the rabbinical courts. The marriages and divorces of the Jews are performed, in Israel, in virtue of the law established by the Torah.

One of the last great French philosophers, Andre Neher, analyzes in this way the challenge to be responded by all the consequent non-racists of good will. Finally, at least if we understood it well. We admit well readily not controlling as it would be necessary the language of Moliere.

“The Jewish man is something other than a man in the earthly, technical, banal, sense of the word. This is the metaphysical Jewish mission, rooted in the physical. It is a mission of sensitizing history. Mankind would be amorphous if the Jew were not omnipresent, inside everything, like a heart carrying the divine sap through the social organism. It is a mission of marking time. On the sundial of the ages, each of which marks a different hour of Mankind, the Jew shows the permanent hour of God. It is a cautionary mission….suffused with the prophetic halo, aglow with the divine gaze continually cast upon him, separated in the study and practice of the Law, standing upright in silent prayer which sets him apart from the entire world except from Jerusalem towards which his whole body and soul are

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turned, the Jew is nonetheless a laborer upon the surface of the earth, adapted to the rhythms of human time and ready to take up arms in defense of the Law, etc.”

End of this excellent description of the psychosis of the ultra-Orthodox sociopaths in Mea Sharim.

But where the non-Jews are allowed to live, in this case, within the Jewish State? The answer is that, in the majority of the places, they purely and solely do not have the right to live there. The majority of the lands in Israel belong to the State which subjected them to the regulations prohibiting a not-Jew from living there. He is forbidden to build a house there, to rent an apartment there, to open a store there, in short he is prohibited from living there. That is all the more cruel as the most of the lands about which these segregationist laws are in force belong to these same Palestinians who are defined officially in Israel as non-Jews, and were torn off from them. They are thus deprived, even as citizens of the Jewish State, of the right to enjoy the lands of their State. There exists in Israel whole cities like Nazaret-illit, Hatzor, Arad, Mitzpe-Ramon, Ramat-Eshkol (see higher) where the law formally prohibits the non-Jews from living. In ancient Rome, the foreigners either, did not have the right to be established … But they were non-citizens! In Israel, the discrimination relates to citizens. The State of Israel publishes every year an “annual statistical report of Israel.” In this annual record, it is almost impossible to find statistics concerning the Israelis. You find only statistics concerning the Jews and the non-Jews. For example, there does not exist in Israel’s statistics about the mortality of the Israelis, but statistics about the mortality of the “Jews” and of the “non-Jews.” Thus, when the State of Israel inquires officially into infant mortality, it does not inquire into the mortality of the Israeli children. There are Jewish infants and non-Jewish infants, who, even statistically are never mixed. And if, in certain cases, they are mixed, it is not written then “Israeli,” but “Total.” As if it was a question of adding different species. Not only Israelis don't exist in Israel, but the animals and the plants themselves are divided into Jews and non-Jews. Officially the State of Israel counts and classifies the cows and the sheep, tomatoes or corn, in “Jews” and “non-Jews.”

But of the “Jewish State” which is Israel - formed with territories allotted by the United Nations to the Zionists and those which were annexed without consultation or by military conquest – we can, however, take on the following data. The non-Jews are approximately 2,5 million (out of 10 million Israelis). They are mainly Muslim Arabs with a small number of Christian Arabs and Druze Israeli citizens, they have the right to vote and enjoy certain freedoms, but their social and civic rights are nevertheless only partial. They are absolutely prohibited from many functions. Whereas they are 25% of the population, they occupy hardly 2% of the employment in the public service and, for the majority, of subordinate employment. We can note that they were subjected until 1966 to a pitiless military government, which compelled them to trip licenses, curfew and house arrests. Measures particularly intended for the confiscation of their lands in favor of the Jewish property. If the discrimination of which they are the victims are weakened with time, they are nevertheless fated to be, in a “Jewish” State, only second-class citizens; some gerim (singular ger), “residents on the land of Israel,” some strangers who are tolerated in condescension or suspicion. This was the case for Abraham according to Genesis 23:4 and for David in some psalms. The concerned will appreciate.

Education is one of the sectors where disparities between the two communities are most obvious.

As the current State of Israel is based on a fundamental discrimination between Jews and Arabs and, generally, between Jews and not-Jews, Israel will never be the State of its citizens. The not-Jews there will be still foreigners.

The State of Israel of today, it is “blood” plus the “land,” plus “God” The concept, with its scriptural sources, is much more precise and more exclusive. In Israel, anti-Arab racism is only the form, enforced locally to a precise territory, of the “anti goy” racism. How this peculiar to Judaism communitarianism which, in the name of the filiation and through law; separates in Israel Jews from the non-Jews, which admits only the juxtaposition of two communities with the institutional domination of one of them, which excludes any assimilation, any integration of the minority community by the majority community; could it not generate racism among the Jews and reaction counter racism among Palestinians?

Menachem Barash, in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot, in 1974, and in connection with Palestinians, that he perhaps compares with Philistines, what is ridiculous, even if the name of Palestine comes well from that of the Philistines, speaks about them as about a plague whose Jews should get rid in the way of Joshuah.He writes indeed with much admiration about the teachings of Rabbi Moshe Ben-Zion Ushpizai of Ramat-Gan, who quoted biblical texts and traditional commentary to explain how Israel should deal with the Palestinians. “With a sharp scalpel and convincing logic,” the Rabbi uses the writings of the “greatest sages” to elucidate the commandments, still binding today, as

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to how to “inherit the land” that was promised by God to Abraham. We must follow the doctrines of Joshua, he explains, referring to the genocidal texts that appear in the book of Joshua and elsewhere. “The biblical commandment is to conquer the land of Israel in its detailed borders, to take possession of it and to settle it.” It is “forbidden” to “abandon it to strangers” (Gentiles). “There is no place in this land for the people of Israel and for other nations alongside it. The practical meaning of [the commandment to] possess the land is the expulsion of the other peoples who live in it” and who try to prevent the Jews of the world from, “settling in our land.” It is “a holy war, commanded in the Bible,” and it must be fought against Palestinians, Syrians, Egyptians, or any other people in the world” who seek to block the divine commandment. There can be no compromises, no peace treaties, no negotiations with “the peoples who inhabit the land.” “You shall destroy them, you shall enter into no covenant with them, you shall not pity them, you shall not intermarry with them,” the divine law dictates. Whoever stands in our way must be annihilated, the rabbi continues with his “convincing logic,” citing numerous traditional authorities.

The reference to Philistines is, of course, ridiculous. The biblical texts and some Assyrian and Babylonian inscriptions inform us about certain military activities of the Philistines, their alliances and their defeats. They occupied Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron and Gath (cf. Goliath), i.-e. the southernmost coast of Palestine (to which they gave their name). It is probable that in the beginning the Philistines were established in this area by Ramses III to keep its border. Initially, the advantage belonged to the Philistines who won victories (capture of Shiloh, victory of Gilboa), before ending up being contained. The wall reliefs of Medinet Habu give a physical image of these people: they are represented as tall men, easily identifiable through their curious feathered headgear, held by a chinstrap. They traveled on boats equipped with a bird’s head shaped bow and stern, or in carriages equipped with solid wheels, pulled by oxen.

The account of the heroic victory of David shooting down Goliath with his sling is, of course, a legend not because of the range of such a weapon but because of the biblical staging which shows us the young David facing Goliath personally whereas the latter, of course, died from the attack of certain warriors of the young war lord (an ambush of Elhanan according to 2 Sa 21:19).

Now what is necessary to understand through the word “giant?” The size of the adversary of David, given in the Scriptures for about three meters, was brought back today to two meters since the Dead Sea Scrolls were consulted.

Goliath is known as being of the Philistine city of Gath. This place was the subject of excavations under the direction of Aren Maeir. Most astonishing, it is that the skeletons which were unearthed at Tel-es-Safi are particularly tall. Seven specimens of exceptional size were already unearthed , of which the tallest one is one meter ninety long.

As for the sling, indeed it is by no means necessary to underestimate the range of it. Unlike an arrow, a bullet of sling does not need to bore an armor to cause lesions. The range of a sling is estimated at 200 m, it was fatal at 70 meters.

In Ireland, in the story Aided Óenfir Aífe (the Violent death of Aife’s only son), Conall Cernach is ridiculed by Conla, the son of Cúchulainn, seven years old. When the child lands in Ireland (coming from Scotland), Conall leaves to meet him in order to ask him who he is , but he receives at once a sling stone which makes him fall and he finds himself with his hands and feet tied.

We know that the Philistines were allies of the Egyptians against Nebuchadnezzar in the middle of the 6th century before our era but the latter seems to have made short works of these enemies who could measure up against the impressive Babylonian army. Nebuchadnezzar did the same to them as to the Jews and the other conquered peoples: he deported the richest leaders and classes of them; he ransacked their cities. Philistines will never be again mentioned thereafter. The main cities which were formerly occupied by the Philistines will become cities occupied by Phoenicians for then reaching the status of Hellenistic cities. Does it remain today descendants of the Philistines?? The thing is not very probable. Like several old civilizations, they died out, leaving the place to new powers which, by their expansionist policy, will assimilate what could remain from their predecessors.

But let's return to our time and intifada. As regards information, there exist non-written rules that the journalists who do not want troubles, in Israel like elsewhere, must follow.

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- When an Israeli Jew is killed, it is advisable to detail his biography: age, name and first name, profession, marital status, country of origin if it is an immigrant, his belief if he is a practitioner… To include suggestive photographs taken on the place of the drama, with the body, the blood… And, if the victim is a child, to speak about his school, his parents, of his friends, in short to get witnesses.

- When Palestinians (or Israeli Arabs) are killed, it is appropriate, not only to avoid every personalization so that they remain without a name nor face, but to use the term “shot down” and not “killed.” Example: “During confrontations, an Israeli soldier was killed, three Palestinians were shot down.”

- Civilian. There are “civilians” only among the Jews. When an armed colonist is killed, it is always a “civilian” who is killed. The Palestinian civilians killed are not “civilians” but Palestinians. Period!

The equating of the Jews with the Israelis (or with the Zionists), thrown in the wind by many religious people and personalities, is today the most serious fault which can be made against the Jewish community as a whole. How this mix-up assimilation, this systematic enrollment , independently of the personal convictions of the individuals, could contribute to making Judaism a religion, for example like Buddhism?

From where a legitimate exasperation in front of this breaker which submerges any speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for years. Including men of good will labeled as Jews through their ascent (and who by no means think of denying it) in front of this wave of intellectual terrorism. Which entails sophisms, paralogisms, and the clumsiest lies, in disproportionate quantity. Who wants to impose on everybody an ideal and untouchable image of the Jew in oneself, with excesses of ethnocentric narcissism of which we have difficulty to find examples more forced, which lead to apology for the most condemnable practices.

-This wave spread out over million columns and printed pages which leaks unceasingly false visions of the events and of the structures of past or present, persuading million ignoramuses or incompetents.

-This daily effort - not only by the written texts, but by the threats, the underground and other maneuvers - to force Jews (including those who are thus especially in the Hitlerian meaning of the word) and not-Jews; to adopt, support, this ideology, to be filled with enthusiasm for it.

-This double unconsciousness thus spread and imposed among thousands of intellectuals and others, more demanding on other levels, who forgive and mask among some Jews so many attitudes or behaviors violently condemned among others.

The resolutely racist Israeli parties are often directed by religious people whose quality of “legitimate representatives” of Judaism, however, could not be disputed.

The Hasidic movement Chabad, movement which took an extraordinary rise in the Jewish world and particularly in the modern State of Israel, where it is lined in the extreme right-wing of the political exchequer; for example, was founded by Shneur Zalman (1745-1813) who compared the soul/minds of the non-Jewish nations with those of pigs, Jews only having a divine soul.

Facing such remarks, Moshe Zimmermann (Director of the center of German studies at the University of Jerusalem) does not hesitate besides to speak about popular Judeo-Nazism prevailing among the Jews in Israel and certain Anglo-Saxon countries. “There is a whole sector of Israeli society, that without hesitation I would call a copy of the Nazis. Look at the children of settlers in Hebron: They are exactly like Hitler Youth. They are brainwashed from age zero that Arabs are bad and about antisemitism, making them paranoid and racist — just like the Hitler Youth.”

Hannah Arendt writes more soberly: “The general Gentile hostility is now assumed to be an unalterable eternal fact of Jewish history [ …] obviously this attitude is plain racist chauvinism and it is equally obvious that this division between Jews and all other peoples- who are to be classed as enemies- do not differ from other master race theories” (The Jewish writings).

By creating the State of Israel after the Nazi genocide, the United Nations had a completely praiseworthy intention: the safety of the Jews. But, by a terrible twist of fate, they are the Jews of Israel who, for more than seventy years, have been the only Jews of the world to live permanently in the stress, the doubt, the anguish and the insecurity; to undergo the war, to carry arms, to enforce the infernal law of retaliation, to waver between fear and rage and to dream of exile.

That Israel became this mass of hatred of a racial nature and of violence is in the logic of the things. Among all the mass religions, only Judaism - in total opposition with part of itself: the universalistic option of some of his thinkers of the last centuries – bears consubstantial this defect to have invented and promoted two human “genera.” The chosen people and the others, Jews and goyim, the non-

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Jews… All the ingredients are joined together, in Israel, so that open out in the minds and the facts; and a hostility of the Jews towards the non-Jews - hostility to which will respond a reaction hostility of the non-Jews towards the Jews - and a hostility of the Jews between them. Thus develop and increase over time the intercommunity hatreds and the violence. Between religious and lay people, hawks and doves, ultranationalists and internationalists, fundamentalists and liberals, fascists and socialists, Sephardi and Ashkenazi… While the average Israeli lives in a permanent stress, the confrontations are not only verbal. Since 1990 the fire of cars and apartments belonging to representatives of the Israeli left-wing, or the death threats which are sent to them, as to many writers, inaugurated a “culture war.”

This one is such as the Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin died because of it - after religious curses had been called upon him - killed by one of his fellow men, Yigal Amir, regarded by a whole community as a “God’s envoy.”

This assassination was probably legitimated by the religious decree of certain extremist rabbis who had designated Rabin as a rodef (persuer) or as a moser (denouncer, i.e., the one who gives Jews up to a foreign power). What therefore justified his kill, according to them. “In blood and fire, we’ll drive out Rabin” crowd howled besides some time before his assassination. The death threats weighing on many people and particularly from the haredim (these “God-fearing” who, according to the statistics, frighten 70% of the Israelis) are such that the 14 judges of the Supreme court are placed under a permanent police protection.

Taking into account the hatred developed by a noticeable part the Israeli right wing, against those who are ready to retrocede a few inches of land to Arabs; a civil war is not to exclude in spite of the powerful heavy taboo on the murder of a Jew.

Apart from the enough generalized fear, there is hardly only the antagonism towards the Arabs which can somewhat bring together the Jews agreeing this policy. Although the nuances are large between the partisans of a certain respect and those who, wanting to expel the Palestinians to the last one, ravel while howling, “Death to Arabs! ” And do not hesitate to promote violence, even the murder, or to approve the assassins openly.

As for the anti-Jewish hostility, far from disappearing as the promoters of the political Zionism (such Leo Pinsker and Theodor Herzl) thought, it worsens each day through a process of generalization perfectly abusive but, alas, terribly human.

The Zionism is undoubtedly the single example of a movement initially of peaceful inspiration - the safety of the Jews - gradually changing, through its internal logic, in an increasingly aggressive movement; to lead, as Hannah Arendt envisaged it since 1948 (see higher), to the most militarist and most militarized country in the world.

After the surrender of the lay in front of the religious men , the Zionism indeed had as consequences what follows.

- Increase of anti-Arab racism among the Jews.

- Appearance of anti-Jewish racism among the Arabs, and its worsening in the West countries.

- Exclusion of a whole non-Jewish population in the name of a data of Hebraic mythology going back to thirty centuries.

- Emergence of bodily violence, within the Judaism which, up to that point, was practically unscathed from it.

- Giving up by Judaism of its spiritual vocation for a narrowly nationalist territorial undertaking.

- Change of brothers and sons of persecuted people into persecutors;

- Sudden burst in Israel of pogroms directed, no longer against Jews (according to the traditional definition of the dictionaries), but against not-Jews.

In short, in sixty years, we are gone from the one who walks hands up in a column, to the one who makes walk hands up in a column.

The State of Israel is a completely traditional ghetto society.

- By its motivation: the protection facing the not-Jews seen as potentially hostile.

- By its biblical inspiration (with the myth of the divine Choseness and the Promised land) and by the blood Law conveying implicitly the concept of “race.”

- By the type of society generated: a society regarding itself as an elite, violent with regard to the non-Jews.

- By the reaction hostility, even the racism, of the surrounding non-Jews.

It differs from the previous ghettos by the fact that it relates to a whole area, that its - moral and bodily – violence evolved in its form; and that it was created, with the support of a community of nations worked on by powerful lobbies. In the very first place the powerful Christian Coalition, with its two

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million members and its some fifteen to eighteen million sympathizers, which, through the Christian Friends of Israeli Communities, brings to Israel a powerful support. At the same time of a political nature (by supporting with the conviction that all historical Palestine belongs to the Jews under the terms of the divine law), economical nature (by financing particularly the settling) and psychological nature (by making them the unconditional advocates of Israel).

Two essential reasons indeed explain the attitude of many Christians regarding Israel. On the one hand, their adherence to the myth of the divine Covenant, a myth they adopted and integrated as a fundamental data of their doctrines. It is particularly the case of the Christian millenarians, Mormons, Evangelists, Baptists, Pentecostalists … they see in the birth of the State of Israel and its territorial expansion as a stage necessary to the projects of God for Mankind. With, ultimately, the conversion of the Jews to Christianity and the return of Jesus in all his glory (parousia). In addition their responsibility in the Hitlerian genocide after their traditional anti-Jewish hostility (it is particularly the case of the Catholics).

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BUT WHAT IS A RELIGION AT THE END?

While the definition of religion should not include elements that are only found in certain specific religious forms, however important these forms may be, such as ethnocentrism, it must also be given some precision and positive content.

It is important, however, not to reduce it to a single factor, which, although present everywhere, is never present alone and takes on its full meaning and value only through its association with other feelings and other concepts. An example is prayers.

One of the most acceptable definitions of religion is that provided by the great Belgian historian Eugene Goblet d'Alviella in 1892:

“By religion, then, I mean the conception man forms of his relations with the superhuman and mysterious powers on

which he believes himself to depend.”

To what Serge Jodra adds.

“But it would not to have of the mood of the non-civilized man with respect to his gods, a very exact idea, that to represent him it as aspiring in any circumstance to live with them in a close communion. In many cases, his dearer desire, it is to keep them at a distance, to get from them that they do not intervene in his life, that they do not disturb by the arbitrary exercise of their will the sure effects that must produce on the natural and social events the magic rites, performed according to the rules, whose utility and effectiveness seen in his eyes to be proven each day through experiments. And even though he concluded with some of the superhuman beings which surround him an alliance, a pact which subjects them towards him, and him towards them, with reciprocal obligations, even though he tries to make as close ,as intimate as possible, this artificial relationship with his gods, there are many characters, invested with the gifts and with the same power, towards whom he has no defined duties, who grant him no protection and of whom he seeks to reconcile the benevolent neutrality or that he tries to force by incantations and charms to a complete inaction towards him. These divine beings, his only concern is to put them where they can’t do any harm to him and, however, in the sentiments he feels towards them unquestionably appear elements of the same nature as the emotions with which are accompanied the sacrifices that he performs for his guards, the prayers that he sends to them. His attitude towards the gods, who are not his gods, is a religious attitude, and nevertheless, he does not aspire to unit himself with them, he does not even design it as possible, he wishes to move them away from him; but it is not only of fear that he feels in their presence, it is a kind of respect for the majestic characteristic they take on , for the indefinite power which comes from their person.

It is a similar reason which forces us to draw aside most of the definitions of the religion proposed by the theologians. They indeed admit almost all the presence in the religious feeling of an ethical element which in i is often absent, and they assign as origin to this prayer, where the man turns upward in order to ask for assistance and help, the awareness of the sin, a quite obscure and almost exclusively social consciousness in the oldest periods of the history we can reach. The religious emotion comes from the very individual, so wide that it is the share of the collective suggestion, exerted in the same group by all the members who compose it, on each one of them, but the morality is a social and exclusively social work. The notion of obligation is established from outside in the conscience, it is the shape that takes in the individual soul the obscure perception of the unbreakable bonds which link, the ones with the others the members of the same social body.

We could also accept, by modifying it somewhat, the way of looking that Jean-Marie Guyau expressed in his book on the Non-religion of the future (1887): “Man becomes truly religious, in our judgment, only when above the human society in which he lives he superimposes in his scheme of the world another society, more powerful and more cultured, a universal and, so to speak, a cosmic society.”

“The religious bond, he says in another passage, has been conceived ex analogia societatis humanæ: the relations, amicable and inimical, of men to each other were employed first for the explanation of physical phenomena and natural forces, then for the metaphysical explanation of the world, of its creation, conservation, and government; in short, sociological laws were universalized, and the state of war or peace which existed among men, families, tribes, and nations was conceived

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as existing also among the volitions which were fancied to exist beneath or beyond the forces of nature. A mythic or mystic sociology, conceived as containing the secret of all things, lies at the basis of all religions.”

This assertion of the possibility for man of getting in touch with superhuman beings whose power goes beyond his and whose action is felt or can be felt in the direction of his own life and causes all the events of nature; is found, indeed, in all the religions, except in certain aberrant types, like the initial Buddhism, and still should it be said that even here the common design is replaced by related and very similar designs.

As we have mentioned it above, any definition of the religion is, because even of the particular nature of the religious phenomena, arbitrary and partial, and we cannot succeed in giving of the whole of acts, concepts, images and organically linked feelings, that we understand under this term, an idea of a sufficient exactitude, only in indicating in a fast draft how was constituted the religious activity and what various forms it successively took on.”

Serge Jodra. Of which we hail Imago Mundi, his free online encyclopedia.

A religion is therefore a set of reflexes or behaviors (death fear, superiority complex, intolerance, or their opposites, the certainty to have a better life after death, modesty and humility, etc.) who are handed down from generation to generation through (or with) various beliefs (dogmas, doctrines) of a metaphysical and unscientific nature, concerning the place of man in the world, his nature, his origin or his destiny, the behavior that he must adopt in his life. The whole accompanied by practices quite equally diverse and varied (rites etc..).

The behavior that he must adopt in the life ...... the behavior that he must adopt in the life .....

As soon as we leave the simple pressure of a certain conformism to pass to the threat or the constraint under penalty of various sanctions in this world, we enter the field of the unacceptable one.

Apart from some well known -isms, the ideas, even a fortiori the ideologies, the modes, do not have their own existence. They have neither birth neither growth neither decline neither death nor another intrinsic dynamic being able to be studied. The fashion being thus to the nihilism in the media (because it is thus that I prefer to call the blind existentialism which is currently all the rage in our country) therefore observers will not be failing to object:

a) There exists as many religions or ideologies thus defined as individuals.

b) The religions or the ideologies thus defined i.e., common to more than one individual do not exist.

d) Judaism exists but it is only love peace and delight. Judaism exists but it is only….The same ones put generally in this place all that seems to them positive and highly commendable.

e) There does not exist one Judaism but Judaisms…

f) Judaism does not exist.

In what concerns us, we are essentialists as regards religion or absence of religion but of a moderate essentialism which does not exclude a certain form of existentialism. Is the surface of a triangle depending on its base “or” on its height? On both, and in proportions depending only on the particular triangle considered. The same applies to men. Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus or Atheists, are relevant human categories. The men and the women educated according to these principles have many conditioned reflexes in common which contribute to determining their surface but they are, of course, also the result of a personal history, of a destiny, of various genetic predispositions to such or such disease, etc. which make that each one, inside the aforesaid general categories in question (Muslim Jew Atheist Christian Buddhist Pagan …) is a single person, quite a particular individualized person.

In what concerns us, we therefore admit that there exist men and women that we can gather or distinguish from the others according to their reflexes or their behaviors in the life (death fear, superiority complex, intolerance, or their opposites, the certainty to have a better life after death, modesty and humility, etc.) who are handed down from generation to generation through (or with) various beliefs (dogmas, doctrines) of a metaphysical and unscientific nature, concerning the place of man in the world, his nature, his origin or his destiny, the behavior that he must adopt in his life. The whole accompanied by practices quite as various and varied (rites etc..).

While distinguishing inside these sets, some subsets (what orthodoxies when orthodoxy there is - because it is not the case in the pagan religions for examples – call generally heresies).

And while recognizing humbly that we do not know where to put in this classification a certain number of borderline cases (where to put the atheistic Jews, the non-Trinitarian Christians not believing that

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Jesus is God, the Mu’tazilites not believing in the divine nature of the Quran, the Druze, and is Buddhism a religion besides???

Still in what concerns us we will therefore admit more precisely than there exist women and men

a) Believing in the existence, not of the God of the philosophers (deism?), but of one God creator of this world and of the Man (the demiurge?)

b) Believing to have been chosen by this entity to be his people to him.

c) Referring to mythical characters called Abraham or Moses.

d) Granting much importance to a book called Torah (part old testament of the Bible).

e) Believing in the return one day of an exceptional man having to guarantee their collective glory (the Messiah) etc.

f) Believing in a future resurrection of the dead and a last judgment.

g) Believing in a kind of new earthly paradise to come around Jerusalem.

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KANT AND JUDAISM.

It is true that according to Kant (religion within the limits of reason alone), Judaism is not a true religion.

Below his reasoning.

The Jewish faith was, in its original form, a collection of mere statutory laws upon which was established a political organization; for whatever moral additions were then or later appended to it in no way whatever belong to Judaism as such. Judaism is really not a religion at all but merely a union of a number of people who, since they belonged to a particular stock, formed themselves into a commonwealth under purely political laws, and not into a church; nay, it was intended to be merely an earthly state so that, were it possibly to be dismembered through adverse circumstances, there would still remain to it (as part of its very essence) the political faith in its eventual re-establishment (with the advent of the Messiah). That this political organization has a theocracy as its basis (visibly, an aristocracy of priests or leaders, who boast of instructions imparted directly by God), and that therefore the name of God, who after all is here merely an earthly regent making absolutely no claims upon, and no appeals to, conscience, is respected – this does not make it a religious organization. The proof that Judaism has not allowed its organization to become religious is clear. First, all its commands are of the kind which a political organization can insist upon and lay down as coercive laws, since they relate merely to external acts; and although the Ten Commandments are, to the eye of reason, valid as ethical commands even had they not been given publicly, yet in that legislation they are not so prescribed as to induce obedience by laying requirements upon the moral disposition (Christianity later placed its main emphasis here); they are directed to absolutely nothing but outer observance. From this it is also clear that, second, all the consequences of fulfilling or transgressing these laws, all rewards or punishments, are limited to those alone which can be allotted to all men in this world, and not even these [are distributed] according to ethical concepts, since both rewards and punishments were to reach a posterity which has taken no practical part in these deeds or misdeeds. In a political organization, this may indeed be a prudent device for creating docility, but in an ethical organization it would be contrary to all right. Furthermore, since no religion can be conceived of which involves no belief in a future life, Judaism, which, when taken in its purity is seen to lack this belief, is not a religious faith at all. This can be further supported by the following remark. We can hardly question that the Jews, like other peoples, even the most savage, ought [normally] to have had a belief in a future life, and therefore in a heaven and hell; for this belief automatically obtrudes itself upon everyone by virtue of the universal moral predisposition in human nature. Hence it certainly came about intentionally that the lawgiver of this people, even though he is represented as God Himself, wished to pay not the slightest regard to the future life. This shows that he must have wanted to found merely a political, not an ethical commonwealth; and to talk, in a political state, of rewards and punishments which cannot become apparent here in this life-would have been, on that premise, a wholly inconsequential and unsuitable procedure. And though, indeed, it cannot be doubted that the Jews may, subsequently, and each for himself, have framed some sort of religious faith which was mingled with the articles of their statutory belief, such religious faith has never been part and parcel of the legislation of Judaism. Third, Judaism fell so far short of constituting an era suited to the requirements of the church universal, or of setting up this universal church itself during its time, as actually to exclude from its communion the entire human race, on the ground that it was a special people chosen by God for himself – [exclusiveness] which showed enmity towards all other peoples and which, therefore, evoked the enmity of all. In this connection, we should not rate too highly the fact that this people set up, as universal Ruler of the world, a one and only God who could be represented through no visible image. For we find that the religious doctrines of most other peoples tended in the same direction and that these made themselves suspected of polytheism only by the veneration of certain mighty undergods subordinated to Him. For a God who desires merely obedience to commands for which absolutely no improved moral disposition is requisite is, after all, not really the moral Being the concept of whom we need for a religion. Religion would be more likely to arise from a belief in many mighty invisible beings of this order, provided a people conceived of these as all

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agreeing, amid their “departmental” differences, to bestow their good pleasure only upon the man who cherishes virtues with all his heart – more likely, I say, than when faith is bestowed upon but one Being, who, however, attaches prime importance to mechanical worship.

It is true that Judaism deals hardly with the destiny of the soul after death and that its eschatology does not bring us further into another world, if not as for the resurrection of the dead, because the glory the Jerusalem which is to come remains well mundane and human well (too human).

To follow Kant literally nevertheless causes us not to deal with the Judaism in our brief druidic approach of the religions and to consider it only in the political perspective. What we do, of course, in our chapter about the State of Israel, but in the meantime, and with no offense to Kant, we will begin first by dealing with the ancient Judaism as a religion, LIKE ANOTHER, LIKE MANY OTHERS in the category henotheism or monolatry.

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REMINDER.

Thomas Aikenhead (March 28, 1676, January 8, 1697). A Scottish student of Edinburgh was the last person to be hanged for blasphemy in Great Britain. In France, it was the knight François-J. Lefebvre de La Barre some ninety years later as we will see it.

Thomas Aikenhead was accused in December 1696 under the following count of the indictment (in short)…

The defendant maintained on several occasions in various conversations, that theology was a rhapsody of ill-invented nonsense, patched up partly of the moral doctrines of philosophers, and partly of poetical fictions and extravagant chimeras: he ridiculed the holy scriptures, calling the Old Testament Ezra's fables, in profane allusion to Esop's Fables; he railed on Christ, saying, he had learned magic in Egypt, which enabled him to perform those pranks which were called miracles later. He called the New Testament the history of the imposter Christ; he said Moses was the better artist and the better politician; and he preferred Muhammad to Christ: moreover that the Holy Scriptures were stuffed with such madness, nonsense, and contradictions, that he admired the stupidity of the world in being so long deluded by them: That he rejected the mystery of the Trinity as unworthy of refutation; and scoffed at the incarnation of Christ. He has also assured that Christianity would have completely disappeared in 1800.

Aikenhead was also accused of having declared one day: “"I wish I were in that place Ezra calls hell so I could warm myself .” This statement from him was made while passing in front of the church of Tron Kirk, whereas he was returning from a night of drinking session with classmates.

The prosecutor was James Stewart (the grandfather of the future Jacobite great economist James Denham-Steuart) who called for capital punishment in order to be used as an example for those who would be tempted to express similar opinions in the future. Aikenhead recanted during the audience and beseeched the leniency of the court but in vain, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. On the morning of January 8, 1697, Thomas wrote to his friends: “"it is a principle innate and co-natural to every man to have an insatiable inclination to the truth, and to seek for it as for hid treasure….” On the scaffold he also reiterated his conviction that the moral laws had a human and not divine origin.

Thomas Babington Macaulay said on the day of Aikenhead's death that "on that day the preachers who were the poor boy's murderers crowded round him at the gallows, certainly insulted heaven with prayers more blasphemous than anything he had uttered."

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REMINDER.

François-J. Lefebvre de La Barre (September 12, 1746, July 1, 1766).

The knight François-Jean Lefebvre de La Barre, born on September 12, 1746, in the castle of Ferolles-en-Brie, executed in Abbeville on July 1, 1766, is as well as the Scot Thomas Aikenhead in 1697, a victim of the religious intolerance in the Age of Enlightenment in a case where the philosophers of Enlightenments will throw themselves in the name of the religious tolerance.

The affair begins following the degradation, discovered on August 9, 1765, of the statue of Christ erected on the new bridge of Abbeville. This statue had been slashed at several places by “a cutting instrument” which, as the usher of the king wrote it, thus caused on the right leg “three cuts more than one inch long, each one, and four lines deep” and “two cuts beside the stomach.” The emotion in the Picardy city is enormous, because, according to the Catholic church, through this gesture, it is God, and not only his symbol, who is struck. Thus, sign of the seriousness of this blasphemy, the bishop of Amiens himself, his grace Louis-François-Gabriel d’ Orleans de La Motte leads, barefoot, the ceremony of “reparation” in order to pay for this sacrilege, in the presence of all the dignitaries of the area.

Who made this blasphemy? The rumors go strong, but, for lack of evidence, it is necessary to resort to a very thorough investigation in order to punish such a blasphemy. The priests incited even denouncement at the time of the Sunday masses. Finally, the investigation is led by Duval de Soicour, lieutenant of police in Abbeville, who gets involved with doggedness, not hesitating to provide false charges and false witnesses, and by the lieutenant of the local court Belleval, who is a personal enemy of the knight de La Barre, since his aunt, the abbess of Willancourt, rejected his advances.

Intimidated, the questioned people accuse the knight de La Barre and two “accomplices,” Gaillard d’Etallonde and Moisnel, to have sung two libertine songs disrespectful with regard to religion and not to have removed their hats when a Corpus Christi procession went by. Worse, the three men through a challenge, refuse to kneel at the time of the passage of this same procession. After denunciation, a search carried out to the residence of La Barre led to the discovery of three prohibited books (of which the philosophical Dictionary of Voltaire and erotic books) which completes to discredit him in spite of a strong alibi. By misfortune for de La Barre, the bishop of Amiens and the local public figures (encouraged by influential excessively pious people attached to tradition) wished to make this case a true example.

Thinking of being found innocent thanks to the acquaintances of his family, the knight de La Barre does not prepare his escape and he is arrested on October 1, 1765, in the abbey of Longvillers, in spite of the remarkable plea of the journalist and lawyer Linguet as well as the defense of the friends of the abbess of Willancourt before the Parliament in Paris, the sentence to the galleys got in the lower court (in the court of the concerned élection) is commuted to a death sentence. The king of France himself is asked, but little convinced by the arguments of the defenders of the knight, he refuses his pardon to him in spite of the intervention of the bishop of Amiens.

The knight de La Barre is therefore sentenced , to undergo ordinary and extraordinary torture so that he denounces his accomplices, to have his fist and his tongue cut, to be beheaded and burned with the specimen of the philosophical Dictionary nailed on his chest. This sentence for blasphemy is carried out on July 1, 1766, in Abbeville by five executioners especially sent from Paris (of whom the executioner Sanson who will cut his head). “I did not believe that it was possible to make a gentleman die for such a little thing” would have been his last words.

Thereafter, it was established that the degradation of the crucifix at the origin of the case of the knight de La Barre would have been caused by the accident of a cart loaded with wood. The knight de La Barre was in his room during the night of the degradation of the crucifix. This judgment was in any

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event deprived from legal bases even in the France of the time; the Declaration of July 30, 1666, on the blasphemy, not envisaging the death penalty.

NAMES OF GOD.

We will apply here in this brief essay the method of analysis applied until now in our study of Irish legends and developed in our many counter-lais (no jealous!)

Ethne Aitencaithrech is an Irish name meaning "gorse-colored hair.” This Ethne Aitencaithrech can only be another name of Mugain, the wife of Cunocavaros / Conchobar.

Ethne Inguba can only be another name of Aemer the wife (the legitimate wife and not a mistress as translated by Eugene O'Curry, deceived by the name difference) of the Hesus Cuchulainn whose most famous name appears in the second part of the story, a second part having probably formed a separate episode originally, before being united under the same heading by some unknown bard or copyist monk. What matters are the outline of the story, not the details. That King Cunocavaros / Conchobar and his nephew, our legendary hero, the Hesus Cuchulainn, had mistresses, is not a mortal sin among us, at most a fault, even if the rest of the story shows us that it is better perhaps to be able to avoid such "faults" precisely, because in this story 1), it must be admitted, the Hesus Cuchulainn was rather pathetic.

Anyway, such a variation of names is less serious than those affecting the name of God in the Bible or his different names in the Quran.

We find indeed in the Bible, in alphabetical order, because chronologically appears first the plural Elohim: Adonai, El, Eloah, El Elyon, El Shaddai, El Olam, El Hai, El Roi, El Elohe Israel, El Gibbor, Sabaoth, Yah, Yhwh,

All these differences in names signify a plurality of different gods or ideas of God, later synthesized or merged into a single symbol, the tetragrammaton; what can’t help but give birth to a god with a multiple personality, quite composite, even contradictory.

What is the origin of these different names of the higher god in the Bible?

If more recent versions of the Old Testament call God Elohim, versions of the tenth or ninth century before our era call him Yahveh.

If the newer text starts by saying that Elohim created heaven and earth, an older Yahwist text no longer speaks of the creation of heaven and earth, but of a desert that God (Yahweh) made fertile by a stream rising from the ground. Yahweh "planted the Garden of Eden" in Upper Mesopotamia, the land of Sham. This is the famous garden of Eve and Adam ... It was there that his thirst for knowledge led Yahweh to punish man by forcing him to work. This older myth (that of the humidified desert ) seems to have originated in a desert region inhabited by the Semites before they reach Upper Mesopotamia ... It was under Yahveh that Cain who cultivated the soil killed Abel pastor of small livestock. And Yahveh punishes man a second time for this crime. And one of the punishments was the flood. Another punishment of Yahveh was the multiplication of languages, preventing people from understanding each other. Yahveh will become the god of Abraham and yet, at the same time, there is in the same region another god, El, the Canaanites and the two assimilate each other and coexist peacefully first.

Since the discovery at Ugarit in Syria of a whole series of tablets containing texts in classical or local cuneiform writing dating from the 14th century before our era we know more about the mythology of the peoples of this religion and particularly about the relationship between Baal and El. We have even been able to reconstruct an entire cycle of Baal.

The Ugaritic texts provide a rich resource for understanding the Late Bronze Age kingdom of Ugarit, located on the coast of Syria. The site has yielded about two thousand tablets in Ugaritic, the West Semitic language of this city-state, and about twenty-five hundred tablets in Akkadian, the lingua franca of the period, as well as many texts written in seven other languages. These reveal a

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cosmopolitan, commercial center operating in the shadow of two great powers of the eastern Mediterranean Basin, the Egyptians and the Hittites.

The Ugaritic texts offer innumerable literary or religious parallels to biblical literature. The parallels are so rich and in some cases so specific that it is evident that the Ugaritic texts do not merely provide parallels, but belong to a shared or overlapping cultural matrix with the Hebrew Bible. Ugaritic literature is only a few decades older than the theoretical or claimed date of the oldest biblical texts, but most biblical literature is still several centuries later.

Unlike the coastal, cosmopolitan center of Ugarit, ancient Israel’s heartland lay in the inland considerably to the south. But despite these important differences, Ugaritic and biblical literature are not to be understood as representing entirely different cultures, but overlapping ones.

Given the importance of the subject, a few words on Ugaritic religion will not be too much.

The Ugaritic religion has many gods, who can be found in other kingdoms of the Levant and the contemporary Middle East. They all together constitute a true divine society, that we see evolving in mythology. The god who occupies the position of divine ruler in the religious texts of Ugarit is El (Ilu), whose name literally means "God.” He is the father of the other Ugarit deities. It is possible that under this name we should in fact see an epithet of the very ancient god Dagan, an agricultural deity that has been highly venerated by the West Semitic peoples since ancient times. In mythological texts, El is supplanted by the god Baal, the goddess of Thunderstorm. His name, meaning "the Lord,” is an epithet of the great West Semitic Storm god (Adad, Addu, Hadad, and the Hurrian Teshub), traditionally the main god of the Syrian-Anatolian pantheons. Baal is also close to the Akkadian Bel. The two main feminine deities are Ashtart (Astarte), consort of Baal, goddess of love, representing the planet Venus, corresponding to the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, and Anat, Baal's sister. Another goddess who occupied an important position was Asherat, the consort of El. Secondary deities include Khotar/Khasis, god of craftsmen and magic, and Shapash, goddess of the sun, as well as Baal's two opponents in mythological accounts, Yam, the Sea, and Mot the death.

These gods are the masters of men, who must perform their worship, which consists of providing for their daily needs through sacrifices. The mythological texts show that the action of the gods can be good or bad for men. Through their piety, men could hope to influence divine decisions. This good behavior had to be accompanied by good moral behavior approved by the gods, but there is no clear expression of this in the texts. Prayer, divination, or certain rituals could give humans hope of understanding divine actions and of tilting them in their favor.

The main actor in the cult is the king, the privileged intermediary between the human and divine worlds. He is supposed to be chosen by the gods, and to be the representative of the gods here below. He must therefore demonstrate justice and fairness. The king occupies a special place: he is the only one who is mentioned in the texts as performing a bloody sacrifice. His role is therefore paramount. At his death, he is divinized, and is included in the list of ancestors of the dynasty who are the object of a funerary cult .

The administrative texts show us that there was also a whole clergy, evolving in the king's entourage, and working in the temples. The basic priest is called khnm (cf. the kohen/kohanim of the Hebrew Bible). There is a high priest (rb khnm). There were also other priests whose precise function is not always defined (qdšm, kmrm, mqm ʾlm). The cult also required the presence of offering bearers, singers, musicians and divination specialists. The Ugaritan worship could appeal to priestesses (khnt, qdsht).

A synthesis takes place in the texts. The patriarchal stories of the Hebrews multiply the references to El which is followed by a qualifier: El of the mountain, El of eternity, El Roi (El who sees me), etc. The house of God is called Beth el. The Hebrews adopt the standing stones of the Canaanites. There is symbiosis of both civilizations. Later, the reference to Yahvism, born in a people of shepherds wandering in the desert, will be used then by the non-Jewish Jebusite priests in Jerusalem to return to these Canaanite influences as the standing stones.

The story of Moses, the burning bush, the choice of the chosen people and of its exit from captivity in Egypt, the ten plagues of Egypt, the Red Sea crossing , all this comes down to Yahveh. The first Yahveh is not a single god but the god of an ethnic group who admits perfectly that other ethnic groups have other gods (henotheism).

At the time of the two kingdoms, Yahveh is probably not the only God for the Hebrews. The biblical prophet, Micah, who lived in Jerusalem in the 8th century before our era, was very aware of this situation: " All the nations may walk in the name of their gods,but we will walk in the name of Yahveh our God for ever and ever" ( Micah 4: 5). Nevertheless, the Israelites, like the Assyrians and the Babylonians, had other gods, including Baal, and even a goddess, Iahveh's companion, Asherah; as

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the Bible testifies to it, if we read it without distorting glasses, and as confirmed by inscriptions recently discovered at Kuntillet Ajrud in Israel, which speak of "Yahve and his Asherah.” A poem in the Deuteronomy (32, 8 and following) as this passage in the Book of Micah (4,5) attest to this form of polytheistic monolatry for which each people has its own national God recognizing the deities of neighboring peoples. There is a monolatrous tradition quite similar to the Yahwist Judaism of this period in the kingdom of Moab with the god Chemosh, and the competition between the popular god Baal and Yahweh could explain the virulence of the Old Testament texts against the first.

CONCLUSION. Between the 10th and 7th centuries before our era, the ethnic god Yahweh is only a deity providing security and fertility to his people through his king.

On the other hand, some epigraphic clues suggest that Yahveh may have been honored with a consort goddess of Ugaritic origin called Asherah, but we do not know with certainty - researchers are still debating it - if it is this goddess or an attribute, the biblical word ashera also designating a sacred tree.

There is indeed in the official and right-thinking biblical terminology a Hebrew common noun which is similar or almost similar, ashera in the singular asherim in the plural, or even asherot, designating either a sacred tree or a pole.

But since it is also accepted that the scandalous goddess could be represented or symbolized both in the form of a woman (e.g., with her hands supporting her breast) and a tree, or even by a sacred pole as among ancient Celts, we are no further ahead than in the cases of Romana or Celtica interpretatio.

What did the Hebrew of the tenth century before our era have in mind when he appeared without bad intentions towards it before this kind of Ashera? Did he see only a simple wooden pole in front of him or did he have the goddess in mind?

To return to the small place god of Sinai, Yahweh, the simplest thing to do is to admit that the Hebrews of antiquity have only imitated what they saw practiced around them by venturing to link their destiny to a god as obscure as Marduk or Assur in their beginning, but from whom they expected the same protection: man hopes that an unknown or fringe god will be able to devote himself entirely to them, while a famous god, solicited by many peoples, might neglect them or prefer others.

1) The wasting sickness of Cuchulainn and the only jealousy of Emer. Gaelic Serglige Con Culainn ocus Óenet Emire. In this legend two female angels come as a birds contact the semi-god Cuchulainn on the behalf of the goddess Wanda / Fand. This adultery will end badly!

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DREAMED (“OR REVEALED”) OR FANTASIZED HISTORY OF HEBREWS.

Reindeer: we will apply here in this short essay the method of analysis used in our study of the Irish legends and developed in our many counter-lays (no jealous!)

As it seems well, archaeologically speaking, that the Hebrews of before the deportation were only a subdivision of the Canaanite society having evolved on the spot, certain archeologists coherent with themselves therefore think that the Book of Joshua would be in fact invented, that it would be a compilation of various accounts of different unrelated battles, having taken place at different times (over at least 200 years) and with different antagonists, moreover, developed by the collective memory or the oral tradition. And it is all the better because the Book of Joshua contains accounts of massacres unworthy to have been ascribed to the will of God, unworthy to have been subjected to the approval and even to the simple meditation, of posterity, of so any human generations, during centuries.

This indefinitely read repeated scrutinized NON-HISTORY having contributed to forging a whole series of conditioned reflexes triggered by a certain number of key words (God, Goyim Law, Pagans, Sin, etc.) handed down from generation to generation, in a more direct way than the manufacturing consent dear to the buddy Noam Chomsky and coming more under mental manipulation; so we will say a few words about it, but in the way we speak of a WORK OF FICTION, its qualities, its weak points, its moral, etc. AS FOR EXAMPLE THE METROPOLIS BY FRITZ LANG WESTWARD THE WOMEN THE BLACK AND WHITE MANON OF THE SPRINGS.

THE LOCAL MYTHOLOGY BEFORE THE DEPORTATION IN BABYLON.

The evolution of the designs of God, of course, followed the social and political evolution of the peoples in question. There never was and nowhere an immutable religion. The concept of immutable religion is, like the concept of perennial religion, a mere fantasy. They were different times and sometimes different people. Those who believe that the religion was not modified because of that are mistaken. Moreover, there never was one religion of the Hebrews, but several, according to the areas (kingdom of Judah /kingdom of Israel for example).

“El” , god of the wandering shepherds in an area ranging from the Upper Mesopotamia to the Palestinian coast, was the chief of the Pantheon of the Canaanite gods (Elohim) and of the Western Semites. He is called bull, powerful, king, father of the years, father of mankind. He is depicted as a bearded sage on a throne, equipped with a long dress, wearing a horned tiara. He has two wives Ashera and Anat, the morning star and the evening star. His power is disputed by his son, Baal/Hadad, an agrarian god of the Upper and Middle Euphrates in the third thousand years. This dispute of Baal/Hadad probably illustrates the increasing power of farming facing breeding (in the Bible, the famous Cain where is your brother Abel). etc. .etc. End of our short introduction about the true religion of the ancient Canaan .

THE POST-EXILIC BIBLICAL MYTHOLOGY.

But these elohim precisely eh well we find them in the Bible. Nevertheless if the more recent text begins well by saying that the Elohim created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1), a Yahwist text (Genesis 2:4b) older although coming after, speaks not about a creation of the heavens and of the earth , but of a desert that God (Yahweh) made fertile by streams which came up from the earth. Yahweh “planted the garden in Eden” in Upper Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates. It is the famous garden of Eve and Adam… but his thirst for knowledge led Yahweh to punish the man by forcing him to work.

This older myth (that of the humidified desert) seems therefore to have its origin in a desert area where the Semites lived before joining high Mesopotamia… It is in the reign of Yahweh that Cain who cultivated the ground killed Abel shepherd of small livestock. And Yahweh for the second time punishes the man for this crime….. One of the punishments was the flood. Another punishment from Yahweh was the multiplication of the languages, preventing the peoples from understanding themselves.

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Recent archeological research shows that the texts of the Bible, like the great saga of the patriarchs, from Abraham and Isaac to the sons of Jacob, has no historical base.

The biblical accounts are to be arranged among the various national mythologies that our planet has, and do not have more historical base than the Lebar na Gabala Eireann reporting the various settlements of Ireland. Most of these texts, moreover, were many times rewritten during centuries, were adapted to the polemics and the events of time.

According to the Bible, Abraham received from God or the Demiurge the order to join the country of Canaan with his, then to sacrifice his son Isaac.

The spiciest of all the paradoxes for those who want to be the heirs (even only spiritual) to Abraham is that this filiation is perhaps perfectly imaginary (a supplementary myth), because there was neither Abraham neither Isaac nor Jacob! The biblical decoration of the life of Abraham does not correspond to his supposed time, but rather to that of Ezra and Nehemiah, or of a little before (Josiah?)

Yahweh will become the god of Abraham and yet, at the same time, there is already in the same area another god, El. Both are assimilated mutually and coexist peacefully initially. A synthesis takes place in the texts. The patriarchal stories of the Hebrews multiply the references to El who is followed by a qualifier: El of the mountains (Shaddai) , El of eternity (Olam) , King El (Melech) , most-high El (Elyon) etc. The house of God is called beth-el. But Adonai, which means lord and father, is also one of the names of the god of Hebrews.

There is symbiosis of the two civilizations. Later, the reference to Yahwism, risen in a people of wandering shepherds in the desert, will be used then by the priests in Jerusalem to reconsider these Canaanite influences like the standing stones.

There was no Moses (whose birth, “rescued from the water,” is copied on the legendary origin of Sargon) therefore there was not either of people from Egypt under his leading; (there were perhaps Canaanite prisoners in Egypt when Ramesses destroyed Avaris, capital of the Hyksos, but that does not have much to do with the question, if not some old legends perhaps).

The sites mentioned in the Exodus existed well, of course. Some were known and were apparently occupied, but well after the supposed time of the Exodus, well after the emergence of the kingdom of Judah, when the texts of the biblical account were composed for the first time.

The excavations provide us the evidence of the importance of the Egyptian presence in all the country of Canaan during the 13th century before our era. However it is hard to imagine the Egyptian garrisons in charge of the safety of the country twindle their thumbs while a horde of refugees, in addition escaped from Egypt would spread terror through all the province.

Moses, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, are legends which have no historical reality.

The account of the exit out of Egypt is fictitious and the Exodus matches no reliable archeological data. If there could not be a conquest of the promised land at the time, it is besides because there was in fact still nothing to conquer before the 10th century. The south of Palestine has almost no city and Jerusalem was only a tiny hamlet. No people could come to conquer the country of Judah which will remain still a long time underdeveloped, rural and sparse.

Biblical places of great importance like Beersheba or Edom did not exist during time of the Exodus, and no king was in Edom to face the Jews.

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THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT JEWISH PEOPLE.

A) THE EGYPTIAN COUNTRY OF CANAAN.

This Hyksos expansion was stopped by the reconquest of the pharaoh Ahmose who seized Avaris (around 1525), then Sharuhen. Egypt soon established its protectorate over the whole of the Levant following the victorious campaigns of Tutmose I and III (1479-1423). For more than three centuries, the Canaanite civilization was marked by Egyptian direct or indirect, domination, depending on whether it was Egyptian garrison towns, such as Gaza and Beth-Shean (with its temples and stelae), or city-states that kept a certain degree of local autonomy, with a king at their head. The political situation of this period, the official submission to the pharaoh and the rivalries between the local kings are well known to us from the cuneiform tablets of El-Amarna, whose documentation stretches over a good part of the 14th century; it includes a few letters from the pharaoh with a view to getting personnel and merchandise and, especially, many letters from the local kings or governors. There are thus contemporary testimonies concerning the towns of Akka/Akko, Akshaph, Ammiya, Ascalon, Ayalon... while Tyre, Sidon and Beirut are mentioned, in the thirteenth century, in alphabetical or Akkadian documents found in Ugarit.

Because of the pax aegyptiaca, the cities content themselves with middle-bronze fortifications, while temples, sometimes built on the Egyptian model or in honor of an Egyptian deity, were built at Hazor, Megiddo, Beth-Shean and Lachish. At that time, taking advantage of the development of international trade, the local elites accumulate power and wealth, with many objects made of gold and ivory, while the rural population decreases and sometimes tries to escape the control of the police, both local and Egyptian - thus the Habiru movement develops in the mountains and hills of the inland. Local revolts regularly led to Egyptian suppression , such as the military expedition of Merneptah, around 1210, after which the pharaoh boasted of having seized Ascalon, Gezer and Yenoam and defeated the people of Israel. Akkadian cuneiform remains the usual diplomatic script, even in relations with the pharaoh; however, the Egyptian administration also uses its own script, as evidenced by some hieratic ostraca ((ostraca singular ostracon: pottery shard used as a draft notebook). (ostraca singular ostracon: pottery shard used as a draft notebook)..

This very unequal civilization will collapse rather abruptly because of this invasion around 1185-1180, at the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, who stopped it on land and sea at the gates of Egypt. Under the nominal suzerainty of Egypt, various "peoples of the sea" settled on the Mediterranean coast: the Philistines (between Gaza and Jaffa), the Tjekker/Sikuli (in the Dor region), the Shardanes (in the Akko region). Further north, the fate of the Phoenician cities remains poorly known. Eventually the control of Egypt ceased completely under the reign of Ramesses VI, around 1140 before our era.

B) THE INVASION OF THE SEA PEOPLES AND THE CANAANITE RESISTANCE (-1200-1000).

The Book of Judges seems to bring together diverse and various accounts traditions and chronicles without necessarily always having a direct connection with the birth of ancient Israel.

The Jewish Encyclopedia even suspects Judge Samgar of not being a Hebrew but a Hittite. He is said to be the son of Anath but Anath is a Canaanite goddess. The formula "son of Anath" could therefore have been a kind of invocation to this deity.

These "judges" do not judge strictly speaking (although shophetim means judges, from shafat,to judge, in Hebrew), but they play the role of administrators and governors for a given tribe or group of tribes .

In Carthage they are the suffetes and there we know more.

They are two magistrates in charge of executive power in Carthage and in the cities colonized by the Punic empire, such as Cadiz, for example. Aristotle compares the suffetes to the kings of Sparta and Polybius to the Roman consuls. Like the latter, they are appointed for one year, but their powers can

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be renewed indefinitely; whereas it is customary in Rome not to run for the consulate more than twice in a row. The suffetes take part in the deliberations of the Carthaginian Senate and, in the event of a conflict between them and the Senate, the matter is brought before the people, who decide by voting. Usually chosen from among the noble families of Carthage, suffetes were the original commanders of armies, Fleet and generals. The Barcids, and particularly Hannibal, held the office of suffete for more than twenty consecutive years.

However, from the first Punic War, the suffetes lost a large part of their discretionary powers. Their remits became essentially civil. They are dispossessed of the direction of military affairs, war and defense, even if, occasionally, they may be, as Hannibal was, placed at the head of armies. Several Latin authors have pointed out at what extent this separation of civil and military powers can be considered, in antiquity, as an originality of the Carthaginian constitution, or even as a superiority over the Roman constitution*. This separation of powers prevents generals from embarking on the adventure of a coup. A wise institution than that of the suffetes, much more democratic than people could have said, and which places the Roman Republic in the camp of the authoritarian regimes.

* It was also the case of the vergobret among the Eduans, he was forbidden to leave the national territory, therefore to lead an army on an expedition.

But let us return to our Shophetim to us.

The Book of Judges occupies a singular place since it describes a transitional period leading to the advent of kinship. This corpus is part of a larger group known as historical books (Joshua, Books of Samuel, Books of the Kings) which ends with the fall of the Kingdom of Judah.

Since 1943 and the work of the German historian and theologian Martin Noth (Deuteronomistischen Geschichtswerk) historical criticism thinks that the oldest parts of Deuteronomy are the work of one man or at least of a school which would have composed a "History of Israel" from scattered documents.

These materials would date from the 8th century and would mainly come from the Northern Kingdom.

Their hypothesis is that, having had to flee to the southern kingdom during the reign of King Josiah (-640-609) and then also to go into exile in Babylon (-597-538), the Deuteronomist or his school would have continued the work by rewriting the first draft of Deuteronomy and adding introductory or concluding chapters, in other words, the three other books known as "historical" as well as a history of Judah, the whole with the help of various fragments or by reworking sometimes very old accounts of various origins.

In view of the tragedies which occurred, the new bias of these deuteronomists was to ignore from now on everything which was king, royalty, or hereditary power.

But despite the editor's efforts to erase any resemblance between Judges and kings, it is indeed under royal features that they will appear in the stories, for the good and simple reason that they exercised de facto the two royal functions par excellence which are to do justice but also and especially to wage war.

It is as if the deuteronomist, who had taken refuge in the lands of King Josiah and who had only incomplete sources concerning the tribal chiefs before the unification under Saul, and who refused by principle to present them as kings, little kings but kings nonetheless, could not help acknowledging that they nevertheless exercised the two major functions of any king, namely to do justice and to lead warriors into battle.

Saul appeared on the political scene in the -tenth century, a particularly painful time for the Israelite tribes. They were subject to Philistine domination throughout most of the West Bank of the Jordan River . Israel's neighbors were thus encouraged to enlarge to its detriment. The Ammonites, defeated by Jephthah, occupied Gilead and crossed the Jabbok northward, and attacked the city of Yabes, the foundation of Manasseh. The tribes of the West Bank were too weakened by Philistine control to help their sisters beyond the Jordan River. This is the context in which Saul, under the inspiration of Samuel (I Sam IX 1-X, 16), was chosen for kingship. In his capacity as "chief" designate, he gathered troops from all the tribes. As the Philistine occupation did not prevent this"mass" mobilization, the victory over Ammon was resounding, and Yabes was unblocked.

C) THE TRUE ORIGINS OF THE BIBLICAL NARRATIVE.

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Sixteen years after the publication of the book The Bible Unearthed (2001), the biblist Thomas Römer, professor at the Collège de France, and the archaeologist Israel Finkelstein co-authored a book in 2019 entitled "At the origins of the Torah" which refines and clarifies the achievements of the previous one.

Notably based on the archaeological excavations carried out in Kiriath-Jearim on a very interesting site evoked in the Bible when the Ark of the Covenant returned from the Philistines and before it was brought to Jerusalem by David. An important wall was discovered there, too small to be that of a city but important enough to be that of a sanctuary, what changes everything.

The etiological biblical account would have had the function of legitimizing this sanctuary and would have resulted from the will of Jeroboam II to enlarge his kingdom by unifying it with Judah. Cf. I. Finkelstein, Th. Römer et al., "Excavations at Kiriath-Jearim. Jerusalem, 2017.

Unification that will take place only after the disaster of-720.

Finkelstein indeed underlines in this work that there are two myths to be definitively overcome.

-First myth: the biblical account from the patriarchs to Nehemiah would be a true and linear description of the history of the Hebrew nation.

-Second myth: the episodes of ancient Israeli history would be unique in the chronicles of the Levant.

However, everything depended on geographical and climatic conditions and was related to what happened in the ancient Near East and the eastern Mediterranean. Example the Ark of the Covenant

What are the data from archaeology?

Until 720, there are two kingdoms: the northern kingdom, Israel, capital Samaria; the southern kingdom, Judah, capital Jerusalem.

Archaeology as well as extra-biblical sources show that the kingdom of Israel was the more powerful of the two, it experienced a demographic, economic and military boom long before Judah. Israel occupied the most fertile lands, and controlled the great trade routes, it was connected with neighboring regions and the Mediterranean coast. It is estimated that the population of the two kingdoms was in a ratio of 25:1 to Iron I and in the mid-eighth century of 4:1. Judah did not develop until the end of the 9th century, and did not become prosperous until the end of the 8th century. In 720, Samaria is taken by the Assyrians and Jerusalem grows from an area of less than 10 hectares to more than 60 hectares. Traditions from the north probably came to Judah with the (northern) Israelites in the years following the conquest of Israel by the Assyrians in 720.

"Ideologically and theologically, the biblical story begins in 720, at the time of the fall of the northern kingdom. Judah and Israel, two kingdoms very different in terms of environment and types of population, had, however, common characteristics in terms of language, material culture and worship. After the fall of Israel and the migration of many (northern) Israelites to Jerusalem and Judah, the demographic profile of Judah changed radically, with North Israelites becoming a large fraction of the kingdom's population. Seeing itself as the heir and preserver of the tradition common to both kingdoms, Judah appropriated the now vacant name Israel, to describe the unified nation under its aegis. It was at this time that the pan-Israeli ideology first developed, promoting two messages: all Israelites will have to accept the kingship of the Davidic dynasty and admit the primacy of Jerusalem and its Temple.

Most of the ancient materials, however, come from the Northern Kingdom.

These traditions were first transmitted orally and then "layered" over the centuries, absorbing later elements, additions. As an example, he gives the account of David in 1 Samuel.

a- The heart of the story describes David as the leader of a band of mercenaries, operating in the arid zone of Judah, south of Hebron, and on the border of the city of Gath. This represents a phase in the history of the region, probably the second half of the ninth century.

b - Descriptions of the wars reflect later realities when kingdoms and armies became stronger.

c- The third stratum refers to the Philistines, with Deuteronomic terminology: therefore it cannot be older than the 7th century.

It is assumed that these stories have been preserved by oral transmission in the regional sanctuaries; the Jacob cycle may have been preserved in the temple of Penuel, the story of the Exodus to Samaria... While it is reasonable to fix the time at which writing was possible, it is difficult to determine the date up to which these texts were retouched, rewritten... It is this question of the dating of the texts that T. Römer tackles in the 2nd chapter of the book.

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The Pentateuch - the Torah - is difficult to date because it does not give historical details: for example, the Pharaoh in the Exodus does not have a name, nor does the one Abraham or Joseph meets... The Pharaoh is here the incarnation of the Egyptian power and its gods before the God of Israel and not a historical figure. One could think of linguistic analysis to date the texts, but here again there is no proof: we do not know if Biblical Hebrew was really a spoken language, there are dialectal variations, variations between spoken and written language... a recent text may very well be written in a more archaic Hebrew... Biblical Hebrew is a literary language that has endured among the scribes.

For Thomas Römer, the most certain date for the texts of the Pentateuch is the Persian period. The further back in time one goes, the more complicated and hypothetical the dating is. But for the oldest texts, a first edition in the 7th century before our era seems plausible.

The stories related to Jacob and the territory were probably memorized in the sanctuary of the god El in Penuel. The realities of the oldest stratum should be dated to the end of the 11th or 10th century, when the border of occupation (and not political) between Israelites and Arameans was formed. At that time Jacob was not yet the ancestor of Israel. But in this case, how can we understand Jacob's association with Bethel, located further south? This tradition may date from the first half of the 8th century before our era, when Bethel was an important temple of the northern kingdom. The institutionalization of the link between Jacob and Bethel can be traced to the reign of Jeroboam II (788-747) who reorganized the cult and the kingdom. It was probably during his reign that the tradition about Jacob was written down in Bethel and became a myth for all Israel. This account, probably compiled in the first half of the eighth century at Bethel, reached Judah after 722, and was taken up by the writers of the tradition related to Abraham and Isaac. The account of Jacob was reworked at different times, for example, the presentation of the children of Jacob as the twelve tribes of Israel is a late construction. Originally, the traditions about Jacob were confined to the southern part of the northern kingdom, between Shechem and Bethel. What were the traditions between Shechem and the valley of Jezreel, Samaria and its surroundings? It seems that the Northern Kingdom had two original accounts: The Jacob cycle, on the one hand, and the account of the Exodus and the sojourn in the desert on the other. Jacob, the local hero of Gilead, was worshipped at Bethel, while the Exodus was celebrated at the shrine of Samaria. And both traditions were probably written down in these two temples.

D) KINGDOM OF JUDAH.

The southern population had at least one central shrine and ancestor accounts, and one can imagine, after 722 but before 586, a fusion of the accounts of Jacob and Abraham, in line with the "pan-Israelite" ideology that may have emerged during the reign of Josiah.

It is plausible that there was a second ancestral figure in the south, venerated in a shrine at Beer-Sheva. Isaac must have become the son of Abraham at an early age, as is evidenced in Genesis 18, with the play on Sarah's laughter. Gen 18 assumes that Abraham did not yet have a son. One would thus have either two different traditions, or one is a later addition.

After 720, the arrival of the northern population in Judah made it necessary to strengthen the unity of this nation by creating a common history, mixing the traditions of the north and the south. The reign of Josiah seems to have been a propitious time for such an undertaking. This deliberate fusion was done in written form, the end of the seventh century and the sixth century before our era are characterized by an extensive use of the written word in administration and correspondence. In this unified history, the chronology was reversed, Jacob was subordinated to Abraham and Isaac, the heroes of the North being systematically devalued in the unified history.

Finkelstein obviously approaches the question of the Exodus as an archaeologist, by examining the place names that appear in the list of stages in the books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The list of itineraries belongs to late redactions of the Pentateuch, but they are undoubtedly based on earlier sources. Archaeology shows that these sites were all in decline during the Persian period, and the author infers that the scribes of that time could not have a true knowledge of the desert, the itineraries mentioned are based on sources older than the Persian period. From this observation, I. Finkelstein will go back in time from stage to stage.

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Before 720: What is the origin of the important tradition of the Exodus in the Northern Kingdom, found in the books of Hosea and Ezekiel? The site of Kuntillet-Ajrud, which dates back to the reign of Jeroboam II (788-747) gives some elements of an answer. In the 9th century, an Arab trade route passed through the lands. Trade was dominated by Gath and Damascus, but with the expansion of Assyria, the northern kingdom, which was its ally and vassal, controlled the territories previously ruled by Damascus, including perhaps Judah. Kuntillet-Ajrud's discoveries indicate that in the first half of the eighth century the inhabitants of the Northern Kingdom, both merchants and members of the administration, frequented Kuntillet-Ajrud, the Darb el Ghazza, and the end of the Gulf of Aqaba. They were able to gather knowledge about the "deep" desert between the end of the Gulf of Aqaba and the Mediterranean coast.

Biblical scholars have proposed hypotheses on the roots of the Exodus tradition, going back to the 13th century. But, according to Finkelstein, these theories do not explain why this tradition was preserved and promoted in the northern kingdom, the southern lowlands would be a more favorable region, where until the twelfth century oppression was strongest, and in the north in the valleys of Megiddo and Beth-Shean and not in the highlands. "We must look for an element of memory specifically related to the Northern Highlands that is chronologically closer to the time of Amos and Hosea."

Finkelstein refers to the military campaign of Pharaoh Shoshenq I (947-924 before our era) which led to the decline of the first northern Israelite territorial entity in the region of Gibeon-Gibeah. This entity was replaced by the Northern Kingdom whose center was initially in the region of Shechem-Tirzah. The Septuagint version of 1 Kings 12 refers to a possible Egyptian involvement in the story of Jeroboam I. Was the Exodus account a founding myth or a thanksgiving for the reign of Jeroboam I? These memoirs may have been incorporated into older traditions of YHWH's deliverance from the Egyptian yoke, which originated in the Lowlands.

N.B. The earliest account of Exodus 3 began with a description of the situation of the Hebrews in Egypt and the birth of Moses and his adoption by the Pharaoh's daughter. This birth, abandonment, and adoption are close to the account of the birth, abandonment, and adoption of Sargon I, the legendary founder of the Assyrian empire. This story of Sargon I was written under Sargon II, therefore the story of Moses cannot be dated before the 7th century before our era. Exodus 2 does not presuppose any knowledge of Moses, his name, his origins... it is therefore tempting to consider the first writing of the story about Moses as a reaction to the neo-Assyrian royal ideology developed at the court of Josiah. If a seventh-century context is plausible, one can assume that the insertion of Moses in this narrative and his construction as a royal figure are linked to the rewriting in Judah of an older tradition from the North.

E) CONCLUSION.

From -1200 to -1000 on the ruins of the Canaanite civilization of Palestine, two different political and cultural entities were gradually organized: the Philistines, on the coast, and the Israelites, in the inland. After numerous bloody clashes in the second half of the 11th century, the Philistines withdrew to their pentapolis (Gaza, Ascalon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath) and the Israelites of David controlled the rest of Palestine, including the "Canaanite" cities of Megiddo, Ta'anak and Beth-Shean as well as the regions of Dor and Akko .

This new political organization led to the development of different "Canaanite" dialects with a particular evolution of alphabetic writing: Phoenician, Hebrew, Philistine and even Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite in Transjordan. These various regions more or less integrate the heritage of Canaanite culture. If the Israelite culture and religion are very cautious towards this heritage, the Philistines are more open to it, as shown by their onomastic, mostly West-Semitic, and by the biblical traditions about the deities of their sanctuaries.

However, even in these two areas, recently discovered inscriptions reveal that they also kept their own traditions, originating in the Aegean Sea.

In fact, it is the Phoenician cities that are the true heirs to the Canaanite civilization. Having suffered little or nothing from the invasion of the peoples of the sea, they increase their maritime trade to Egypt by asserting their independence and prosperity, which was manifested in the ninth century by the

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marriage of Jezebel, daughter of the king of Tyre Ithobaal, with Ahab, king of Israel -(874-853), and then by the foundation of Carthage in 814. This commercial civilization remains famous for the quality of its constructions and for its art often inspired by Egyptian motifs, which are also found on the seals and ivories of Samaria in the 8th century.

The Jews are therefore some Canaanites. Nothing differentiates them, if not perhaps to be initially more uncultivated , but more hubristic, and to live high lands poorer than those of the plains.

According to the Bible, the nabi or visionary named Samuel gave a first king to the people under the name of Saul, then David succeeded to him and conquered the Jebusean City named Urushalim (Jerusalem).

There is no disadvantage to believe in the historicity of a David who wins the “kingship” thanks to the feat of one of his captains (El Hanan) flooring the giant of a rival band with his sling (what gives besides the measurement of the importance of his kingdom!)

Many excavations followed one another on the supposed site of the city, which did not really bring much to its archeological comprehension. The only assertion that we may deduce from these excavations is that there was well a fortified village about the year 1000 before our era at this place. But nothing could confirm that Jerusalem was well the strategic center of the Hebrews of the time, and the excavations brought no proof of the size of the city at that time.

David will complete to colonize the country while warring against the Philistines of the coast and all the other Hebrews, against the Amalekites and the Edomites in the Negev, then the Ammonites and the Moabites in Transjordan; who were in turn defeated and victims of massacres worthy of the Nazi or S.S genocide: 1 Samuel, 27.9; 2 Samuel 8.2; 12.31; 1 Chronicles 20.3.

Editor’s note: it is important in this respect to show the most severe revisionism. The massacres in question undoubtedly never had this extent.

What is dismaying, on the other hand, it is that such ideas were not deeply condemned by the religions attached to this Book.

If there were no patriarchs, neither Moses, neither Exodus, neither conquest of Canaan, nor unified and prosperous monarchy after David and Solomon; we must conclude from it that the biblical Israel, such as the five books of Moses (Pentateuch) depict it to us, as well as the books of Joshua, of the Judges and of Samuel, never existed.

It is much more reasonable to attribute to other kings the monumental buildings ascribed to Solomon.

All is not false in the legends of this first Bible, but archeology shows that the Solomonian empire is a pure fabrication of the time of Josiah. There is no trace of the first Temple!!

Even if certain facts can be historical, of which a good portion of the names of kings, all the history is arranged to serve the political interests of Josiah or of the Persians after him. Impossible to find oneself really there, just like in the legend of the king of the Bretons named Arthur, for example. Many indications of places or peoples show obviously that these texts are a late reconstruction referring to much more recent cities(like Hebron) while being unaware of the real big cities of the time like Hazor. ALL THIS IS THEREFORE ONLY AN IMPOSTURE IN A STRICTER SENSE OF THE TERM.

After the Mesopotamian deportations, the mixture of the languages, and the destabilization of the worships, which resulted from it; the Aryan emperor Cyrus will make himself the liberator of all these people, to whom, consequently, he will give back “their gods and their lands,” thus constituting the first true empire gathering different but united in their differences, nations.

The ideology of the first Bible will go in the direction of the interest of this empire which wants to make the Jews an outpost against its enemies.

All that we could say in connection with the immutability and the permanency of the Bible (or of the word of God or of the divine inspiration) is therefore only an imposture; the traces of evolution and of manipulation of its texts are numerous. Anonymous works for example were ascribed, fictitiously, to characters made famous by the Tradition. For instance, Moses who could not write the Pentateuch.

The Hebrew scribes began to exist and hold records only at the time of King David (and of Solomon? ? 1010 to 933 before our era). And the intellectual or philosophical assessment of the immediately previous period, that of the oral literature, is therefore rather poor: some poems or legal texts (for memory the Hindu Vedas,themselves, with their thousands of lines of verses, date back to the 14th century before our era).

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In the 10th and 9th centuries before our era two theological Schools are constituted, that of the Elohim and that of YHWH. Their more or less successful merger; (the Bible comprises two different accounts of the Creation: the elohimist account - Genesis 1.2 to 4 - where the higher being is designated by the odd plural name “Elohim” and the Yahwist account where he is called Yhwh - Genesis 2.4 to 24 -); will form the first 5 books of the Bible (Pentateuch).

The scribes will write down the folk traditions concerning the hero of legend called Abraham. It will be the time of the first psalms and first collections. Then will come the time of the deportation to Babylonia.

The 8th and 7th centuries before our era were the golden age of the prophets: long diatribes are gathered by their disciples, and are manipulated by them to give them, afterwards, the appearance of successful prophecies. The old legal traditions give rise to the Deuteronomy (7th century) then to the other books of the Jewish Law.

When the formation of the myths is studied, one can easily distinguish or characterize in it a standard configuration, constantly repeated during History. Each time a dominant culture succeeds those which were previous to it, it defames the former deities or makes them some demons.

The process is found in a particularly significant way in the Bible, particularly when it speaks about Astarte. Although being considered in the eyes of the believers to summarize in it all the past history of the universe; the “omniscient word of God” (the Bible) mentions hardly the thousands of years during which the great goddess-or-demoness, the archetypal fairy if you prefer, was known and worshiped in the area, and only to denigrate her or claim to convert her worshipers to the true faith. But in spite of all the efforts made to erase from History the memory of the great goddess-or-demoness consort (shakti Hindu say) YHWH (Astaroth Astarte, Asherah); the permanency of her worship shows through the writings of the copyist of 1 Kings 11.5, “Solomon followed Astarte the goddess-or-demoness of the Sidonians, and Moloch the detestable god of the Ammonites”; and of Judges 3, “the Jews did evil in the eyes of the Lord; they served Baal and Asherah.”

As regards worship the Hebrew people was also subjected to the influence of the Egyptian religion and writings.

But its monolatrous henotheism also has an Akkadian or Aryan origin ( the god-or-demon Shamash in his chariot or Ahura Mazda for Zoroaster). Let us say that it is a monolatrous religion inspired from Iran more than from Egypt and which officially (or partially) disavows the traditional local beliefs (the Golden Calf). A concession nevertheless will be made to this worship of the god-or-demon of fertility, the altars devoted to Yhwh will be bull horned altars (four horned altars more precisely).

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REMINDER: ON THE FAKE OR DISTORTION OF THE TEXTS

USED AS MATERIAL FOR THE COMPOSITION OF THE TORAH.

Higher criticism is a branch of philology. It studies the origins and the sources of a text. The higher criticism applies to all the "founding documents" whether it is the Iliad or the Odyssey, the Bible, the Quran or the Tao Teh King ascribed to Lao Tzu. In the West, this work enjoyed a certain renown because of the theological-political consequences it had on Christianity.

The higher criticism focuses particularly on the sources that contributed to the document and determines who was the author of it, the date and place of composition of the text. It is also interested in the external sources of the texts.The criticism of the sources or higher criticism is opposed to the textual criticism, which tries to establish the original text or the various intermediate texts which approach it.

Originally, the name higher criticism was used to refer to the work of a group of German biblical scholars living in Tubingen [Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834); David Strauss (1808-1874); Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872)], who began in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to analyze the historical archives of the Middle East to seek independent confirmation of the events described in the Bible.

These ideas, developed in Germany by Graf and Wellhausen, traveled to England with Coleridge and more with the English translations by George Eliot of the life of Jesus by Strauss (1846), and the essence of Christianity by Feuerbach (1854) . The Life of Jesus (1863) by Ernest Renan (1823-1892), continued the same tradition.

Three years before the publication of the Life of Jesus, Anglican liberal theologians had begun the process of integration of this critical history in the field of Christian doctrine with Essays and Reviews (1860). With the work of scientists or theologians like Rudolf Bultmann, the higher criticism of the Bible has been used to somehow get rid of the myths that pollute it.

This type of work is felt as a threat by some Christian currents among the most traditional and by the branches of Judaism which want absolutely to find in the Bible the historical foundations of Israel.

The liberal Jewish and Christian scholars respond by saying that the faith in God has nothing to do with the belief that a text, in this case the Bible or the Gospels, has more than one author. In addition, they emphasize the circular reasoning consisting in using biblical affirmations to "prove" the authenticity or historicity of the Bible.

As we said, the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh) includes...

- The Torah (consisting of the written Torah - or Law of Moses, which is found in the Old Testament of the Christians, specifically in what is called the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy - and the oral Torah composed of the Mishnah (a collection of oral tradition of the Torah) and the Gemara (a collection of interpretations of the Mishnah). The whole called Talmud.

- The Neviim ( "Prophets").

- The Ketuvim ( "The Writings" or "Hagiographa").

The (Christian) Bible includes:

- The Old Testament (the "Pentateuch,” which is the written Torah, and many of the books of the Prophets and of the Writings).

- The New Testament (including the four canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John + the Acts of the Apostles Paul’s letters and the book of the Revelation).

In the Quran, the following terms are used to describe the different parts of the Bible.

1. Tawrat - the Torah, the first five books of the Bible.

2. Zabur - the Psalms.

3. Injil - the Gospel.

4. Sahaif - the books of the Prophets.

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The Torah, the Psalms and the Sahaif are called the Holy Scriptures of the Jews that the Christians call the Old Testament. The gospel is called the Holy Scriptures of the Christians that Christians call the New Testament. The Quran states that all these Scriptures were revealed by God: "He has sent down upon you the Book in truth; confirming what was before it. He revealed the Torah and the Gospel "(Quran 3: 3-4).

Muhammad therefore quickly encountered the Jewish religious leaders who accuse him of having very little knowledge of the Bible.

However he blamed the Jews for having falsified the divine revelations of which they were the custodians. The principle of the thing being extremely simple: everything which in the Bible is different from Islam or contradicts Islam, comes from a forgery.

1. Suras and verses in the Quran accusing Jews and Christian monks of having falsified the word of God.

[2, 75] The Cow (Al-Baqarah).

Do you covet the hope [O believers], that they would believe for you while a party of them used to hear the words of God and then distort the Torah after they had understood it while they were knowing?

[2, 79] The Cow (Al-Baqara).

“So woe to those who write the "scripture" with their own hands, then say, "This is from God ," in order to exchange it for a small price. Woe to them for what their hands have written !”

[3, 78] The Family of Imran (Al-Imran).

And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from God, when it is not from God and they speak a lie concerning God knowingly.

2. There are also many verses of the Quran taking the opposite view of certain passages of the Torah or the Gospels.

Example Genesis 2 2. " By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.”

Surah Qaf No. 50 verse 38. " And We did certainly create the heavens and earth and what is between them in six days, and there touched Us no weariness.”

This verse therefore is focused on answering the Torah which claims that God rested on the seventh day.

It is always in the name of a past completely imagined on common historical facts that the religious egocentrism opposes the men in a fratricidal struggle. Archaeology has therefore a primordial role to play in the peace process in the Middle East. It helps to discredit the religious fanaticism of the monotheisms and brings a clearer understanding of the past where the truth of facts eclipse the vanity of myths.

Archaeology has not demonstrated, far from it, that the Biblical chronicle is true in all its details. It is now clear that many events of the biblical story took place, neither at the place indicated, nor in the way they are reported. Moreover, some of the most famous episodes of the Bible simply did not happen.

The Bible is only a compilation. The stories of Genesis in fact come from several different sources. The first 11 chapters are for instance of Sumerian origin.

Some scholars like Jon D. Levenson have found in them several designs of the creation that it is possible to understand only by comparison with the Babylonian or Canaanite myths having inspired the true authors of the Bible (what is significant, they are the differences).

The Genesis for example refuses the idea that man can be half angel, half-beast, that is to say a mixture of divinity and of base material; as in the Sumerian-Babylonian myths, where Man is born from a mixture of dust animated by the blood of a god or demon; it insists on the fact that Man was created in the image of God-or-of-the-demiurge (what is besides more anthropomorphic, because that implies also, of course, that God or the Demiurge is in the image of the Man).

Editor’s Note. This mindset hostile to the notion of God-Man will also remain in Christianity from the primitive Ebionism to the Reformist through Unitarians.

The Bible therefore has two creation stories. The first which is in fact paradoxically the most recent, falls within the tradition known as priestly tradition, the second which is yet the most archaic, within the tradition known as "Yahwist.”

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The priestly narrative is called thus because it is assumed that its author is a priest who wrote in exile in Babylon (between 587 and 538 before our era). Despite an almost liturgical tone, this story is polemic. It wants first to respond to the Babylonian creation stories showing that Man is both half-angel half-beast (dust or clay animated by some blood of a god or demon); in order to substitute it a more radical break between humanity and divinity.

The Hebrew religion if we can talk about it in the singular because the plural could be advocated was first handed down orally and in a dual way (the kingdom of Israel in the north, the Kingdom of Judah in the south). Until the time of King Josiah (sixth century before our era) when people began compiling pell-mell myths, legends, caravan routes, family anecdotes, genealogical lists, origins of place names (as fanciful as those of the Irish Middle Ages), etc.

It is more logical in these circumstances to equate the story of the founding fathers (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob) with a form of legend intended to give a stronger mythical background to the kingdom of Judah. This account of the origins appears as an assembly of several legends borrowed from the peoples in the region, combined with various customs, in which were added the warlike concerns of military leaders of the time.

Modernity began in the eighteenth century with the criticism of the Bible and of the scriptures.

The researchers reread today critically the first books of the Bible as old work ( since the oldest narratives go back around the year - 1000 and most recent around the year - 500).

The first books of the Bible present the kingdom of the Hebrews as a sovereign kingdom, united in one people, gathered in one capital, and under the protection of a single god or demon, Yahweh.

According to recent discoveries of two Israeli researchers (Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman the Bible unearthed), all this is only a story told in order to serve the territorial and religious ambitions of the kingdom of Judah in the seventh century. These are legends, developed, embellished, to serve the project of King Josiah: reconcile the two Jewish kingdoms and impose himself facing the major regional empires, Assyria, Egypt, Mesopotamia. The biblical texts were not inspired by God or written by Moses, they proceed from several writers adapting them according to the quarrels and problems of their time.

The corpus of texts we will briefly touch on, below, of course, has not been composed at the time of the facts they are supposed to tell, but later, in the seventh century, during the reign of King Josiah. Written by scholars of the court of Jerusalem it has mostly theological and political objectives. On the religious level, it is for the subject of the kingdom of Judah the obligation to believe in a single god or demon, in a single place, the Temple of Jerusalem, in one capital, Jerusalem, under one king descendant of the dynasty of David. Politically, it is at this time, between 630 and 609 before our era, that the little kingdom of Judah will assert itself against the powerful Egyptian empire that threatens it. This body has a concrete aspect outlining the goals, needs and objectives of the royal line. Let us notice, however, that a certain number of texts and not the least ones, were written or touched up after the return from the exile in Babylonia, i.-e. in the sixth century before our era.

"This war was terrible and cruel, and if God had not ordered it, we could accuse Moses of injustice and robbery." Dom Antoine Augustin Calmet, dictionary of the Bible. Regarding the "holy"warwith the unfortunate Midianites. All the problem is here indeed! If God did not command such a horror, then this war waged by the Hebrews was only a crime and genocide. The question is: "Could God order" such an abomination? If God is pure love or does not exist, what amounts to the same thing, the answer to this question can only be no, he can’t and we must therefore consider Moses as a man cruel, unjust, a terrible brigand. A little like Muhammad many centuries later elsewhere.

Besides we find the same kind of reasoning (in comparison with the simple universal human morality, it is abominable but as it is or it was the will of God then….we can make the apology of it, with the verse 82 of the surah 4 of the Quran which stipulates: “If it had been from other than God they would have found therein much incongruity.”

Credo quia absurdum therefore (the Son of God died: it is wholly credible, because it is unsound. And, buried, He rose again: it is certain, because impossible.”)

But if God did not command such horrors, while wars or jihads led by the early Muslims were only crime and looting, even genocide there too, and Muhammad was only, as Moses or Joshua, only a cruel, unjust man, a terrible robber ...

Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and Quran contain many horrors that have not other justification than to have been ordered by God. Remove from them this endorsement and then they revert to what they have always been: a horrible tyranny, some injustices, genocides, crimes, a crime against the spirit, an insult against the human intelligence and the dignity of Man.

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The value judgments that we will be led here and there to issue nevertheless does not focus on events or massacres having really taken place, for example during the conquest of the Promised Land under the leadership of Joshua; but on the fact that these fantasies worthy of Hitler have been glorified, justified or excused by generations of theologians and exegetes. Of course, to be sure, we must strive to look into detail. To contradict what is held true for thousands of years is difficult, man lets him so easily seduced by the wonderful stories.

The Book of Joshua speaks of an easy conquest.

The Book of Judges itself on the contrary refers to a difficult conquest.

So whom to believe?

As it stands, the book of Joshua appears as a composite structure. For many years, commentators agree to see in it a compilation of passages of various origins rather than a coherent narrative. To these large blocks are connected independent traditions, for some of them very old (on the named Caleb for instance). The final work of the book formatting seems to have been carried out largely by the Deuteronomistic School. The final retouching of the book is to be placed at the end of the Babylonian exile (- 538) or in the period immediately after the return from exile.

In fact, the entry of the Hebrews into the Promised Land was a long process that was not completed two centuries after its beginning. If the book of Joshua speaks much of captures of cities which are then burned, after their inhabitants were exterminated, it is probably not the way in which it happened. Most Hebrew clans were gradually assimilated to the Canaanite peoples without the latter being massacred (the city of Jericho was in rubble for decades before the Hebrews appear in Canaan for example). The book of Judges which covers the period between the entry into Canaan and the royal period, doesn’t mention these massacres, which belong only to the stories of sacred war; but shows on the contrary the difficult settling of these nomadic tribes in territory already well occupied and defended by its visibly not i

informed that their land had been given, inhabitants.

The sacred scripture of Judaism is therefore the Torah wa nebi'im ketuvim (abbreviated tanakh), "the Law, the Prophets and the Writings"; and, as indicated by the title, it is composed of three basic sections. The Torah itself or Pentateuch (the five writings), the Prophets, and the other texts.

Judaism says that the five books of the Law, Torah, or Pentateuch, were dictated by God to Moses.

As soon as the Talmudic period (from 135 to 500 of our era), many scholars have questioned the attribution of these texts to Moses. They had particularly noticed that Moses could not be the author of the Deuteronomy since this text relates his own death and some events after it. At the end of the seventeenth century, Spinoza too considered that the Torah or the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, but rather of the scribe named Ezra. This thesis earned Spinoza to be excommunicated from the – Portuguese- synagogue in Amsterdam, but continues to be the foundation of the modern biblical criticism.

"Isn’t it enough the simply common sense to judge that a book like the Deuteronomy which begins with these words”: These are the words that Moses spoke beyond the Jordan, " can only be from a clumsy forger, since the same book assures that Moses never crossed the Jordan? Isn’t ridiculous the answer of Abbadie, that with beyond we can understand on this side? Should we believe a preacher died mad in Ireland (in 1727), rather than Newton? "(The now quite forgotten in his own country, great French philosopher, Voltaire, in" The Important Examination of the Holy Scriptures by Lord Bolingbroke,” a book also known as the" tomb of fanaticism. "

Therefore Moses cannot be the author of these texts since their drafting and reworking range on several centuries. These legislative books were in reality written 700 or 800 years after the time when Moses is supposed to have lived.

The oldest part of the Torah or Pentateuch dates back to the tenth century before our era, the last part of other Writings or Ketuvim dates from the second century before our era.

The Law, Torah or Pentateuch, includes Genesis (Bereshit), Exodus (Shemot), Leviticus (Vayikra), Numbers (Bemidbar) and Deuteronomy (Devarim).

Today the prevailing theory is that which is called "the documentary hypothesis" according to which the Torah or Pentateuch was written by for different people, what would explain the duplicate with which this text is full.

Y or Yahwist who to describe his God-demon uses the letters YHWH (tenth century before our era).

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E, or Elohist, who uses for that the (plural) name Elohim (eighth century).

D who is behind the drafting of a part of Deuteronomy (622 before our era). P, a group of priests, which is the basis of the Leviticus or even of parts of other writings.

However the diversity of the sources also implies a diversity of the designs OF GOD AND OF THE MYTHS OF FOUNDATION OF THE COSMOS OR OF THE MAN. Traces of polytheism or at least of various worship of different god or demon are found in all these texts. -El, the Father according to the Canaanite religion with his wife Asherah and their children, God became the plural Elohim. - Yaho / Yahweh the great god or demon of the pagans in Midian.

And various apologies of what it is agreed to call crimes against humanity (genocide, etc.); fortunately, more imaginary than real. It is still appalling to see that there were (and there are still?) men or women to legitimize them, excuse them, understand them. It is enough to surf a little on the websites to notice it (that of the Rabbi Ken Spiro is a good example).

The following texts (which form the Torah) are therefore a distortion or falsification of previous elements, some very old, out of their context and sewn together by priests or Jewish scribes in the service of their political authorities.

The case of the Pentateuch or first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The first approaches.

Although Philo of Alexandria (De vita Mosis 1 § 84) attributes to Moses, only the partial composition and writing of the Pentateuch, old Jewish and Christian, traditions, generally ascribe to him the total composition and writing. The story of Moses's death and of his burial by God in Deuteronomy 34, however, arouses a problem of logic.

A first answer was that Joshua, Moses's successor, would have continued the work left unfinished by Moses (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Baba Batra, 14 b).

Issac ibn Yasush the eleventh century and Abraham ibn Ezra in the twelfth century drew up lists of post Mosaïca of the same kind. Examples.

Genesis 36, 31 requires getting past the time of the monarchy.

Numbers 22, 1 designates Transjordan (the plains of Moab opposite Jericho) as a country located beyond the Jordan, what involves that the author of this text lives already in Canaan; but , Moses is supposed not to have entered it in his lifetime.

Etc.

Subsequently Spinoza in his Theologicol-Political Treatise (1670) noted that there was a unity between the Pentateuch and the historical books from Joshua to Kings, and therefore concludes that the Pentateuch could not have been written by Moses. He leaned rather for Ezra, after the end of the Kingdom of Judah. The debate increased only in the eighteenth century.

Henning Bernhard Witter (1683-1715) and John Astruc (1684-1766),after having identified a certain number of logical breaks of the story or observed a certain number of duplicates for others, develop a theory of the different sources of the Pentateuch separately. Astruc published in 1753, some Conjectures about the Genesis. He identifies 12 of them and particularly:

The text A in which God is designated by the word Elohim.

The Text B in which God is designated by the letters YHWH.

This book will be considered, of course, as attacking the Pentateuch.

Overall, the theory of the sources of the Pentateuch meets three explanatory models:

-The hypothesis of additions: a small core was rewritten and have received various additions by multiple authors. The original Torah was quite a short writing, containing the words of God or of the Demiurge, gone down upon Moses during his retreat on the Mount Sinai (Islamic hypothesis). But this model could not impose itself and was rejected as soon as the nineteenth century, for it did not explain the numerous parallel threads nor the editorial units.

-The hypothesis of the fragments: a large number of scattered or isolated narrative and legislative texts, with no narrative continuity, are gathered by several writers who give them a time frame.

-The documentary hypothesis. Several narrative threads of different periods and writing place tell the same story with different ideological and theological perspectives, gathered by successive editors.

The Graff-Wellhausen system denies notably the writing of the Pentateuch by Moses by showing that it consists of a compilation of different and older theological traditions.

According to recent theories, both linguistic and archeological, the overall structure of the texts of the Hebrew Bible was compiled in the time of King Josiah in the seventh century before our era. Although the raw material is derived from older writings; the finalization would extend from the 1st century before our era to the fourth century for the part new Testament.

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Regarding the Exodus and the stay in the Desert for forty years, the excavation of the (supposed to correspond to those mentioned in the Bible) places, was unsuccessful.

However, after the separation of the Kingdom of David in two, in the second half of the ninth century, the result of excavations matches the biblical chronology.

Handwritten note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau.

Currently a growing consensus is made around the idea that the stories of the patriarchs and of Moses were not linked, before the writing of the Priestly Code.

It is obvious that if we are, we too, convinced that the texts composing the Torah come from a montage or from the censorship of various previous documents it is not at all for the same reasons that our Muslim friends. This is just our usual propensity to a radical criticism of things. Modern higher criticism has just begun as regards the Quran. The questions of the researchers are challenging some of the traditional claims about its composition and its contents; and show that the Quran incorporates materials from the Hebrew Bible, from the New Testament or from the Romance of Alexander (surah 18), and that the text of the Quran has developed over a century.

We find in the Quran some borrowings, from the Jewish and Christian theology, as well from general morality of Mankind, and from precepts of the former Arab society.

To sum up, the Quran, which contains excerpts from the Bible itself already falsified; also includes texts inspired by the thought or personal desires of Muhammad, by the traditions and customs of the Arab paganism, by the legends, myths and ideas of the time. As for the existence of a heavenly archetype of Scripture from which the Quran was drawn (dogma of the uncreated Quran); it is a belief that we cannot accept, because the Quran contains texts about polygamy, repudiation, holy war, the marriage of Muhammad, his harem or the gossip of his wives ...

So is it the word of God or is it a word from God? Or is it containing a portion of God's Word? Some authors have titled it the "the supreme forgery of the devil."

In our case, we only wonder what is to be thought about the falsification of a document already resulting itself from a falsification? A squared imposture?

End of the handwritten note found by the children of Peter DeLaCrau.

CONCLUSION AND OVERCONCLUSION.

Since the Jewish religion is a religion believing itself revealed, which, furthermore, has decreed God one and unknowable (what is not totally false), it has never gone beyond the stage of the commentaries of the Torah (Mishnah) and of the commentaries of the commentaries of Torah (Gemara or Pilpul) or the practice of the 613 religious commandments (mitzvoth). For the record cf. the place that Jewish theology gives to non-Jews and the destiny of the soul after death.

The Bible is indeed a very disparate, very few homogeneous, set (what does the Ecclesiastes in all that?) And we can find about any topic passages with very different, even opposed, views; because there is no great biblical text which is not ambiguous. It is a real "Spanish inn" a place where you have only what you put in.

The survival of Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox and Reformist,religion, prevented until now both a mythological and historical study of the Bible, because of the sacred aura which is attached to it. Only a study freed from any theological influence can release the meaning of texts that it is advisable to take on just like Greek, Assyrian-Babylonian, or Druidic, mythology, because the Bible is in fact a vast compilation of various materials.

The Bible is a library whose books or chapters ... ... belong to all kinds of different genres. The many authors who contributed to producing this text have added there remarks they thought necessary for their time. For example, a considerable number of obscure laws (613 mitzvoth). Which need explanations, given their gaps or contradictions) or a cluster of pathogenic nonsense, at least as regards the universal morality (the sacred texts that the Jews attributed to various visionary Nebiim or other Jehovah's witnesses). Some passages (list of names, measurements of the temple, poetic descriptions, etc.) involve besides no transcendental truth, that is to say about our way of life, or our salvation.

The position of the Judeo-Christians is currently the following one. All is not true in the Bible, but, on the other hand, it contains all the truths necessary for our salvation (5% of the text????).

Although it sometimes takes centuries of reflection inspired by the divine providence (or the Holy Spirit) to "discover" and to realize that the meaning contained in these statements of faith...

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a) Depend largely on the semantic significance of the language used, at one time, and in certain circumstances.

b) That it also happens that the dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely - not false, however – and that, later, it is notified more fully and more completely.

c) That these statements have an intention limited for some questions to solve, or some errors to reject.

d) That the truths to be taught are stated in words which bear the traces of conceptions of a given time and must therefore be constantly reformulated in order to present the same meaning more clearly.

If we understand well, the priest author of this brilliant euphemism comes almost to say that we are never too sure of what is necessary to think about this or that dogma, and therefore that it is constantly necessary to reformulate .

But as the great Irish bard John Toland has well seen it in his famous book "Christianity not mysterious": the truth should always be the same.

Why under these conditions not to do easier by frankly acknowledging that there is no more divine inspiration than divine revelation in these texts? The Old Testament of the Bible or Jewish Bible conveys a number of ideas, but it is to reason, not to faith, to determine if they can be accepted. A true religion must be reasonable and understandable .... What has been revealed must be as well understood as anything else in the world, the revelation is only a means to inform us, only the evidence of the idea being to persuade us then of its correctness.

As we have had occasion to say, there is little relation between the scientifically proven historical truth and the picture that the first 5 books of the Bible make for us. The scribes who wrote this work of propaganda during the reign of the little King of Jerusalem called Josiah in the 7th century before our era, had to use for that nevertheless a certain number of beliefs, of received ideas prevailing in their time, of materials, legends, traditions, or chronicles.

OVERCONCLUSION: It is high time to support in this regard the most severe of the religious revisionism. It is time finally to see the god or demiurge of this monolatry for what he is: a creation of man in his image. The Bible just like the Quran besides conveys humanly conditioned even dangerous to the mental health of individuals, ideas.

This monganian mindset has never been completely unfamiliar to our latitudes. A Jesuit having one day declared, during the Commune of Paris, in order to answer a question from the attorney Raoul Rigault asking to him where they could find him, that God was everywhere and nowhere at once; he noted: "In a state of loitering in the service of a master who has vanished."

Our only source of information on the Jewish religion or INTHE USUAL MEANING OF THE WORD is the Bible, what is not without arousing some problems because in this regard the Old Testament resembles more a founding myth or foundation myth as a historical chronicle. Tautology: our only source of information about these “ahistoric or mythical” Hebrews being the Bible, so we will say a few words here below about these thus defined biblical Hebrews. Let us not forget, however, that the Bible of Jerusalem is not "the" text of the religion of all the Hebrews, it is only the text of the religious people in the South, in the kingdom of Judah, what is much more restrictive: that excludes the Jews of the ancient Israel (Northern State) and the Samaritans.

But let's turn now to the biblical text itself.

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THE LAW, THE MAJOR PROPHETS , THE MINOR PROPHETS,

AND THE OTHER WRITINGS.

FIRST PART ACCORDING TO OUR OWN DIVISION.

LET US TAKE FOR EXAMPLE THE CASE OF THE DEUTERONOMY WHICH SEEMS WELL TO BE THE OLDEST OF THE BIBLE BOOKS whoever its author is, a single man or a team, whom we shall designate for the convenience of the reasoning in what follows under the name of "Deuteronomist.”

In view of the stylistic or theological similarities this Deuteronomist or Deuteronomistic School would have….

-Of course written or rewritten the oldest parts of Deuteronomy.

-But would also have written all or part of the books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles,

Deuteronomy is indeed a book which has a double place:

it is considered the conclusion of the Pentateuch, but it is also the introduction to the historical books, and particularly to the Book of Joshua.

This double position has led to many debates. Some scholars, favoring its position as the book of the Pentateuch, proposed to include the book of Joshua as well, while others, favoring its position as an introduction to Joshua, proposed to exclude it from the Pentateuch.

In fact, as early as Spinoza it appeared that certain texts of Deuteronomy announcing the possibility of the destruction of Jerusalem were curiously echoing the divine wrath reported in later books. In the 19th century, the existence of common themes was thus recognized.

Martin Noth will be the first in 1942 to try to give a coherent explanation. He explains the similarities between Deuteronomy and the historical books by the existence of a Deuteronomistic history written by a single author, the Deuteronomist. In addition to his editorial activity, this author has integrated different ancient traditions, sometimes even in contradiction with his own theses.

His document or Deuteronomistic History would go from Deuteronomy 1-3 the original prologue to 2 Kings 25 which describes the reinstatement of Jehoiakim in exile. The whole would thus have been written after -562.

The aim would have been to explain the fall of Israel and the deportation by disobedience to YHWH and thus a divine punishment.

Many changes to Martin Noth's theory have been proposed. Two competing schools have emerged.

The Model of the Two Blocks which had, and still has in its modern versions, the favor of Anglo-Saxon exegetes and the position of the Göttingen School which is favored by German or French exegetes. In addition to these two major developments, it is also appropriate, out of simple honesty, to remind of the existence of arguments rejecting the very existence of a Deuteronomist history.

Martin Noth's theory had weaknesses, in that it left some elements unanswered.

First of all, it did not explain the two opposing visions of kingship presented in the Deuteronomist texts: a flamboyant vision of the monarchy first, a negative vision blaming it for the exile after.

Moreover, additions were made to the original Deuteronomist history and it was possible that these additions were not independent of each other but resulted from a single design.

The two-block theory. Frank Moore Cross, followed by the Anglo-Saxon exegetical school, proposes a new model explaining the present Deuteronomistic History by a two-block theory.

First of all, a first writing of the events during the reign of Josiah and presenting the latter as a model having restored the worship in its pure form, a cult essentially adulterated by King Jeroboam. Then a second author (designated under the abbreviation Dtr2) completes the story during the exile by explaining the latter by the divine vengeance in front of the failure of the successors of Josiah.

For Cross, the second Deuteronomist had hardly modified the first block, but his successors found various mentions related to the exile in the initial block and naturally attribute them to changes made by the second author.

This hypothesis, known as the two-block model or Crossian theory, still has many followers today.

The theory of successive layers.

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This modification of Noth's theory will be presented in 1971 by Rudolf Smend, a German jurist specialized in canon law, son of a famous 19th-century theologian.

Rudolf Smend also explains the presence of numerous passages apparently added to the original Deuteronomistic History by a second, more oriented drafting, but with the aim of emphasizing obedience to the law this time. This second editor is said to have reworked the original text at the end of the exile or in the years that followed.

The contemporary German theologian Walter Dietrich assumed a third editor, the prophetic Deuteronomist, who changed the text by making various additions in Deuteronomist History that emphasized prophets such as Elijah or Elisha.

Many Anglo-Saxon researchers are still leaning towards the two-block model. Different variants have been developed with regard to the extent of these two blocks. Some add a third Deuteronomist, approaching, but with different terminology, the position of the Göttingen School.

Denial of Deuteronomistic history.

Various authors have also questioned the very existence of a Deuteronomistic History, i.e., the existence of a coherent work ranging from Deuteronomy 1-3 the original prologue to 2 Kings 25.

Some exegetes, such as the Swiss theologian Konrad Schmidt, consider, for example, that the Deuteronomistic texts present in historical books do not result from a coherent editorial will as the Deuteronomistic hypothesis supposes.

-It would have existed before the exile a historical text relating the period Moses-Joshua.

-After the capture of Jerusalem in -587. a narrative retracing the life of the kings of Israel and Judah would have been constituted and would have formed the books of Samuel and the books of the kings.

When the Pentateuch would have been gathered together with Moses as the central figure, a second historical set would have been created, taking over the books of Joshua and those of the Kings.

Despite the lack of consensus on a complete theory among exegetes, several points are nevertheless admitted by the great majority of them.

First of all, they all acknowledge the existence of Deuteronomistic texts in the Ancient Prophets.

The Deuteronomistic writers had knowledge of neo-Assyrian texts. There are, for example, great similarities between the curses of the Treaty of Asarhaddon (-672) and those of Deuteronomy 28 (brrr...). This does not mean, however, that these texts date from this period, since they seem rather to presuppose the fall of the kingdom of Judah (-586.

Most of the Deuteronomistic texts aim at explaining and justifying the exile during the Babylonian period.

In the Persian period, several Deuteronomistic texts were revisited in a more legalistic perspective.

Finally, the editorial work continued during the Hellenistic period...

The German-Swiss exegete Thomas Römer in his book "The First History of Israel. The so-called deuteronomistic school at work" supports the following compromise.

A first editorial phase of this history took place during the Assyrian period (chapter 4), a subtle interweaving of literary production (project of the Judean scribes) and royal propaganda (Josiah's cult reform). But we should speak here less of continuous historiographical writing than of "archival documents" whose themes and writing have been influenced by neo-Assyrian literature (seventh century). This school of scribes thus transposed to the reign of Josiah pieces inspired by the epigraphy of an Assyrian empire that was an object of terror and a model for the entire region (core of Deuteronomy: theological framework; accounts of Joshua 1-15: conquest; account of the rise of David: legitimization of the Davidic dynasty; first drafts of a history of kings culminating with Josiah).

A second phase (chapter 5) begins with the neo-Babylonian period, a name that Th. Römer considers preferable to that of "exile period,” because the concept of period linked to exile is precisely one of the themes of Deuteronomist writing. This second phase (sixth century) tries particularly to explain the failure of a king previously presented as the model of kingship. It is probably this exiled Deuteronomist who is best known and who has profoundly oriented the theological axes of the history attributed to him (the main features of Noth's hypothesis are also present here).

Finally, the third phase (chapter 6) concerns the ultimate development of Deuteronomistic writing during the Persian period (5th century - see R. Smend and W. Dietrich). In particular, it emphasizes the choice of Israel and a segregationist vision of the people, restricted to the exiles of -597 (Deut 7; Deut 9:1-6), as in certain redactions of the book of Ezekiel (Eze 11:14-21; 33:23-29) from which it is partly inspired and makes the exiles of -587 the only ones responsible for the catastrophe (Eze 14:21-23). We also owe to him a strict monotheism (Deut 4 or Deut 26:12-15), and the positive role played

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by the Jewish Diaspora: thus, the final reinstatement of Joiakin in 2 Kings 25:27-30 uses the literary conventions of the "novels of the Diaspora" found in the stories of Esther and Mordecai, of Joseph (Gen. 37-45), or of the first part of Daniel (Dan 2-6). In this context, the Torah goes beyond the country to become a "portable homeland" which is inscribed on the door frame of every Jewish house (Deut 6:6-9).

From this author (Thomas Römer) we also recommend the excellent book entitled "the invention of God". All is said in the title but you have to devour it to the end anyway (Yahweh arrived in Israel in the luggage of a tribe of Shasu Bedouin from yhwh a mountainous region located,located ...near Petra in Jordan???).

TO SIMPLIFY AND AS FAR AS WE ARE CONCERNED WE WILL START AS WE SAID OUR QUICK OVERVIEW OF THE LIBRARY THAT IS THE BIBLE ............. BY THE DEUTERONOMY (WE HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE).

Below is its text in summary, very summarized (the moral scope of the message intended to make us better and to save our souls is nevertheless limited, just as in the case of what follows besides and which has perhaps the same author as we have just seen. The book of Judges shows us, for example, a young chieftain (Sardana of the peoples of the sea?) named Sisera, cowardly murdered while he was sleeping by his hostess. This makes Judge Deborah laugh when, at the time, violating the laws of hospitality was one of the greatest crimes possible and the victory had gone to the side of the Israelites anyway. The Song of Deborah thus shows in this case a hatred of the enemy that had become useless and that could only have been justified before the battle, not at that time. But the god of Deborah was fed up with it, so what can be said, except that Mankind has no use for such gods!

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DEUTERONOMY.

Deuteronomy takes over a lot of the stories of the Exodus. This second law, also attributed to Moses, is the same as that revealed allegedly in the Sinai, but adapted to the reality of the life during the time of Josiah (seventh century before our era).

This text in fact is still not truly made for the life in the desert. For example, it is indicated in it how the king should be chosen and how he should govern. Towns and villages, agriculture, worship and liturgy, the place chosen by Yahweh, so that his name remains here [Jerusalem] are mentioned. Therefore, it was written long after Moses and cannot be from him.

1, 28. Giants (Anakites) live in cities almost touching the sky ... futuristic science fiction!

2.10 to 37. The Emites are giants ... previously lived the gigantic Anakites, the Zombies Rephaim (the Rephaim also are some giants) the cave-dwelling Horites ... as to the Horites, the sons of Esau dispossessed or exterminated them. They live in their place, as Israel did, etc. Legends worthy of a bad horror movie!

3, 1 to 22. Don’t be afraid ... your God himself will fight for you.

4, 28. Can we deduce from it that the true God, himself, can eat or feel ??

14, 22 to 29. The institution of the tithe (religious tax).

16.1 2. Centralization in Jerusalem of the Passover feast that was before especially family. This passage proves that the text was written in the time of King Josiah, not of the mythical Moses.

19, 21. A reminder of the law of retaliation.

20.16. " However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes.”

Who is this God who orders to exterminate men, women and children ...?

26. 2 to 13.A booster shot about the tithe as religious tax.

28. This chapter of Deuteronomy resembles strangely the text of the adê or oaths of fidelity which the king of Assyria Assarhaddon made all his vassals or governors swear in - 672. Copies have been found a little everywhere on clay tablets, written in cuneiform characters.

In any case, the same mentality is at work there.

The adê first specified the object of the treaty and the name or status of the contracting parties: the king of Assyria, on the one hand, his vassals or representatives on the other. The latter swore for all those who depended on them.

The treaties then mentioned the list of guarantor gods before detailing all the cases where the Crown Prince might be in danger. Then came the curses that would be put in place if the oath was broken. Then came the solemn declaration of the oath which began as follows: May the gods be our

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witnesses: we will not rebel against Assarhaddon, our king, king of Assyria, nor against Assurbanipal, the crown prince.

Finally, the text ended with new curses, then the date and the colophon.

34, 5. The burial of Moses. Knowing that it is he who is supposed to have written this report, this raises a slight issue.

------------------------------- ------------------- --------------------------------------- ----------- --------------------------- -----

Here begins the 2nd part of the Jewish Bible: Prophets. Nebiim or other visionaries kind Jehovah's Witnesses. A patchwork of stories citing vague historical events.

At that time, the land of Canaan was an Egyptian province. Yet no trace of Egyptians in the story. No trace of battles in the (many) Egyptian records of the time. The fortresses described by Joshua did not exist !! The Book of Joshua in any way dates back to the alleged move of the Hebrews in Canaan. It is probably a propaganda document put in circulation under the leadership of King Josiah, to meet the most pressing concerns of the Kingdom of Judah in the seventh century before our era. Then reworked two hundred years later, when returning from the deportation to Babylon.

This book reflects the will of the repatriates clan to find again the territorial sharing situation between tribes ... that prevailed before the Exile, as well as various territorial claims of the one or the other.

As it appears archaeologically speaking that ultimately the Hebrews are only a subdivision of the Canaanite society having evolved locally, some archaeologists consistent with themselves therefore believe that the Book of Joshua about the conquest of the Promised Land would be in fact completely invented, or rather it would be a compilation of various stories of many battles unrelated between them occurring at different times (at least over 200 years) and with different antagonists, moreover developed by the collective memory or the oral tradition. And that's better because the Book of Joshua contains stories of massacres unworthy to have been attributed to the will of God, unworthy of being submitted for approval or even simple meditation, of the posterity, of so many human generations during centuries. But that we have already said it.

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JOSHUA’S BOOK THEREFORE.

1, 4. From the wilderness and this Lebanon even…. this country being located more 100 km away, Joshua had to have a damn good sight.

1,14 and 15. The country which Moses gave you beyond the Jordan. As Joshua spoke while still on the east bank of the Jordan, regarding the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, there was a mistake. It would be necessary to write "On this side of Jordan" because these three tribes remained on the eastern bank of the river. This other detail shows that the true author of the account already lived for a long time Promised Land because Joshua and his men are not supposed to have even set a foot on it in that time.

3.16. The crossing of the Jordan River. Tall story copied from the alleged miracle of the Red Sea!

5.13 to 15. Vision worthy of the most fantastic movie, staging the exploits of a mythical hero known as Hesus Cuchulainn in Ireland. The chief of the armies of God personally (Lug?) appears to Joshua.

6, 21 to 26. Genocide of the inhabitants of Jericho.

6 5. The account of the capture of the city of Jericho (of which the walls would have collapsed to the sound of the war trumpets) is therefore a forgery. It was in no case a fortified place still active, taken by force by besiegers, but likely a ritual and symbolic ceremony. At the time quoted by the Bible, Jericho was not yet or no longer, fortified !!

8, 24 to 26. Genocide of the inhabitants of Ai.

8.30 to 35. Obvious and improbable addition in full war. The aim is to show that all these killings are well a holy war led by God.

10.1. God makes a rain of stones fall on the Amorites. Weapons of mass destruction are not new. See the legend of Hercules and of the Crau in France.

10.13. The sun stops its course over Gibeon to make Joshua able to complete his victory. Idiotic, of course , and for a very simple reason: it is not the Sun which revolves around the Earth, but the Earth which rotates on itself. The scribe inspired by God in order to tell this has undoubtedly lost an opportunity to shut up.

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10 (20 to 43) 11 and 19 (51). Genocide of the inhabitants of Jerusalem (yes) of the inhabitants of Hebron Yarmut, Lachish, Eglon, etc., etc. These are the inheritances distributed by the priest Eleazar, Joshua, and the heads of families, to the tribes of the Israelites by drawing lots, before God.

22.19. Anachronism. In principle, Jerusalem has not yet been conquered.

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JUDGES. (Hebrew shopetim, suffetes.) Again, it is a mixture of different traditions merged into one text later, more than six centuries after the supposed date of the events during the return from exile in Babylon. The Israel of this book is very backdated.

1. This purely political and warlike chapter speaks of very localized and disordered struggles, without an overall plan, nobody at the time having an idea of what it would result from all that . In summary some small lords, Hebrew or other (e.g., Shamgar Judges 3, 31, who is not Hebrew) fighting against each other. The final writer of this book did as if these various and very circumscribed elements concerned all the Jewish people of the time; but let us point out once again that these suffetes, really small lords, had only a very limited activity consisting essentially in conquering, defending and governing their micro territory. What contrasts seriously with the war apparently led by Joshua in the previous book.

2. Change of tone. Religious view of the things.

3, 7. The Israelites do evil in the eyes of the Lord by serving Baal and Astaroth. What a naughty people!

5, 1 to 31. The Song of Deborah is a long apology for war and revenge, yes, a call for mobilization and war; for the war of God against the peoples struggling to defend their land and their freedom. Other Semites in Palestine or Aryans like the Philistines.

5, 23. Strangely God needs help.

8 5. Inclusion in this place of the biblical story of another tradition. The Midianite kings no longer called Orev and Ze’ev but Zebah and Zalmunna.

8, 27. Gideon feels normal to make a statue of YHWH. Critical note of the scribe relating this tradition, six centuries later.

9, 29. A mistake of tense or grammar in the Hebrew text. Abimelech is not there and so cannot hear something.

13. At the time of the Judges, the people of Israel was submitted by the Philistines, what did not prevent Samson to go "and take a woman" among the latter. From that point, events are linked. At the wedding feast, Samson challenges about thirty guests to solve a riddle of his own, and as they do not succeed, he kills them. The father of the bride, taking the thing badly (it is understable ) takes back his daughter. This was not to the liking of Samson who therefore burned the harvest of the Philistines. Response of these who went up in Judah (Judea) in order to capture Samson. But this one, having a Herculean strength, resists and "Finding a fresh jawbone of an ass, took it and smote a thousand men therewith." The least we can say is that there are in this story many things that should not be taken literally.

13, 25. Samson was gripped with tremors, probably of epileptic nature.

The two long stories of the end (the Chapter XVII and the chapters XVIII to XXI) are only appendices, or digressions that have nothing to do.

17. Same thing for Gideon. The named Micah makes a statue of YHWH and worships it with the service of a Levite.

19. Unbearable!

19.18. Mention of Yahweh's temple deep in the mountains of Ephraim, maintained by a Levite having a very little edifying behavior.

21.1 and 5. The text of the oath differs. Memory lapse or a mistake of the scribe having tried to merge the various oral traditions about the subject.

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SAMUEL.

The division into two volumes of this book is not original. Its final text dates back roughly to the return from the deportation into Babylonia, i.-e. to the sixth century before our era. The mixture of different writings having been more or less successful, it contains many discrepancies, repetitions, or dissonances even duplicates. The institution of kingship is for example shown twice, and differently. It is the same thing with the rejection of Saul by David, as well as with the story of David fleeing from

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Saul's court or sparing Saul. The story of the death of the latter, with which begins the second book, has many differences with that of 1 S. 31.

Il will also be noticed that the story of this death is followed by a funeral song in which David celebrates the death in action of Saul and Jonathan. The composite nature of the work prevents from attributing it to a single author.

1 Samuel.

2, 22. " He heard that his sons lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of the meeting (with God)”.

Mention absent from the Greek translation of the Septuagint and which had to be added later.

6.13 to 19. Contradiction and inconsistency. Look at the ark of the covenant causes death in one case and not in another.

10, 24 to 25. Establishment of kingship.

11.14 15. Establishment of kingship. (Bis repetita.)

13.1. The scribe having carried out the, a little bit forced, synthesis, of all these legends about the great leader (Saul) left blank the age of the captain. There is a free place provided for that, but nothing written. Strange!

14.32. Lower sorcery of the army of the Hebrews who sacrifice to the souls of the dead.

17.54. David brings back the head of Goliath to Jerusalem. Regarding the custom of severed heads in antiquity see Posidonius and Diodorus of Sicily. Only problem: it was only later that Jerusalem was conquered (by him elsewhere).

27.6. King of Judah. But at the time when the facts are supposed to take place there was not had yet separation between Judah and the Kingdom of Israel, this split having occurred in - 931.

28, 7 to 25. Saul conjures the soul / mind or the ghost of Samuel. Inspired by the Sumerian poem which shows the shadow of Enkidu leaving the hell and throw himself into the arms of Gilgamesh. This is a curious story of a witch or of clairvoyant , that we cannot resist the pleasure of quoting longer.

" Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramah, even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land. The Philistines gathered themselves together, and came and encamped in Shunem: and Saul gathered all Israel together, and they encamped in Gilboa. when Saul saw the host of the Philistines, he was afraid, and his heart trembled greatly.

When Saul inquired of Yahweh, Yahweh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by lots, nor by prophets. Then said Saul unto his servants: “Seek me a woman that has a familiar spirit, that I may go to her, and inquire of her.”

And his servants said to him: “Behold, there is a woman that has familiar spirit at En-dor.”

Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said:

”Divine unto me, I pray you, by the familiar spirit, and bring me up whomsoever I shall name unto you.”

And the woman said unto him:

“Behold, you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off those that have familiar souls/minds, and the wizards, out of the land: wherefore then lay you a snare for my life, to cause me to die?”

Saul swore to her by Yahweh , saying

“ As Yahweh lives, there shall no punishment happen to you for this thing.”

Then said the woman:

”Whom shall I bring up unto you?”

And he said : “ Bring me up Samuel.”

And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice; and the woman spoke to Saul, saying

“Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul.”

And the king said unto her:

“Be not afraid: for what you see?”

The woman said unto Saul:

I see a ghost coming up out of the earth.”

He said unto her:

“What form is he of?”

And she said:

“An old man comes up and he is covered with a robe.”

And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.

Samuel said to Saul:

“Why have you disquieted me, to bring me up?”

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And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answers me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called you, that you may make known unto me what I shall do.

And Samuel said:

“Wherefore then do you ask of me, seeing Yahweh is departed from you, and is become your adversary? And Yahweh has done unto you, as he spoke by me: and Yahweh has rent the kingdom out of your hand, and given it to your neighbor, even to David. Because you did not obey the voice of Yahweh , and did not execute his fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore has Yahweh done this thing unto you this day. Moreover Yahweh will deliver Israel also with you into the hand of the Philistines; and tomorrow shall you and your sons be with me: Jehovah will deliver the host of Israel also into the hand of the Philistines.”

No comment !

2 Samuel. Originally 1 and 2 Samuel were the same book as we have seen it.

6.16 to 22. David plays music and dances naked before God and men.

8.1 to 5. "And after this it came to pass that David smote the Philistines, and subdued them: and David took the bridle of the mother city out of the hand of the Philistines.He smote Moab, and measured them with the line, making them to lie down on the ground; and he measured two lines to put to death, and one full line to keep alive. And the Moabites became servants to David, and brought tribute. David also smote Hadadezer the son of Rehob, king of Zobah, as he went to recover his dominion at the River Euphrates. And David took from him a thousand and seven hundred horsemen, and twenty thousand footmen: and David hocked all the chariot horses, but reserved of them for a hundred chariots. When the Syrians of Damascus came to succor Hadadezer king of Zobah, David smote of the Syrians two and twenty thousand men. Then David put garrisons in Syria of Damascus; and the Syrians became servants to David, and brought tribute. The Lord gave victory to David whithersoever he went.”

Archaeologists confirm the existence of David, whose name is inscribed on the stele in Tel Dan, but they claim that at that time his kingdom is not literate, his capital Jerusalem still a small mountain village of 1000 inhabitants . What makes the rest of the account highly improbable. The Israel of these two books is largely invented. It will be necessary to wait for - 700 to see a rapid development of Jerusalem, the extent of which will increase from six to seventy-five hectares in a few decades, and the population from 1 000 to 12 000 inhabitants. These figures are extrapolated from the statement of the position of the graves and from their dating. But around - 1000, the population living in the southern highlands (geographical area corresponding to Judah) is estimated at 5 000. This is a small rural population. It is not likely that it could contribute to the formation of such a large army under David.

15.7. Mistake ! Four years and not forty.

16, 21. David had a harem.

21, 6 to 9. David gives seven of the Saul sons up to their worst enemies (the Gibeonites) in order that they are offered in human sacrifice to God. (Human, too much human!)

22.1. This song is clearly not from David. It corresponds to the Psalm number 18, but with noticeable differences.

24, 9. The distinction between Israel and Judah is anachronistic since the split between the two kingdoms will only come later. Anyway, the figures of this census are different from those of 1 Chronicles 21.5.

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BOOK OF KINGS.

Originally 1 and 2 Kings were one book. Its writing spanned three centuries. The oldest parts date back to the ninth century before our era and the most recent parts to the - seventh century, or after the return from the deportation in Babylon. As in addition the authors wanted to do two very different stories, one for the kings in the North (Israel) and one for the kings in the South (Judah), the whole is quite muddled.

The whole deals nevertheless with the history of the king of Judah for four centuries, since the days of King David to the Babylonian exile (specifically until the liberation of the last king of Judah Jehoiakim). It is probably to this period (between 560 and 538 before our era) that dates back in its current form, the book of Kings. It was probably written to publicize to the exiles the causes and circumstances of their misfortunes, and encourage them to keep the hope of a future release. The author describes the events he witnessed. As for the past, as we have said, he is based on the tradition and also on written documents missing today, but which were a source of abundant , alive and very accurate, information. These archives were undoubtedly made available for the author who kept only what he wanted and nothing else.

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Evidence here and there, as we have already seen, the many references like "the rest is registered in the annals of the kings of Israel," "the rest is registered in the annals of the kings of Judah" etc., etc.

1 Kings. David and Solomon. Their existence is probable although less certain for Solomon, but the historical reality has nothing to do with the version described in the Bible.

1, 34. The walls of Jerusalem under King Solomon…. Jerusalem is, of course, a very old city, but in the supposed reign of Solomon, it was still a small village with no fortification.

5, 6. 40 000 pairs of horses for his chariots. This figure differs from Chapter XX verse 26. The Aramaic steles of Kurkh and Tell Dan in Galilee give the figures of 2000 chariots and 2000 cavalrymen.

5, 27 to 30. Contradiction with 9, 22.

8.1 to 9. The text has been updated after the return from the deportation into Babylonia (- 538) by addition of the following specifications: Zion seventh month the holiest place...

9, 22. Solomon did not make slaves of the sons of his people... Contradiction with Chapter V, verses 27-30.

10, 26. 1400 chariots. Figure most likely that chapter V, verse 6.

11,5. Prudent Solomon also worships the powerful Astarte, the great goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer, of the Phoenicians (Sidonians) and Milcom, the great god of the Ammonites, called abomination by this text (hello the anti Ammonite religion racism) !!

15.11 to 13. Asa king of Judah continues the anti Canaanite religion racism of David and persecutes the worships other than his own.

15.13. Maacah the grandmother of Asa king of Judah develops among the Jews the feminist worship of Astarte / Asherah.

16, 34. To protect his capital (Jericho), King Hiel sacrifices two of his sons.

17.17. Beginning of a new text on Elijah, a Judean nabi or visionary of the ninth century before our era, opposed to the religious freedom introduced by Jezebel, Ahab's wife, for the Canaanite god-or-demon Baal.

19.1. Elijah persecutes forcibly the other prophets serving other gods apparently, being given the continuation (see the text of the oath of Jezebel).

19, 2. Secularism of Jezebel who admits all religions.

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In order to make our contribution to the fight against racism and through spirit of justice towards the simple followers of this god, "partisans workers and peasants,” the white ermine "a troop of sailors of workers of peasants" who are also our ancestors, a few words here to explain what were their reasons for praying Baal. Baal is in fact a name common to Semitic languages meaning something like lord-master-owner.

The name of Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian general who could have taken Rome, means "who has the favor of Baal.”

On the worship level, it was the generic name of a god, accompanied by a qualifier that reveals what aspect of the god in question was intended. Baal Marqod, god of sacred dances; Baal Shamen, god of the heaven; Baal Bek, the solar Baal; and above all, Baal Hammon, the terrible god of the Carthaginians. Thus, each region had its god, its local Baal.

For the Canaanites it was the god of the sun and the storm as well as the god of fertility (related to the rain of the storm and the sun, both necessary for the growth of plants).

Baal is by far the most mentioned Old Testament theonym after YHWH (Jah, the Lord) or Elohim, with nearly 90 occurrences.

In the Bible, he has no precise identity, but brings together all the deities that could turn people away from the worship of Yahweh.

In the same way, "Astarte" gathers the deities referring to Ishtar, the goddess of Babylon.

In the Book of Judges, many stories begin with: The people of the Lord " turned away from the Lord by worshiping the Baals and the Astartes . "

So much so that certain biblical passages describe their God as one could describe Baal at the time: He rides across the heavens (Deuteronomy 33,26), he is a god of storms and storms (Psalm 29), he lives on a mountain, brings rain, fertility and harvests........................................................................................................................................................................... For more details on this subject see the book by Thomas Römer entitled "Dark" God.

Associated with this worship we find the priesthood, and hill sanctuaries, called high places (bamoth). Inside were icons and statues of Baal, and outside were stone columns (probably phallic symbols of

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Baal), sacred posts representing Ishtar, and incense altars. This cult was also associated with certain celestial bodies (sun, stars).

According to the Bible, male and female prostitutes served sexually in high places, and some biblical passages report among the Chaldean rituals child sacrifices to get the favors of the deity. For example, we can read in the book of Jeremiah (19,5 ): "They have built the high places of Baal to burn their children in the fire as offerings to Baal—something I did not command or mention, nor did it enter my mind.” The formula is strange.

Nonetheless, extra-biblical sources are not very conclusive on the subject.

In short, to what these biblical texts testify especially is that from the 9th century before our era onwards, the religious extremists of Yahweh, the Nabis or other visionaries of this type, would wage a merciless struggle against the worship of the aspects of the great Middle Eastern divinity that the Baals embodied.

Why so much hatred?

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2 Kings: Kings, Jehu, Jehoahaz, Jehoash, Jeroboam, Zechariah, Menahem and Hosea, did exist. The king of Moab has existed, even if his story was embellished. Samaria, the palace, the Omrides too, who built water supply tunnels to supply cities like Megiddo. The destruction of the temple in Jerusalem has indeed taken place (in - 586).

1, 2. Baal called Baal Zebul, what means "Prince Baal," or perhaps "Baal of the place." Ridiculed as Baal Zebub (prince of the flies) by the sectarians of the Yahwist monolatry.

2.11. After having handed down his powers to his disciple Elisha; Elijah finally ascends to heaven in a chariot and fire horses ... Good riddance!

3.19. " You shall strike every fortified city, and every choice city, and fell every good tree, and stop all springs of water, and mar every good piece of land with stones." But who is this god who orders to spread such desolation ?? See above the remark of Dom Antoine Augustin Calmet.

3, 9. King of Edom. Anachronism! There is not yet king of Edom at that time.

3, 26 to 27. Human sacrifice made by the king of Moab having achieved his goal! The wrath of God fell on Israel!

10, 16 to 31. War of religion? This passage is quite strange.

a) The new king pretended to convert to the Baalite religion.

b) Then he persecutes it and turns its temples into latrines.

c) But the editor says after (verses 29-31) it has not happened.

So what to believe? It is true that the politicians are always doing such turnarounds.

17.12. Other religions are called abominations (shiqutsim or idols).

17, 32 to 34. Obvious allusion to the Samaritans rejected as heretical by the exiles back from Babylonia after - 538.

18.14. Three hundred talents of silver for the tribute. Assyrian annals give the most probable figure of 800 talents of silver.

22 8. The Book of the Law ... allusion to a germ of Deuteronomy.

22, 20. Buried in peace ... Another failed prophecy. See a little further. Josiah will die killed at Megiddo in - 609. Unless you consider that to die assassinated is to have a peaceful death, there is a problem!

23, 4. Josiah condemned to the stake necromancers, diviners, household gods, sacred mounds (equated with droppings: shiqutsim).

"The king (Josiah) commanded…to bring forth out of the temple of Jehovah all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the Asherah, and for all the host of heaven, and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron, and carried their ashes unto Bethel. And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. And he brought out the Asherah from the house of Yahweh, without Jerusalem….and burned it at the brook Kidron, and beat it to dust, and cast the dust thereof upon the graves of the common people. And he brake down the houses of the sacred sodomites, that were in the house of Yahweh , where the women wove hangings for Asherah. And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beersheba; and he brake down the high places of the gates that were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man’s left hand at the gate of the city. Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of Jehovah in Jerusalem, but they did eat unleavened bread among their brethren. And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had

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given to the sun, at the entrance of the house of Jehovah, by the chamber of Nathan-Melech the chamberlain, which was in the precincts and he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. And the altars that were on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of Yahweh , did the king break down, and beat them down from thence, and cast their dust into the brook Kidron….Moreover them that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, and the teraphim, and the idols, and all the abominations (shiqutsim) that were seen in the land of Judah and in Jerusalem, did Josiah put away that he might confirm the words of the law which were written in the book that Hilkiah the priest found in the house of Yahweh [book which was ascribed to Moses as we have seen. Editor's note].

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The prophets.

The prophets never mention the founding events recorded in Genesis and Exodus: Adam and Eve, Noah, the patriarchs, the exodus from Egypt with Moses, the giving of the Law on the Sinai, forty years in the wilderness. We will note particularly in their books:

- The absence of the Deuteronomistic cycle: covenant disobedience, punishment, repentance, salvation.

- The absence of the idea that the exodus from Egypt founds the identity of the People.

- The absence of the promise of a numerous descendants and of the gift of the land to Israel.

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ISAIAH. Oracles collection attributed to a nabi or visionary of the eighth century (-740 to - 700) so called.

The writing of this book lasted at least over three centuries. Isaiah comments on the political and religious events of his time.

The first part of his public life (-739 to -732) begins with the illumination that will take possession of him in the sanctuary of Jerusalem (Chapter VI).

Isaiah speaks especially to the Samaria of the eighth century before our era; he announces the imminent coming of a savior, but no one can specify if he was talking of a new son of the king or perhaps of his own son. He was not referring to the Jesus to be born eight hundred years later, but these words were taken over in various midrashim about him. The alliance between the Samaria and Syria Isaiah will send him back to his ivory tower in the desert. Disparities and inconsistencies, even from a strictly historical point of view, are noted in his book. There are indeed two or three very different parts in this book.

-From chapter 1 to chapter 33, this is the genuine text by Isaiah. With a few exceptions. The chapters 24-27 and 34-35 (the little Apocalypse, Zion) were added to the original text after the return from the deportation to Babylon in - 538. Like the historical appendix that are the chapters 36-39.

-From chapter 40 to chapter 55 or 66, this is an anonymous and collective work; that makes us take a leap from about two centuries, the royal period (- seventh century) to that of the deportation to Babylon, in which his author lives, about 550 or 540 before our era. Babylon replaces Assyria, it is spoken of the Persians, the Medes and Cyrus (Chapters 41, 44, 45).

The visionaries of the School of Isaiah in fact continued to write two hundred years after his death and their texts were included in the book attributed to this author.

-From chapters 56 to 66 for some specialists a third "Isaiah" written in the time of the return from exile (just before or just after).

FIRST PART.

2.4. "He will judge between the nations, and will render decisions for many peoples and they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up the sword against nation. And never again will they learn war.” Again a failed prediction! Thousands of years later, still wars (of which many are religious wars).

6 1. First illumination of Isaiah in the sanctuary of Jerusalem about - 740 - 730. The nabi sees God's throne surrounded by angels with six wings (some Seraphim).

7.14. Here was joined during a long time one of the numerous falsifications of the Jewish Bible, worked out by the Christians. To increase the number of prophecies fulfilled by the life of Jesus, the Hebrew word for "young woman" was often replaced by "virgin,’ in order to make possible an allusion to Mary.

7.17. By the king of Assyria ... words added to the original text, because it is an anachronism.

11.6-9 "The wolf shall dwell with the lamb as well, and the leopard shall also lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion and the cattle of the stall will be set, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion, like the ox shall eat straw. The sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand into the

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den of the basilisk. It will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the bottom of the sea by the waters that cover it. "

Again a failed prediction! Almost 3000 years later, still nothing ...

21 9. Babel (Babylon) will only fall long after the period when the speech is supposed to have been spoken, evidence therefore that it was actually written after, at least regarding this passage.

24.1. "He turns the earth upside down"! As if the earth was flat!

SECOND PART.

42.1; 49.1; 50.4; 52.13. Four poems mentioning a mysterious servant of God. Of whom does the author think by writing these words, nobody knows?

63, 3 to 6. Incitations to hatred, murder and (anti-Arab?) racism?

65,11-12. Another incitation to a racism anti religion of (Hebrew) Gad and Meni, to religious intolerance, to the forced or by terror conversion, to the worship of a particular very particular, God-or-demon: the god in the kingdom of Judah and especially in Jerusalem: Yaho/Yahweh.

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JEREMIAH. From - 605 to - 586. The date of the assassination of Gedaliah, governor of what remains of the kingdom of Judah under Babylonian protectorate. Jeremiah will flee to Egypt, accompanied by his secretary Baruch.

In the book published under his name, the review will recognize three distinct genres: the words written or dictated by the prophet, some biographical fragments perhaps written by his secretary Baruch, and some additions inserted by the last writers.

5, 31. Suddenly a flash of lucidity. The prophecies are only lies and priests give an example (sic) by reaching out for subsidies.

10.11. Verse written in Aramaic and added to the central text after the return from exile in Babylon (in the -sixth of - fifth century).

26. Tells the same story that chapter VII but in a slightly different context.

31, 34. "No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,”declares the Lord. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Another example of failed prophecy! After 2500 years it is always necessary (for some people) to teach Yahweh to mankind, to the great displeasure of this God- or-demon.

39.14. Jeremiah is left free and stays at home on the spot with the common people of Judea (all Jews were not deported).

40.1. Jeremiah too is a member of the captives chained for the deportation to Babylon with the rich public figures.

40, 4. Back to square one. Jeremiah is left free and remains with the Judean common people left on the site under the direction of a governor appointed by the king of Babylon, the scribe named Gedaliah.

41, 9. The bodies of the men he had killed along with Gedaliah ... Mistake! It is impossible, Gedaliah was killed a few lines before (verse 2).

48, 9. Give wings (or flowers?) to Moab for she would fly away... No meaning! Probably a very old mistranslation. The general meaning is nonetheless clear: revenge, revenge and again revenge, to kill, to kill and to kill again, to destroy,to forbid.

49, 36 " Four winds from the four quarters of heaven."For this nabi inspired by God, the earth was therefore a flat and square (or rectangular) table.

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Ezekiel. A nabi or visionary member of a great priestly family deported to Babylon. Despite the ambiguity of some verses on this subject, it is certain that Ezekiel was among the Judeans displaced in - 597 or - 587.

Jehovah's Witness, Ezekiel begins by having, on the banks of the canal or river Chebar, a vision of the heavenly throne of God, standing on a fantastic chariot surrounded by angels of the cherub’s type; that is to say similar to the winged bulls that watch at the entrance of the Sumerian temples (the famous Kerubim). (Ezekiel 1, 4 to 28.) There are many incomprehensible words (the wheels of the chariot are some astrolabes ?) and duplicates.

God or the Demiurge would have allowed him to live mysterious experiments. In one of them (37, 1-10), he gets the power to make the flesh grow bach on skeletons and so to bring them again to life. Excellent !

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All attempt to date his work is complicated by the fact that we must distinguish between the time when the author lived and the time when was finally written the book which has his name; because the text is more the work of a school of thought that that of one man. This school is the source of a theology that can be called Aaronic priesthood, and which will peak just after the return from deportation.

13. Tackles the prophets. Very good ! Congratulations!

14.14. Noah, Daniel, and Job. The Daniel in question, of course, is not the one who gave his name to the book of Daniel, but the Danel of the legend of Aqhat in Ras Shamra.

38 and 39. Gog of the land of Magog. Pure legend that Gog, not more serious than the legends of the Curoi type in Ireland or of the Gargan (tua) type in France. It is also found in the Quran.

39.11. A burial place in Israel, in the valley of the travelers... Inconsistency. This valley is not located in Israel but in the east of the Jordan.

48. The general idea of this chapter is very clear and well explained any of the manipulation of text that occurred after the return from the deportation into Babylonia in - 538. It is, for the repatriate clans, to proceed to a new division of the country, taking into account the developments of the situation after fifty years of absence.

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HOSEA. - 750. A contemporary of the fall of the Northern Kingdom. Gives to us his version of the reign of Jeroboam II on the country. The harangues of Hosea are among the most violent ever uttered by Jehovah's witnesses (nebiim) against the religious freedom or the freedom of thought, equated with prostitution; that prevailed in the Northern Kingdom in Samaria , but also more or less in that of the South (in Jerusalem and Judea). Some authors found in this prophet the trace of the murder of Moses by the Jews themselves.

4.14. Allusion to the sacred prostitution. The wife of the prophet Hosea was also herself a sacred prostitute of the Canaanite fertility cult (cf. Hosea 1. 2; 4.13 to 14). For the Canaanites, of course, it was not prostitution in the modern sense of the word among us. No concept of sin or impurity being attached to the force of life that is sexuality.

It existed in Babylon a custom that Herodotus disapproves violently.

The foulest Babylonian custom is that which compels every woman of the land to sit in the temple of Aphrodite and have intercourse with some stranger at least once in her life […] most sit down in the sacred plot of Aphrodite, with crowns of cord on their heads.There is a great multitude of women coming and going. Once a woman has taken her place there, she does not go away to her home before some stranger has cast money into her lap, and had intercourse with her outside the temple; but while he casts the money, he must say, “I invite you in the name of Mylitta. It does not matter what sum the money is; the woman will never refuse, for that would be a sin, the money being by this act made sacred. So she follows the first man who casts it and rejects no one. So then the women that are fair and tall are soon free to depart, but the uncomely have long to wait because they cannot fulfill the law; for some of them remain for three years, or four.

Herodotus tells us a similar custom in some places of the island of Cyprus. We know that the temples of Aphrodite, in Paphos and Amathus, housed sacred courtesans, without being able to affirm nevertheless that the same law was in force in them. What meaning should be given to this custom ?? Perhaps is it an act of consecration of the virginity to the deity; perhaps should we see in it an act of ritual deflowering, practiced in the majority of the primitive societies where virginity was regarded with contempt because it was a proof of unsociability. On the Malabar coast, the girls could not find a husband as long as they remained virgin: to shed the blood of a tribesman being forbidden by a taboo.

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JOEL. - 400 or- 350. Openly nationalist message unconsciously compensating for the deprivation and poverty in Judea after the exile.

3.1. As shown later, and as often in the Bible, refers only to the people of Judah and does not mean "whole mankind.’

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AMOS. Early eighth century before our era (- 790 - 739 ?) First of the visionaries (nebiim) to proclaim the day of YHWH. Judean from the southern kingdom, Amos gives us his vision of the reign of Jeroboam II over the Northern Kingdom. Oracles and visions of Amos had to be collected and put in order by disciples, so there are little subsequent additions, unlike other works of the same type.

The diatribes against Judah (2, 4, 5) , however, had to be added a century later and the announcement in the final verses (9, 11 to 15) of salvation beyond the punishment is a later addition.

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Obadiah. This long cry of hatred against the Arab neighbors of Edom may date before the deportation to Babylon in - 587, but the verses of the end (19-21) were added after the return of the Repatriates (sixty to seventy years after).

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JONAS. One upon a time there was a man named Jonas ... The story of Jonah swallowed by a whale or a giant fish is, of course, not a true story. It is only a fable. This book is typical of a new mindset. God is also considered for the first time as the creator of the sea.

1. 9. The characters are all pagans apart from Jonah.

N.B. The port of Tarshish or Tartessus, destination of Jonah's travel, is a city that really existed in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula in the estuary of the Betis (Cadiz). It was famous for its wealth. One of its kings, the Celtic Argantonius, left in the annals of the Greek navigation the memory of an immensely generous man. (The Samians had brought from him a boatload of silver remained legendary.) As for the Bible, see 1 Kings 10, 22.

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MICAH. Kingdom of Judah late eighth century before our era. This visionary (nabi or Jehovah's Witness) comments on the religious and political news of the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem.

He was a contemporary of the tragic end of the northern Hebrew kingdom , and of the forced exile in Assyria of many inhabitants of Samaria after the attack triggered by Tiglath-Pileser III in - 732. From where these harangues.

Chapters 4 and 5 were added after. Announce what will be after the "Day of Yahweh.” The punishment of the nations and the reign of Zion. Therefore first appearance of a beginning of universalism in the Jewish monolatry. " Yahweh will judge between many peoples and render decisions for mighty, distant nations. Then they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation will not lift up the sword against nation, and never again will they train for war!” (4: 3). But this universalism is still elementary. All nations of the world are invited to come together in peace, but it is still the particular god or demon of the Hebrews who rules the kingdom come, kingdom whose capital is Jerusalem with its Temple rebuilt and more beautiful than ever.

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NAHUM. Fall of Nineveh. - 615-612.

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HABAKKUK. - 615 - 597. Habakkuk is an Akkadian name.

The second part of his work, chapter 2, 5 to 20, is made of five curses against Babylon.

1, 2. Revenge revenge and revenge again.

-------------------- ---------------- -------------- - ------------ ------- ------------------------------ ------------------------- ----ZEPHANIAH. The first part, which evokes the reign of Josiah, is perhaps due to the prophet himself, and was probably written before - 622. He announces the day of YHWH (1.1 to 2, 3).

The second part was written in Babylon during the exile, by another author, who used the original text of Zephaniah, but added his to it. Contains violent diatribes (2, 4-3, 8) against Israel's neighbors. This visionary (nabi) foretells the coming glory of his God-or-demon Yaho/Yahweh and of his people.

1, 4 to 6. Threats addressed pell-mell to the Baalite religion, astrology and atheism.

1, 8. Condemnation of the clothing fashions come from elsewhere.

1.14 to 22. The day of YHWH. Revenge, death, and destruction.

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HAGGAI. Year II of the reign of Darius 1st. That it is to say - 520 before our era. Finally, we enter history, the true one!

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ZECHARIAH. - 520 - 518. 4th year of the reign of Darius.

Chapters 9 to 14 were added to the original text by the one of the Zechariah disciples who distributed the first his work. This second part of the book begins with a classic topic, that of the punishment of the non-Jews (of the nations).

1.7. Refer to two different calendars, the lunar calendar of the Hebrew religion with numbered months, the lunisolar calendar of the Babylonian and Persian administration , with months having a name.

1.12. Astrological considerations. According to the Assyrian inscription of Esarhaddon, the anger of the gods ceased after 70 lunar, years. This corresponds perfectly behold, to the time required to undertake the reconstruction of the Temple.

6, 8. There are to be the Judeans in exile in Babylon in the sixth century before our era, and who have all in them a piece of the divine breath (Ruah).

174

8, 22. The whole world comes into Jerusalem to pledge allegiance to the laws of Yahweh and follow the Jewish people.

12, 12 to 14. Sexist separation.

13, 2 to 7. A long diatribe against the prophets speaking for Yahu/Yhwh. FINALLY !

13, 9. God kills a third of the Judeans.

14.16. The whole world is celebrating the Jewish feast of Sukkot.

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MALACHI. - 460. Malachi is not a proper noun but a common noun meaning "envoy, emissary." This book is therefore in reality anonymous.

1, 3. YHWH feels only hatred towards Esau and prefers to him, Jacob! The tone is set.

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3rd and last part of the Jewish Bible: the other Writings (Ketubim), a collection of unclassifiable pieces.

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The book of Psalms.

For centuries, has been ascribed to David or to the other authors mentioned in the heading. Of course, it was not the case. God indeed is much more often designated in it by the name of Elohim (210 times) than by that of Yahweh (45 times). Many of these texts are older and some date back to the Egyptian culture, but have been adapted to the various periods through which they went.

22, 2. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? "Well, it's funny, that's the sentence attributed by Matthew (27,46) to the man who was crucified on mount Golgotha around 30 or 40 before our era.

38, 3-9. O Yahweh, rebuke me not in your wrath, there is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation…..My wounds are loathsome and corrupt, my loins are filled with burning; there is no soundness in my flesh.

74. Yahweh breaks the head of Leviathan just as Marduk splits that of Tianmat in the Sumerian and Babylonian epic.

82. Traces of the Babylonian Enuma Elish and of Ugaritic stories.

105. Verses 1-15 are taken over in 1 Chronicles 16, 8-22.

136, 2. Yhwh is therefore the god of the gods, the master of the masters.

137.9. "Dash the infants of Babylon against the rocks." War crimes or crime against humanity?

139, 19 to 22. “Surely you will slay the wicked, O God: depart from me therefore, you bloodthirsty men….. am not I grieved with those that rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred:they are become my enemies. "

143, 12. "In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant."

149, 2-7. "Let Israel rejoice in him that made him: let the children of Zion be joyful in their King. Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing for joy upon their beds.Let the high praises of God be in their mouth,and a two-edged sword in their hand;to execute vengeance upon the nations,and punishments upon the peoples. "

What is striking in the text of these xenophobic songs, it is their very limits, the calls for revenge, for example, their prospects little oriented towards the hereafter.

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The Book of Job. Story probably written in the tenth century before our era, but constantly rewritten until the third century. This is a very ancient popular novel.

The topic of Job derives directly from the Sumerian tablets of Nippur. It is striking that the Book of Job uses almost literally the words of the Poem of the Creation (Enuma Elish) describing the battle of Marduk against Kingu. Kingu, too, was unsteady on his feet when seeing Marduk. Such analogies cannot be a coincidence and we guess here the same tradition or permanence of identical visions, perceptible to the last detail. Job besides is neither Jewish nor Judean he is Idumean, i.e. "Arab.’ Elihu is the only hero of this novel undoubtedly of Jewish origin.

N.B. The book of Job is one of the few books in this library, with the Ecclesiastes and the Song of songs, worthy to be carried with oneself on a deserted island.

Challenged by the Great Satan, God allows that Job is overwhelmed with various misfortunes. This god besides likely is not the Yhwh of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, or more precisely of Moses, because he is called Shaddai or Eloah (divine names of Semitic origin).

Job is a hero of tragic novels of the caliber of Prometheus, Odysseus, Oedipus or Sisyphus.

The end is, of course, a little easy and brings nothing more to the problem of the existence of evil.

The original story is the prose of the chapters 1, 2 and 42, verses 7-17.

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During the Babylonian exile, was inserted in the middle of this ancient tale long poetic dialogs, now forming the bulk of the book (chapters 3 to 42, 6). With the exception of chapters 28, 32, and 37, which were added again after.

1 6. The sons of God take their place in front of Yhwh, the great Satan insinuates himself among them.

7.1. The word "enosh" (mortal) to describe the human looks really very pagan.

7, 20. God is equated with a heavenly policeman.

28. An example of poem added to the primitive text of this tale.

31.35. Let Shaddai answer me! Job calls out to God.

32 to 37. Monologue of Elihu. These chapters were to be added –

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Proverbs.

Compilation of several different collections. The first words of this long series of sentences, sometimes questionable, attribute them to the mythical Solomon. This is clearly false. The collection perhaps dates back to the sixth century before our era (Exile to Babylon). The author speaks to his son according to a classical way among Egyptians and Mesopotamians. This is a composite collection with sometimes contradictory lessons. Wisdom and madness are personified in it, the wisdom portrayed as a foreign woman.The foreign woman has always been a central topic of this genre of literature, including in the pieces of advice of the Egyptian scribe Ani. A foreign woman or a sister.

The love literature in the Middle East of the time, including Egypt, of course, where the Pharaohs could marry their sister, often made use of the words brother and sister in order to designate lovers. Although written in Hebrew, these proverbs are devoid of any national (ist) characteristics.

The sayings are partly of Mesopotamian origin (inspired by the Sumerian proverbs of the tablets in Nippur) or of Egyptian origin.

The second volume contains a number of duplicates compared with the first.

1, 20 and 21. Wisdom cries outside, shouts at the top of her voice in the squares, calls over the noise, cries at the gates of the city. We are not far from the Prunikos or prostitute dear to the Gnostics.

2 5. The fear of Yhwh ... and the knowledge of the Elohim.

22.17 to 23.11. Inspired from the teaching of the Egyptian sage Amenemope probably through a Canaanite translation, this region having long been subjected to Egyptian influence.

31, 27. The end of the book of Proverbs confirms the personification of the wisdom, Tzofia in Hebrew, and foreshadows her equating with the Greek Sophia, even Prunikos of Gnostics.

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Ruth. Little story having nothing historical. Perhaps composed after the return of exile around - 500. Many words are of recent origin and come from the Aramaic language.

2.5. Who does that woman belong to?” In certain cultures the woman always belongs to somebody: father, husband, brother, etc.

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The Song of Songs.

Also ascribed to the mythical king Solomon by the first words of the text.

Unless Solomon was only the recipient of this poem. The Song of Songs is not a song intended to celebrate the weddings of God and of his faithful, but an (admirable) poem devoted to the, strictly human, beauty of love, between a man and a woman.

The Song of Songs is only a strictly profane poem where it is most difficult to find the name of God, or his tetragrammaton, except for the chapter 8 verse 6, where it appears in the expression “flame of Jah.”

Sebastian Castellio was sued by Calvin at the 16th century in Switzerland, our dear German-speaking Switzerland, to have said it, but too bad, let us repeat it with him!

It is in reality a continuation borrowed from the Sumerian song of the sacred wedding. It is the Same style, the same topics, details, vocabularies, same characters, monologues, dialogs, same flowery and redundant language. See for example the song of love of Shu-Sin in chapter 21. Shu-Sin who resembles extremely King Solomon whose existence is possible, without being sure, but whose reign has nothing to do with that which is described in the Bible.

The Song of Songs is the 2nd book of this library deserving to be carried with oneself on a deserted island! It is a splendid amorous dialog between a woman and a man, a little as we find some of them in the ancient Egyptian literature.

2.1. The lily of the valleys. Word of Persian origin, Shoshannah (name of the town of Susa). Or perhaps ultimately from Egyptian ssn = lotus.Has produced our modern Susanna.

176

8.6. Shalhevet-yah. Flame of Jah.

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Ecclesiastes. The author of Ecclesiastes presents himself as “a son of David, king of Jerusalem” in other words, Solomon. What is false obviously!

In reality it was written in a Hebrew language close to Aramaic language by an obviously atheistic author around - 300 or - 200, under the domination of the Ptolemies, a time when many Judeans are Hellenized.

We find in this text certain expressions of the Ugaritic or Phoenician literature.

The Ecclesiastes falls under the long and large tradition of sages who in Mesopotamia, Egypt and in the Hellenistic world, did not cease for centuries opposing the facts to the constructions of the mind. The end, 12.9 to 14, was added to the initial text of the author of this masterpiece, third book to carry potentially with oneself on a deserted island.

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Lamentations. The tradition attributed these poems to Jeremiah , but in reality nobody knows exactly who wrote them. It is in any case an adaptation of the “Lamentation over the destruction of Nippur,” a Sumerian text.

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Esther. The first drafting goes perhaps to the 5th or the 4th century before our era, during the Persian period. The Christians will add to it many passages in Greek language.

Little religion in this text. The name of God does not appear in it. The book tells the story of a Jewish young woman, the beautiful Esther, who is supported by her uncle Mordecai; mistress or de facto wife of an Aryan emperor of Persia named Achashverosh (Xerxes or Artaxerxes for the Greeks, Ahasuerus for the Romans) after the disgrace and the ousting of the queen Vashti. Mordecai discovers a plot directed against the king and saves him. But the minister Haman, jealous of Mordecai, tries to cause the fall of the Jews. Esther intervenes, denounces Haman and saves his people. After this intrigue and this quite incredible plot, Mordecai manages to make the Prime Minister of the Arya emperor, Haman, eliminated, and to make his partisans executed, after having publicly humiliated him. Mordecai takes the place of Haman. The Jews avenge themselves on their enemies.

The astonishing promotion of Esther and Mordecai, his uncle, are quite improbable, in the context of the time, just like the story of the plot. Only the general characteristic corresponds to the Persian reality of the 5th century before our era. For the rest, the improbabilities are too numerous to grant any historical value to the told events.

Celebration of six months in all the empire, rise of foreigners to the highest positions, use in the royal decrees of several languages instead of the Aramaic alone, only official language, authorization by the king to let his subjects to be massacred … Moreover, the characters, except perhaps for Xerxes, are only stereotypes. Obviously, the book of Esther is a fiction, a tale of which the purpose is to dramatize to the maximum. The book of Esther is more a historical novel than some even fictionalized history. N.B. According to Herodotus, the wife of Achashverosh was called neither Vashti nor Esther, but Amestris.

2.5. A Jew named Mordecai… this name is too, however, to compare to that of the Babylonian god-or-demon Marduk.

2.6. Exiled of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. What would make him therefore a man one hundred and twenty years old! Impossible!

2.7. Esther. The name of Esther is resulting from that of the great Babylonian goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, Ishtar, Astarte, Ashtoreth (the Sumerians worshiped her under the name of Inanna, wife of Dumuzi, the Tammuz of the Bible).

9.1 to 19. The revenge of the Jews. “On the thirteenth day of the month of Adar [….] the Jews assembled in their cities throughout all the provinces of King Ahasuerus to lay hands on those who sought their harm; and no one could stand before them, for the dread of them had fallen on all the peoples […..] The Jews struck all their enemies with the sword, killing and destroying [….] At the citadel in Susa the Jews killed and destroyed five hundred men and the ten sons of Haman [….] in the king's provinces they assembled, to defend their lives and rid themselves of their enemies, and kill 75,000 of those who hated them [….]Therefore the Jews make the fourteenth day of the month Adar a holiday for rejoicing and feasting.”

This story is so nauseating that some people thought that it was rather an Eastern tale intended to show that the good Aryan king in question could protect and reward all his faithful, even the Jews (or intended to explain the holiday of Purim, which is one of the most xenophobic Jewish holidays, and arouses all the issue of the preventive wars. Do we have the right to defend ourselves before even to be attacked?)

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- Book of Daniel (other visionary Jehovah's Witness!)

Probably composed circa - 164 before our era, but speaking to us about a hero of the exile in Babylon (- 587 - 538) to whom the name of Daniel is fictitiously attributed. The presence of two languages (Hebrew and Aramaic) in this text, shows that the book is in reality due to several authors, and reflects the situation of the Judea after Exile: the repatriates adopted the language of the winners, the Aramaic one.

The book can be divided into two large parts.

The first Daniel (chapters 1 to 6) is made up of six accounts telling us the exploits of Daniel and his companions at the court of Nebuchadnezzar. Chapters 2 to 7 are in Aramaic language.

With the second Daniel (chapters 7 to 12) we are no longer in Babylon, but in the land of Israel. This part of the work is made up of four visions of the apocalyptic genre and intended for Daniel only.

2.32. The division of the statue in five parts (gold, silver, iron and clay) is perhaps inspired from Hesiod (works and days).

4.31 to 34. Can we reasonably imagine Nebuchadnezzar admitting that the god-or-demon of the Judeans is the highest god-or-demon?

12,1-2. “A time of trouble, such as was never since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time your people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”

Daniel is the first nabi to evoke the resurrection of the dead , but this resurrection seems to concern only the chosen people.

Various passages in Greek language were also added, and this very early , to the primitive text.

This apocalyptic and ecstatic literature resonated considerably, and generated prophets and Messiahs of all kinds, who will lead the crowds.

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Ezra and Nehemiah.

Formed at the beginning one book written in late Hebrew, with some passages in Aramaic, official language of the Persian Empire (Ezra: 4.9 to 6.18; 7.11 to 26).

This book supposes known of everybody the Babylonian calendar (no longer indication of correspondence with the place of the months in the year) become the official calendar of the Persian Empire.

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EZRA.

This rather composite unit was composed between - 450 and - 400.

The main concern for Ezra is to separate from the other people the people devoted to Yhwh.

His book comprises two parts. The first (chapters 1 to 6) tells the resumption of the worship of Yahu/Yhwh in Jerusalem at the time of Cyrus and the restoration of the former royal temple, place where seats on his throne the sovereign god-or-demon of the country: Yaho/Yhwh. The second part of the work (chapters 7 to 10) described the activity of the priest, sent on a mission in Jerusalem by King Artaxerxes, in the seventh year of his reign, that is to say in -457, it seems… His mission orders present him as the highest jurisdictional authority of the ethnic group. Sent to inspect the conformity of the pertaining to worship and law practices implemented by the authorities in Jerusalem. Ezra also has the task of appointing , in the areas located west of Euphrates, judges in charge of the legislation, of which he is the guard.

1.1 to 3. These verses form the end of 2 Chronicles (36, 22 to 23). Editor’s note: can we really imagine only a while that the Aryan Cyrus could recognize Yaho/Yhwh as single God of Heaven ?? Yhwh therefore is probably an addition to the text of the original Order in Council of Cyrus.

1.11. The figures are not very probable.

2.59 to 63. Racism in a rough state.

2.63. The tirshatha: the governor (in old Persian).

4.2. The Persian king Artaxerxes suspends the rebuilding of Jerusalem.

7.12 to 26. It is the mission letter from Artaxerxes, written in Aramaic, and accrediting Ezra in his mission in Jerusalem as in Judea.

9 and 10. Still the racial purity necessary to the perpetuation of Judaism. Chapters 9 and 10 of Ezra are among most painful of this religion.

44.9 to 14. The Levites are subjected to the priests in the Temple.

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NEHEMIAH.

Nehemiah prohibits the mixed marriages, imposes the use of Hebrew, forbids the foreigners in Jerusalem.

178

1.1. The month of Chislev… use of the Babylonian calendar, without equivalence with the former Hebraic calendar.

2.1. Nisan… same thing!

2.10. Tobiah. A Levite converted to the religion of the Ammonites.

13,23-24. In the case of the mixed couples, it is the language of the husband who must prevail and not the mother tongue.

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Chronicles.

The chronicles in the beginning formed one book. Come back on the books of Samuel and of the Kings. It is therefore a second reading of the royal period carried out between - 400 and - 300 by some Levites, or some close relations of this caste (from where their role in this book of course). These texts seem to come from very diverse sources, of which some of them sometimes very old. The author chose the facts that he wanted to point out carefully , sorted them and recomposed them to draw from them a very personal work.

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1 CHRONICLES.

The purpose of this first part is clearly a lawyer work. It is a question of proving at all costs that David was a perfect king. This same apologetic concern appears in the history of the 21 successors of David. It is therefore a historical book, but with a very positioned history, with a selective memory.

6.48 to 53. Subordination of the Levites “to the sons of Aaron.” Priestly rereading of this rereading.

11 and 12. The regrouping carried out around the future king David is not in its logical place since it was carried out before the death of Saul and not after, what is not very probable.

16.8 to 22. Takes over the first 15 verses of psalm 105.

21.25. The figures of this census differ from those of 2 Samuel 24.9.

23.27. The at least twenty-year-old Levites… contradiction with verse 3 (thirty years old). It is a later reworking of priestly origin (subordination of the Levites to the sons of Aaron).

24.26. Manipulation of the texts by addition intended to integrate the descendants of Aaron without exception, in the clergy of Jerusalem, in contradiction with Ezekiel 44.15, where are mentioned as priests, not all the descendants of Aaron, but the only descendants of Zadok.

27.4. Mikloth the ruler … perhaps a later addition.

2 CHRONICLES.

11.13. Criticism of Jeroboam. Rather unjust besides, because the reality is quite simply that the policy of the kingdom in the North, as regards worship, differed from that of Juda, even before the centralization carried out by Josiah. Starting from this chapter the Jewish Bible joined more or less well the History. Josias existed well. It is besides under its reign, to unite the Hebrew people around Jerusalem, that was invented the first part of the Bible, called Pentateuch or Torah.

28.16. Manipulation of the facts. The request for assistance of King Ahaz was an obliged consequence of the attack undergone by him.

28.77. Ahaz rests away from the former kings Israel. Contradiction with 2 Kings 16.20, where he rests… with them!

29.34. Theological legal plea intended to somewhat restore the image of a religious caste, relegated to the second rank since the deuteronomist reform of Josias and the exile in Babylon: that of the Levites.

32.19. Finally, a little clearness and realism. The God-or-demon of Abraham Isaac and Jacob was made in the image of men, the god-or-demons are only creatures of the Man! Yes, but this finally objective, realistic and veracious line, is taken , alas, only by pagans.

33.6. The king of Israel (North kingdom ), Manasseh, makes his children pass through the fire of the sacrifice.

36.22 to 23. Taking over of the Book of Ezra (1, 1 to 3).

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4th part of the Old Testament, the Christian part: Seforim Hisoniim or “deuterocanonical texts.” Deuterocanonical in Greek means “belonging to the second canon.”

The Septuagint bequeathed us some texts of which the Hebrew original was lost and also added to it new ones, directly written in Greek language.

- The book of Esther, the Book of Daniel, the book of Judith, the story of Tobit, the 4 Books of the Maccabees.

- The Wisdom of Joshua Ben Sira (known as also Ecclesiasticus or Sirach).

- The Wisdom of Solomon. Written in Greek circa - 100 before our era by a Hellenized Alexandrian Jew. Ascribed to Solomon although this one has perhaps, we say well perhaps, lived eight hundred years earlier.

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- The book of Baruch. Very composite compilation of texts. It is impossible that the whole is due to a single author. A letter containing a strong criticism of the religious freedom, for example, was in it textually attributed to Jeremiah. (6, 1 to 72).

It is today usual to consider that the closure of the Jewish canon was the fact of the academy established in Jamnia (or Jabneh) after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, in the year 70 of our era.

The books in question are therefore not regarded as valid by the Orthodox Jews. They are, on the other hand, admitted by the Christians and a very clear Hellenistic influence is detected in it.

In summary.

The Book of Esther in the broadest sense of the term therefore has in its Christian version 6 passages more than the Jewish Bible or Tanakh.

The Book of Daniel in the broadest sense of the term has therefore in its Christian version one more passage than the Jewish Bible or Tanakh.

The Book of Judith is not part of the Hebrew Bible known as Tanakh.

The Book of Baruch is not part of the Hebrew Bible known as Tanakh.

The Book of Tobit is not part of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh.

The Books of the Maccabees are not part of the Tanakh.

The Book of Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira is not part of the official Tanakh or of the Protestant Bible.

The Book of Wisdom of Solomon idem.

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VISITING CARD OF THE BIBLICAL "LIBRARY"

(What a pity that in Alexandria was not so lucky!)

At this point in our short paper, let us place here a short review of documents that cannot be discussed below, since they have not been incorporated in full or were eliminated by the Jewish intellectuals in question. Because the current Torah is the result of a choice or of a compilation made after the return of the Jews from their last major deportation into Babylon; that which took place in the year 587 before our era and which lasted seventy years.

-The Book of the Wars of the Lord [Numbers 21.14]. " Therefore it is said IN THE BOOK OF THE WARS OF THE LORD: Waheb: in Suphah, and the valleys of the Arnon.”

-The book of the Acts of Solomon [1 Kings 11, 41]. "The rest of the acts of Solomon, and whatever he did, and his wisdom, are they not written in THE BOOK OF THE ANNALS OF SOLOMON , "

-The book of Jashar [Joshua 10.13]. "So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on] its enemies, as it is written IN THE BOOK OF JASHAR [….].

-The records of Samuel, Nathan, and Gad [1 Chronicles 29, 29]. "As for the events of King David's reign, from beginning to end, they are written in THE RECORDS OF SAMUEL THE SEER the records OF NATHAN THE PROPHET and the records OF GAAD THE SEER.

-The book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah [2 Kings 24,5]. "The rest of the deeds of Jehoiakim and all that he did, are they not written in THE BOOK OF THE CHRONICLES OF THE KINGS OF JUDAH."

Etc. Etc. Other mentions of this kind exist in the Bible. What shows well in passing that there is no divine inspiration in all that, but only the use of various records.

As we have had the opportunity to say it, there is little connection between the scientifically proven historical truth and the picture of it that the first five books of the Bible outline. The scribes who composed this work of propaganda under the reign of the little king of Jerusalem called Josias, in the 7th century before our era, nevertheless had to use a certain number of beliefs, of received ideas prevailing in their time, of materials, legends, traditions, or chronicles.

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Pages of notes found crossed out by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them at this place to close the chapter.

FIRST PART ACCORDING TO THE TRADITION : THE LAW,

THE MAJOR PROPHETS , THE MINOR PROPHETS,

AND THE OTHER WRITINGS.

1st part of the Bible: The Genesis. Perhaps the part of the Bible about which most was written.

In this part of the Bible indeed religion has made the mistake of meddling in empirical facts. It has given us in this way a long list of precise and indisputable assertions about the cosmos and the biology. But every time it offered a description of what occurs in the world and that science could also get involved in it; now well this is the description of the world provided by the science which proved to be closest to the truth.

As for the notion of original sin, it resulted from a rather simplistic reflection about the human condition borrowed mainly from the Sumerian mythology.

Adam is somehow in the beginning the gardener of the Elohim on earth, he is equipped with grace; and his original immortality, as well as his state of happiness symbolized by the life in the garden of Eden, of which he is the ruler; attest to the supernatural gifts granted to him by the Elohim. But since all the men die one day or another, then, it is that there was to be after, a serious offense against God from Adam.

Below some excerpts from the version called "Yahwist" of the story of the creation of mankind by God.

So the Lord YHWH Elohim said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”

To the woman he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.”

To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it.” Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

In the sweat of your brow, shall you eat bread.

Until you return to the soil which have been you.

Yes, you are dust, dust you shall return.

And Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.

Also for Adam and his wife the Lord YHWH Elohim made tunics of skin, and clothed them.

Then the Lord YHWH Elohim said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and also take of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.”

Therefore the Lord YHWH Elohim sent him out of the Garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

Comments.

Through this myth the Judeo-Christians affirm the degeneration of the man, that they claim to protect against himself. This is there, of course, the argument of all the despotisms.

The biblical legend nevertheless has still traces of the archaic Eve still completely invested with her Sumerian-Babylonian beneficial powers. Adam indeed in it calls his wife, "Eve, Mother of all living." The act of disobedience brings upon Adam the wrath of the jealous Elohim who condemn him to a miserable fate him and his descendants.

The Elohim being, in this myth, equated with a creating god or demon, this singular plural God is supposed to give life, but also to have the right to take it back, by putting and end to it when he wants.

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With the exception of some Gnostics or Heretics who condemn the attitude of this God (the Elohim), by judging it unnecessarily cruel, Christians Jews and Muslims agree generally to find relatively fair this punishment.

It is nowhere stated in the text that the tempter represented in this story as a serpent is the Devil. This is also after their exile in Babylon, and probably as a result of the influence of the Sumerian-Babylonian thought; that Jews have indeed started talking in various words of the objective presence in the world of this evil force (the Devil, Satan, Belial).

So the FUTURE right-thinking biblical mythology (e.g., the Apocalypse of John 12: 9); which will identify this Serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan (Hebrew form) or with the Devil (form come from the Greek language) in disguise, that is to say finally to Lucifer. This would have revolted the sixth day, not admitting that God orders his heavenly hosts to worship Adam. In this dualism which doesn’t want to say its name, the serpent plays the role of great Tempter.

Among the Jews themselves in any case, as we have seen and as we will see again the decision of the Elohim didn’t win unanimous support ; and the Gnostic Naassenes, themselves, will prefer on the contrary to worship the serpent (symbol of the enjoyment of life and knowledge).

Other Comments on Genesis.

PART BORROWED FROM SUMERIAN MYTHOLOGY.

1, 1 to 27. God begins by creating the earth then the light then the seas then the plants then the stars and the moon, then the animals, then the man and the woman. The least we can say is that the writers were completely wrong. We now know that the stars (including the Sun) appeared first, then the Earth and the Moon and the seas and plants and animals, and humans. Genesis matches the view of the authors of the time, but has nothing to do with reality.

1, 31. God created all this in six days! There are a few thousand years (around 6000 according to the medieval theologians. See the Annals of the Four Masters in Ireland). This is very far from reality, even by counting with a large safety margin. We now know that it took billions of years. First for the formation of the universe then of the stars like the Sun, of the planets like the Earth then of the seas and oceans; the birth of the life which doesn’t cease becoming more complex (the fossils prove it) and finally of human beings.

2, 7. " Then the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground." Taken from Sumerian mythology, which itself speaks of clay.

2, 8. The earthly paradise of the Bible is "borrowed" from the Sumerian poem (written around - 2800) "Enki and Ninhursag." The Hebrew Eden and that of the Sumerian myth perhaps are like : same rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) same place, same suffering, same original sin.

2 9. The topic of the tree is borrowed from the Mesopotamian mythology (see the plant of immortality that Gilgamesh finds and that a snake steals).

2.14. The human race would be born therefore in Mesopotamia near the Euphrates. Surprise there would have lived the supposed or real writers ... This egocentric theory is undermined by archeology. We now know that Homo sapiens is born in Africa, probably in the East. What is born in Mesopotamia is the first civilization. It's not the same thing.

2, 21. The story of Adam's rib is also "borrowed" from the Sumerian poem "Enki and Ninhursag." It comes from a pun in Sumerian language where "ti" means both "rib" and "to live,” a pun which has lost its full meaning in Hebrew.

2, 22. The woman was created from a man's rib. False !! We could almost even say the opposite: all embryos are born female and are differentiated only after a few days. But even today, a certain number of people believe that man has a rib unless the woman !! Thank you the Bible!

3, 2. Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit. Another tall tale copied identically from an ancient Sumerian legend by making the origin of evil depending on the first woman who, prompted by a serpent to disobey the creating god-or-demon, encourages her partner to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree.

The oldest and most comprehensive of Akkadian legends that have survived, the Epic of Gilgamesh, of which the Sumerian version dates from the second thousand years before our era, has indeed an episode where the snake plays such a role.

For the skeptics, see the seal of the temptation, which is in the British Museum where you can see the woman, the man, the serpent and the tree.

Today no one believes seriously in the historical reality of this story.

3, 20. Adam called his wife "mother of all living." This is the title once recognized to the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, called Aruru, goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of love, whose priestess, in the Epic

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of Gilgamesh, will seduce the first man called Enkidu. With love, she will give him knowledge and science. Eve did the same in respect of Adam but among the Hebrews, God punished the woman for that.

3, 22. Ultimate avatar of the Sumerian pagan belief which has it that the god- or-demons keep for themselves the benefit of immortality.

4. Abel. The stem hbl has a sense of steam or vain smoke. Abel is a man without interest that does not speak much and whose holiness will be in fact useless.

6, 2. Sexual intercourse between God-or-demons and humans (some women in this case). Are a universal topic. We even find it in the mythology of the high-knowers of the druidiaction (druidecht) despite the atheism (before the word is invented ) of some of them.

6 4. The Nefilim are giants.

6, 8. Like most major biblical figures, the character of Noah is a mythical figure.

6.14. Noah's Ark: This story is taken identically from a Sumerian legend. In the Epic of Gilgamesh,Utnapishtim also receives before the flood falls, the order to build a "ship" according to specific measures to put in it the seed of all living beings.

6.19. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female. Contradicts 7, 2.

7 2. " Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal." Contradict 6.19.

7.17. The biblical account of the Flood is well known, but it is interesting to read it along with the Sumerian and Akkadian texts, because we understand better then the indisputable derivation linking the version of the Genesis to its previous models. The well known Chaldean historian Berossus (fourth century before our era) who tells a deluge story very similar to that of the Genesis, said to have copied it from tablets which still existed in his time in the library of Nineveh.

Editor's note. Noah's tall tale is also similar in many respects to the Greek myth of Deucalion, who built an ark after the flood had reached the Mount Parnassus. Generations of researchers have sought and still seek vainly the remains of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat !!

8.7. The test of the crow. See the Epic of Gilgamesh.

8.19. The estimations for the total number of land animal species vary between 2 and 30 million. Let us say 5 million species, it means that Noah embarked 10 million animals in the Ark (including animals which, like the kangaroo, live only at the end of the world). Noah's Ark was to be very crowded !! Genesis doesn’t explain how these animals fed by landing on a ground covered with water for more than a month; how did the carnivores not to devour their prey, how the kangaroo has reached Australia, the puma, America, some marsupials Madagascar and the iguanas the Galapagos.

11.1. The Tower of Babel. A topic borrowed from Mesopotamian mythology. The Tower of Babel was a ziggurat.

------- ------- --------- ------- ------- ------------- -------------------------------------------------- ------------- ----------- ----

End of the part borrowed from the Sumerian myths. End of the part borrowed from the Sumerian myths.

- -------------------------- --------------------------------------- ----------- -------------------------- ------------------ ------ -

11, 26. Insertion after this first mythological part, of the legend of Abraham, to give a "real ancestor" to the Hebrew people, an ancestor that they make coming from Ur. Ur was already renowned as a place of knowledge of an early antiquity; but its prestige increased considerably throughout the region when, around the middle of the sixth century before our era, it became an important religious center with the Babylonian- or Chaldean – king, Nabonidus. Thus, the choice as origin of Abraham of the Ur of the Chaldeans, gave to the Jews both distinction and cultural antiquity.

14. Text very old that some people suppose to have been first written in Akkadian or Canaanite language.

15. Chapter probably written before the Babylonian exile and inserted afterwards, many centuries later, in the book of Genesis.

18, 2. The topic of the mysterious visitors, whose coming is related to a future birth, is a universal theme. Its unconscious and psychoanalytic meaning was explicitly revealed in the Irish druidic mythology about the triple conception of Cuchulainn. The visitor of the child to be born is the true,divine, father.

19.1. The stories of cities destroyed by divine anger are a universal topic since we found them in Indian mythology (in India the woman is changed into stone).

The change in stone is also found in the druidic mythology (some legionaries changed into stones by St. Cornely at Carnac in France).

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19.31 to 38. Lot's daughters give birth, from the seed of their father, to Moab and Ammon. This incestuous birth shows well the contempt of the chosen people of the time towards these kingdoms and their inhabitants.

21, 32. Abraham meets Abimelech king of the Philistines. But the Philistines will arrive in the region only a thousand years later. According to the interpretation of a stele in the temple of Medinet Habu (Egypt), they would be part of the Sea Peoples, a federation of peoples whose migration shook in the twelfth century before our era the Eastern Mediterranean. This thesis is not shared by all historians. The Philistines come perhaps from Crete. Repelled from Egypt, they settled on the coastal plain in southern Canaan (Gaza Jaffa) circa - 1175 and found their major cities along the coast, on the current sites of Ashdod, Ashkelon and Gaza. Thus circa - 1150 and over the following centuries, they fight another nomadic people, came by land: the Hebrews. The relations between the two peoples were probably changing, periods of latent war alternating with periods of open hostility.

22. The Torah speaks of a mountain in the country of Moriyyah and in no way of Jerusalem.

22, 2. Universal topic. Especially famous is the very old Greek legend of Athamas and Prixos. When, on the basis of a Delphic oracle, Athamas is about to sacrifice his son Prixos, on the top of a mountain, a ram appears which takes the young man. Thus freed, the young man offers the ram in sacrifice to Zeus.

26.1. Idem. Isaac meets Abimelech king of the Philistines, yet they arrive in the region only about a thousand years later, as we have already seen it. This story does not honor Isaac besides, the only one to act rightly in this case being the Aryan (Abimelech).

27. Isaac's blessings are no more no less than magic formulas.

It was indeed enough to pronounce them so that the beneficiary is permanently changed, even though there was a mistake about the person involved (Esau / Jacob).

30. Funny manners! This behavior, everyone would condemn if it was not Jacob.

33, 20. El, God of IsraEL.

47.11. Anachronism. Ramesses was not pharaoh in the supposed time of Jacob.

49, 3 to 27. Tribal Proverbs punctuated with various spells. A universal topic (see the oath among the high-knowers of the druidiaction - druidecht - and the Teasgasc riog or Teasgasc an righ written by King Cormac Mac Airt for his successor).

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EXODUS.

Here also, the text is not homogeneous. The writing down may have started in the seventh century before our era, from various materials (caravan routes, place names etymology, etc.) but the final version is certainly later than the return from Exile (fifth century before our era).

The Israel which is reflected in this book is that of the priestly caste of the time.

The Babylonian exile and the return of the exiles are projected on a mythical Egyptian slavery, making it possible in this way to justify through religion a fundamental antagonism with Egypt, according to the political situation of the time.

The saga of the Exodus thus echoed their own situation of repatriates. The Exodus from Egypt under Moses's leadership should no longer be considered in a historical perspective, but as a literary fiction, constituent of a political and religious ideology. This legend still continues to be a reference for a certain number of men or women fighting for the liberation of their people. Therefore let us imagine it objectively, objectively and not subjectively (not with the eyes of Juliet for Romeo, or of Chimene for Rodrigue) and on pieces of evidence.

2.1 to 3. The invention of the character of Moses. The story of the birth of Moses is reminiscent of that of the great conqueror Sargon 1 of Akkad, who reigned fifty-five years (-2334 to -2279) and proclaimed himself, "anointed of God." His birth is indeed described as follows: " My mother, the high priestess, conceived me, in secret she bore me; she placed me in a basket of rushes, she sealed the lid with bitumen; she cast me into the river [the Euphrates] so that it did not rise over me.”

Then the newborn will be taken in and adopted by a gardener named Aqqi. The favor of the Goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer this word, called Ishtar, will make him a cupbearer in the court of Kish then a prince.

Many details of the story of Moses are found in other cultures, including to India. Like Moses, Krishna indeed was placed after his birth by Vasudeva into a reed basket, and discovered on the bank of the river Yamuna by Nanda and Yashoda. See The Mahabharata.

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2, 5 to 10. The daughter of Pharaoh takes a bath in the river. Or the Egyptian princesses of the day swimmed in luxurious bathrooms supplied with filtered water or by rainwater, especially not in a muddy river.

3, 21 to 22. "You will not go empty-handed.But every woman shall ask of her neighbor and the woman who lives in her house, articles of silver and articles of gold, and clothing and you will put them on your sons and daughters. Thus you will plunder the Egyptians." Is it very moral?

4.16. Moses is presented as God (very human and very common peculiarity, from Jesus to the Roman emperors).

4.26. Moses starts and comes to a halt where God sought to kill him. Zipporah takes a flint, cuts off the bloody foreskin of her son, touches with it Moses’s genitals for cure him and says, "You are my bridegroom of blood to me." And God let Moses alone ... What means this gibberish of low magic? ? Can God do this really? ?

7.17. The plagues of Egypt are a legend. The topic of the water changed into blood is drawn directly from the Sumerian myth "Inanna and Shukallituda or the gardener’s mortal sin."

9, 23. Like among the Celts for the druids, the thunder (Taran / Toran) was similarly supposed to be the voice of the higher god or demon.

9, 27 "Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron, and said unto them, this time I have sinned! "That the most powerful ruler of the time could say this to a representative of the Habirus (Hebrew) is pure fiction!

12, 29. To facilitate the exodus from Egypt, God finds nothing better than striking thousands and thousands of innocent people " all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon.”

12, 35. By order of Moses the ancestors of the Jews go out of Egypt as thieves. (By taking away items in silver or in gold and clothing.) Hence the reaction of Pharaoh.

12, 37. Moses left the country with 600 000 families (sic). At the time, the border between Egypt and Canaan was closely controlled and Egypt was at the height of its power. Given the balance of forces in the alleged time of the event (around 1300 before our era) it is impossible to imagine the escape from Egypt of 600,000 Hebrew slaves; who would have crossed borders so strongly guarded, and crossed the desert to Canaan, despite the presence of Egyptian troops. Archeological excavations prove it, including in the nearest region of Mount Sinai, supposed place of the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses. Anyway, if a horde of fleeing Hebrews had crossed the fortified frontier of the Pharaonic territory, we would have found a written record of that.

Now, in the Egyptian documents yet superabundant which describe the time of the New Kingdom in general and that of the thirteenth century in particular, we find no reference to the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt, not even a suggestion.

No trace of the 600 000 families (2/3 of the population of Egypt at the time) who have crossed this region! The papyrus Anastasi V reports that two slaves who fled, were sought; and the Egyptians, whose administration noted everything down, would not have recorded the flight of more than a million people !! Unbelievable!

13.18. The hypothetical Israelites fleeing through, not the Red Sea, but a lagoon located a little north, whose name is "Sea of rushes " or "Sea of reeds.” Suph in Hebrew language. So not a deep sea but a simple swamp! Nothing miraculous there, with all due respect to Hollywood and Walt Disney. The Red Sea which opens to let the Hebrews go it's only a movie!

13, 21 to 22. On this famous column, see the study by John Toland: I Hodegus. (The pillar of fire and cloud was not a miracle, but a way to find one’s way also used by other peoples in the region.)

14.19. Idem.

14, 28 and 15.19. Pharaoh, his horses, his chariots and horsemen pursuing the Hebrews, perish at sea. But no Pharaoh has ever perished at sea !!

16, 35. Circa - 1440 before our era these 600,000 families have made a long journey in the Sinai for forty years without a trace! Not a single shard of pottery, not the least grave !! It's not yet for lack of having sought. All the nooks and crannies of the Sinai were searched. Moreover, according to biblical tradition, it would have passed four hundred and eighty years between the exit out of Egypt and the construction of Solomon's Temple, what puts the Exodus between -1450 and -1430. But most historians identify the Pharaoh in question with Ramesses II (-1301 to -1234) !! The dates do not match!

18, 2 to 7. Moses's wife, Zipporah, has not left in Egypt with, but was repudiated and was sent back to her father as an ordinary disposable tissue; what is in contradiction with 4, 24 to 26, where she seems to accompany him on his way to the kingdom of Pharaoh.

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19.16. The Hebrew people should be as the priest of God.

20. The Ten Commandments are a summary of the Babylonian Code of King Hammurabi (around - 1800).

21, 23 to 25. The law of retaliation. Human. Too much human!

22.17 to 19. Moses firmly believes in the nuisance potential of the devil and of the demons, since he ordered the systematic killing of witches. And of the zoophilious persons to cap it all.

Editor’s note. One wonders if by "witches" it is not necessary to understand "faithful of another religion" given the following verse, the verse 19, which dooms to herem anyone participating in other cults.

23, 23 to 33. My messenger will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.

The "conquest of the Promised Land" operation is therefore planned by God and Moses and it is a “nazir” genocide through deportation or extermination of the Aryans, Hittites and Philistines or Jebusites, of the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, etc.

25 to 31. Technical details concerning the sanctuary tent sired by God (what use for the salvation of our souls today that all these rituals to follow literally?)

31.18. The story of the divine tablets brought from the mountain is more than doubtful. See the appendix on the Ten Commandments.

32, 27. Moses makes massacred by the priests (the Levites) 3000 of his opponents (relatives, brothers or companions).

35-39. Execution of the orders given for the construction of the sanctuary tent . Whole sentences are taken from the previous chapters (2-31). But archeology has found no trace of that.

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LEVITICUS.

There also, this book was completed only well after the return of the deportation in Babylonia in the fifth century before our era. It contains 247 of the 613 commandments (mitzvoth) of the Jewish Bible.

1-17. As we have seen, the Hebrews sacrificed animals to get from their God (Elohim or YHWH) the absolution of their faults. The Leviticus describes in detail the various types of sacrifices offered by the Hebrews (burned offerings, food offerings, sacrifices for sins, etc.). More than half of the book (1-17) is devoted to the requirements for these sacrifices. What utility today for the salvation of our souls?

7, 20. Ritual excommunication.

10.1. Moses makes burned alive by God two supporters of the religious freedom, Nadab and Abihu. More precisely for breaches of the ritual (low magic?)

15.18. Every sexual intercourse makes impure.

16, 8 to 10. A mysterious entity named Azazel (a demon?) is almost placed on the same level as Yahweh since the sacrifice of a goat is also necessary for him.

17-3. Any man who kills an ox, a lamb , or a goat, to be devoted to God (in reality intended to make the Levites live) is punishable by death.

19. Various sexual rules. Impurity of women menstruating, condemnation of homosexuality, of the bestiality. The Canaanites are impure, the immigrants must comply with the laws of the country.

20.1 to 6. The important being not apparently the life or the death of these children, but that they are dedicated from an early age (sacred prostitution?) the one who dedicates his children to the god Molek or who follows the worship of Molek is sentenced to death.

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NUMBERS.

Takes over a significant portion of the stories and legends of Exodus. Some of the places mentioned did not exist at the time when this book was supposedly written.

There also composite work, partly inspired by the records of the priestly institution and completed in the – 5th century during the assignment of Ezra and Nehemiah. The desert crossing described in this book is, of course, intended as a prefiguration of the deportation to Babylon. The writers of the Priestly School complement the pertaining to worship law of the Leviticus, sometimes change it (recognition of the subordination of the Levites to priests) and incorporate in it various other elements (routes, topographical data, places visited by the tribes). From where some contradictions besides. They bring us another view of the Exodus of the chosen people in the desert, rather militaristic and warlike.

1, 20. The figures are, of course, implausible.

11, 1 to 3. The people starting to be tired by his policy, Moses called the fire of God against him.

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12. Aaron’s sister, Mary, who speaks ill of Moses’ sleeping around with a stranger woman, God sends scabies to her. Convenient ! Same situation many centuries later with Muhammad.

13, 26. Kadesh. The chosen people begins its journey in the desert.

14, 29 to 35. The people complaining again because of the policy of Moses, God condemns all adults over twenty years to perish in the desert.

16, 27 to 35. Korah, Dathan and Abiram, as well as a part of the people, having revolted against Moses, he makes them devoured by the fire of God (or of the Devil?) or engulfed by the earth. This chapter is very composite and is full of inconsistencies. The final text, the result of several successive drafts, compiles two different traditions. One concerning a revolt of the Reubenites with Dathan and Abiram. One concerning a revolt of the Levite Korah and his followers.

The first protest against the alleged theocratic tyranny (what is well convenient) of Moses. They perish in a morass.

The second against the monopolization of the priesthood by Aaron. They will be burned alive.

17, 6 to 14. New popular revolt suppressed in the same way: 14,700 dead.

19, 2. Sacrifice of a bovine. Universal practice (see the tarbfess of the high-knowers of the Irish druidiaction).

20.1. The chosen people go again through Kadesh. They go around in circles.

21, 5 to 9. New revolt of the chosen people, but suppressed differently this time, and concluded with a first concession to the religious freedom, that of the bronze snake.

This chapter is an example of the idolatrous superstitions of the time. Who can indeed imagine for a moment that it is enough to look a caduceus, a bronze snake attached to a pole, to escape death if the venom dose was lethal? ? ?

Yet this is what we find in the Scriptures dictated (or inspired?) by God.

"YHWH said to Moses, "Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live. And Moses made a caduceus (a bronze serpent) and set it on the standard; and it came about that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the caduceus (the bronze serpent), he lived…" (Numbers 21: 8 9). In short, some eastern low magic where the snake wrapped around a pole is used as a magic wand. The details tending to point out that it is only God who heals had to be added later.

21.17. The oldest piece of poetry of the Torah: the well song.

22, 28. Balaam's donkey starts talking. Is it even possible? It is true that she had had a vision then (an angel barring his road). The character of Balaam is the subject of various not concordant traditions.

25.1 to 9. Although not hesitating himself, and for his own account, to practice mixed marriages or interbreeding, Moses forbids the intermarriage and the religions other than his own. He makes tortured 24,000 men guilty of this "crime" especially with the help of informers and of a priest named Phinehas son of Eleazar (today they would rather use anonymous letters in order to denounce these unfortunate people) .

28-30. Unlike previous texts which, according to the Canaanite custom, did the year begin in autumn and called the months with names, this part of the Torah makes the year beginning in spring as in the Babylonian civilization. That proves that it was reworked long after the supposed date of the events.

31. Moses ordered the genocide of the people of his ex-wife and of his ex-stepfather, the Midianites, who nevertheless had given him their God-or demon. Except the virgins (reserved for what purpose?)

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SMALL QUESTION NOW: WHAT IS A RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY?

The enormous and catastrophic misunderstanding for the intellectuals and the Western media, is that the word religion does not mean the same thing for everyone. For the ancestors of the current Jews and of the today Muslims, religion was a law. Din. For the Hebrews a tribal law, for the Muslims a universal law. For the pagans of Indo-European spirit like Cyrus and particularly the Celts, the religion it was social events and feasts (the law was distinct from them, reason why Christianity born from the conversion of all these peoples, unlike Islam, was not involved directly in the question of the laws having to govern the society).

For the Jews of today the religion is become ethnocultural, outside the law, and for some of them a question of nationality. Same thing for the Syriac, Coptic, Maronite, etc. Christians.

For Buddhists, Shintoists and Hindus, the religion is a philosophy. So, when an Indian speaks about Hindu religion that thus therefore does not mean the same thing in the mind of a Pakistani as in that of an Indian, and that is perhaps not the same thing either for an Iranian (Persian).

Consequently there are not in this field true dialogs since they do not speak about the same thing but successions of monologues. With the emergence of the idea of Nation-State the things became even more complicated. When an Arab of today speaks about “Jews,” he refers especially to a question of beliefs. For an Arab of today, just like for Europeans of the Middle Ages (religious and nonracial antisemitism), a converted Jew is no longer a Jew. But for a Jew, a Jew it is somebody whose mother was Jewish (traditional rabbinical definition). Moreover all that merged more or less with the idea of Nation-State and therefore now is equivalent to a nationality.

In Serbia in Croatia or in Lebanon, the concept of religion means a thing in times of peace and another very different thing in time of war. For the Orthodox and Catholic Christians, religion became especially an aesthetics, some ceremonies and some rites.

“In its ordinary sense the word "crowd" means a gathering of individuals of whatever nationality, profession, or sex, and

whatever be the chances that have brought them together. From the psychological point of view the expression "crowd" assumes quite a different signification. Under certain given circumstances, and only under those circumstances, an agglomeration of men presents new characteristics very different from those of the individuals composing it. The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined characteristics. The gathering has thus become what, in the absence of a better expression, I will call an organized crowd, or, if the term is considered preferable, a psychological crowd. It forms a single being, and is subjected

to the LAW OF THE MENTAL UNITY OF CROWDS.

The disappearance of conscious personality and the turning of feelings and thoughts in a definite direction, which are the primary characteristics of a crowd about to become organized, do not always involve the simultaneous presence of a number of individuals on one spot. Thousands of isolated individuals may acquire at certain moments, and under the influence of certain violent emotions--such, for example, as a great national event--the characteristics of a psychological crowd…

A psychological crowd once constituted, it acquires certain provisional but determinable general characteristics. To these general characteristics, there are adjoined particular characteristics which vary according to the elements of which the crowd is composed, and may modify its mental constitution. Psychological crowds, then, are susceptible of classification.

Homogeneous crowds include: 1. Sects; 2. Castes; 3. Classes.

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The sect represents the first step in the process of organization of homogeneous crowds. A sect includes individuals differing greatly as to their education, their professions, and the class of society to which they belong, and with their common beliefs as the connecting link. Examples in point are religious and political sects…..

Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organized crowd, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of

civilization. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian--that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings, whom he further tends to resemble by the facility with which he allows himself to be impressed by words and images--which would be entirely without action on each of the isolated individuals composing the crowd--and to be induced to commit acts contrary to his most obvious interests and his best-known habits. An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will.

It is for these reasons that juries are seen to deliver verdicts of which each individual juror would disapprove that

parliamentary assemblies adopt laws and measures of which each of their members would disapprove in his own person. Taken separately, the men of the Convention were enlightened citizens of peaceful habits. United in a crowd, they did not hesitate to give their adhesion to the most savage proposals, to guillotine individuals most clearly innocent, and, contrary to their interests, to renounce their inviolability and to decimate themselves.

It is not only by his acts that the individual in a crowd differs essentially from himself. Even before he has entirely lost his independence, his ideas and feelings have undergone a transformation, and the transformation is so profound as to

change the miser into a spendthrift, the skeptic into a believer, the honest man into a criminal, and the coward into a hero…(Gustave Le Bon.The crowd, a study of the popular mind).

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THE ANCIENT JEWISH RELIGIOUS IDEOLOGY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES ACCORDING TO MONETTE BOHRMAN.

The conclusions generally put all anti-Jewish grievances on the same level, and among them, atheia is considered to derive from amixia. It seems that our approach has highlighted not only that atheia and amixia of the Jews are a reality, but that atheia (the absolute negation of what is not the one God, of the Jews and which translates into the rejection of idolatry) is at the heart of the problem and that it results in amixia (separation from the practices of others)".

The historian of religions Monette Bohrmann (1934-2015) devoted in 1994 a long study of the negative characteristics resulting from Jewish worship according to the Greeks and Romans. Published in the collection "Dialogue of ancient History" (pages 171-196).

The first of these negative characteristics, according to her, would be well amixia and the second atheia.

Our author reviews a series of biblical, Greek and Roman testimonies (the list is long).

Amixia.

I - "[Moses] instituted a kind of life contrary to humanity and hospitality" (Hecataeus of Abdera, Fragm. 13 Muller; after Diodorus XL, 3 trans. Th. Reinach, Texts... p. 17).

"Only of all the nations it [the Jewish race] refused to have any social relations with other peoples.... ... [the Jews] had perpetuated among them the hatred of men. That is why they had instituted very special laws, such as never to sit at the table with a stranger and to show no kindness to them.... Moses ... the one who had imposed on them [the Jews] laws contrary to humanity" (Posidonius of Apameia, Fragm. 14, Muller after Diodorus XXXIV, fr. 1, ibid. p. 56-59).

"He who by chance has had as his father a Sabbath observer... brought up in contempt of Roman law, he reveres only the Jewish law" (Juvenal, Sat. XIV 96-103, ibid., pp. 292-293).

"Never do they [Jews] eat, never do they sleep with strangers, and this race ... abstains from all trade with foreign women" (Tacitus, Hist. V, 5, ibid., p. 307).

"[The Jews] pride themselves on superior wisdom and disdain the society of other men" (Celsus, True Discourse, Origen V, 43, ibid., p. 168).

"These men are distinguished from the rest of mankind by their whole way of life" (Cassius DioXXXVII, ibid., p. 182).

Atheia.

I - "A certain Moses... exhorted them to be benevolent to no one... and to overthrow all the sanctuaries and altars of the gods they would meet" (Lysimachus of Alexandria, fragment 1 Muller, in Josephus, Against Apion I, 34, ibid., p. 119).

"Sometimes he [Apollonius] insults us as atheists and misanthropists" (Apollonius Molon, Against Apion II, 14 §148, transl. Th. Reinach, Texts... p. 63).

"They [Posidonius and Apollonius] make it a crime for us not to worship the same gods as other peoples" (Apollonius Molon, Against Apion II, 7 §79, ibid. p. 62).

"The first instruction they are given is to despise the gods, to abjure the fatherland, to forget parents, brothers, children" (Tacitus, Hist. V, 5, ibid., p. 307).

"... this nation at once full of superstition and enemy of religious practices" (Tacitus, Hist. V, 13, ibid., p. 321).

Monette Bohrmann thus concludes as follows.

From the confrontation of sources, it emerges that the amixia and atheia blamed on the Jews are at the heart of the vision that non-Jews have of Jews and, what is more, that Jews have of themselves. The Romans, for their part, remarked that the way of life of the Jews was radically different from the consensus common to other peoples, that it was indeed "contrary to humanity" and therefore, from their point of view, Jews were "misanthropic"; the food laws forbade them commensality (they "never sit at table with a stranger," "do not share the table with their fellow men"), so the Jews could not have a normal social relationship with other peoples. As a minority, they must preserve themselves from

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acculturation in order to survive, to go through time and history (history is said in Hebrew toledot, that is to say, generations): consequently "they refrain from all communication with foreigners," and abstain "from all contact with foreign women" and remain distinct from mankind and this behavior is indeed subject to "rules that are a religious institution" (the precepts of the Law), since God "separated" the Jews from other peoples, "to be a special people who are "forbidden to attach themselves to foreign gods" in order to serve them.

Judaism is thus effectively characterized by an amixia which can only shock and irritate the Roman; the latter does not understand that his own rites are rejected by others who also practice rites, that his deep respect for tradition is not" shared by others who deeply respect their own tradition, and that finally his pietas, which is expressed by a social duty that the Jew flouts, is rejected. The refusal to integrate from the Jews is not only reprehensible (the Jews, organized in politeuma, are the asocial element in the city), but incomprehensible to the proud Romans, who brought culture to the Barbarians through Romanization, and who, although they are the representatives of the greatest world power, do not refuse to incorporate into their own worship the local cults of the conquered territories (they bring back to Rome the gods of Carthage or the Celtic epona). Rome, in spite of its great power, was tolerant and integrated the less powerful and conquered peoples, whereas the Jews were a minority that braved it while claiming privileges and citizenship rights, without playing the game of integration completely, since they claimed at the same time their right to be different. An anecdote from the Palestinian Talmud clearly shows that the Jews are aware of the disparity of the two cultures to the point of making it the explanation of events under Trajan :

"It happened that a son was born to him [Trajan] on 9 Ab [anniversary of the fall of the Temple] and at that time the Jews fasted. His daughter died during the feast of the Maccabees, and the Jews were lighting the lights of rejoicing [cf. Josephus, A/. XII 325]; the wife of the Roman sovereign sent a messenger to her husband and made him say: "Instead of defeating the Barbarians, come and subdue the Jews who rebel against you." (Г./. Succa V 1, 55b).

Even if relations between Jews and Romans have not always been bad (cf. the treaty of alliance in I Mac. 8:17-20 and the privileges enjoyed by the Jews since Caesar), the analysis of the antagonism between Rome and the Jews logically leads to the observation of an ancient anti-Judaism, even to what J. Isaac calls "the theme of eternal antisemitism" (Genesis of Antisemitism, p. 29), and most research concerning the relations between Rome and the Jews is centered on these themes. Considering that these conclusions are an acquired point, we will not dwell on them, because they are only spin-offs (alas! very real and whose importance we are careful not to underestimate) of what we are trying to define...

FOR OUR PART, WE WILL DEVELOP THIS ANALYSIS THROUGH OTHER CONSIDERATIONS BECAUSE WE TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE INAUTHENTICITY OF THE PENTATEUCH AND THE FACT THAT WE ENTER INTO HISTORY ONLY WITH DAVID AND SOLOMON.

SEE AFTER.

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SHORT OUTLINE OF JEWISH IDEOLOGY THEREFORE

ACCORDING US.

Editor’s Note. Semantic specification about the Arabic word "yufakuna" which characterizes Jews and Christians according to Surah 9 verse 30 in the Quran and which is often rendered in translations as something like "Jews and Christians .... do not understand .”

They are

-beguiled

-perverted

-perverse

-deluded

-turned away

But the word does not imply a simple ignorance, it rather suggests a misguided intelligence, or that one prevents from functioning normally.

It is a derivative of the word afaka, at least according to the volume 1 of the book by Muhammad Mohar Ali entitled "Word for word translation of the Quran.”

And the "one" in question is to be taken in the strongest sense: it can be God as well as the devil.

Being an atheist, however, we will reject this hypothesis and we will opt for a more natural impediment.

"Jews and Christians ...... are naturally unable to see, to know, to understand! "

At the philosophical level "Jews and Christians’ faith…has nothing to do with Reason! ”

More bluntly "Jews and Christians……are morons.”

In short in summary "Jews and Christians ... are persons with Down’s syndrome.”

There was marginally a true theology, in the meaning of a meeting between the doctrines of the Jewish religion and the (ancient) philosophy, the Kabbalah and the Zohar, but the path was quickly shut down; in fact, in the strictest sense we can speak about theology only for the ending paganism and druidism.The Judaism arouses no one of the essential metaphysical questions about the nature of God. Sublime speculations have very little to do with Scripture says Spinoza,for my part, I have never learned, nor could I have learned any of God’s eternal attributes from Holy Scripture. And Moses Mendelssohn adds in his 1783 essay entitled, "Jerusalem, Religious Power and Judaism" :“Judaism besides boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood. Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation, another.

The voice which let itself be heard on Sinai on that great day did not proclaim, "I am the Eternal, your God, the necessary, independent being, omnipotent and omniscient, that recompenses men in a future life according to their deeds." This is the universal religion of mankind, not Judaism…Eternal truths, on the other hand, insofar as they are useful for men's salvation and felicity, are taught by God in a manner more appropriate to the Deity; not by sounds or written characters, which are comprehensible here and there, to this or that individual, but through creation itself, and its internal relations, which are legible and comprehensible to all men. …..all the inhabitants of the earth are destined to felicity; and the means of attaining it are as widespread as mankind itself, as charitably dispensed as the means of warding off hunger and other natural needs.

Mendelssohn nevertheless did not go so far as to doubt the miraculous character of the divine revelation by Moses OF THE LAWS intended for the people of Israel, and this ultimate taboo has as a result that the Jewish religion therefore never went beyond the stage of the commentaries of the Torah and of the practice of the 613 religious commands (mitzvoth). Nothing to do therefore with the God of the philosophers kind Plato or Plotinus.

Certain branches of Judaism believe in the transmigration of the souls. In 2011 an ultra-orthodox rabbinical court of Jerusalem has sentenced to death by standing a wandering dog accused of being the reincarnation of a secularist lawyer who had insulted the religious judges 20 years before (cf, the information website Ynet).

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According to this online newspaper, the tall dog had entered the rabbinical Court in charge of the economic litigations of the ultra-orthodox Jewish district of Mea Shearim in Jerusalem, alarming judges and plaintiffs and refusing to leave the places in spite of the threats. One of the judges present remembered abruptly that 20 years earlier, the court, insulted by a famous secular lawyer, had cursed the latter, deceased since, and called on him the curse of God so that he is reincarnated into a dog, considered as “impure” according to the Halakha, the strict Jewish religious tradition.

While he was at it, the judge in question has therefore sentenced to death by stoning the animal, which, however, succeeded in escaping the children in the district, called to carry out the sentence. An Israeli association for the defense of the animals nevertheless made a complaint.

The Zohar (Hebrew "Splendor" or "Radiance") is the foundational work in the Jewish mystical thought known as Caballa. Caballa is the concealed part of the Oral Torah. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah (the five books of Moses) and scriptural interpretations as well as material on mysticism, mythical cosmogony, and psychology. The Zohar contains discussions of the nature of God, the origin and structure of the universe, the nature of souls, redemption, the relationship of Ego to Darkness and "true self" to "The Light of God,” and the relationship between the "universal energy" and man. Its scriptural exegesis can be considered an esoteric form of the Rabbinic literature known as Midrash, which thinks on the Torah.

The Zohar is mostly written in what has been described as a cryptic style of Aramaic. Aramaic, the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period (-539 to– 70), was the original language of large sections of the books of Daniel and Ezra, and is the main language of the Talmud.

The Zohar first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de Leon. He ascribed the work to Shimon bar Yochai ("Rashbi"), a rabbi of the 2nd century who, according to legend hid in a cave for thirteen years studying the Torah and was inspired by the Prophet Elijah to write the Zohar.

As mentioned above, the rationale behind reincarnation or transmigration of souls in Judaism is dealt with in the Zohar in a long passage called Saba d'Mishpatim. The central idea is that reincarnation, or gilgul 1), has two purposes: a) to rectify errors; b) to get higher levels of soul. Soul must be reincarnated either because of sin or because it failed to completely fulfill its obligations in Torah and mitzvot, or to assist another person (for example a wife). In extreme cases, a soul reincarnates solely to interact with one individual, a family, or community. Infant mortality is often explained in kabbalistically guided Judaism as a way for either the parents to learn a lesson tailored made for them, or the soul of this child belonged to an otherwise saintly individual who was lacking some minor experience, which could only be fulfilled by returning on earth for a month, six months or a few years.

The paper of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is rather lengthy and complex. Reincarnation was evidently a serious topic to him.

For the record here below the place that the Jewish religious ideology grants to the not-Jewish worships.

Shiqutsim. “Abomination” euphemized in idol is the Hebrew word used to designate the other religions, the other worships, the other gods.

As we have already had the opportunity to say it, the whole question is to know what those pseudo-idolaters worshiped.

As far as the druids of the Celts are concerned, the answer to this question has already been provided to us for a long time.

“Ar baí cretim in óenDé oc Cormac . ar ro ráidseom na aidérad clocha ná crunnu acht no adérad intí dosroni & ropo chomsid ar cul na uli dúla” (Senchas na relec inso).

“Cormac believed in one God. He said that he adored neither the stones nor the trees, but he adored only the one who had made them and who is the guardian of all the elements” (The history of burial places).

Simplest would be, of course, to compare the analysis which will follow to the profiling of a criminal but to compare the work which will follow to the profiling of a serial killer would not be exactly suitable since that would suppose that the aforementioned serial killer exists really. Therefore let us specify that in what follows, by God we will understand the superhuman character such as he results from the writings in question, and not such as he is really, about whom we know nothing. Just like the author of a book about the mermaids or the unicorns does not believe inevitably that these creatures exist or existed really.

In short, in addition to the fact that the god of the Torah (whatever his name and therefore his original design: Elohim, El, Yaho, Yahu, and finally the Tetragrammaton Yhwh in a word) is A STRICTLY ETHNIC OR NATIONAL (IST) GOD AND NOT THE GOD OF THE PHILOSOPHERS OR THE GOD OF ALL THE HUMAN BEINGS, what we many times underlined vigorously with regret.

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1) Let us note in passing that, according to the great French celtologist Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc'h, (Glossary The Druids, in very clear French in the text and not in Breton: "la tradition celtique ne contient aucune trace d’une croyance a la reincarnation”) nothing proves that the ancient druids believed in the systematic reincarnation on earth of souls after death because he does not find, as for him; in Celtic literature, only cases of temporary metamorphoses; DURING THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL and a reincarnation of the individuals after their death IN ANOTHER WORLD (in a body slightly different from the previous one, immortal, glorious, etc..).

JEWISH CREED (ANI MAANIN).

The famous Jewish philosopher and theologian Moses Maimonides (Spain 1138 Egypt 1204) considered in chapter 10 of his famous tractate Sanhedrin that the 13 principles which will follow were sufficient to define the Jewish faith.

But we shall pass only a few of them under the microscope or under the scalpel for obvious reasons.

Many of them are self-evident for a believer (what is missing, however, it is a precise definition) or result implicitly from each other.

Furthermore, we intend to revisit some of them in the context of our study of Christianity.

The Pharisaic belief in the resurrection of the dead, for example, which arouses many problems insofar as it is not the well-known theme of an afterlife IN A BODY TRANSFIGURED BY AN INTERNAL LIGHT OF THE TYPE LON LAITH OR LUAN LAITH.

On the other hand, we will develop various points which are not included in this " credo " but which seem to us also to characterize the pious and believing Jew compared with a Buddhist or an atheistic Bolshevik (for example).

Either it is a "forgetting" from Ramban because he wrote in Arabic, or it is a sign of the large evolution of the Jewish psyche since his time and especially since the creation of the state of Israel. Let us bear in mind that the Guide for the Perplexed was written for "perplexed" Jews justly, torn between the data of Scripture and philosophical rationality, and that its aim is precisely to expound Judaism in terms of non-Jewish values, at least to establish a correlation between Jewish values and general values. But it does not matter because we are here precisely to repair such forgetting in the chapter of the Thirteen Principles....

For the record, then, and in the order kept by Maimonides, while reminding of the fact that they were much criticized at the time.(Rabbis Hasdai Crescas and Joseph Albo, for example, lost control regarding them) that a large part of the Jewish community of the following centuries haughtily ignored them and that Moses Maimonides himself seems to have done the same (he no longer speaks of them in his last works, the Mishnah Torah and the Guide for the Perplexed ,

* According to Joseph Albo, the belief in the coming of the Messiah was not an essential belief, and therefore not an integral part of Judaism.

Maimonides' credo, then.

1. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is the Creator and Guide of all the created beings, and that He alone has made, does make, and will make all things.

2. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is One and Alone; that there is no oneness in any way like Him; and that He alone is our God - was, is and will be.

3. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is incorporeal; that He is free from all anthropomorphic properties; and that He has no likeness at all.

4. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is the first and the last.

5. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, is the only one to whom it is proper to pray, and that it is inappropriate to pray to anyone else.

6. I believe with complete faith that all the words of the Prophets are true.

7. I believe with complete faith that the prophecy of Moses our teacher, peace unto him, was true; and that he was the father of the prophets, both of those who preceded and of those who followed him.

8. I believe with complete faith that the whole Torah which we now possess was given to Moses, our teacher, peace unto him.

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9. I believe with complete faith that this Torah will not be changed, and that there will be no other Torah given by the Creator, blessed be His name.

10. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, knows all the deeds and thoughts of human beings, as it is said, "It is He who fashions the hearts of them all, He who perceives all their actions."

11. I believe with complete faith that the Creator, blessed be His name, rewards those who observe His commandments, and punishes those who transgress His commandments.

12. I believe with complete faith in the coming of Moshiach, and although he may tarry, nevertheless, I wait every day for him to come.

13. I believe with complete faith that there will be resurrection of the dead at the time when it will be the will of the Creator, blessed be His name and exalted be His remembrance forever and eve

BASIC DOGMAS

1. DIRECT CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE

(Point number 1 of the 13 principles of faith by Moses Maimonides).

On Sunday, 23 October 4,004 before our era (at 6 p.m.).

Birth date of the Universe according to the archbishop of Ireland James Ussher and the Bible. In 6 days God creates,time, space, galaxies, stars, Sun, Earth, plants, animals, and man (starting from a little of clay or dust).

For the record there exist cosmogonies attributing no absolute beginning to the universe or seeing the current universe as being risen from a preceding universe being broken down, this one being doomed to do in the same way for in turn giving rise to another universe and so on infinitely . As for the birth thus defined of our current world, it varies according to these religions (the astronomical figures suggested in this field by the druids, some “long lives” of several tens of thousands of years, for example made the Greeks laugh, particularly Strabo. And let us not speak about Indians).

The creationist theory therefore attributes to a mythical being the energy that he gives up. This theory has as basic principle the creation of the Universe and of the Earth by an almighty God or Demiurge, the God-or-Demon of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. At the time of the first 5 days he equipped this world with plants, sea and land animals, and finally, the sixth day, he peopled it with a human couple, object pursued by him as of the beginning. The immediate consequence of this idea is that God created the living beings, and particularly the human beings, directly in the state where we observe them currently. The idea of evolution is consequently absolutely contrary to the text of the Bible.

N.B. One will forgive us, I hope it, to be on this point more tolandian that Toland, and to be rather monganian. In fact, the Man was not created starting from a little of earth (like a pot under the hands of a great potter), but starting from an already existing animal.

That God is perhaps the cause of the line having given this animal, changes nothing to the fact that one could already perfectly think of that (the man made starting from an animal) as of the time of Toland; and that our lrish high druid therefore was not sufficiently liberated from the biblical imagery to come to this conclusion, however, much more obvious. What shows it is not enough to be Toland to be tolandian.

And the woman was created starting from a rib of the man…Today still, a certain number of our fellow men remain persuaded that men have a rib less than women… But in October 2002, the Vatican nevertheless admitted that Eve never ate apple. Phew! The honor is intact!

Another postulate, dear to the creationist theologists, is the reality of a universal flood of catastrophic type, that God or the Demiurge would have sent to Mankind to punish it; and whose only a handful of survivors would have been saved thanks to an Ark containing a couple of each animal specie. This Ark is one of the principal research subjects of the creationists, who go as far as organizing archeological expeditions on the Mount Ararat, in Turkey, where the Ark would have washed up at the end of the flood according to them.

The upholders of the materially veracious nature of the book of Genesis never take into account three important facts.

1. The location of the continents and their drift.

2. Old orogeneses.

3. Climatic variations.

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In short, the creationist theses about the origin of the Universe, the Life and the Man, are not admissible scientifically speaking, and have no interest for the advance of sciences, but are opposed to it on the contrary.

Demiurge we said in connection with this god. Demiurge and interventionist. Because the God of the Bible is the complete opposite of a deus otiosus or of the god of philosophers. His creation being obviously missed (or let us say at the very least imperfect) he doesn’t cease indeed to intervene in the human history, as the few examples below show it below.

JEALOUS.

Bhagavad Gita 9, 23-29. “Those who are devotees of other gods and who worship them with faith actually worship only me, O son of Kunti, but they do so in a wrong way because I am the only enjoyer and master of all sacrifices. If one offers me with love and devotion a leaf, a flower, fruit or water, I accept it. I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever renders service unto me in devotion is a friend is in me, and I am also a friend to him.”

Judaism not being based on such philosophical premises (see the point number 5 of the 13 principles of faith by Moses Maimonides), the word monotheism is not that which is appropriate to it we said. The God-or-demon subject of this monolatrous (monolatrous and not monotheistic) worship , the god-or-demon of the beginnings of the Bible, is an anthropomorphic god-or-demon who reacts like a mere mortal. The concept of terribly human amorous jealousy, as divine attribute of God, besides is often used in the Bible.

Exodus. 20.5: “For I, Yhwh your god, am a jealous god, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generation……….but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love me.”

Zechariah. 13.9. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them: I will say, it is my people; and they shall say : “Yhwh is my God.”

Zechariah. 8.2. "I am very jealous for Zion; I am burning with jealousy for her."

Exodus. 34.14 to 16. “You shall not worship any other god for Yhwh whose name is jealous is a jealous god otherwise you might make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land and they would play the harlot with their gods and sacrifice to their gods, and someone might invite you to eat of his sacrifice…”

Here therefore how the open-mindedness of the faithful of the other religions towards the chosen people is rewarded. They invite the Hebrews to join their joy and their festivals (meat feasts offered in honor of their gods) and that is the answer.

As we could see it, several passages of the Bible, associated with the monolatry and with the political power in the society, call on the herem ha qahal or anathema, “massacre of the enemies on order of God (of the God of love?)”.

Herem means in Hebrew “unclean, abominable.” It is therefore a question of purging the Qahal, the Church (in Hebrew) of its undesirable elements.

Leviticus. 10.1 to 2 for example. Yaho burns alive two partisans of religious freedom, Nadab and Abihu, Jews converted to another religion.

Leviticus. 20.1 to 6. The important thing not being apparently the life or the death of the children in question, but to whom they are dedicated from an early age, the one who dedicates his children to the god Molech, or who follows the worship of Molech (sacred prostitution? ?) is sentenced to death.

Numbers. 25.1 to 9. Jews letting themselves attracted by the Moabite religion (that of their wives in fact) Yahu makes perish 24,000 of them.

Jeremiah. 48.10. A curse on anyone who is lax in doing God’s work! A curse on anyone who keeps their sword from bloodshed!

The Deuteronomy insists on the fate it is advisable to reserve to the believers of other religions, even if they are family members. “ If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend, that is as your own soul, entice you secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which you have not known, you, nor your fathers; of the gods of the peoples that are round about you, nigh unto you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; you shall not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall your eye pity him, neither shall you spare, neither shall you conceal him: but you shall surely kill him; your

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hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him to death with stones, because he has sought to draw you away from the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy. 13.6 to 11).

Now I think of it, the religious toleration, it is what already?

We find again this racism and fanaticism at work in the action of Asa the king of Juda circa - 912. “Asa did that which was good and right in the eyes of Jehovah his God: for he took away the foreign altars, and the high places, and broke down the pillars, and hewed down the Asherahs” (2 Chronicles. 14.1 to 4).

We also find the racism and the fanaticism of the Nazirites in Elijah’s action, A kind of double of Moses, also enlightened by a revelation received on Mount Horeb.

The central episode of his cycle of legends is located on the Mount Carmel where, in front of all the North kingdom gathered at the time of a festival, he attacks the other religions violently; and particularly the Baalite religion, in order to try to impose his. Elijah, Jewish nabi or visionary of the 9th century before our era, will be opposed indeed to the Religious freedom demanded by the queens Jezebel , wife of Ahab, and Athaliah, in favor of the Canaanite or Phoenician god-or-demons (First book of Kings. Chapters 17 to 21, second book of Kings, chapter 1).

Same thing for the action of Elisha his successor.

The stories in connection with this visionary (2 Kings. Chapters 2 to 8.15) were initially handed down orally by a named Gehazi then written down at the court of the king of Israel circa- 800 before our era. Rather strangely Elisha, however, will go and crown king the Aramean Hazael (2 Kings. 8.7 to 13).

Elisha would have performed miracles when he was alive and miracles would also have taken place on his grave (2 Kings. 13.21). See also the declamations of Hosea attacking the village baals.

We will find this religious intolerance in the way in which the Jews will act with the great Nazarene rabbi Jesus and his first disciples like Stephen. The only means of settling the crises resulting from violence is that of the scapegoat sacrifice. It is a question of sacrificing somebody who is different from the group and that the group thinks cause of the violence, although he is not more than the others in reality, of course. In this sacrifice, the group is reconciled temporarily. It is what the Jews tried to do with Jesus or his followers.

A prediction inserted as it is said in Latin language “post eventum” afterwards, of course, in the Gospels, announces that those who believe in Jesus will be dragged before the authorities in the synagogues and will be scourged” (Matthew 10.17; 23; 34; Luke 12.11). John does not speak only about the expulsion of the Christians from the synagogues, but also about the putting to death of Christians by Jews, for whom it was a way a serving God (16, 2). Should it be understood with this that true executions took place, of which the Jewish authorities made themselves guilty? Or does that mean that the Christians were denounced by the religious leaders to the Roman authorities which then carried out the execution? (Raymond E. Brown.) The preaching of Stephen will also cause a violent suppression. Stephen indeed blamed the Judaic worship and the role of the Temple, by pointing out that the true worship is practiced in mind and heart, in a complete sincerity.

The indignation of the Sanhedrin will result in the stoning of Stephen, and this first martyrdom takes place between 32 and 37, before the approving eyes of Saul, future St. Paul.

The switch of the latter will be all the more striking that he was not only an enthusiastic Jew, but also an active opponent to the new religion. Besides he admits in his letters having been a persecutor of those who will become later his brothers.

“For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it ” (Galatians. 1.13). The verb “to persecute” says well that he was not satisfied with simple verbal threats. In the same way, when he uses the word “zeal” on this subject (Philippians. 3,6).

After a short period of respite, a new wave of persecution, in 42, reached this time the Christians of Hebraic culture, and particularly the group of the twelve. It will be the doing of the king Herod Agrippa. James the greater is put to death (42/44) the apostles scatter.

For a Jew of the 1st century, the early Christians are indeed heretics: they constitute a party, a group, a little sectarian, which does not respect the tradition (Acts 24.5): “… He - Paul - is a ringleader of the Nazorene hairesis [sect]…. .” And a little further (Acts 24. 14), Paul answers: “ I worship the God of our ancestors as a follower of the Way, which they call a sect.” He therefore confirms the pejorative use of the word hairesis and admits that the early Christians were called thus by the Jews. A Little further still, in Acts 28.22, it is written: “We know well, say the Jews of Rome, that your sect meets the opposition everywhere… ”.

In some places the Jews,in possession of rights or privileges got from Roman law, would join the citizens of the towns in dragging the early Christians before the court. In Antioch, for example, in all

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probability, the Jews too demanded the trial and execution of Polycarp. BERNARD Lazare says even they have fed with great eagerness the stake upon which the bishop was burned.

The god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is indeed a divisive god, he is not like the god of the Baghavad Gita (9, 23-29) mentioned at the beginning of this chapter nor like the god of the Celtic philosophers. This god or speech about God is the greatest of the common divisors of mankind.

Today still in Israel many Jews reprove, detest or hate still fundamentally, a number of persons of their “line” being opposed to their design of the world. The telephone threats, the insults by mail, do not come from poisonous anti-semites, but from excellent Jews, or at least wanting to be such. And we know by experience that it can be a question of a mortal hatred : it is Yigal Amir the Jew who kills Yitzhak Rabin the Jew (in 1995).

WARLIKE.

The prophets of the Bible describe with jubilation the punishments inflicted to the despisers of their god. Isaiah and Jeremiah joined to him the word Sabaoth, which does not mean God of love, far from it, but God-or-demon of force, God-or-demon of armies. Besides several sacred texts of Judaism (see for example Deut. 20) refer to the herem, or anathema: “massacre of enemies on order of God (of the God of love?)”. Of what does consist really this anathema, or prohibition? The Hebrew word herem seems more precise than its Greek translation anathema. It designates the curse through which a person or an object is to be either destroyed, or isolated because of its sacred nature. Its older expression in Exodus 22.19 “You shalL not suffer a sorceress to live. Whosoever lies with a beast shall surely be put to death. He that sacrifices unto any god, save unto Yhwh, shall be utterly destroyed”; shows clearly that such a sanction strikes in first those who do not follow the same religion either they are individuals (leviticus 27.29) or cities (Deuteronomy 13,13-19).

Practically, however, this anathema or herem seems especially related to the holy war (Numbers 21,1-3; Joshuah 6; Judges 1.17; 1 Samuel 15).

1 Samuel. 15.2 to 3. “ I have marked that which Amalek did to Israel, how he set himself against him in the way, when he came up out of Egypt. Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.”

Jeremiah. 7.20. “Behold, my anger and my wrath shall be poured out upon this place, upon man, and upon beast, and upon the trees of the field, and upon the fruit of the ground; and it shall burn, and shall not be quenched.

Zechariah. 14.3. Yhwh will go out, and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle.

Psalm 139,19-22. “Surely you will slay the wicked, O God…And am not I grieved with those that rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred: they are become my enemies.”

Psalm 143.12. “In your unfailing love, silence my enemies; destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.”

Psalm 149. “ Let Israel rejoice in him that made him:

Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King […..] Let them sing for joy upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two-edged sword in their hand; to execute vengeance upon the nations, and punishments upon the peoples.”

2 Chronicles.14, 13. Fear of Yhwh. Plundering. Raid.

2 Chronicles. 20.22. Yhwh set ambushes against the enemies of his people, the men of Ammon Moab and so on.

Obadiah. 1.10 to 21. “Esau….For violence against your brother Jacob, shame shall cover you, and you shall be cut off forever….For the day of the Lord upon all the nations is near; as you have done, it shall be done to you;

your reprisal shall return upon your own head……But on Mount Zion there shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions. The house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame; but the house of Esau shall be stubble; they shall kindle them and devour them, and no survivor shall remain of the house of Esau for the Lord has spoken…..Then saviors shall come to Mount Zion to judge the mountains of Esau, and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”

Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh is definitely not gentle for the opponents to his people. “The house of Esau” mean the Edomites, but in every sense.

See also Deuteronomy 7.1 to 5. When YHWH Adonai Elohim shall bring you into the land whither you go to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before you, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite (in Jerusalem), seven nations greater and mightier than you; and when YHWH Adonai Elohim shall deliver them up before

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you, and you shall smite them; then you shall utterly destroy them: you shall make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them; neither shall you make marriages with them; your daughter you shall not give unto his son, nor his daughter shall you take unto your son. For he will turn away your son from following me that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of YHWH Adonai Elohim be kindled against you, and he will destroy you quickly. But thus shall you deal with them: you shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asheras (??) and burn their graven images with fire?”

There are people who see in all these massacres, not respecting neither children nor women except the virgins… a manifestation of the love of God (towards his people), of his power. Dom Calmet posed the problem better the only justification of all these crimes is that they were ordered by God.

“This war was terrible and cruel, and if God had not ordered it, we could accuse Moses of injustice and robbery.” Dom Augustin Calmet dictionary of the Bible. In connection with the “holy” war (in fact of mitsvah) with the unfortunate Midianites.

In what concerns us, we see there only, we uns, agnostic or atheistic regarding the God or Demiurge of the Bible, a manifestation of the evil which can perhaps reign supreme in certain minds (man is a wolf to man) or confusing stupidities.

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PITILESS…

God or the Demiurge of the Bible having been, in the original myth of Sumerian inspiration, designed as a creating god-or-demon, this singular God in the plural (Elohim) is supposed to give the life; and therefore consequently, to have the inalienable and imprescriptible right to do with it what he wants, as he wants and when he wants.

The Jews regard YHWH as a celestial monarch, a monarch requiring an absolute obedience to his laws and regulations. The Jews are subjects of Yhwh. Besides he says it himself “For the Israelites belong to me as servants” (Leviticus. 25,55). Same situation in Islam besides which means literally “submission to God.”

The word freedom appears only once in the Bible and it means in no way “liberty of choice” but refers only to the status of the man who is not a slave.

Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh is in the beginning, “the supreme leader of the Judean people.” He is the almighty and frightening master of it, a single king, savagely punishing those who are rebellious to his omnipotence. It is to him that a Jew must always resort, in the good fortune as in the misfortune.

With due respect to our friends of the website of Port Saint Nicholas, the God of the Bible is not a Santa Klaus; it is a God or Demiurge it is impossible to do more fickle, who is mistaken, who becomes angry, who regrets what he did or wanted to do… and who can even be malicious.

See for example Exodus, 32.14. Yahweh regrets the maliciousness that he wanted to do against his people. To the extent that he will be even at times mixed up with Satan by his own faithful.

In 1 Chronicles, 21.1, what 2 Samuel, 24.1 attributes to God is attributed to Satan.

How in these circumstances simultaneously justify the love of Yahu/Yhwh for his people and the misfortunes from which he did not protect it? Why indeed a people chosen by the only true god of the universe should suffer for him and because of him?? For what reason to pay such a high price for such a choseness ? How many sufferings undergone in the name of a god who attaches such a great importance to the (forbidden) fruits of his garden, but so little to his children! According to a very current interpretation in Judaism - interpretation which falls obviously within the magic thought – renamed retribution theology by Christians – the misfortunes of God's people contribute to the redemption of its own sins, the persons guilty of the misfortunes in question being only simple instruments of his will. For example, the king of Assyria Sennacherib in 2 Kings, 18.25. The leader of the Israeli Orthodox movement Shass went even as far as to say one day that the Nazi holocaust was due to a divine punishment, because the Jewish people had given up the Torah.

The Jewish mythology unified around the worship of YHWH admits for its God the right to persecute and mistreat or martyrize, his faithful, in order to test their attachment (see the book of Job).

As if to overpower his own creatures with evils and setbacks, in the only purpose to test the faith and constancy of them, was not enough; the Man has also the favor, if we may say, in this design of the world, to be also likely to be tempted by Satan (the Devil or Lucifer).

Such a system is, of course, quite practical for God, because this way of seeing the things always justifies what he does, whatever it is.

If what happens to man is not very amusing, it is:

-Either a punishment for his many sins. The disease is for example a consequence of the sin. The patients expiate for their sins, and even for those of their parents (principle of collective responsibility).

- Or an intervention of the devil.

Leviticus. 26.16. Then I will do this to you: I will bring on you sudden terror, wasting diseases and fever that will destroy your sight and sap your strength. Deuteronomy. 28.22 to 35. Yhwh will smite you with consumption, and with fever, and with inflammation, and with fiery heat,and with blasting, and with mildew and they shall pursue you until you perish…..Yhwh will smite you in the knees, and in the legs,

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with a sore boil, whereof you canst not be healed, from the sole of your foot unto the crown of your head!

Numbers. 11.1 to 3. The people complaining about his policy, Moses call the fire of God against it.

Numbers. 11.32 to 34. The Hebrews find quails to be eaten in the Sinai. God punishes them. (One wonders well why.)

Numbers. 12.9 to 13. Yhwh fulminates. He departs. The cloud leaves the tent. Miriam becomes leprous as white as snow.

Numbers. 14.29 to 35. The people complaining again about his living conditions in the desert, God sentences all the more than twenty-year-old adults to perish in it.

2 Samuel. 24.1. God turns David against his people. N.B. In 1 Chronicles, 21.1, this role is attributed to Satan.

2 Kings.18, 25. God orders to the king of Assyria Sennacherib to destroy Judea. Passage compared to the Nazi holocaust by some people.

Isaiah. 38.1. In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And Isaiah the prophet Amos’s son came to him, and said unto him: thus says Yhwh, set your house in order…

Psalm 38.3 to 9. O Yhwh, rebuke me not in your wrath; there is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation….my loins are filled with burning.

Psalm 94.1. Yhwh God of revenge.

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OTHER DOGMAS.

THE POSSIBILITY OF KNOWING FUTURE.

Let's remind in this regard of what is the answer of the author of this compilation, what is the answer of the ollotouta, to the question that he is often asked about predictions or prophecies of absolutely unexpected and unpredictable events, namely "is it possible to know the future"? The answer is as follows.

"A future can be known through its causes, all the more so as the intelligence is more advanced. Therefore, it is possible that men particularly gifted in terms of consciousness and subconsciousness can manage to perceive in some way, in causes still difficult to analyze, to perceive and to guess, future events.

But if an event is absolutely not contained in its causes, either because it is a fully free act, which is very rare, or because it is an event that supposes a concomitance of causes, an interference of causes that is absolutely impossible to foresee because it is due to pure chance, in this case no human being can foresee this future event.

On the other hand, the fact of having foreseen and feared an event, or of wishing for it, can also contribute to the realization of this event and therefore falsely give the impression of a prediction that was simply the remote, and very effective, cause of the event in question".

Applied to the World of the Bible, the possibility of knowing future is called a prophecy, but also an oracle or some necromancy.

Apart from the well-known prophets, there are in the Bible about twenty verses evoking practices intended to know the future (consultation of the teraphim for example), a certain number of which do not seem to be disputed as to their results. Here are a few examples (the question of their real effectiveness will be examined at the end under the heading "unfulfilled prophecies").

Leviticus 19:26-31.

You shall not eat any meat with the blood still in it, neither use divination by snakes nor observe clouds.

Numbers 22:7.

The elders of Moab and Midian left, taking with them the fee for divination. When they came to Balaam, they told him what Balak had said.

Deuteronomy 18:9-14.

When you enter the land, the Lord your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. Let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead….

Jeremiah, 27:9.

So do not listen to your prophets, your diviners, your interpreters of dreams, your mediums or your sorcerers who tell you, ‘You will not serve the king of Babylon.’

Ezekiel, 21:21-23.

For the king of Babylon will stop at the fork in the road, at the junction of the two roads, to seek an omen: He will cast lots with arrows, he will consult his teraphim, he will examine the liver. 22 Into his right hand will come the lot for Jerusalem, where he is to set up battering rams, to give the command to slaughter, to sound the battle cry, to set battering rams against the gates, to build a ramp and to erect siege works. It will seem like a false omen to those who have sworn allegiance to him, but he will remind them of their guilt and take them captive.

Micah, 3:6-7.

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Therefore night will come over you, without visions, and darkness, without divination.The sun will set for the prophets, and the day will go dark for them. The seers will be ashamed and the diviners disgraced.

They will all cover their faces because there is no answer from God .

Zechariah, 10:2.

The teraphim speak deceitfully, diviners see visions that lie; they tell dreams that are false, they give comfort in vain.

Therefore the people wander like sheep oppressed for lack of a shepherd.

NECROMANCY.

Leviticus 20:6.

I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people.

Isaiah, 8:19.

When someone tells you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God? Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

Isaiah, 19:3.

The Egyptians will lose heart, and I will bring their plans to nothing; they will consult the idols and the spirits of the dead, the mediums and the spiritists.

AND FINALLY, THE MOST FAMOUS AND MOST SPECTACULAR CASE (A GOOD HORROR MOVIE) THE FIRST KING OF ISRAEL.

1 Samuel 28:7.

Then Saul said to his servants, “Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her.” And his servants said to him, “Behold, there is a medium at En-dor.”

As for official prophets, three names stand out of the crowd : Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel...but the problem is that some of the events announced did not occur, and this practically during their lifetime sometimes.

Predicted and unrealized events

We know today that the conquest of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar, prophesied by Ezekiel, chapters XXVI- XXVIII, did not take place.

That Cyrus, when he took Babylon in -539, did not treat this cursed city with the rigor that Isaiah, chapters XIII and XLVII, and Jeremiah, chapters L and LI, etc., had predicted.

The Doctors of the Talmud, the Jewish exegetes and theologians of the Middle Ages were aware that certain prophecies were not fulfilled. Below are their explanations.

In chapter XI, verse 23 of Jeremiah, God announces that he will bring woe upon the inhabitants of the city of Anathoth and that there will be no remnant among them: ush’eriyt to tih’yeh lahem.

Now in Nehemiah VII. 27, there are one hundred twenty-eight citizens of Anathoth who have returned from the captivity of Babylon. The rabbis realized the contradiction between these two texts and eliminated it by explaining that, since the inhabitants of Anathoth had done penance, the decree that had been issued against them was repealed.

A general theory was elaborated by Maimonides in the Introduction to his Commentary on the

Mishnah between 1158 and 1168...

It is founded on the two basic texts which Jewish theologians of the Middle Ages will not cease to comment on.

-The first is the famous reply from Jeremiah to Hananiah ben Azzur (Jeremiah XXVIII; 8-9).

" From early times the prophets who preceded you and me have prophesied war, disaster and plague against many countries and great kingdoms. But the prophet who prophesies peace will be recognized as one truly sent by the Lord only if his prediction comes true.”

-The second is an answer of the Babylonian Talmud.

R. Johanan further said in the name of R. Jose: No word of blessing that issued from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, even if based upon a condition, was ever withdrawn by Him. How do we know this? From our teacher Moses. For it is said: And the Lord said to me, “I have seen this people, and they are a stiff-necked people indeed!Let me alone, that I may destroy them, and blot out their name from under heaven and I will make of thee a nation mightier and greater than they. Though Moses prayed that this might be averted and it was canceled, [the blessing] was nevertheless fulfilled towards his children." (Babylonian Talmud Tractate, Berakhot, 7a).

According to Maimonides, a prediction of happiness addressed to a prophet and concerning himself may not be fulfilled, since his sins may prevent its fulfillment; but a prophecy of happiness

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communicated by a prophet to a third party is always fulfilled, otherwise how would recognize the authentic prophet?

As for the prophecy of misfortune, it may not come true, either because the men concerned by this prediction have done penance, or because God postpones their punishment, or because He grants them His forgiveness because of the good works they would have done before.

Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) (1288-1344) accepts the traditional doctrine on the prophecy of unhappiness which may not be fulfilled, but he points out, against Maimonides, that certain prophecies of happiness communicated to men by the prophets may also not be fulfilled, what leads him to make a new distinction between prophecies of happiness. Men can receive good either from the astral conjuncture, which never takes into consideration their merits, or from divine providence, when they have reached a certain level of perfection. The prophet's announcement of a happy event determined by the stars is still to be fulfilled. It is not the same when the prophet foretells happiness granted by special providence, for, since men are always fallible, they may have severed the special bonds that attached them to God and then find themselves subject to the common law of astral determinism. It is thus that certain promises made to the people of Israel have never been fulfilled. They were all suspended on one condition: obedience to the voice of God. Since the condition was not fulfilled, the promise went unheeded. Among these unfulfilled promises, Gersonides cites that of Nathan to David (II Samuel, VII, 10): " And violent men shall afflict them [Israel] no more, as formerly.”

LET US RECAPITULATE...

Predictions, prophecies and apocalypses.

a) The prophecies in the strict sense of the term.

Prophecies are worth what they are worth, that is to say not much outside the coincidences due to chance, or to a good intuition. Coincidences otherwise very rare compared to the huge amount of prophecies that were never realized. And that is besides what makes "miraculous" the prophecies which are realized ... for who has not been initiated into probability calculations.

Mankind’s history counts no longer the cranks OF all kinds who claimed to announce the future through more or less divine “revelations.”

The "prophecies" usually wallow in a very convenient "deliberate vagueness.” As for those who had the merit of being relatively clear (and especially precise about dates), they have all proven false.

b) The prophecies in the broad sense (admonitions, exhortations and warnings).

As they proceed from a divine word dictated directly to a chosen man (close, in his enthusiasm, the Greek prophetess), they suffer no discussion.

The prophetic word of God calls for the decision, causing a crisis, and thus leads in fact to a division between those who listen and those who do not listen, between chosen and not chosen, finally between saved and damned. God is the greatest common divisor of Mankind. His choices are always dividing.

c) The apocalypses.

The vogue of the apocalypses is between - 200 and + 150. They express a pessimistic view of history that explain the successive setbacks of the Jewish state annexed by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks,Romans.

Editor's Note (the third phase, that of the triumph of the Righteous persons) being never proven, of course, the meaning of the word Apocalypse ended up passing from that of a revelation to that of a cataclysm.

Anyway, the rabbis themselves insist no longer about these different ways of knowing the future.

"The course of these events and the details that can be brought to them, do not constitute an essential element of our faith. We must not invest a lot in the study of the legendary tales and homilies of our sages, relating to these events, nor do it the main thing of our research; because they do not lead to the genuine reverential respect for the divinity or to his love. " These comments show the bad faith of the religious authorities clearly. They know perfectly well that all these prophetic hare-brained ideas cannot be a proof. So they discourage the faithful to analyze the texts in a critical way. Still the old argument of the mysterious ways of the Lord, which blocks every reflection.

The prophecies remained most popular are undoubtedly the centuries of Michel Nostradamus, Jewish convert to Christianity astrologer doctor. These are also the most ambiguous.

In fact, you can make them say anything. It is enough to go to a bookshop to find a lot of divergent interpretations, the tastiest being those that made forecasts for the ten or twenty past years ... which were never realized! Nostradamus is for example a complex character. It is therefore normal that his "prophecies" are also complex. His writing style makes possible very different interpretations of the same quatrain, especially over time. This applies to quatrains about Islam; the wars against Islamic nations and an invasion of Europe by Muslims. We did mention that only anecdotally and we must not be troubled overmuch by the concordances it is possible to detect in them. For example, the fact that

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the city of Marseille is indicated as an entry point of the Mohammedan invasion of Europe is not "prophetic,” Marseille is a major Mediterranean port since the Greeks ... In fact, the genius of Nostradamus was especially, not to have any gift of prophecy; but to have succeeded masterfully in writing , probably deliberately, text where you can find anything and everything, from the moment that you seek it in them. Let us notice, incidentally, that the centuries of Nostradamus are in verse, and that its style is truly "inimitable" just like the Quran.

So we do not intend to give more importance to these "prophecies,” they are Judeo-Christian or Islamic. We have contented ourselves to highlight a few facts coming under the accident or the intuition, and probably in a combination of both. That does not bother besides the exegetes of Nostradamus, who, imperturbable, regularly republish a book reinterpreting the prophecies for the next decade then prepare the version that will be released again ten years later for the following decade. And so on…

THE DIVINE OR SACRED NATURE OF THE TANAKH.

As we have seen above, the great Moses Mendelssohn himself hesitated to free himself from this ultimate taboo in his Jerusalem of 1783. He conceded that there could be no revealed religion, that there was no true religion except natural religion, but as for the Law of Moses the Egyptian he continued to maintain that it had been revealed by God himself personally.

“The lawgiver was God, that is to say, God not in his relation as Creator and Preserver of the universe, but God as Patron and Friend by covenant of their ancestors, as Liberator, Founder and Leader, as King and Head of this people; and He gave his laws the most solemn sanction, publicly and in a miraculous manner…These laws were revealed, that is, they were made known by God, through words and script.”

We therefore come up against the same fundamental psychological blockage and one could not do more alienating, only with the notion of uncreated Quran in Islam. Reason no longer has its place here in the debate, it is in this case Faith, the wall of the Faith. This is a regression of the spirit!

The Torah is therefore the fundamental law around which Judaism is centered: it is the source of all the biblical commandments including as for the behavior. It is at the center of the weekly worship: every Shabbat, a section is read publicly in the synagogue and the faithful compete for having the honor of reading a paragraph from it. The Bar Mitzvah * ceremony is similarly centered on the reading of the Torah.

The Torah or Thora ("instruction"; in ancient Greek Nomos "Law") is, according to Jewish tradition, the divine teaching transmitted by God to Moses on Mount Sinai and handed down through his five books.

It is therefore composed of five books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. It contains, according to the Jewish rabbinic tradition, 613 commandments or mitsvot, an oral dimension, later compiled in the Talmud and the midrashic literature (well, perhaps) contrary to the Karaite Jewish tradition which takes into account only the written Torah.

The Torah is the first part of the Tanakh or more complete Hebrew Bible, which is consisting of 24 books (or 36 according to the criteria used).

N.B. Christianity calls Pentateuch those books traditionally attributed to Moses, a term of Greek origin which means "The five books" precisely.

Various theories have surfaced to explain the origin of the Torah, including the fragment theory and the complement theory. Despite their differences, however, these theories agree that the Torah is a collection of texts shared by scribes around the period of exile, before and after. The publication of this compromise literature, which does not seek to erase the divergences of the theological options, can be understood as the establishment of an identity matrix of the nascent Judaism, a response to the political, economic and religious changes with which it was confronted.

As for the believers, it is completely different.

Generally speaking, the proponents of Orthodox Judaism agree on the wholly (or almost wholly) mosaic and wholly divine origin of the Torah. Radical biblical criticism has little support among Orthodox Jews. Criticism of the biblical books outside the Torah (Neviim and Ketuvim) is tolerated, albeit looked not favorably but to apply it to the Torah itself is considered erroneous, even heretical.

On the other hand, Massorti Judaism (the third way between Reformed and Orthodox Judaism) accepts biblical criticism by pointing out that if the Torah was not written in its entirety by Moses it is nevertheless of divine origin, the scribes having been inspired by God. A position similar to that of Christianity, therefore.

These five books consequently contain a complete and ordered system of laws and prohibitions (according to rabbinic tradition, the Torah contains 613 distinct "commandments,” positive - "do" - or

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negative - "do not,” each called mitzvah, "prescription"), as well as a THEORETICAL historical description of the beginnings of what will become IN PRINCIPLE the Judaism.

Many of the laws, however, are not directly mentioned in the Torah: they were inferred from it by exegesis and oral traditions, before being compiled in the Talmud (Mishnah and Gemara) and other less frequently studied treatises. The Karaites not admitting the authority of the rabbanim (masters) of the Talmud; consequently they dot follow these laws.

Two "versions" of the Talmud exist, the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, actually the result of compilations of discussions held in the Babylonian and Galilean academies. The Jerusalem Talmud having been hastily completed, under the pressure of historical circumstances, two centuries before the Babylonian Talmud, it is therefore the latter that is authoritative when the two contradict each other.

N.B. The Torah is the only part of the Hebrew Bible which the Samaritans consider having a divine authority, with the possible exception of the Book of Joshua. All other books of the Jewish Bible are rejected. The Samaritans also reject the Jewish oral tradition (as expressed in the Mishnah, then the Gemara, of the Talmud). The Samaritan Pentateuch contains about 2,000 verses different from the Masoretic version.

The Samaritan Bible is written in Samaritan abjad *, the early form of the Hebrew alphabet, known as proto-Canaanite, which the Judeans abandoned for the Assyrian square script. This alphabet is considered to be faithful to the one used before the Babylonian captivity.

* A rite of passage to adulthood from the religious point of view of Jewish teenagers,

** Writing system writing only consonants down, what can lead to some ambiguities sometimes (can refer to different words).

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THE DIVINE OR SACRED NATURE OF NEVIIM AND KETUVIM

(of the prophets and other writings).

In the strictest sense of the term, only the Torah or the first 5 books of the Bible have been revealed, but the other books nevertheless have a certain value since they were considered sacred by the Jewish canon which developed at the end of the 1st century in Palestine (at Jamnia?)

In Jewish theology, and in Christian theology as well, the starting position is that of the inerrancy (isma in Arabic) of the prophets both with regard to the faith and the life of the believer, and with regard to the details of scientific, historical or geographical themes. The authors having followed God's will, God avoided any error from them in these fields.

For Judaism, as for the Church, it is therefore quite obvious that the prophets cannot make mistakes. Divine inspiration, under whose action they speak, grants them what the theologians call the privilege of inerrancy: they cannot err. One finds the same convenience in Islam under the name of Isma.

These authors having been inspired by God and even having written under his dictation, these texts cannot contain errors. If the Bible was only the fruit of human imagination, there would be no reason to believe in its doctrines or to follow its moral guidelines.

According to Levi ben Gershon (Gersonides) (1288-1344), the prophet must necessarily be a philosopher (hakham), but he is not different from a simple philosopher in that he would have access to an order of supranatural truths, which he alone could understand. What for the ordinary philosopher is the result of deduction cannot be granted to him in an intuition, for, if this were the case, the philosopher would be superior to the prophet, since he would know things by their causes, whereas the prophet would be incapable of doing so: the latter would therefore have not a science, but an opinion. However, the prophet is endowed with a faculty of apprehension sharper than the common philosopher, not because he is a prophet, but because, in order to become a prophet, you must be an eminent philosopher. With the exception of Moses, prophets, as prophets, are essentially instruments of Providence charged with saving man and bringing him back to God.They possess in their own right the power to apply the general law of the Being they are contemplating to a particular and contingent case the general law of the Being they are contemplating; in God and to reveal future "events.” This is their fundamental mission.

Many intellectuals, therefore, have over ages supported the importance and quality of divine revelations in the prophets.

Judah Halevi, for example (Spain 1085 ? 1140 ?) has supported with the utmost vigor the theory of the literal inspiration of the prophetic writings. When they are enveloped by the Holy Spirit the prophets speak words expressly, willed by the divinity and it is not possible for them to change any of them.

In this view of things the prophet is no more than a passive instrument deprived of all initiative, in the choice of the subject, of course, but also in the choice of expressions; he is a simple organ of the divinity which transmits the word of God himself without any human accommodation.

Nor could the Jewish school of thought, represented by Saadiah Gaon (Egypt 882-942 Babylon ) and Maimonides (Spain 1135-1204 Egypt), admit that the Prophet was likely to be mistaken in scientific disciplines. It sees in him not only a -religious and political- guide but also a philosopher scientist (in the Middle Ages it is the same thing) who, in a full of imagery form, communicates scientific and metaphysical truths to all categories of human beings.The speculative teachings of the Bible and the results of philosophical-scientific research can in no way contradict each other, since both express essentially the same divine truth, but revealed by God entirely in one and the same breath in

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Scripture, on the one hand, and on the other hand, deposited in power in the equally divine reason of the philosopher scientist.

In principle, God could have avoided the revelation, since a patient and methodical search could discover the truths taught by revelation. But in fact this was not possible. God could not leave men engaged in philosophical research without religion until they had discovered the truth; He also had to take into account the masses, lacking the intellectual capacity to deal with speculation; He also had to care for those among the elite men who would have undertaken to reach the truth by rational means but who would have been carried off by death in the middle of their research. Not wishing to deprive either of the possession of the truth, he transmitted it to all the men and women of the world, through his prophets.

Maimonides' absolute confidence in the infallibility of the prophets in all disciplines is based on his understanding of the prophetic inspiration. He believed that it is given only to a human intellect that has reached by its own means the summit of the intellection accessible to man. It is then that the prophet, in an intuition concentrating in it many discursive operations, perceives things which had remained hidden to him in his preprophetic state and contemplates the essences in their reality . And yet - this is an essential point - how much intuitive his science may be, the prophet nonetheless feels that he has got it through a long speculative work, that is to say, which is capable of being demonstrated. In Maimonides there is not a supranational field reserved for the prophet; the prophet is a superphilosopher.

Under the influence of Averroes, that it had thoroughly undergone, fourteenth-century Jewish philosophy would significantly modify Maimonides' prophetology. Without denying that the prophet had to reach a high level of speculation, it nevertheless tended to reduce his scientific-philosophical superiority over the non-prophet, and it will admit with difficulty that he can, because he is a prophet, benefit from properly scientific knowledge which was inaccessible to the simple scholar, or to skip steps in the discovery of truth. That there is a short way to reach this truth, the revelation, and a long way, the normal discursion, is unacceptable to Averroes, since the latter would be useless. Now, since science got by means of logical premises and conclusions is more perfect than any science delivered entirely in a revelation, it is therefore this one which has no reason to exist.

THE EXPLANATION OF THE MISTAKES COMMITTED BY PROPHETS WHEN THIS IS THE CASE.

This evolution of prophetology from Maimonides to the philosophers of southern France in the fourteenth century makes us able to explain, according to us, why the latter no longer feel compelled to allegory; when the biblical text offers them a scientific theory which is difficult for them to accept, whereas for Maimonides allegorical exegesis defeats all the difficulties. If prophetic inspiration cannot supernaturally raise the prophet above the knowledge got through discursive way, if in the purely scientific field he is reduced to his own science;therefore he can have made mistakes in this field which is no longer essentially his own.

Prophets are not omniscient will reply Gersonides, the first person to worry about the problem. Inspiration can only spring up in the mind of the prophet when he has already focused all his attention on a subject and has collected himself intensely; it is then that it intervenes to enlighten the whole field of his thought, but leaving in the shadows the fields that the prophet had not previously cultivated. If he shared erroneous beliefs with his contemporaries (like Abraham, for example) and took them for granted, they cannot be straightened by inspiration. When in his Milhamot Ha Shem ;Gersonides teaches the total infallibility of the prophet, it is in the exercise of the mission which is truly his own: the announcement of future events.

It is not without a certain hesitation that Joseph Ibn Kaspi(1279-1340) ,for his part,resolves to acknowledge the prophetic error. If it is proved, however, that the prophet was mistaken, one can advance the idea that the fault does not concern the very essence of things. The imagination, which the prophet needs, could have kept received impressions, that is to say, commonly accepted beliefs of his time. In this connection, Ibn Kaspi quotes, by diverting them from their literal meaning, these words of Maimonides: "It is known that…. . Dangerous explanation, if ever there was one!

Moses Narboni, for his part (1300 ?1362) , is surprised - what is strange, given that he knew the work of Gersonides and Joseph Ibn Kaspi - that no one, neither in a book nor in a conversation with him, has ever aroused this problem: how could the prophets of Israel have uttered an error? His solution is very much reminiscent of Gersonides'. Prophetic inspiration, he says, communicates only truths, but it does not shed light necessarily on what is not questioned.

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In the end, if the prophet is mistaken it is because he did not push methodical doubt as far as Ramus or Descartes did!

Moses Narboni accepts in its literal sense the Talmudic adage ... hakham adïf mi-nabï (the scholar is superior to the prophet) and he believes that the superiority of the scholar over the prophet is due to the fact that the former knows by demonstrative reason while the latter materializes the truths in images. A forerunner of Spinoza in a way, Moses Narboni , thinks that the wise man does not need the prophetic gift in order to come closer to God, the evidence being Solomon, because the path that leads to God is the philosophical demonstration.

Such research on the limits of prophetic inerrancy was something that only Jewish philosophy at the time of its most daring development could afford, but it will not be continued. It was with indignation that an Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508), for example, rejected the imputation of errors to the prophets and exclaimed: "God preserves us from such beliefs! . When, later on, a Spinoza, after having drawn abundantly on medieval Jewish exegesis and philosophy, writes with the acrimony which is known from him, his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, he will already have been excluded from Judaism.

These many problems have therefore led to several types of doctrinal reaction and to four different forms of inspiration.

The theory of dictation asserts that God is the author of Scripture and that its human authors are only secretaries who put it in writing under his dictation. God spoke and man wrote. This is very close to orthodox Islam where the archangel Gabriel reads to Muhammad excerpts from an uncreated Quran. But the theory of dictation explains only certain parts of the sacred text, not the whole, nor even the essential add the scandalmongers (cf.satanic verses).

The theory of limited inspiration, in contrast to the theory of dictation, which considers the Scriptures as the work of God, with a minimal human contribution, considers them, first of all, as a human work, written with only limited divine help. For the proponents of this theory, God has guided human authors, while leaving them free to express themselves through their work, thus making even factual and historical mistakes possible. For believers, however, doctrinal errors have been avoided.

Although the authors studied above never completely abandoned the idea of the prophet as a teacher of physical sciences, they nevertheless came to conclusions which, although not as elaborate, are nevertheless very close to those, for example, of an eminent contemporary Catholic exegete and theologian who writes : "The charism of inspiration does not enlighten all the thought of the prophet and correct all his errors, to the point of making him an omniscient person; it illuminates him to write such and such a book, intended for such and such a concrete purpose, and guarantees his knowledge only in so far as it is relevant to his purpose. He will therefore keep the mistakes of his natural knowledge on many points, and it may even be fatal that these errors will appear in many places of his book; they will not, however, harm his teaching of truth because they are not part of this formal teaching...".

The last theory, that of biblical Christianity, is that of full verbal inspiration. The adjective full here means "complete" and verbal means "word for word.’ The theory of full verbal inspiration asserts that every word in the Bible, not just the ideas and thoughts it contains, comes from God.

This school further adds that the author never writes on his own initiative but is driven by God. They put the words "inspired" by God in writing but each kept his own style. So the styles are different but the words are indeed those that God wanted. This is basically the position of the present Catholic Church.

Finally, the neo-orthodox theory of inspiration emphasizes the transcendence of God. Neo-Orthodoxy teaches that God is so different from us that we can only know him through direct revelation. This idea of divine transcendence denies any form of natural theology (i.e., the possibility of knowing God through his creation). For this school of thought, the words of Scripture do not come from God, but are the fallible words of fallible men. The Bible is inspired by God only in the sense that God sometimes uses it to speak to us. But God can also speak to us through other books, including fiction.

PS. Allegory is also a way for believers to get out of trouble.

The believer's truth is that scientific truths also appear in the biblical text, but they still have to be extracted from it. Allegorical exegesis offers them a good way to do this. The allegorical method was advocated and used by Maimonides because he was convinced that the Holy Books teach scientific and metaphysical truths and that the teaching of Scripture cannot disagree with the conclusions of rational speculation. Allegory is, to take over the words of Maimonides in the Introduction of his Guide for the Perplexed, the key to understanding all prophetic words. It is also the key to eliminating the

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difficulties aroused by certain biblical verses whose literal meaning is unfortunately in opposition to certain results duly established by science. As Samuel Ibn Tibbon says (c. 1150-1230) in a lapidary formula: "It is better to force the letter of Scripture than nature.’

There we are in full concordism!

On the other hand, this is not the case for all believers. These mass religions have not become philosophical and thoughtful religions as in the case of the God of the Greek philosophers or druids.

To fully understand the implications of the notion of Revelation, one must put oneself in the shoes of a fervent believer. For him, the biblical texts were directly inspired by God to the nebiim their authors.

The nabi is an Inspired man, a Seer, a Prophet. See for example 1 Samuel, 9, 9, and 10, 5 to 12. Under the action of the divine breath - ruah - these recipients of a revelation can enter into a trance or into a daze. King Saul was one of them, according to certain texts (I Samuel 19:20-24).

For a fervent believer, the biblical texts were thus directly inspired by God to their authors and were composed in an almost scientific manner, notably the Book of Genesis (or the Quran for Muslims), which describes the beginning of the World. These books are a divine revelation. The least verse of any of the Books of the Bible, at least of the first five, can be doubted in any way, which means that the Bible must be considered as the only basic work worthy of faith; capable of giving a complete explanation of the world around us, its origin and its evolution over time. The events of the past could only have taken place according to the biblical chronology, which is considered an absolute chronology. Singular action of God in History. Mankind today is at least 100,000 years old, a little more if we take into account the contribution of the Neanderthals, but the revelation would only have manifested itself within it from - 1800 to + 70 (School of Jamnia/Yavneh) or + 100 approximately (the death of the last apostle)? And in only one region of the world (too bad for the other peoples!)

Summary diagram of the logic of Revelation.

GOD.

BIBLE (written under divine influence). Quran today

Complete and sufficient explanation of the World.

Literal interpretation of the Bible (of the Quran).

Morality of life.

N. B. This diagram gives a fairly good idea of the approach based on the notion of Revelation: the Bible (the Quran) contains all that it is necessary to know. So science must confirm the biblical writings. If they invalidate them, they are necessarily false, the only remaining truth given by verse x of chapter y of book z of the Revelation which is the Bible, taken literally. The conflict "Science vs. Revelation" exists in many religions to varying degrees. Science and experience become intruders when they contradict this pattern.

A revealed religion is like an axiomatic system in that it cannot tolerate its foundation being questioned. The biblical texts which make up the Jewish, Catholic, Reformed canons are not all the same, but for each religious option they alone hold the truth which has been conferred upon them by the divine power through prophets.

The truths supposedly revealed are always dangerous because they are imposed truths and, since they exclude all questioning, they are a permanent ferment of fanaticism and intolerance.

The Sumerian fables of the creation of the world, although defended foot to foot by the Judeo-Islamic Christians who still support five or six of its basic themes (the direct creation by God or the Demiurge of Man in his image, etc.); after having gradually abandoned everything else, at least in speeches aimed at a cultivated public (for children or adults of this level, the speech is still as nonsense talkative as ever I can attest to that personnaly); have lost all credibility. In spite of these concessions of the theology, which could be summarized as follows: 95% of these texts (taken literally) emanated simply from the men of the time, but 5% of their message (the essential notions) were indeed inspired by God.

Those who do not want to admit that they can believe in things that are completely contrary to Reason, claim all to have found them in Scripture, in order to justify all kinds of absurdity John Toland underlines. But by thus opposing one light to another, they undoubtedly make God responsible for this uncertainty. To admit, even for a moment, that Reason can authorize one thing and the divine spirit another, inevitably plunges us into skepticism, for we never know with certainty who to obey and who does what? (A brief summary of John Toland's thinking on this subject.)

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Even today, many evangelical Christians still maintain that the Bible and the Book of Genesis, particularly, must be accepted literally. They group themselves under the label of "creationists" or "fundamentalists. Their interpretation of the sacred texts implies considering the Bible as a compilation of works of a scientific nature. The challenge is just as dramatic with Islam.

For Buddhism, on the other hand, there is no problem, only solutions: given its very philosophical character, somewhat similar to ancient Druidism, this "religion" integrates without difficulty any new discovery.

THE MESSIAH OR SAVIOR SENT BY GOD.

To help only Jews and not other human beings (the Gentiles).For the only glory and liberation of Israel and Jerusalem, not for the greater glory of other countries and other peoples.

The concept of God is a rather abstract idea, although deeply rooted in the human psyche. The savior,as for him, is a very real being, who can be touched, unlike the god or demon.

The concept of savior is therefore reassuring for the faithful. The savior resembles him, he speaks, it is a human, but he has this little "extra" which makes him a superman.

NB. Hence the fact that, of course, the Jews of the time were not able to recognize in the Nazorene great Rabbi Jesus died on the cross as a slave this announced savior or messiah.

The myth of the savior is as old as the emergence of human consciousness. Early Homo sapiens had their saviors, the saviors at that time were the members of the tribe who brought back the most game, saving the tribe from hunger. Then, when the human psyche became more complex, according to its adaptation to environment, the saviors proved through their bravery in the battles, or by inventing weapons, means of transport, buildings, laws even trade agreements. These heroes who were members of the elite of each ethnic group therefore were consequently raised to the rank of a savior. The savior’s myth therefore is not peculiar to Judaism.

In all places where peoples lived in the hope of a better life, they invented imaginary characters are supposed to come and give them the liberation from their evils. Among Buddhists, this was the worship of the Buddha Maitreya, who will come and enlighten the world, for Muslims the Mahdi, for Christians Jesus.

Judaism has only enlarged this mythological concept to put it at the service of various territorial ambitions, or to be used as a psycho-emotional life preserver for a people "uprooted" living in the hope of regaining his lost earthly paradise: the Jerusalem of before the deportation and destruction by the Babylonians during the sixth century before our era.

Hence obviously the idea that the Savior was also to be a king, and as king a man surrounded by the honors due to his rank. King David was retrospectively considered as the first of the messiahs as soon as he defeated the enemies of the Jewish kingdom, as it is written in the stories and legends of the Jewish religion.

"In the course of time, David defeated the Philistines and subdued them, and he took Metheg Ammah their capital from the control of the Philistines. David also defeated the Moabites. He made them lie down on the ground and measured them off with a length of cord. Every two lengths of them were put to death, and the third length was allowed to live. So the Moabites became subject to David and brought him tribute. Moreover, David defeated Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah, when he went to restore his monument at the Euphrates River. David captured a thousand of his chariots, seven thousand charioteers and twenty thousand foot soldiers. He hamstrung all but a hundred of the chariot horses.When the Arameans of Damascus came to help Hadadezer king of Zobah, David struck down twenty-two thousand of them. He put garrisons in the Aramean kingdom of Damascus, and the Arameans became subject to him and brought tribute. The Lord gave David victory wherever he went. " (2 Samuel, 8.1 to 5).

[We have seen previously what was to think more seriously of the real, scope and power, of the Davidic kingdom].

According to the Torah, iso that a man is called the Messiah, therefore he is to be also a king. A king, anointed and crowned with a royal behavior, with a specific function, and having the authority to declare war or to direct it, for the greater glory of God and his (chosen) people, of course.

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This myth of the Messiah is particularly strengthened after the destruction of the Second Temple and the spreading of the Jews in the world. Wherever Jews settled, they conveyed their nostalgia for a lost glorious past, like the cult of the return to Jerusalem thanks to a savior sent by God. This Messiah will rise will liberate the Jewish people from the hands of the descendants of Esau (the rival brother of Jacob in the Bible); and will restore the Davidic kingdom of the glorious time. He will rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and will gather in the holy land the sons of Israel exiled in the Diaspora.

The legal institutions become again like before. The sacrifices and the various worships dedicated to Yahu/Yaho/Yhwh, the rabbinical courts, everything will be restored.

This second messiah according to the writing will be a descendant of King David, but will also be the last one.

Below what Maimonides said about him in his essay on the 13 Principles of Faith of Judaism (because the belief in the future coming of the Messiah is one of the components of Judaism, the penultimate of the 13 according to Maimonides) and it is therefore important to be able to recognize it. Hence the definition of Maimonides all in all careful enough (the Rambam waits for seeing the final result).

“If a king shall arise from among the House of David, studying Torah and occupied with commandments like his father David, according to the written and oral Torah, and he will impel all of Israel to follow it and to strengthen breaches in its observance, and will fight God's wars, this one is to be treated as if he were the anointed one. If he succeeded and built the Holy Temple in its proper place and gathered the dispersed ones of Israel together, this is indeed the anointed one for certain, and he will mend the entire world to worship the Lord together, as it is stated: "For then I shall turn for the nations a clear tongue, so that they will all proclaim the Name of the Lord, and to worship Him with a united resolve” (Zephaniah 3:9).

The list of the alleged messiah unfortunately was long and always ended tragically. Here are a few ones briefly mentioned by BERNARD Lazare.

Towards 1666, the date most commonly designated as the sacred date, all Jews of the Orient were raised by the preaching of Sabbatai Zevi. From Smyrna, where Sabbatai had proclaimed himself Messiah, the movement spread to the Netherlands, and England even, and everybody expected the restoration of Jerusalem and of the holy kingdom from the King of Kings, as Sabattai was called. The same enthusiasm was displayed in 1755 when Frank appeared in Podolia (region of Polish-Ukrainian border) as the new Messiah.

Around these visionaries, many mystical sects were formed, for example that of the Donmeh who approached the Muslims, or that of the Trinitarians who approached Christianity (design of a god at once one and triple).

For many years the Rabbi Menachem Schneerson was thus raised to the rank of a virtual Messiah by a community of fundamentalists called Hasidim (Lubavitch). They created around him a messianic mystical universe. They were certain that he was THE messiah sent by God because he met all the characteristics specified by the prophets. But one day he died (at a rather advanced age besides). The night he died, the members of the sect kept vigil over him until he comes back to life.

Nothing happened, of course, the poor man being dead and actually dead. The sect tried to find explanations for his non-resurrection. They comforted themselves by thinking that he was not the true Messiah, that according to the Torah the true Messiah was to triumph over all enemy nations, rebuild the Temple and gather all the Jews.

In Judaism, especially in its messianic and fundamentalist branch; he who does not believe in the Messiah, or doesn’t act to make the Messiah coming, not only denies the teaching of the prophets, but especially that of the Torah and of Moses; it is written in the Pentateuch: " Then the Lord your God will have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where he scattered you. Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back. He will bring you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will take possession of it. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors” (Deut. 30, 3-5).

The Messiah’s myth makes the teachers of Judaism (rabbis) able to always have in the mind of the faithful a ring to hang it their chain, and therefore to keep them in their dependence, by playing on their fears or despair. As long as there are desperate persons, there will be priests or politicians to manipulate them, in order to quench their thirst for power. The cult of the savior, like that of the chosen people, is a very powerful ethnocentric unifying concept, it is fed with the despair of the little people.

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Our conclusion about the Moreh Nevukhim of Maimonides will be therefore the following one. It is easier indeed to let oneself be guided by someone than to guide oneself. To guide oneself requires courage and will, it takes a lot of energy that few people have the strength to implement.

To repeat to somebody throughout his life that the Savior will happen soon, but that, in the meantime, you must pray but also do what the rabbi * says, is simple, but very effective.

* Rabbis because there are no longer priests in Judaism since the destruction of the second temple.

THE END OF TIME (ACHARIT HAYAMIM).

13th and last point of the "creed" of Moses Maimonides.

Christianity being substantially moved away from Judaism in this field it is important to remember that this end of the time according to Judaism resembles more a regeneration of the current earth, a little like the Germanic Ragnarok (war of Gog and Magog) than a total return to nothingness of the latter. A common point, however: the resurrection of the dead for their judgment (Yom Hadin) and finally, following this brutal process of regeneration of the Earth, the establishment of a new earthly world for eternity (Olam Habah).

The prophetic books of the Bible speak of a global catastrophe which will escape only a Palestine intended to become a new Garden of Eden; and in which will be rebuilt, in a perfect submission to YHWH, the paradise that the disobedience of Adam and Eve made lost. But first will come before the day of wrath of YHWH.

This is a theme present in the prophetic current from Amos to Malachi. The origin of the expression remains highly controversial: pertaining to worship theophany, New Year holiday, holy war, curses in case of a breach of covenant? Its meaning depends on the context. Its general sense of the day of the divine judgment seems pretty clear. The day of Yahweh is an intervention of God in history, in order to punish his enemies, whether they are foreigners or, as in the case of Amos (Amos 5, 18-20), the Israelites guilty of unfaithfulness to God's laws. The most commonly quoted texts are Isaiah 13: 6; Ezra, 13, 5; Amos, 5.18 to 20; Obadiah 15, Zephaniah 1, 7-16.

The eschatological dimension of the expression used to designate the end and the beyond of history is absent from the oldest texts. In the Book of Joel, is this day past or future? In the second part, of course, it is a day to come, but in a future that is not yet eschatological. For the people which repents in any case, the day of Yahweh will be a day of salvation and for his enemies, a day of judgment. Do not forget the visions of that other visionary Jehovah's Witness (nabi) who is Zechariah. There are seven of them to start the first part of his book.

Zechariah 8, 23, is striking with philo-Semitism (antisemitism and philo-Semitism being both another thing than pure objectivity). " In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying: Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you."

The chapter 14 is also interesting. After an unprecedented cosmic disaster (verses 4-8) coupled with a terrible world war, all peoples of the Earth will celebrate the Jewish holiday of cabins (Sukkot). Editor’s note. In other words, the lives of other humans, their sorrows, their sufferings and their joys, will only serve to justify or glorify the favorite people of Yahweh, after the coming of the Messiah.

In short! Sun, moon and stars will sink into darkness , heaven will be folded like a (scroll shaped) book which is finished. So will sound the hour of the Judgment which will wash the chosen people from his past impurities and the chosen persons whose faith in their Lord has not been firm enough and the goyim or gentiles, enemy of Israel, will be reduced to nothing by the action of the Messiah.

But those who will be members of the Righteous persons will survive the vengeance of YHWH, they will gather behind the Messiah and this one will restore monarchy. All will settle in Palestine with YHWH and Jerusalem will become again the leading light of the world. It will be an era of peace and universal harmony during which all nations will bow down before the Lord and his people. Editor’s note. This fantasy is still a cornerstone of the today State of Israel.

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The great Jewish mystic Moshe Luzzatto (1706-1746) will integrate all these data by writing in his Derech Hashem or Way of God:

“While a Jew and a non-Jew appear exactly alike in terms of their human characteristics, from the Torah’s perspective, they are so greatly different as to be considered a completely different species.”

And, furthermore, about the Palestine of after the coming of the Messiah:

“ Only Israel will be found there, while the righteous of the other nations will be given their reality only by virtue of their attachment to….They will be subordinate to Israel as clothes are subordinate to the body. They will acquire whatever good is due to them, but they are unable to acquire anything whatsoever beyond this.”

In other words, those non-Jews who strove to draw close to God by adhering to the seven Noachite Laws will also earn a place there, but a lesser one. Because they’d have done less to draw close to God here (because they’d have fulfilled fewer mitzvot).

Schopenhauer has shown that the moral, social, and intellectual concepts of Hebrews are to be rejected. A god like this Jehovah, who, willingly, for such is his pleasure, and gladly, produces this world of misery and lamentation, and which in addition congratulates oneself on it, that is too much! “Judaism, originally the one and only purely monotheistic religion that teaches an actual God creator of heaven and earth, has with perfect consistency no doctrine of immortality of soul. Thus it has no reward or punishment after death, but only temporal punishments and rewards whereby it is distinguished from all other religions (though not to its advantage). The two religions that sprang from Judaism really became inconsistent, because they took up the notion of immortality of soul that had become known to them from other and better doctrines, and yet retained the God creator.* The religion of the Jews as presented and taught in Genesis and all the historical books up to the end of Chronicles is the crudest of all religions because it is the only one that has absolutely no doctrine of immortality of soul, not even a trace thereof. When he dies, each king, each hero or prophet, is buried with his fathers and with this everything is finished. There is no trace of any life after death; indeed every idea of this kind seems to be purposely dismissed, etc.”(Schopenhauer, in his book titled in German-Greek language in a way "Parerga und paralipomena").

Duhring too has shown this dangerous side of the Semitic design of the divinity and of morality far less positive and happy for Man (last straw!) than the ancient design of barbarous peoples. ("Death is the middle of a long life if you know well what you sing. Happy the peoples beneath the Great Bear Thanks to their error; because they do not know this supreme fear which frightens all others” Lucan, in his Latin book De Bello Civili I, 454-462).

The non-Jewish Goyim who are not satisfied with the fate of the Jewish theology can obviously imagine they are better at Christianity. Lost punishment, the two judgments of souls (a particular judgment a general judgment) that knows the Christianity are not worth much better.

Our mysticism to us is the great Anglo-Irish druid John Toland, who taught in the eighteenth century that it is urgent to stop all these superstitions, which are the cause of many conflicts bruising our world (most recent Nazism). These myths are supported only by men who prefer to subjugate their fellow men rather than to teach them to think on one's own. Free thought being essentially pure freedom, these men do not tolerate it. Our duty is to drive them into a corner, so that the human being take back what he was rightfully entitled to have: freedom.

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First OTHER VERY HUMAN AND EVEN BANAL IDEA IN THE COMPOSITION OF JUDAISM:

THE NOTION OF AM NICHVAR OR MORE PRECISELY

THE CERTAINTY OF BEING THE GOD'S PREFERRED PEOPLE.

The principle of the divine choice found in the images of the am segullah or am nahalla (treasure, or inheritance, of God) which are frequently used to describe the people of Israel.

This is called ethnocentrism when they are other peoples. Claude Levi-Strauss, in his essay of 1952 entitled "Race and History,” even considers that the notion of humanity, encompassing all forms of the human species without distinction of race or civilization, is a very late concept, on the one hand, and on the other hand, that the rejection outside humanity of all those who are too different to be members of it is, paradoxically, a universal trait of behavior.

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia goes even further, by adding that the same mental attitude can be found in social groups in a privileged position, such as the European aristocracy. Didn't Metternich say in 1815 that in Austria, man begins with the baron?

Below are some illustrations of this Jewish ethnocentrism.

MORNING BLESSINGS (SHACHARIT)

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a heathen.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a slave.

Men say:

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has not made me a woman.

Women say:

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has made me according to your will.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has supplied my every want.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has made firm the steps of man.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who girds Israel with might.

Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who crowns Israel with glory.

The inherent to Judaism ethnocentrism is structured and developed starting from at the same time scriptural and sacred religious elements. It is to say that it is “cultural” in the strongest meaning of the term.

The destiny of Ishmael in the Bible proves it. Son of Abraham and of the Egyptian slave Hagar, born during the sterility period of Sarah previous the birth of Isaac. Sarah will make throw outside the mother and the son (Genesis 21). Because one of the myths, if it is not the most powerful myth of Judaism, is well that to be the chosen people of God. It is this chooseness which makes the Jew, it is towards it that he defines himself compared to the other people. This difference is claimed besides by the fundamentalists. The Torah is the first great racialist * theory of History and the biblical myth of the chosen people is the basis of it.

According to Malachi (1, 2-3), the God of the beginnings of the Bible is a god who does not deal with the others (God loves Jacob and he hates Esau on the other hand).

Kant, as of the 18th century, had perfectly analyzed this singular phenomenon related to the idea of divine chooseness. In his work dedicated to the subject, he speaks about people chosen by Jehovah,

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and which, hostile to all the others, is itself exposed to the hostility of all. This divine Chooseness is one of the elements of “the Jewish Prison.”

The Orthodox Judaism defines itself facing the others and not with the others, and it is this tension between the Jew and the goy, this difference, which galvanizes it. The religious Jew can be defined only in opposition to the other people, and it is because of that he feels still oppressed. Without these ethnocentrist concepts, so fixed, the Jewish people would have been a people like the others, and would surely have lived happier by merging in the mass than by affirming so egoistically a difference unsupported by science. The Torah is the first great segregationist theory of History. This concept of “chosen people” existed, of course, more or less in all the cultures of the tribes of the time, but the Hebrews, for political-warlike reasons, developed it more strongly than the others. The kings of the time exploited this idea with an aim of federating a people attacked from everywhere by close nations. Its effectiveness made it possible their kingdom to remain during many years.

[Editor’s note. And besides it is still the same thing today].

It is normal for a people to maintain favored relations with its gods. It was even a tautology to say it in the case of the Celts and of their druids. What is unacceptable, on the other hand, is to refuse that to the others, it is the claim to be the people chosen by the only existing God, to be the people chosen by the universal God as single agent of his wills and desires; the only one with which the Divinity made a true covenant, the only one which is placed under its protection, the only one being entitled to its love, its benevolence, its protection and a glorious final future.

At the time when the snake tempted Eve, it corrupted her with its venom and its stink, but Israel, with the revelation made to Moses, was freed from this evil and this bad smell; whereas the other nations themselves could not get rid of it.

The other men are placed outside the Hebrews, they will have right only through the mercy of God to the bounty to come according to the Jewish eschatology; and the earthly goods which are given up to other nations such as Palestine, for example, actually belong to Israel. We find besides exactly the same reasoning in Islam: earthly goods actually belong to God and therefore to the true Muslims actually, unbelievers are only temporary occupants of them ( Allow us here to think that it is perhaps exactly the opposite which occurred.The pagan human beings were much more interesting for Humanity. They had a richer potential).

The principle of the single worship of Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh was the unifying element of the Jewish tribes, the cement of a people which was flattered by a speech raising it to the rank of people ”chosen” by God. By the only god existing, the god of the universe.

Without all this discourse around the concept of “chosen people” the Hebrews would certainly not have succeeded in maintaining a kingdom, because their military strategies and their technicalities were not the most powerful of the time. It is this conviction to be a special people, galvanized by the certainty to have been chosen by a supernatural force, which urged them to live, it was their only raison d'être, without that their kingdom would have crumbled much more quickly.

Notes found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them in this place.

But the Hebrews were not the only ones to have developed this concept of “chosen people.” All the nations had a federating concept, concept which did not affirm loud and clear a divine chooseness but which underlay it by other ethnocentric conceptualizations. The Egyptians thought for example to be descended from the god-or-demon Ra, even also considered themselves as being a chosen people, but chosen by another god-or-demon; the Greeks were the descendants of Gaia the mother goddess-or-demoness and sons of Zeus, for the Romans it was Jupiter and for the Vikings, Odin. The Celts themselves thought to be resulting from the God of Death (ancient druidic illustration of the idea that the Being comes from Nothingness) according to this quotation of Caesar. “The Celts assert that they are descended from the god Dis, and say that this tradition has been handed down by the Druids. For that reason they compute the divisions of every season, not by the number of days, but of nights; they keep birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night” (B.G. 6,17-18).

Dis Pater is only the interpretatio romana made by Caesar of a character of legend whose Celtic name is unknown for us; and that some people compare to a great initiate they bring closer to the Nemet Hornunnos, another well-known character of druidic mythology.

The Greeks in any event thought them to be rather coming from a kind of Hercules called Ogmius in their language. The concept of divine chooseness was therefore currently used at the time, it was a mode of thinking peculiar to this primitive period of mankind. The Hebrews, considering their low number, were obliged to create a feeling of membership even more powerful and especially more warlike. “Today know this: God, your God, is crossing the river ahead of you—he’s a consuming fire. He will destroy the nations, he will put them under your power. You will dispossess them and very quickly wipe them out, just as the Lord promised you would.” (Deuteronomy 9.3.) Such words were

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necessary to give courage to a people frightened by attacks from everywhere. Therefore we must not be particularly shocked by the principle of the divine chooseness of the Jewish people, or of another one, but where lies the problem it is in the perpetuation of this concept ON THE UNIVERSAL LEVEL and in what concern the god of the universe.

Including in both other modern mass monolatries which divide still Mankind into two camps, that of the faithful who will be saved therefore will ascend to Heaven and the others, all the others, which will find themselves in hell.[ Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. Editor’s note]. Aren’t such concepts, such hubris, harmful as much for the people which convey them, than for the others? Incompatible with a lasting peace between members of the same species? Isn't this separation between “chosen” and “not chosen” superfluous nowadays? Science has many times shown us our single identity, which name is Mankind.

Unfortunately, this concept is established so much in the Jewish culture that without it there would be no longer Judaism. If tomorrow the Jewish people ceased believing in its chooseness by God, it would have no longer reason to live as such.

As a faithful interpreter of the many texts of Judaism, generating such a mindset, such an interpretative delirium, the general Eitam, of the Israeli religious right wing, could write one day (

Ha’aretz , 28 April 2002) that the greater Israel it is “the State of God; the Jews are the soul of the world; the Jewish people have a mission to reveal the image of God on Earth […] A world without Jews is a world of robots, a dead world; and the State of Israel is the Noah's Ark of the future of the world. Its task is to uncover God’s image.”

* Racialism. Obsession with biological heredity to the detriment of the principle of spiritual filiation.

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THE SECOND OTHER IDEA IN THE COMPOSITION OF JUDAISM.

THE NOTION OF BERIT IN OTHER WORDS PACT OR TREATY,

even covenant.

………..

Second part of our reflection on the dogma of the covenant in Judaism: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH.

Let us begin by reminding of the fact that if we believe the text, in question, what is not the case of everybody, God had already concluded an embryonic pact, a pact as a minimum, with Noah and his descendants. The difference with the pact concluded with Israel being that Israel receives more numerous and more precise commandments than the Noahides.

But let's return to the Berit made with Israel.

This idea, which was originally quite banal (sacrifices are offered to a god in order to get his neutrality or his help) in the case of Judaism, stems from the following postulate which, of course, makes no sense for an atheist, a Buddhist, etc.

1)The world was created by a single, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, just and merciful entity.

2) This being has on his own initiative entered a covenant with the ancestors of the people of Israel, promising to treat this people as his "treasure" as long as the children of Israel respect his law, which includes a religious component as well as civil, matrimonial and legislative aspects. Adherence to this law implies a way of behaving, clothing, eating, etc. peculiar to those who adhere to it. THE SAME WILL BE TRUE OF ISLAM.

3) The details of the provisions of this fundamental law, 613 mitsvot, are recapitulated in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible called Torah in Hebrew and Pentateuch in Greek, traditionally attributed to Moses, hence also its name " Law of Moses .”

4) The members of the people thus chosen who observe the 613 mitsvot of the Law will be considered righteous and will be rewarded in one way or another.

5) Members of the chosen people who do not observe the Law will be punished sooner or later (the punishment may indeed be postponed).

This treaty or pact is at first glance eternal.

It is clear from the texts that the choice in question was the work of God and one can therefore ask oneself the question of the degree of adherence to this policy by the people in question.

Indeed, what freedom do the Jews have to support the Covenant and, consequently, to reject it if they want? What freedom do the Jews have once they have accepted the Covenant?

The Torah, as the content of God's covenant with the people of Israel, seems to have been imposed on the people,in the time when a man by the name Moses was ruling over them.

With this Covenant, God choses Israel, and this choice is entirely free - at least, from God. God was no more forced to choose Israel than he was forced to create the world.

But did Israel really have a choice in his response to this proposal?

Did Israel truly accept the Torah, or was the Torah in fact accepted for him without his full consent? Were there other possibilities? Is the Torah simply imperative, that is, directly imposed, or does it correspond to the desires of the people who would certainly have chosen to accept it even in the presence of other options? And if not, how did Israel experience the contractual obligation as expressed in its acceptance of the Torah generally and the commandments specifically?

See the Bible for the answers, but Gnosticism and Christianity will also be the answer to these questions.

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……………. .

First part of our reflection on the dogma of the covenant in Judaism. HISTORICAL APPROACH.

The notion of covenant - OBLIGATION, particularly developed in Christianity, starting from that which first characterized Judaism, is a kind of hapax in the world of religions, with the obvious exception of Islam, but it was in fact only the transposition into the religious field of the political practices of the region at the time.

The epigraphist Dominique Charpin demonstrated this peremptorily in his book entitled " You are of my blood .”

And since we have been talking about hapax, here is what our author says about the Hebrew terminology concerning this covenant.

The Bible provides us with two different accounts, in Exodus 19-24 and Deuteronomy 5-10.

In Ex 31:18 or 32:15 we have the formula luḥot ha'edut. The word 'edut corresponds to the Akkadian adê found in the oath of loyalty to his son Assurbanipal that the king of Assyria Esarhaddon made his vassals take in -672.

But we also find the term berit to designate the covenant with Noah Abraham and Moses...

Mari's covenant narratives use the preposition birIt, "between,” to designate a covenant established between two parties.

COMPARISON WITH HITTITE TREATISES.

The Hittite treatises which have been preserved are a first element of comparison which explains many of the peculiarities of this "berit" which was concluded between God and Israel and thus of the Deuteronomistic theology of Covenant which resulted from it.

G. E. Mendenhall compared the two covenant narratives (Exodus 19-24 and Deuteronomy 5-10) with the forms of the Hittite treaties. This study revealed a very similar structure, with six distinctive elements: the introduction of the declarant; a historical preamble; some clauses; a statement relating to the written document; divine witnesses; lastly, some curses and blessings.

The declarant introduction.

In most Hittite treaties, the texts are worded as speeches made by the "superior power" in favor of the king of the inferior entity.... The person expressing the covenant speaks in the first person and begins by defining himself with his name and title(s).

Let us note that the covenant is asymmetrical, the "vassal" making a commitment while the "lord" does not act reciprocally.

The evocation of the past is much more developed in the Hittite treatises than in the Bible. But in both cases, it makes the inferior party the oblige of his superior: the latter expects gratitude for what he has already accomplished and adherence to the clauses of the agreement he proposes.

In the Bible, these clauses form, among other things, what was later called the Decalogue:

Finally, in the ancient Near East, treaties systematically contained curses; these were sometimes followed by blessings, but less frequently.

In the Bible, the contrary can be seen in Deuteronomy 28:

If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the Lord your God (etc.) ….However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you (etc.).

AND THE LIST IS LONG.

COMPARISON WITH THE NEO-ASSYRIAN TREATISES.

In the case of the neo-Assyrian texts, the analogy is so much more advanced, especially with regard to curses, that one can even speak of borrowing: the literary dependence of the Bible on them is therefore beyond doubt.

The comparison between the curses of Deuteronomy 28 and the covenant of Esarhaddon was sketched by D. Wiseman in his edition of the Assyrian text. A few parallels are enough to be convinced of this.

Esarhaddon’s succession treaty SAA 02 006.

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May Sin, the brightness of heaven and earth, clothe you with leprosy and forbid your entering into the presence of the gods or king. Roam the desert like the wild ass and the gazelle!

The list of incurable diseases sent by Yhwh is quite close:

The Lord will afflict you with the Egyptian boils and with tumors, festering sores and the itch, from which you cannot be cured (Deut. 28,27).

Esarhaddon’s succession treaty SAA 02 006.

If you hear any evil, improper, ugly word which is not seemly nor good to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, either from the mouth of his enemy or from the mouth of his ally, or from the mouth of his brothers or from the mouth of his uncles, his cousins, his family, members of his father's line, or from the mouth of your brothers, your sons, your daughters, or from the mouth of a prophet, an ecstatic, an inquirer of oracles, or from the mouth of any human being at all, you shall not conceal it but come and report it to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria….If you should come into contact with perpetrators of an insurrection, be they few or many, and hear (anything, be it) favorable or unfavorable, you shall come and report it to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria…..

You shall not take a mutually binding oath with (any)one who produces (statues of) gods in order to conclude a treaty before gods (be it) by setting a table, by drinking from a cup, by kindling a fire, by water, or by oil but you shall come and report to Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, and shall seize and put to death the perpetrators of the insurrection and their troops.

The similarity with what is found in Deuteronomy 13, where God takes the place of the future king of Assyria, is striking:

If a prophet, or one who foretells by dreams, appears among you and says, “Let us follow other gods and let us worship them,” you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer….It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him. That prophet or dreamer must be put to death for inciting rebellion against the Lord your God. If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. You must certainly put them to death (Deut. 13: 2-10)

The injunction to neither add nor subtract that appears in both texts is also very similar. On one side you have....

Esarhaddon’s succession treaty SAA 02 006.

You shall neither change nor alter the word of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria,

And on the other:

You shall diligently observe all that I command you, add nothing to it or take away from it (Deut. 13, 1).

The question is how the author(s) of Deuteronomy could have had access to the text of the treaty of Succession of Esarhaddon. The Annals of Esarhaddon mention the king of Judah Manasseh among the vassals of the empire. It is therefore certain that Manasseh took an oath of loyalty to Esarhaddon, which he probably renewed under his successor: in the Annals of Assurbanipal, Manasseh is indeed among the twenty-two vassals who went to Nineveh in -667 to offer their tribute.

The discovery at Tell Tayinat of a copy of the treaty of Esarhaddon preserved in a temple demonstrates that the hypothesis that a tablet of this kind was present in the temple of Jerusalem is quite credible. And if one goes in this direction, it is difficult not to consider the reign of Manasseh (c. 687-642) as the best time for such an exhibition. The reuse of the text could have taken place during the reign of Josiah; its authors changed a treaty with the king of Assyria into a treaty with Yhwh. The extent to which this change was motivated by anti-Assyrian sentiments remains a matter of debate: by replacing the Assyrian king with Yhwh, its authors would have in some way turned this instrument of Assyrian domination against those who had used it against them.

Dominique Charpin finally remarks quite rightly that the obligation to reread this treaty appears written out in words in the oath of allegiance that Esarhaddon makes his vassals take towards his son Assurbanipal.

Tell Tayinat version SAA 02 015.

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You will guard like your god this sealed tablet of the great ruler on which is written the treaty regarding Assurbanipal, the great crown prince designate, the son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, your lord, which is sealed with the seal of Assur, king of the gods, and which is set up before you.

OBJECTIVE AND NON-PARADOXICAL EPICLESES * OR ATTRIBUTES

(such as omnipotent, omniscient, good, father, righteous, and so on, obviously unjustified attributes

as history has shown ).

The god of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob...

as described or as it appears directly or even indirectly in the Old Testament part of-è the Bible...

whether before or after the exile in Babylon (- 597 - 538) but especially before it is true ...

besides the fact that it is not unique, what we have sufficiently demonstrated in the preceding parts of our notebook ...

a point to which therefore we will not return and for which we consequently will act as the wisest of Muslims * * towards Christians believing in the Holy Trinity ...

for in order to simplify we will act as if and will play the game of divine oneness (tawhid) as far as they are concerned....

although such an imposture alone is sufficient to justify the disqualification of the message ...

the god of Abraham of Isaac and Jacob therefore can only be called as follows (jealous misogynistic warrior, etc.).....

According to the small list of adjectives or qualifiers that we will unroll below.

* Epicleses of Apollo, for example alexicacos, hekatebolos, sauroctonos…..

** The wisest of Muslims (0.01%) take into account the fact that the Trinitarian Christians have always been persuaded to be monotheistic in order to grant them the benefit of not being equated to associationists or associators (shirk mushrik mushrikun ) or miscreants (kufr kafir kufar) and therefore the right to live. As dhimmis.

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THE PRIMACY OF HEREDITY.

Druidism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism ... can be defined as spiritual traditions and more specifically as religious traditions, linked to the relationships with a deity. The Judaism itself is well a tradition of this kind, with its myths of Creation, the Garden of Eden, the Messianic Hope .... But combines with it, as we have seen it many times, a notion coming from immemorial time and falling in a completely different vein, the concept of "Abraham’s line." Judaism is not a religion in the conventional meaning of the word, but a "race religion" or a "culture race." The Jew is not only the custodian of the original Hebrew message, he is also, by the blood, through genealogy, the descendant of Abraham. For Kant, for example, and to name him only, Judaism is an "ethnic" religion. Even worse in reality: “Judaism is actually not a religion at all!”

Exodus. 34, 16. Moses receives a command from God so that his people do not marry the daughters of foreigners.

Numbers. 16, 40. "This was to remind the Israelites that no one except a descendant of Aaron should come to burn incense before the Lord.”

Numbers. 25, 6 to 9. Moses prohibits intermarriage and religions other than his own. He makes execute 1000 or 24000 Jews having become guilty of this "crime.’

Deuteronomy. 7, 3 and 4. " Do not intermarry with them (the Canaanites). Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons.”

Joshua. 23, 13. " But if you intermarry with them and associate with them, then you may be sure that the LORD your God will no longer drive out these nations before you. Instead, they will become snares and traps for you, whips on your backs and thorns in your eyes, until you perish from this good land, which the LORD your God has given you.”

1 Kings. 11, 1 to 4. Love and mixed marriages are associated with religious treason (apostasy).

Psalm XII, 8: " You, O LORD, will keep us, you will preserve us from this generation forever.”

Ezra laments that " They have mingled the holy race with the peoples around them" (9: 1-2) and ordered the segregation " let us make a covenant before our God to send away all these foreign women and their children” (Ezra 10,3).

Nehemiah.13, 23-27: " I saw men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah. I rebuked them and called curses down on them. I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in God’s name and said: “You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves.”

Nehemiah. 13, 30. " So I purified the priests and the Levites of everything foreign.”

There are also a series of texts advocating the concept of collective responsibility.

Exodus. 20, 5. " I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation…”

Numbers. 14.18. “Yhwh punishes the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.’

Editor's note. In many countries such ideas, such texts should obviously fall under anti-racism laws. Nevertheless, one can note that at the time the handing down was made through the father. The very law of levirate, under which the brother of a man dead without children must to guarantee him posterity by sleeping with his widow, proves it.

Therefore a radical change is produced with the Talmudic period: the rabbis decided that the Jewish identity will pass through the women. Probably judged more docile and having less critical mind.

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Although the followers of most religions have hardly between them only the link of a common belief and practices, and that everyone is entitled to such adoption; the Judaism as for it establishes between his followers a special link of hereditary nature. Rare fact in the history of mankind, the birth is the true criterion of membership. Rabbinic law establishes, in fact, that the Jewish characteristic is handed down by the women. The handing down of the Jewishness according to the Jewish but also Nazi law , falls within a biological principle. This characteristic in addition is indelible, even when there is apostasy or mixed marriage (which is equivalent to apostasy). Every man born Jew remains Jew according to the Talmud and the rabbinic history. The membership criterion is binary: you are Jewish or you are not.

It is to be noted that for the Church too, but on a completely different level, every Catholic remains Catholic as he is not officially written off in the parish register of baptisms, and therefore betrays if he agrees with other ideas . Example Julian the Apostate.

Although the word "Jew" was originally neither racial nor national but religious, a change occurred: Racial condition (heredity) became necessary and sufficient to be Jewish, the religious condition (belief) became optional. Many Jews do not observe Shabbat, dress like everyone else, the discriminating characteristics with which history had saddled them are disappearing apart from Mea Shearim and there remains only the "Abraham’s line" as a distinctive characteristic between a Jew and a non-Jew. This heredity which is handed down by the woman in despite her status lower than that of the men, themselves keeping the transmission of the knowledge and values of Judaism.

The identity through filiation is imposed on the identity through membership. A boundary that the will cannot cross was established. We may add that this notion of " Abraham’s line" present in Judaism is so significant that it transcends the multiple "natural" ethnos groups that the Jewish population includes: Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Falasha, Russian Jews, etc.).

Editor’s note.

When we know besides that the Jews in Maghreb are perhaps only Berbers Judaized in Roman times, and the Muslims in Palestine some Jews converted to Islam in the early days of the conquest; we can measure how stupid are these notions of , pure chosen, or what not, race ?

Faced with ethnic cleansing practices inspired from the alleged conquest of the Promised Land, for fear of "alteration of Abraham’s line,” implemented in Israel; purity that always runs with expulsion and destruction as in the days of Joshua or David; Haim Cohen (who was a judge at the Supreme Court of Israel) even one day will evoke Nazi laws. The bitter irony of fate had that the same biological and racist theories worked out by the Nazis and which inspired the infamous Nuremberg laws are the basis for the definition of Jewishness in the State of Israel.

The pressure of the rabbis has certainly always existed, for the biblical order of non-assimilation is respected, and that there are no mixed marriages but it is made particularly insistent since the creation of the State of Israel. To the point that the fear of intermarriage has become an obsession in rabbinical circles, community forums, and in more than an ordinary Jew. Joseph Sitruk, the chief rabbi of France, was able to write in 1993: "I wish young Jewish people never marry only Jewish girls."

If the unbelievers do not always respect this order, it is not the same thing with the believers for whom this is an absolute imperative.

The current Judaism, in fact, not only is not proselytizing, but practices a maximum dissuasion to any potential candidate for conversion. This systematic rejection is, of course, the first element of communitarianism, and goes willingly as far as the ghettoization, this basic data of medieval Judaism.

The Basic Law of the State of Israel admits foreign inputs ( is considered as Jewish a person born from a Jewish mother or converted); but the conditions specifically required by the rabbis are such - in particular the practice of the 613 commandments or mitzvot of the Torah - that, without exception, a goy does not become Jewish; in accordance also with the majority widespread idea that "the will is not enough to be part of the chosen people."

In this race-religion complex that is Judaism, it is the ethnic dimension which is paramount, the filiation is necessary and sufficient to define the "Jewish" or the "half-Jew" according to Nazis.

While all other religious traditions incorporate more or less "good" believers, in the Jewish tradition, on the contrary, the belief is secondary and incidental, the preponderant criterion hereditary. There are no good or bad Jews, but Jews and non-Jews. In the meaning of the Jewish law, an agnostic or a doctrinal opponent, as a Christian, whose mother is Jew, he would be a Protestant theologian or Catholic bishop, remains Jew. He cannot choose not to be Jew.

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That a person unaware of Judaism, its writing, its teaching, his family history ... and following neither rites nor traditions, may be recognized as "Jew" on the basis of the single hereditary criterion, is for worse or for better, one of the fundamental characteristics of the Judaism as a religion.

Thus, unfortunate provision of the Jewish tradition, the name “Jew” or the adjective "Jewish" will trap both those who use it and those who are thus designated. The first ones can be accused of thinking race; - Is it not enough most of the time for an individual to be born in a family where there are Jews to be called at once a Jew, regardless of any Jewish belief or culture? The latter may feel despised being treated starting from this single genetic criterion, criterion which is known, moreover, to be the source of the anti-Jewish prejudices and stereotypes of the modern era.

THE DOGMA OF THE PROMISED LAND.

And not by just anyone but by God himself, the one, the true, who is the god for everybody.

Several Middle Eastern peoples had received from their god or demon similar promises.

In Egypt, on the poetical stele of Karnak, erected by Thutmose III (fifteenth century our era) to celebrate his victories, the god or demon Amon says: " I give you the earth, in its length and in its breadth.”

In the Babylonian epic of creation (eleventh century before our era), it is also said that the god or demon Marduk distributes the incomes for each one and that he orders to seal his alliance with the people of the Anunnaki to build Babylon and its temple (“build Babylon and raise the shrine”).

As for the Hittites, they celebrate and sing Ariniddu, the goddess-or-demoness, or sun fairy, of Arinna, who: "Controls the kingship of heaven....and sets the borders of the land."

Similarly therefore, the Judeans and their god or demon, Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh, have developed, here are some three thousand years, a contract (the Covenant) according to which, through an absolute obedience, they would be his favored people and in return receive a particular land.

The notion of Promised Land HA'ARETZ HAMUVTAKHAT occupies a central place in Jewish thought.

This is here, of course, the religious dogma that most crushes into the world of politics by defInition.

There are in fact a certain number of passages in the biblical text where the imaginary entity called...called...Let us say God for the sake of simplicity, grants the land of Canaan to various of his interlocutors; Abraham Issac Jacob Moses, Joshua, in short to the children of Israel.

We say "Land of Canaan" because the expression "Promised Land" does not exist anywhere in our texts. And this land of Canaan was not deserted or inhabited by a sparse population like 18th century Australia, but by peoples with 3000 years of history, and at the forefront of civilization at that time. Cities such as Arad in the Negev or Byblos in Lebanon, in commercial relation with Egypt, Hazor in relation with Mari in Mesopotamia. Fragments of Akkadian cuneiform tablets have even been found in powerful fortified cities further south such as Megiddo, Shechem, Silo, Lachish, Jaffa, Ashkelon, Hebron. Then comes the reign of Egyptian civilization with Thutmose I (1504 before our era), which lasts until 1140 before our era with Rameses VI, a period when peoples such as the Shardanes and Peleset, whose links to local peoples are not very clear (Philistines, Hebrews, and others?), enter the scene. The Philistines initially prevailed over the proto-Israelites because of the superiority of their armament (horses, chariots, and various weapons). They even seize the Ark of the Covenant.

The whole current problem concerns the interpretation of these ancient passages in the light of the later developments.

The Hebrew Bible refers very frequently to the gift of the land of Canaan to Abraham and his descendants. However, Abraham himself refers to himself as a stranger dwelling in Canaan (Genesis 23:4), and buys land to bury his wife at the price of a tidy sum of money paid to Ephron the Hittite.

The expression "Promised Land" thus refers to the fact that the gift to Abraham is not immediately followed by its realization. In fact, the land is more promised than given. And if it is given it remains simultaneously to be conquered, it is a land that must be both received and taken. God announces

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that he will drive out the Canaanites before the Israelites, but according to other texts and the account in the book of Joshua, the children of Israel must fight themselves to come into possession of the promised inheritance.

This warlike process is not necessarily understood as a timeless obligation; some religious Zionists in the twentieth century will thus make the difference between the obligation to inhabit the country and the obligation to conquer it by force of arms, recognizing as legitimate only the negotiation or purchase of land.

At the same time, the question of the fulfillment of the promise and possession of the country arouses the question of borders.

We will not tackle here the question of the geographical limits of this promised land, a subordinate problem par excellence, but the question of its principle.

The oldest texts (Genesis 13:15; 17:8; Exodus 32:13) seem to indicate that this gift of the land of Canaan to the children of Israel IS IRREVOCABLE.

Until the destruction of the First Temple in 586 before our era and the exile of the Jewish people to Babylonia, the Jewish people enjoyed political sovereignty. For most of this period, they had their own government. As such, any Torah commandment observed came under the public political domain. Generally speaking, "religious" or liturgical matters were dealt with the priestly institution of the Temple; "moral" or civil and criminal matters were dealt with by the institution of kingship.

The people therefore had no real alternative to " Judaism ,” whatever its denomination. They lived under a single state religion. The only theological-political alternative was individual exile.

All this changed, however, when the Jewish people (as a whole according to the Bible) was exiled. In Babylonia there was an alternative, so many preferred to stay (the famous lost tribes of Israel).

After the return from the exile to Babylon, however, the idea developed that this gift (of the Promised Land) had been conditional. Biblical historiography, from Joshua to 2 Kings or 2 Chronicles, can be interpreted as an attempt to account for the loss of the land and of the Temple, due to moral and/or religious guilt, by the unfaithfulness of the people and especially of its leaders regarding the covenant passed between God and Israel, for example the prohibition to indulge in idolatry and the crimes traditionally associated with it (murder, adultery, theft, perjury...). The non-compliance with these conditions could indeed lead to the revocation of the donation.

At the time of the return from Exile and during the period of the Second Temple, the texts testify to a focus on the Temple and on Jerusalem, and only rarely evoke the land and the promise made to Abraham. Conversely, it seems that the loss of the Temple and of Jerusalem following the revolts against Rome of 66-73 and 132-135. paradoxically contributed to the revaluation of the land as part of the relationship between God and Israel, at least in the rabbinic sources of Palestine.

This land has a distinct status, a form of "holiness,” by virtue of its special relationship with God, as Deuteronomy 11:11-12 points out: "The land, whither you go to possess it, is [….] a land which the Lord your God cares for the eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year." For this reason, some rabbinic sources will later establish an analogy between the land chosen and chosen by God among all, and the people chosen and chosen by God among all. This passage of Deuteronomy contains the seed of the essentialist and mystical vision of the land of Israel which would later develop in certain currents of Judaism, particularly in the Middle Ages, for example in Judah Halevi in Spain (1075-1141).

For the Jews and still according to BERNARD Lazare, “It was therefore in Jerusalem only, in the land given by God to their ancestors, that their bodies would be resurrected. There those who had believed in Yahweh, who had observed his law and obeyed his word, would awake at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the appointed hour; every other land but that washed by the yellow Jordan was a vile land, fouled by idolatry, deprived of God.”

Zeev Sternhell concludes from it that the Jewish nationalism has no difficulty to deny others the basic rights that with a total peace of mind, he demands for himself. Confident in its rights to demand all the land of his kings and prophets, Judaism cannot perceive that another legitimacy can also exist in the land of the Bible.

THE IMMEDIATE COROLLARY OF THE DOGMA OF THE PROMISED LAND.

The notion of ger, plural gerim, an immigrant or foreigner, resident in the land of Israel.

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Genesis, 15, 18, combines the two fundamental notions of "biological line" and "Promised Land" by putting into the mouth of Yaho/Yhwh, these words: " To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates .” So the Hebrew ancestors of the Judeans had God with them when, led by Joshua, they exterminated the people of Canaan during the conquest of the Promised Land.

Exodus. 33, 1 to 2. This God or Demiurge of the Jewish Bible is a war god-or-demon who helps Israel to drive other peoples out of Palestine.

23, 23-33: the genocide by killing or deportation of the Aryans, Hittites or Philistines or Jebusites, of the Amorites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, Jebusites, etc.

Deuteronomy. Chapter II, 12. " The descendants of Esau destroyed the Horites from before them and settled in their place, just as Israel did….)

Chapter III, 22 "... your God himself will fight for you.”

Chapter VII, 1 to 24. " When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations. The Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites [of Jerusalem] seven nations larger and stronger than you.

When the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy.”

And lastly the book of Joshua.

Final Extermination:

- Of the inhabitants of Jericho (6, 21-26).

- Of the inhabitants of Ai (8, 24-26).

- Of the inhabitants of Jerusalem (yes) Hebron Yarmuth, Lachish, Eglon, etc., etc.

Chapters 10 (20 to 43), and 19 (51).

These are the territories that Eleazar the priest, Joshua and the heads of the tribal clans of Israel assigned by lot in the presence of God.

ANALYSIS.

"Land,’ "blood" (mother line) and biblical reference element are the three fundamental pillars of the State of Israel today. They are rich political ingredients drawn from the religious heritage of Judaism.

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THE ROLE OF JERUSALEM

(from monopoly to centrality).

Deuteronomy 12 , 11. Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name, there you are to bring everything I command you: your burned offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the LORD.

That this privileged place be Jerusalem is specified only in the books of Samuel and in the books of the kings, concerning the reigns of David and Solomon. The only problem is that these books were written many centuries later (after the date of writing of Deuteronomy).

For the Samaritans, descendants of the Hebrews who were not deported to Babylon (roughly the people of the countryside) this place targeted by Deuteronomy is Mount Garizim 880 meters near present-day Nablus.

Four passages of the Old Testament grant indeed a privileged role to Mount Gerizim.

Deuteronomy 11, 29. When the LORD your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses.

Deuteronomy 27:12. When you have crossed the Jordan, these tribes shall stand on Mount Gerizim to bless the people: Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Joseph and Benjamin.

Joshua 8:33 - All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the LORD, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel.

Judges 9, 7 - When Jotham was told about this, he climbed up on the top of Mount Gerizim and shouted to them, "Listen to me, citizens of Shechem, so that God may listen to you.

But none of these say expressly that it must be so at all times and in all circumstances.

Since the Samaritans have been in constant decline since the return of the exiles from Babylon, to the point of almost coming close to complete extinction today, the question has therefore been settled and it is understood wherever there are Jews that this place of worship by definition of Judaism it is Jerusalem.

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TITHE OR RELIGIOUS TAX.

(Didrachma).

Every worship needs material means to be performed, perpetuated and even developed.

The obligatory offerings and sacrifices listed in Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not presented as taxes strictly speaking; but they are, of course, "taxes disguised as offering.” God is considered to be the master of the people of Israel, so they owe him a practical recognition, paid in the form of tax requirements. It is a matter of affirming at every moment one’s submission to God: at the birth of a child or the first-born of livestock, at harvest time, at death, etc...God is also seen as the owner of the land; the products of the soil are tithed as a sign of gratitude for the divine benefits and form a kind of tenancy right.

The Second Book of Kings remembers the original meaning of the taking: it shows a man bringing his first fruits to Elisha and not to the priests. H.L. Ellison, interpreting this episode, writes that the man recognized Elisha as the only true representative of God in the country; he then contravenes tradition, on the grounds that it is to God that he wishes to pay his tax. The recipient is only the representative; it is to the deity that the product is supposed to return . In his eyes Elisha is legitimate, for that because he acts in the name of his god.

As far as psychology is concerned, Abraham's sacrifice on Isaac is in nothing different from the human sacrifices practiced then in Canaan, except at the end. It is revealing of Abraham's mentality that he was ready to push the desire to please his god-or-demon up to the crime.

“ Any Israelite who sacrifices an ox, a lamb or a goat instead of bringing it to the Lord

(in fact intended to feed Levites) ….that person shall be cut off from their people " (Leviticus 17:3).

By offering the deities a little of what they grant to men - harvest, newborn of the flock, child, human life - the ancient religions hoped to avoid the wrath of heaven and to reconcile themselves to the benevolence of the supernatural beings who govern our destinies.

As among the Sumero-Babylonians (see the myth of the creation of Man among them), blood therefore had a very important cultic use among the Hebrews. Spilled on the altar during sacrifices, it was used in the rites of the consecration (Exodus 29:20).

At the time of the Sinai covenant, half of the blood of the sacrifice will be shed on the people and the other half on the altar (what use for the salvation of our souls today?)

Hence the fate (rejected and despised) reserved for the unfortunate Cain, who had only plants to offer.

And the healthy reaction of Isaiah, many generations later, in the face of such a bloody religion (1,13 to 17).

"Stop bringing meaningless offerings your incense is detestable to me.

They have become a burden to me; I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow."

........................................................................................................................

CHRONOLOGICAL MARKERS.

A-From origins to kingship IN TEXTS. Rather confusing situation. Theocracy ??? Tribal chiefs???

------------------- ---------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------

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B-Kingship. – 1040 - 586. The royal line will disappear in Babylon around -560.

-On the religious level the period known as First Temple, -960-587. In fact, there was an enlargement of an earlier pagan temple.

-Analysis: there is a state authority, kings and high priests.

------------------- ---------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------C-Post-exile situation.

Yehud Medinata -537 - 323. Persian province.

Province of the Lagid kingdom of the Ptolemies from -323 to -201. Province of the Seleucid kingdom from - 200 - 135.

Hasmonean kingdom from -134 to -63.

King Herod the Great and the ethnarch Herod Archelaus from -37 to + 6.

Judea Roman province from + 7 to + 324.

-On the religious level, the period known as Second Temple - 539 + 70.

-There are civil authorities, independent or not (independent from -134 to -63) and high priests.

------------------ ----------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------- ----------------------- D-Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem and Diaspora. +70 to...1948? No more Temple no more high priests. Appearance of the rabbis.

------------------------ ----------------------------------------- ----------------------------- ---------------------------------------

According to the sacred text, King Joash would have taken care of the fact that this tax, which had fallen into disuse, would be paid again. (2 Ch, 24:4-11) but perhaps is it the origin of this form of levy and not a reinstatement?

THE SITUATION AFTER THE RETURN FROM DEPORTATION.

- 538 in Jerusalem consecration of a new altar in honor of Yhwh and beginning of the reconstruction of the Temple .

- 515 inauguration of the new Temple.

In the absence of the restoration of kingship, it seems that the religious and political leadership of the Jewish nation within the Persian Empire was then entrusted to a Kohen Gadol (high priest) and to the Council of Elders (Sanhedrin).

The sacred text (Ne 10; 32-33) shows us Nehemiah taking from the Jews a capitation of one third of a shekel.

For the Persian central power to allow the priestly class to rebuild the sanctuary and allow it to receive tithes and obligatory offerings was undoubtedly an "economic" way of establishing its domination over this people.

The thing is all the more obvious when the clergy also takes care of what is normally the responsibility of the State, what will be several times the case in Judaism.

When Alexander the Great arrived in -332 he found a Jerusalem governed by a Council of Elders composed of three rival factions: influential Jewish patricians, priests and scribes.

Although his intention was to take the city of Jerusalem and destroy it with its Temple as a punishment for the support for Darius of his high priest (Jewish Antiquities Book XI, 317-319), Alexander allowed the Jews to continue to govern themselves in exchange for their loyalty and the payment of tribute. The Lagids followed Alexander's policy of allowing the peoples they had conquered to govern themselves.

In Jerusalem this traditional government remained that of the High Priest and his Sanhedrin...

After his clear victory in the year -200 in Panium at the foot of the Golan Heights, over the army of his ( 5 years old ) rival Ptolemy V of Egypt, the Seleucid king Antiochus III, known as the Great, who became the master of the Syrian and Palestinian set, granted the Jewish people a very generous charter, maintaining the main thing of their autonomy.

The text was, of course, reported to us by Flavius Josephus... The city of Jerusalem thus remained a Jewish theocracy.

The other Seleucid kings did not change anything and, with the exception of three years of persecution under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, guaranteed the observance of the Mosaic Law in the Holy City. An ordinance of Antiochus III even imposes fines for the violation of certain ritual dictates of the Torah...

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Around Jerusalem, the payment of a tax or tithe to the Temple was a natural part of the autonomy enjoyed by the Jewish nation to administer itself.

This payment was intended to be egalitarian: "All who cross over, those twenty-year-old or more, are to give an offering to the Lord. The rich are not to give more than a half shekel and the poor are not to give less " (Exodus 30:14-15).

God or Moses would therefore have invented the flat tax. ?

N. B. This tax intended to finance worship should not be confused, however, with what Moses is supposed to have ordered concerning the Egyptians, and which comes rather under a traditional spirit of vengeance.

Exodus 3:21-22.

"The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing……they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.”

So the Hebrews will come out of Egypt like thieves. (Exodus 12:35.) Hence the Pharaoh's reaction, of course (pursuit, clashes...).

During the period of the Second Temple, the rate varied, but the principle of equality regardless of the wealth of the taxpayer was always preserved.

The name of didrachma being Greek (a coin of two drachmas) this appellation of the tithe due to the Temple of Jerusalem is to go back to the Hellenistic period.

According to Daniel Sperber's calculations, the didrachma paid out each year represented no more than two days' work by a farm worker. Its low value was compensated for by the large number of payers.

THE SITUATION IN THE DIASPORA.

For the Diaspora this was to be a means of affirming in a practical AND VISIBLE way, one’s attachment to the "promised land.” As well as its Jewishness or its membership in the people of Yhwh.

This was, moreover, the very meaning of this tax when it was instituted. The book of Exodus attributes it to God Himself in these words: " Then the Lord said to Moses, when you take a census of the Israelites to count them, each one must pay the Lord a ransom for his life at the time he is counted. Then no plague will come on them when you number them. Each one who crosses over to those already counted is to give a half shekel […] It will be a memorial for the Israelites before the Lord, making atonement for your lives." (Ex 30:11-13 and 16).

It will be noted, however, that this levy was not intended to become permanent: it was only the payment made by the Israelites whom Moses had counted, and intended for the upkeep of the tent of meeting (verse 15).

The Jews of the diaspora seem to have paid for the didrachma to the local Jewish authorities in the synagogues. According to Jean Juster, it was initially used to provide for the needs of the local community; only the surplus was sent to Judea on pilgrimage during the great Jewish feasts.

These transfers of funds must have been important, since several Roman writings mention them. Let us quote particularly the famous case reported by Cicero, in his speech in defense of the former governor of Asia, Lucius Flaccus: "As gold, under pretense of being given to the Jews, was accustomed every year to be exported out of Italy and all the provinces to Jerusalem, Flaccus issued an edict establishing a law that it should not be lawful for gold to be exported out of Asia. And who is there, O judges, who cannot honestly praise this measure? The Senate had often decided, and when I was consul it came to a most solemn resolution that gold ought not to be exported. […..] The amount of the gold is known; the gold is in the treasury" (Cicero, Oration for L. Flaccus XXVIII).

Rome, therefore not only had knowledge of these payments, but was even able to count the sum paid by the Province of Asia in 59 before our era.

This was, of course, a simple protectionist measure, but it was very badly considered by the Jewish community of the time.

Flavius Josephus mentions several other comparable cases during the late republican period.

On the other hand, Julius Caesar, when he recognized the Hasmonean high priest Hyrcan II as having rights over Jewish taxation, of course, included in it the half-shekel. He therefore promises the ethnarch to respect this tax and the autonomy of its collection. Rome admits the power of the high priest, considered as a "friendly" sovereign. The tax remains in place and keeps its identity weight.

In 28 before our era, Augustus himself, perhaps to confirm a decision of Caesar, taken over locally by certain governors, asserts the inviolability (asylia) of this taxation; he orders that those who receive "sacred money" (khremata hiera) to send it to Jerusalem are allowed to do so from everywhere.

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Agrippa adds to these edicts the denial of the right of asylum to anyone would touch the money of the Jews, and about 9 before our era the proconsul of Asia, Julius Antonius, promises an escort for these sums that he calls "voluntary offerings to the deity.”

The Roman authority was therefore initially very reluctant to see so much money leave its provinces, even after the conquest of Judea by Pompey in 63 before our era and Caesar was the first to authorize the payment of the didrachma, followed by Augustus, who carefully protected it, thus breaking with the "protectionist" measures of the republican period.

CONCLUSION.

The didrachma is well therefore one of the material consequences of the theocratic ideas then in force in Judea. The didrachma is presented as a divine order: it would be willed by God, perceived both as origin of the power and recipient of the taxation. It is also a means of getting the subsidies necessary for the good functioning of the sanctuary. The didrachma also obliges every Jew to position himself before the priestly authority, choosing, year after year, to pay it or not.

By the equality of its payment, the didrachma certainly meant, from its origin and still in the first century, the equality between all Jews, but also the attachment to the temple of Jerusalem, even the submission to God in every moment of the believer's life.

Judaism has established the obligation for everyone to pay to religious authorities the tenth part of his income. (Deuteronomy 14:22-29.) Every Israelite therefore owes the tithe for seeds, fruit, oil and animals. The tribe of Levi, which is in charge of taxes, receives the whole tithe, and the priests the tithe of the tithe. Deuteronomy adds two,of them, one on all revenues, payable in Jerusalem, the other for the poor. But from the beginning, this tithe will give rise to discontent and disapproval. The tax collectors who form the tribe of Levi, for example, will fall into common disrepute.

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OTHER IDEA MAKING UP JUDAISM

(since an ideology is always made with several ideas):

THE EXISTENCE OF INTERMEDIATE BEINGS BETWEEN GOD AND HUMANS.

The Canaanites had a kind of Trinity with 4 persons : El, the Father, his wife Asherah or Astarte, Mother of the god-or-demons, their son Baal, and their daughter Anath daughter, called the Virgin. To impose the worship of YHWH (Yaho/Yahu) the Judeans will compare him with El and will preserve the creatures who are the emanations from him in the plural form Elohim. The Orthodox Jewish religion made these entities, the heavenly court honoring YHWH. What the Hindus call vyuha and what the Muslims will call shirk (to condemn it).

It results from that an ambiguity about the person of the single God-or-Demon which therefore will not fail to generate, in the Judaism, and the Judeo-Christianity after it, dualistic or Trinitarian speculations ad infinitum.

The Bible is indeed also filled with beings called malak in Hebrew, Greek aggelos, angel in our language. Sometimes known as sons of God.

“The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair and they took them wives of all that they chose. The Nephilim were in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them: the same were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown.” (Genesis. 6, 1-4).

For the Jews indeed it goes without saying, the angel always appears in forms coming under the male sex; either he fights against Jacob, stops the arm of Abraham about sacrificing his son, steps in between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel; or proposes to lead the chosen people towards the Promised land.

The angels are an integral part of the Hebraic religion. To represent them in detail, the Jews also had recourse to the Sumerian religious imagery.

After the exile in Babylon (- 587 - 538) they even used the Aryan religious images in Persia to speak about them.

Cherubs. Kerubim. Singular kerub. The Akkadian etymology of the word refers us to the concept of lower divinity playing a part of intercessor to more powerful deities.

The kerub is a mythical being equipped with a chest of man and a body of winged quadruped, synthesizing all qualities of the living: human intelligence, strength of lions, speed of bulls, independence of birds.

In the Old Testament the cherubs seem to be entities, with two or four faces, whose function being to protect.

Those who were placed by God to forbid the Men any return in the earthly paradise (the Garden of Eden) will be equipped with blazing and whirling swords (Genesis. 3,24).

In the tent sanctuary of the desert, two statuettes out of gold representing cherubs overhung the Ark of the Covenant (Exodus. 37.7 to 9).

It was always protected by them in 1 Kings, 8.6.

God or the Demiurge is sitting on them in 2 Samuel 6.2 and 1 Chronicles 13.6.

The cherubs of which Ezekiel affirms that they carry the throne of Glory of God, are winged bulls similar to those which watch at the entrance of the Sumerian temples. People asked for a long time the question of the gender of the angels. It is true that the cherubs appearing in the first temple of Jerusalem were two female figures, but the Jewish tradition answered for a long time that there are also some of them who are males, since the two cherubs who succeeded them were coupled;

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according to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (- 175 - 164) who, while destroying the Temple, besides will make fun of this “pornographic” inspiration. We know less, on the other hand, about the seraphs (serafim or burning, with venom) equipped with SIX wings (while you are at it!) Those who appear in the account of the calling of Isaiah are represented with bodies of poisonous snakes (Isaiah. 6,2).

In the reign of David, the nationalist ideology of the first Hebrew kingdom has in its discourse legitimated the earthly triumph of Yaho/YahuYHWH, at least such it was hoped, by an equivalent heavenly triumph.

The mythical figures of the other nations [their national god-or-demons] were subjected, still in this religious ideology, to the god-or-demon of Israel, YHWH: they were to form only his court. At least in the mind of the successive writers of the Bible, of course; and thus the historical destiny of all the other nations was designed by them as being directed by angelic [or more exactly divine], entities, placed under the supreme authority of Yaho/Yahu/YHWH.

Certain branches of the later Jewish religion (see for example the apocryphal book of Enoch) saw all these elohim angels as being organized under the direction of chiefs (4 or 7 following the times) called archangels. Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Gabriel… the ending - El, which designates God, indicates the most important ones. Michael (who is like God) prince of the angels, occupies the top of this hierarchical pyramid considering his name. I am, he says, in one of the books of Enoch, the angel who intercedes for the nation of Israel, so that it is not destroyed. Therefore it would be him who, in the last century, would have intervened at the end of the forties to prevent that the genocide of the Jews in Europe, undertaken by the baptized Catholic Adolf Hitler, is carried out through its conclusion; and so that the Jewish State finally takes shape in Palestine.

Raphael means “God has healed.”

Uriel means “Light of God.”

Gabriel means “God is my strength.”

This flood of imagination peaked with Christianity. Much more detailed than Enoch, Saint Paul, in his letter to the Colossians, evokes five different categories of angels (principalities, thrones, powers, dominations, and virtues). In his Dictionary of angels, Gustav Davidson will count a thousand beneficial or evil creatures. Albert the Great as for him, counted 66,666 legions of 66,666 angels each one, what would then increase their total to 4,444,355 556. The 3000 angels of the battle of Badr in Islam are crushed!

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DEVIL DEMONS AND OTHER ANTI GOD.

Dualism ... religious-philosophical principle according to which fight in the world two opposing forces, good against evil, light against darkness, the Good God against the Bad Devil, etc.

THE DEVIL.

The conformist biblical mythology equates the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan (Hebrew form) or with the Devil (from the Greek form) in disguise, that is to say with Lucifer. This would have revolted during the sixth day, not admitting that God had ordered his heavenly militia to worship Adam. In this dualism which doesn’t want to say its name, he plays the role of great Tempter.

But there are other biblical creatures more or less also playing this role.

THE MONSTERS.

The Leviathan. Monster on the initial chaos, symbol of the hostile forces, pertaining to the Ugaritic and Phoenician mythology in Ras Shamra (the Lotan); and often depicted as a snake or a dragon with seven heads symbolizing the raging sea. In Job, 40,15 it is equated with a crocodile. Rahab is another name of the Leviathan. This mythological figure of Evil, comparable to the Babylonian Tiamat, is also associated, and as Leviathan, with raging sea and sea monsters.

THE DEMONS.

Azazel is a kind of desert demon. (Leviticus.16 8.) The Septuagint translates this term apopompaios ( "he who removes plagues"). Cabbala and Midrash see in it the combination of the names of two fallen angels "Uza" and "Azael" down on Earth at the time of Tubal-Cain (Genesis 4). Azazel would be one of the names of Satan. This is what takes over the familiar modern Hebrew in which "Go to Azazel" means: "Go to hell." The ritual of the scapegoat was a kind of exorcism consisting of offering a goat to the demon called Azazel in order to divert God's wrath from the community.

There are other demons, with hairy goat's body, but this time anonymous, mentioned in Leviticus 17, 7. Lilith is a female demon who haunts the ruins at night. See e.g., Isaiah 34.14. The term is borrowed from the Babylonian mythology.

Belial. Hebrew name of the Ugaritic death god or demon (Mot).

The Refaim themselves are Transjordan giants more or less combined with death (some ghosts?)

THE ANTICHRIST.

Although especially popularized by the Apocalypse ascribed to John, this concept goes back at least to the second century before our era; while under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the plundering of the Temple in Jerusalem and the forced Hellenization had sparked the revolt of Mattathias Maccabee and of his son Judah.

The Antichrist still falls within the deepest human psychology and for Jews it is designed as running Belial decisions, avatar of the Ugaritic god or demon of death, nothingness and of the negativity.

Therefore he will act as a foil to a long series of Messiahs willing to secure the salvation of the nation, of the Jewish people, or of the whole world.

But as has been rightly said in his time the French Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in a few sentences, that we believe we can be summarized as follows (in case of misunderstanding from our behalf, let us know); "If there is a being who, before ourselves and more than ourselves, is worthy of hell -- I am bound to name him -- it is God. The sins which we ask him to forgive, he caused us to commit them;

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the traps from which we implore him to free us, he set for us; and the Satan who besets us is himself "(Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. System of economical contradictions or the philosophy of misery).

MISOGYNY.

It is obvious that the creating god-or-demons of the world were thought by the first men as being at the beginning… goddess-or-demonesses! Or some fairies, if you prefer!

The first human speculations about the birth of the world and the men could indeed only be worked out in terms of a divine procreation or maternity.

The worship of the Great Goddess-or-demoness, i.e., of the female principle, Creator of Life or Queen of Heaven, is probably the oldest form of religion which can be known. It was the subject of a violent suppression from the sectarian believers of the Babylonian then biblical myths, who erased to the memory of it, in order to better do prevail the exclusivism of the “Our Father.” The ancient Israel considered the woman for a lower being, in accordance with the curse cast on her by the Elohim in the Genesis.

Unto the woman he said: “I will greatly multiply your pain and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; and your desire shall be to your husband, and he shall rule over you” (Genesis. 3.16).

It was also forbidden to the women to enter a place where was laid down, this would be only a while, the Ark of the Covenant with God: 2 Chronicles, 8.11.

And one of the oldest Jewish prayers to recite each morning for the (male) practitioners, the Shacharit prayer, is still this one: “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has not created me a woman.”

As for the women themselves, they must be simply satisfied to thank God for having done them as they are. “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who has made me according to your will.” No comment!

See hereinbelow.

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THE GHETTO VOICE.

The haredi is, etymologically speaking, the one who is "terrified" at the idea of violating one of the 613 mitzvot of Judaism.

In other words, and from an atheistic point of view, he is a mentally ill person who is making his own life a misery . De minimis non curat druis. God, IF HE EXISTS, CANNOT BE SUCH ……… .But finally BEATI PAUPERES SPIRITU we will therefore deal in this chapter with the way in which this insane person can make the life of others a misery, of those who are content with 3 or 4 (out of 7) Nohahide laws which make sense, namely the first the fifth and the sixth. The others are a farce .

First of all, let us specify that the Haredim do not define themselves as ultra-orthodox, but as orthodox Jews. And let us add that the notion of " orthodox Jews " did not exist in the past: it would have required the existence of " heterodox Jews .” But there was none. Or at least they were not numerous enough (the case of the Karaites, for example) for a specific name is attributed to them.

These thus defined ultra-orthodox Jews, therefore, without wishing to offend them but only to be understood by the general public, do not form an identical group and include Hasidim, Mitnagdim, Sephardim, Mizrahim, etc., within them.

Historically, ultra-orthodoxy is Ashkenazi. Therefore, there are few Sephardic Haredim. The Haredi communities nevertheless respect the same principles, each one bringing only its few variations.

Historical background.

In Spain within the framework of the Arab-Muslim empire and in the south of France, we have seen with BERNARD Lazare who were the great names in Jewish thought who tried but vainly to wrest the pious Jew from his mental prison. His personal pet hate is the Talmud.

In the nineteenth century, Western modernity brought about in Germany and then in the rest of Europe strong developments in Judaism. In the first half of the nineteenth century in Germany particularly, a "reformed Judaism" appeared which tried to revise the place of the Talmud. On the other hand, Judaism, which did not follow this movement of thought, had to define itself as the guardian of religious tradition and was therefore given the status of Orthodoxy.

But the question of the " modernization " of the Jewish religion was not the only one that arose. The question of the modernization of Jewish societies as a whole (social structures, power structures, relations with the State) was also aroused.

Let us note, first of all, that there was a reformed or assimilationist current which considered that the Jewish religious fact should remain purely private.For example, Karl Marx. There is nothing wrong with that.

Another current was content with a cautious approach open to technical and social modernity. Jews must also exist as an organized collectivity. And they must reject aspects of the modern world contrary to the 613 mitzvot (commandments) identified by tradition or at least remain close to their values, but they can also participate in the life of the society in which they evolve.

At first, the Orthodox remained united. Modern German Orthodox and Eastern European conservatives founded, for example, the Agudath Israel Party in 1912 in Poland. At that time, they were aware of the risks run by religious Jews in general in the world of that time and together they rejected Zionism, assimilation, socialism, atheism, etc.,

But in the interwar period, the differences between "modern" Orthodoxes and conservatives became more pronounced. "Modern" Orthodox left the Agudath Israel at that time besides.

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Consequently, only the religious sensibility rejecting the entry into Western societies, which were considered to be contradictory in their values with the Jewish tradition, will remain in the Agudath Israel. This current was expressed especially in Central and Eastern Europe. It accepts certain aspects of technical modernity, but refutes almost all the aspects of social or political "modernity": democracy, equality men women, etc. THEY ARE THE HAREDIM.

The Haredi world today has many specificities, both with regard to non-Jews and to secular Jews and "modern" Orthodox religious Jews. The "modern" Orthodox and the Haredim do not differ theologically, but in their way of life and their political orientations.

Two principles are applied in the Haredi world: Da’as Torah: " what the Torah says ,” and Emunat Hakhamim: " faith in the wise .” This is a unique system of thought to which we will return in a more detailed way....

The ideal of the Haredim remains a Jewish life grouped around the rabbis, refusing many aspects of the modern world (television is particularly rejected), with separate districts for non-Jews or lay Jews. Physically, their black clothing (the "black-coated" as they are called in Israel) makes them easily noticeable. We are not, however, in the presence of an attitude of rejection of modernity as radical as that of the Amish: electricity, cars, computers and planes are accepted.

The fundamental vision of the Haredim is that the world around them is a permanent source of perversion. Television or advertising is a source of debauched or violent images. The values of independence of the individual, ideological relativism, equality of the sexes or religions are rejected. It is an illusion to believe, as Orthodox Jews do, that one can live in this world while strictly adhering to the 613 mitzvot. The threat is permanent. In order not to succumb to it, one must live in groups, in separate neighborhoods, under the strict guidance of the rabbis.

Today, Haredim are mostly numerous in Israel and the United States. There are also relatively large communities in Great Britain and Belgium, mainly in Antwerp and London, but also in Paris and Zurich.

They are now strongly established in Israel, where they have their own neighborhoods (and even cities), political parties, shops and schools. In Israel, the main communities are, in decreasing order of importance

-the Jerusalem area, where there are about 200,000 of them

-Bnei Brak, an almost completely ultra-Orthodox city of 200,000 inhabitants in the suburbs of Tel Aviv

-Ashdod, where more than 50,000 Haredim live south of Tel Aviv

-Betar Illit and Modiin Illit Israeli settlements in the West Bank (Judea-Samaria), established in the mid-1990s and located near the former "Green Line.” They each have more than 50,000 inhabitants,

Since the end of the 19th century, they have partially rejected modernity, whether in the field of morals or ideologies. Because of their mistrust of social innovations, the Haredim generally live on the fringes of the surrounding secular societies, even Jewish ones, in their neighborhoods and under the leadership of their rabbis, the only source of power that is fully legitimate in their eyes. They are also the largest Jewish group today, displaying their reluctance and sometimes even hostility to Zionism.

POSITION TOWARDS ZIONISM AND THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

The Haredim originally rejected Zionism quite widely, although this rejection has changed. According to a historically dominant (but not exclusive) thesis among the religious, God destroyed the kingdoms of Israel and Judah to punish the Jews, and only his messiah will be able to recreate David’s kingdom.

The life in the Holy Land is possible, but any autonomous attempt to create a state is a revolt against God. The Babylonian Talmud (Masekhet Ketubot 111a), in its commentary of a verse, rather obscure but repeated 3 times, of the Song of Songs (verses 2,7; 3,5; 8,4) states, for example….

Why are these three oaths needed?

One, so that the Jews should not ascend to Eretz Yisrael as a wall, but little by little.

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And another one, that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the Jews that they should not rebel against the rule of the nations of the world.

And the last one is that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the nations of the world that they should not subjugate the Jews excessively.

Huh..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

This would be basically,very basically, the Jewish component of the protection obligations that the Muslim dhimmah implies towards the Jews. A bit far-fetched anyway! Can one play the future of a community on such weak indications????

Finally, it is not our problem! If this discussion gives us the opportunity to repeat once again that we are, of course, against any genocide it goes without saying, but also, and here it is less obvious, for the maintenance of human biodiversity physical mental cultural, especially linguistics (each language is a way of thinking the world).

In any case, this exegesis known as "exegesis of the three oaths" is still evoked today by the Neturei Karta and the Hasidim of Satmar (from Satu Mare in Romania) but over time the Haredim ended up (mostly at least) accepting the State of Israel. The parties that represent them even have ministers. But the Zionists' (even religious Zionists) own "worship" of the state still seems to them to be idolatry condemned by the Bible. Hence their present ambivalent attitude of acceptance and reluctance.

Four attitudes towards Zionism can be identified today:

A small minority, grouped in the Edah Haredit (centered around Satmar's Hasidim) and the Neturei Karta, is violently anti-Zionist. For them, Zionism is still a rebellion against God, and must therefore be fought. Rejection is absolute. This rejection also leads to the rejection of modern Hebrew, which is considered a secular language. Hebrew must remain a religious language. At the extreme opposite , there is a small minority of Haredi Tzioni who are both Haredim and religious Zionists (generally quite extremist besides).

The influential Shass party, an offshoot of the Sephardic Haredim, although not historically Haredi Tzioni, announced in 2010 its official rallying to Zionism and its willingness to join the World Zionist Organization.

The mainstream still issues reservations about Zionism, an ideology which, even in its religious aspect (embodied among others by the National Religious Party, one of the main expressions of the "modern" Orthodox) implies placing one's hope in the State and not only in God. This is a form of idolatry. But the Jewish State still arouses a certain interest.

A sizeable minority of Haredim lost these reservations. One finds them today, for example, among the Lubavitch Hasidim. Without officially rallying to Zionism, they take actually very nationalist positions. Moreover, it is customary for the Lubavitch Hasidim who have completed their religious studies to do their reserve periods in the Israeli army.

RELATIONS WITH THE ARMY.

The Haredim do not have a positive relationship with the army. Apart from the Lubavitch most thus refuse military service, even in the Israeli army.

HOMOSEXUALITY.

Opposition to homosexuality is generating increasing violence in Israel, linked to the rising visibility of the homosexual community.

In 2005, a homosexual was stabbed by Haredim, in application of a Leviticus passage (20,13) that punishes homosexuality with death

In November 2006, the violent Haredim demonstrations against a homosexual parade in Jerusalem resulted in 860,000 dollars in damages.

STATUS OF WOMEN.

Sexuality is particularly central to the Haredim's rejection of the modern world. The fear of sexual temptation is permanent. Not only the Haredi woman must wear a "modest" outfit (which implies, for example, hiding her hair), but all women who enter Haredi neighborhoods must theoretically do the same.

Marriages are made at a young age, usually through a matchmaker (Shadkhan), who is responsible for finding and proposing the best match. Having as many children as possible is an important

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religious commandment for the Haredim: "Grow and multiply. (Genesis 1:28, 9:1,7.) Except in medical cases, families have from 5 to 10 children (an average of 7 children per family in Israel in 2005).

The woman is under the authority of her father until marriage, ad then under that of her husband. Thus, when conflicts arise between Haredim communities, or during elections in Israel (see below), the wife must follow her husband's community and party, not her father's.

The chastity of women is a great concern for ultra-Orthodox society. She must not only hide her hair, arms and legs down to her ankles, but even in the presence of third parties, she is forbidden the slightest physical contact with a man who is not her husband. According to Jewish law (codified in the Shulhan Arukh) *, she must never be alone with a man other than her husband (or her father, grandfather, brother, son, grandson, etc.). It is also forbidden for a man to be alone with a woman other than his own (or one of his close relatives). In the 1980s, separate pedestrian crossings for men and women were thus created in some Haredim areas to prevent involuntary brushing between men and women on the most walked passages.

At the end of 2007, in Jerusalem, a city with a high proportion of Haredim, about 30 buses had been fitted out to allow for a gender separation, with men having reserved seats at the front and women at the back, any mixing being prohibited.

All these constraints severely limit the Haredi woman's ability to go out whether for leisure or work.

In 2007, a survey showed that men in the ultra-Orthodox community spend most of their time studying religion and do not work, the burden of earning an income falling on women. This work is a limited but real factor in strengthening the weight of the Haredi woman. However, this work by women is limited by two factors.

There is no question of accepting that Haredi women work in a mixed gender environment, what reduces the number of accessible posts.

Frequent pregnancies put off many employers.

Nevertheless, some Haredim consider such a shift towards female work as a serious sin.

* The Shulhan Aruk or Shulchan Aruch is a kind of Jewish Sharia written in 1563 by the Talmudist Joseph Caro (Spain 1488 Turkey 1575).

LIFESTYLE.

The study of religious texts in a yeshiva is the primary objective of every Haredi man. The Haredim have got considerable state funding for their activities, enabling a high proportion of adult men to devote all their time to study. In practice, particularly as a result of a downward trend in state aid, statistics show that the socio-economic situation still forces many Haredim to work in the commercial sector. Nevertheless, more than 70% of male ultra-Orthodoxes and about 50% of female ultra-Orthodoxes are without a job. In the diaspora, such funding is absent or limited, and the time spent studying must be cut back to allow for gainful work.

DEMOGRAPHIC GROWTH.

Today, in Israel and in the diaspora, the Haredim are growing quite rapidly. Among Israeli Jews, there were 3% of declared Haredim in 1990, 5% in 1999, 6% in 2002 and 9% in 2012.The number of Haredim in Israel is growing rapidly. They accounted for 25% of Jewish children in Israel in 2006, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics.

From a socio-economic point of view, their (relative) rejection of modern education and their willingness to give preference to Talmudic study over work in the commercial sector (especially if it is immersed in the world of the laity) lead them to fairly modest living standards. This situation is particularly strong in Israel, where the communities are firm on these points.

But despite this socio-economic situation, the Haredim are a very dynamic population. Women marry young and have 5-10 children (27% of Israeli Haredim report living in overcrowded housing, compared to 2% of secular Jews). Moreover, some Orthodoxes are sliding towards ultra-Orthodox practices, and some traditionalist Jews, even secular Jews, are doing Teshuva (repentance) by becoming Haredim.

This sometimes explosive growth leads to tensions with neighbors. Indeed, the aim of the Haredim is to have homogeneous and relatively closed neighborhoods. When Haredim settle in numbers in a new

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neighborhood, and this is a permanent movement, they tend to impose their rules. Thus, in Jerusalem, "for some months [text written at the end of 2007], the members of a 'decency patrol' have also been lashing out at women dressed 'provocatively' according to them, who are circulating in the neighborhoods inhabited by the (ultra-Orthodox) Haredim in northern Jerusalem. The Princess shop of female clothing in Mea Shearim Street is regularly visited by the patrol. "They ask us to withdraw from the sale dresses they consider too short," says the owner. If we want to do business in the neighborhood, we have to obey the rules: our clothes must show nothing but hands and face."

MODERN GHETTOS.

The desire for social control is one of the reasons why Haredim choose to live in separate neighborhoods (often called ghettos in memory of the former ghettos of Eastern Europe). In these neighborhoods they have developed a society apart, with its shops, schools, institutions and newspapers.

To avoid too many conflicts, the Israeli authorities have indeed accepted to create new neighborhoods or new cities specially for the Haredim, thus avoiding too much pressure on the "secular" neighborhoods. In Jerusalem, many settlement areas in East Jerusalem have been created for their benefit. The same was true for Bnei Brak, Israel's second largest Haredi city, in the outskirts of Tel Aviv, and for the large Israeli settlement of Modi’in Illit. The Haredim now account for 25 per cent of the population of the settlements in the territories.

This rapid demographic and geographical growth is sometimes perceived (especially in Jerusalem, where the Haredim account for almost a third of the Jewish population ) as an invasion by the neighborhood. Regularly, the specter of a non-Zionist Jerusalem (dominated by Arabs and Haredim) reappears. Indeed, in 2003, a Haredi, Rabbi Uri Lupolianski, was elected mayor of Jerusalem. Father of 12 children, considered a moderate, he tried to ban the Gay Pride in Jerusalem, but was rejected by the courts.

WAY OF LIFE.

We have seen that the Haredim had large families, did little "modern" education that could lead to well-paid jobs, tried (especially among men and in Israel) to avoid a paid work in order to devote themselves to religious study. These three phenomena imply a rather disadvantaged socio-economic level, especially in Israel.

The rapid demographic growth of the Haredim makes it increasingly difficult to rely only on state funds that are not infinitely expandable. As a result, there is an increasing proportion of Israeli male Haredim in paid employment (30 per cent in 2007 ).

Paid work in the diaspora is much more widespread (due to lack of subsidies), and Haredim therefore generally have a more favorable socio-economic status there than in Israel. Nevertheless, the 2008 US National Census places the Haredi enclave of Kiryas Joel in Orange County, New York, at the top of the country in terms of poverty rates. With an average household income of $15,848, two thirds of the residents live below the poverty line and the percentage of residents receiving state food assistance is 40%.28 The average household income in the area is $13,848.

In Israel in 2005, official figures indicate that 21.3 per cent of Haredim live below the poverty line. This reinforces the role of the Haredim political parties (which distribute some of them or lobby for getting them) and the de facto acceptance of the Zionist State as a provider of funds.

POLITICS.

Some mitzvot cannot easily be respected on an individual basis. This is the case of the ban on watching "debauchery" images. These are spread on wall advertisements or magazine covers. Hence the attempt to prohibit any naked woman on these media (in Israel), at least in Haredim neighborhoods.

There is a tradition according to which every Jew is accountable for the behavior of others, which is the basis for God's collective punishment, destroying ancient Israel for the failings of certain. The "good behavior" of other Jews (non-Jews are not concerned) therefore also concern the Haredim.

Some religious leaders, such as Elazar Shach, however, have sometimes contested the attempts at religious coercion in Israel. For them, they amplify the conflict with secular Jews, do not prevent them from committing their sins privately, and therefore do not save them from divine punishment. Finally, to

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ask a Knesset comprising lay people, Marxists, Arabs, to pronounce on the best way to follow Jewish religious law, is simply not serious.

This debate has never really been settled, but the tendency to call for a strengthening of religious legislation in Israel is nevertheless dominant.

However, Haredi society is not fundamentally interested in politics, because the priority must go to the religion. However, in order to preserve its interests, it has been led to create religious parties (Agudat Israel, originally, then Shass and Degel HaTorah). Agudath Israel was initially active in the diaspora, but it and its splits are now mainly active in Israel. These specific parties, which espouse the internal divisions within the Israeli Haredi world, have a dual function. From an ideological point of view, it is a matter of pushing binding laws on the observance of commandments and generally of advocating a religious vision of the world in the sphere of political institutions. From a pragmatic point of view, it is a matter of defending the interests of the Haredim, particularly the collection of state funds to finance large families and religious institutions. In the final analysis, the aim is to enable as many men as possible to study as much as possible, wasting as little time as possible on ancillary activities, such as a paid work. The Israeli government's policy of reducing social assistance since 2001 has therefore met with strong opposition.

SPECIFIC FEATURES.

The Haredi world has strong specificities.

Social (specific schools, specific shops), geographical (separate neighborhoods, sometimes physically closed during the Shabbat) and clothing (black clothes) separatism. The "modern" orthodox are infinitely less particularistic and have, for example, neither reserved district nor special clothing (with the exception of the wearing of the kippa and "modest" clothing for women);extremely extensive religious studies. In Israel, state funding of the yeshivot allowed a high proportion of Haredim to study the Talmud throughout their live without a paid work. Today, donations mainly from abroad (the United States, France) finance the yeshivot. Indeed, state aid has decreased considerably. The "modern" Orthodoxes, on the other hand, are studying secular studies and working in the traditional economic sectors;

a relationship to Zionism ranging from visceral hostility (very minority), or simple rejection (minority), to a positive outlook (minority), through an interested but critical neutrality (majority). The "modern" Orthodoxes, on the other hand, are today almost all in favor of Zionism (which was not always the case at the beginning of the 20th century). The rejection of the values of social "modernity": gender mix, democracy, state "cult,” liberated sexuality. In this field, "modern" Orthodoxes are more open, even if sexual freedom is clearly rejected.

Hostility to science. For the Haredim, the Talmud is in possession of the truth and cannot be contradicted by any other source of knowledge. Science is thus often seen by the Haredim as a threat for the orthodox faith. Among the "modern" Orthodoxes, scientific knowledge is more accepted, and there are various attempts to reconcile it with the faith.

In Israel, the socio-economic status of the Haredim is much lower than that of the "modern" Orthodox.

The outward vision of the "black-coated" is therefore often that of a homogeneous and compact group. Although exact on the whole, this vision must be nuanced: the Haredim have no common direction, and are crossed by many splits; the divisions between Mitnagdim or Lithuanians and Hasidim for example

VIOLENCE ANTI HAREDIM.

Haredim regularly provoke hostile reactions, particularly in Israel, both because of their policy of religious constraints and because of their visible differences. These reactions may include verbal or physical violence. For example, the Israeli sculptor Yigal Tumarkin……

But the cases of attacks by secular Jews against Haredim remain relatively isolated, they are nevertheless indicative of a tension that the Israeli press has dubbed the Kulturkampf (War of Cultures), named after an anti-Catholic campaign launched by Bismarck in Germany in the nineteenth century.

THE NON-HAREDIM AS SEEN BY THE HAREDIM.

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-Non Haredim non-Jews: Orthodox Jewish tradition indicates that each people defines its relationship to God by itself, but that Jews have a special role in God's plans. There is therefore no question of seeking to convert non-Jews (although conversions are possible at their express request). Ultimately, Haredim are quite indifferent to what non-Jews think or do. Given past persecutions, there is a certain mistrust, and sometimes a willingness not to "provoke the nations (goyim)".

-Non Haredim secular Jews: The general idea is that the world of secular Jews is dangerous and corrupt therefore it is necessary to be separated from it by living in reserved districts.Haredim and non-religious Jews in Israel today form two separate nations.This situation can only be changed by the Teshuva (repentance) of those who have departed from the Torah. « In the presence of non-religious Jews, we are inclined to behave as if they are not even there.” However, the Lubavitch Hasidim practice nevertheless intense proselytizing among secular Jews, while other communities tend to keep out of the way.

-Non Haredim conservative (massortim) or reformed Jews: these currents, which appeared in the 19th century and are now especially powerful in the United States, partially contest the Halakha (Orthodox Jewish religious law). The Haredim consider them Jewish, although dangerously far from orthodoxy. Their rabbis are not recognized, nor are their conversions. Since the State of Israel accepts the conversions of these rabbis if they took place outside Israel (but does not recognize them if they took place in Israel), we have therefore Israelis recognized as Jews by Israel, but not by the ultra-Orthodoxes (or even by the "modern" Orthodox clerics, for that matter). One of the recurrent political struggles of the Israeli Haredim parties and the American Haredim since the 1980s has been to have the Israeli law of return changed to exclude these converts - very few in practice. The State has always refused such a reform, which would be a declaration of war against American Judaism dominated by these progressive currents.

-Non Haredim Falasha (Beta Israel Ethiopian Jews): The Haredim coming under the jurisdiction of the Rav Yosef (Shass) accept them without problems, the former Sephardic high rabbi of Israel recognized them as Jews in 1973. The "modern" Orthodoxes also recognize them as fully Jewish, but other Haredim groups are much more reluctant. Some accept them as fully Jewish only after an accelerated conversion by immersion in a ritual bath (something the Beta Israel generally refuse).

-Non Haredim Samaritans and Karaites: Although recognized as Jews by Israel , from the Haredi point of view they are very heterodox groups, totally rejected; various accusations, sometimes violent, flourish against them: pagans, crypto-Muslims, enemies of the Jews...

AND FINALLY THE HAREDIM AS SEEN BY THE NON-HAREDIM SECULAR JEWS.

The Haredim are more or less well perceived by the secular Jews, who develop rather ambivalent feelings towards them... On the one hand, they represent a tradition to which many Jews, even non-practicing Jews, remain attached. But on the other hand, their demographic growth frightens them. Their desire to strengthen religious coercion (in Israel at least) is rejected. Their refusal to do military service is seen as a danger for Israel. Their rather broad refusal to work, and their demand for state funds (still in Israel) to compensate for this refusal, is often very badly perceived. Words like "parasitism" or "racketeering" are sometimes read in the press. The Shinui party thus based its electoral success in 2003 (15 seats) on a strong denunciation of binding religious laws and financial aid to the Haredim.

POINT OF VIEW IN THE WAY OF ARTHUR KOESTLER.

That Jews may have thought that hostility towards Jews was not the result of a difference of belief or culture between Jews and non-Jews, but of a difference of a profound nature; makes it possible to realize what the notion of a chosen people can have as perversion.

How long will it take for the representatives of Judaism to recognize that this notion - almost always pejorative - of foreigner, ger, goy, of incomplete, unfinished, crippled, barbaric, deficient by nature, even impure, character, in short, another by definition, has contributed to a decisive step backwards compared to the Moreh Ha Nebuchim or Guide of the Perplexed by a Moses Maimonides (who nevertheless always followed the Pharisaic idea of the resurrection of bodies* ) or compared to the Haskalah by a Moses Mendelssohn (who was nevertheless deeply religious and never went so far as to question the totem Moses)?

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* Not to be confused with the notion of a glorious body, i.e., to be endowed after death with a regenerated body, an ideal body (bellissama for women for example) as illuminated from the inside by a divine light (luan laith lon laith lon gaile).

ISRAEL AND THE DIASPORA.

"The Jewish religion - unlike Christianity, Buddhism or Islam - implies membership of a historical nation, a chosen race. All Jewish festivals commemorate events in national history: the exodus from Egypt, the Maccabean revolt,

the death of the oppressor Haman, the destruction of the Temple. The Old Testament is first and foremost the narrative of a nation's history; it gave monotheism to the world, yet its credo is tribal rather than universal. Every prayer and ritual observance proclaims membership of an ancient race, which automatically separates the Jew from the racial and historic past of the people in whose midst he lives. The Jewish faith, as shown by 2000 years of

tragic history, is nationally and socially self-segregating. It sets the Jew apart and invites his being set apart. It automatically creates physical and cultural ghettos. It transformed the Jews of the Diaspora into a pseudo-nation without any of the attributes and privileges of nationhood, held together loosely by a system of traditional beliefs based on racial and historical premises which turn out to be illusory…..

Thus orthodox Judaism in the Diaspora is dying out, and it is the vast majority of enlightened or agnostic Jews who perpetuate the paradox by loyally clinging to their pseudo-national status in the belief that it is their duty to preserve the Jewish tradition.

It is, however, not easy to define what the term "Jewish tradition" signifies in the eyes of this enlightened majority, who reject the Chosen-Race doctrine of orthodoxy…..

After the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews ceased to have a language and secular culture of their own. Hebrew as a vernacular yielded to Aramaic before the beginning of the Christian era; the Jewish scholars and poets in Spain wrote in Arabic, others later in German, Polish, Russian, English and French. Certain Jewish communities developed dialects of their own, such as Yiddish and Ladino, but none of these produced works comparable to the impressive

Jewish contribution to German, Austro-Hungarian or American literature.

The main, specifically Jewish literary activity of the Diaspora was theological. Yet Talmud, Cabbala, and the bulky tomes of biblical exegesis are practically unknown to the contemporary Jewish public, although they are, to repeat it once more, the only relics of a specifically Jewish tradition - if that term is to have a concrete meaning - during the last two millennia. In other words, whatever came out of the Diaspora is either not specifically Jewish, or not part of

a living tradition. The philosophical, scientific and artistic achievements of individual Jews consist in contributions to the culture of their host nations; they do not represent a common cultural inheritance or autonomous body of traditions.

To sum up, the Jews of our day have no cultural tradition in common, merely certain habits and behavior patterns, derived by social inheritance from the traumatic experience of the ghetto, and from a religion which the majority does not practice or believe in, but which nevertheless confers on them a pseudo-national status.

Obviously -as I have argued elsewhere - the long-term solution of the paradox can only be emigration to Israel or gradual assimilation to their host nations. Before the holocaust, this process was in full swing; and in 1975 Time Magazine reported that American Jews "tend to marry outside their faith at a high rate; almost one third of all marriages are mixed.’

Nevertheless the lingering influence of Judaism's racial and historical message, though based on an illusion, acts as a powerful emotional break by appealing to tribal loyalty. It is in this context that the part played by the thirteenth tribe in ancestral history becomes relevant to the Jews of the Diaspora. Yet, as already said, it is irrelevant to modern Israel, which has acquired a genuine national identity. It is perhaps symbolic that Abraham Poliak, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University and no doubt an Israeli patriot, made a major contribution to our knowledge of Jewry's Khazar ancestry, undermining the legend of the Chosen Race. It may also be significant that the native Israeli "Sabra" represents, physically and mentally, the complete opposite of the "typical Jew,” bred in the ghetto .’ THE THIRTEENTH TRIBE: THE KHAZAR EMPIRE AND ITS HERITAGE.Arthur Koestler, New York: Random House. 1976.

As we have already had the opportunity to point out, the word race used by Arthur Koestler in his book is to be handled with extreme care and, let us repeat it: there has been no pure race for a long time. There are only human ethnic groups characterized by this or that gene (appearance) frequency.

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What plays a role in history, on the other hand, are the "cultural" races or more precisely the cultural conditioning. With all due respect to Mr. Adolf Hitler, Moses, or the ultra-orthodox religious like Eitan).

The last great historian of Judaism, Esther Benbassa, has become very pessimistic, or at least without illusions on this subject. The present phase, since 1945, is clearly one of accelerated ghettoization, with a dreadful return of religion, as it is evident not only from the State of Israel, but from the various countries, especially in the West, where Jews live. "I meet more and more Jews who seem to me to be living in a kind of aquarium. They listen to Jewish radio, they read the Jewish press, they live with Jews, they go to see Jewish films. The self-imposed confinement of some orthodox people is understandable. The way of life, the dietary rules impose a certain distance. This is not the most worrying, nor the most surprising. I'm talking about the others. To this can be added the fact that Jewish children go in large numbers to schools which, in defiance of the spirit of the law, admit only an "infinitesimal" proportion of non-Jewish children. In France, it is worse, because the so-called homeland of human rights combines inefficiency and hypocrisy in this field. The secularism about it she boasts has become a vain word, a rattle, a red rag that is waved under the noses of the bulls they want to wake up. In these establishments, new ghettos for children and young people, whose numbers are subject to strong growth, and which form an unprecedented communitarian pole; the four pillars of teaching are "learning to be Jewish, knowing Hebrew, loving Israel, opening up to social life.”

Rejecting both the assimilation of Jews into communities of non-Jews (in the name of the myth of the Divine Choseness) and the assimilation of non-Jews into communities of Jews (in the name of the Law of Return or the Rabbinical Law on the Transmission of Jewishness by Women); Judaism sentences its own people to move from a ghetto to a ghetto whether this ghetto is territorial or intellectual. See the unfortunate counterexample of the present State of Israel.

The phenomenon of belonging is very powerful among ethnic and religious minorities throughout the world; it is a part of the herd instinct. There is strength in unity, as the saying goes. The herd instinct is part of a certain primordial way of thinking. As soon as the species feels threatened by an external danger, its members are drawn to one another to reassure and strengthen themselves in the face of adversity. Even animals form coalitions between subgroups when an attack threatens the entire group. This is most noticeable in primates. It's normal, you might say, since they're our cousins.

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THE NATIONAL PREFERENCE OR COMMUNITY LOGIC

(chosen people / gentiles goyim / Gerim).

" A people who live by themselves, set apart from other nations" (Numbers, 23, 9).

" No foreigner uncircumcised in heart and flesh is to enter my sanctuary, not even the foreigners who live among the Israelites. " (Ezekiel, 44, 9).

The brief soundings we have just carried out in the heart of present-day Judaism have shown to what extent, frightening besides, one of the key points, the notion of covenant, could have been copied from the political world (of the time, moreover, and therefore very primary).

Whether the model which inspired the scribes of King Josiah (639-609) was a Hittite treaty or a neo-Assyrian treaty is of little importance, what matters is that it is a question of vassalage and not of a treaty between equals as Jean Jaures (February 12,1895,applause) would have wished. And from the ancient Near Eastern type of vassalage the Alliance theology has kept all its characteristics, including its carrot and stick policy.

The conditioning of men is also in the order of the nurture: the Man is not only a being "of nature" with genetically determined behavior, but also a being "of culture. It can result from that very different realities: the best and the worst.

Speaking of the hostility of the Jews against "non-Jews" Hannah Arendt has written in the preface to the antisemitism part of her book about the origins of totalitarianism:(Harvest New York 1958).

“The notion of an unbroken continuity of persecutions, expulsions, and massacres from the end of the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages, the modem era, and down to our own time, frequently embellished by the idea that modem antisemitism is no more than a secularized version of popular medieval superstitions, is no less fallacious (though, of course, less mischievous) than the corresponding antisemitic notion of a Jewish secret society that has ruled, or aspired to rule, the world since antiquity.

Historically, the hiatus between the Late Middle Ages and the modem age with respect to Jewish affairs is even more marked than the rift between Roman antiquity and the Middle Ages, or the gulf — frequently considered to be the most important turning point of Jewish history — that separated the catastrophes of the First Crusades from earlier medieval centuries.

For this hiatus lasted through nearly two centuries, from the fifteenth to the end of the sixteenth, during which Jewish-Gentile relations were at an all-time low, Jewish “indifference to conditions and events in the outside world” was at an all-time high, and Judaism became “more than ever a closed system of thought.”

It was at this time that Jews, without any outside interference, began to think “that the difference between Jewry and the nations was fundamentally not one of creed and faith, but one of inner nature….

The history of antisemitism, like the history of Jew-hatred, is part and parcel of the long and intricate story of Jewish-Gentile relations under the conditions of Jewish dispersion. Interest in this history was practically nonexistent prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, when it coincided with the rise of antisemitism, i.-e. the worst possible constellation for establishing reliable historical records .

Since then, it has been the common fallacy of Jewish and non-Jewish historiography — though mostly for opposite reasons — to isolate the hostile elements in Christian and Jewish sources and to stress the series of catastrophes, expulsions, and massacres that have punctuated Jewish history just as armed and unarmed conflicts, war, famine, and pestilence have punctuated the history of Europe.

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Needless to add, it was Jewish historiography, with its strong polemical and apologetic bias, that undertook to trace the record of Jew-hatred in Christian history, while it was left to the anti-semites to trace an intellectually not too dissimilar record from ancient Jewish authorities.

When this Jewish tradition of an often violent antagonism to Christians and Gentiles came to light, “The general Jewish public was not only outraged but genuinely astonished ,” so well had its spokesmen succeeded in convincing themselves and everybody else of the non-fact that Jewish separateness was due exclusively to Gentile hostility and lack of enlightenment. Judaism was now maintained chiefly by Jewish historians, had always been superior to other religions in that it believed in human equality and tolerance. That this self-deceiving theory, accompanied by the belief that the Jewish people had always been the passive, suffering object of Christian persecutions, actually amounted to a prolongation and modernization of the old myth of chosenness and was bound to end in new and often very complicated practices of separation, destined to uphold the ancient dichotomy, is perhaps one of those ironies which seem to be in store for those who, for whatever reasons, try to embellish and manipulate political facts and historical records.

For if Jews had anything in common with their non-Jewish neighbors to support their newly proclaimed equality, it was

precisely a religiously predetermined, mutually hostile past that was as rich in cultural achievement on the highest level as it was abundant in fanaticism and crude superstitions on the level of the uneducated masses.

Two very real factors were decisive for the fateful misconceptions that are still current in usual presentations of Jewish history.

Nowhere and at no time after the destruction of the temple did Jews possess their own territory and their own state; they always depended for their physical existence upon the protection of non-Jewish authorities, although some means of self-protection, the right to bear arms for example, were granted to “the Jews in France and Germany well into the thirteenth century .”

This does not mean that Jews were always deprived of power, but it is true that in any contest of violence, no matter for what reasons, Jews were not only vulnerable but helpless so that it was only natural, especially in the centuries of complete estrangement that preceded their rise to political equality that all current outbursts of violence should be experienced by them as mere repetitions.

Catastrophes, moreover, were understood in Jewish tradition in terms of martyrology, which in turn had its historical basis in the first centuries of our era, when both Jews and Christians had defied the might of the Roman Empire, as well as in medieval conditions when the alternative of submitting to baptism and thus saving themselves from persecution remained open to Jews even when the cause of violence was not religious but political and economic.

This factual constellation gave rise to an optical illusion under which both Jewish and non-Jewish historians have suffered ever since. Historiography “has until now dealt more with the Christian dissociation from the Jews than with the reverse,” thus obliterating the otherwise more important fact that Jewish dissociation from the Gentile world, and more specifically from the Christian environment, has been of greater relevance for Jewish history than the reverse, for the obvious reason that the very survival of the people as an identifiable entity depended upon such voluntary separation and not, as was currently assumed, upon the hostility of Christians and non-Jews.”

In short, the evidence if it was needed to have one, that the Jews are like the others, is that they are like other people, capable of the worst and best.

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ETHICS AND MORALS.

As for Jewish ethics or morals, it is rightly important to distinguish two levels:

The first level,what Judaism expects from every man, whether Jewish or not, what is called the Seven Laws of Noah (Sheva Mitzvot B'nei Noach), more often called Noahide laws even Noachide laws.

What the druids of antiquity called "Reda" type morality, but which in the case of Druidism had at least the merit of guaranteeing everybody, Celtic and non-Celtic, the salvation of souls in the other world, a better another world, whereas in the case of Judaism this morality is useless to non-Jews or Goyim for two reasons.

The first is that in Judaism the survival of the soul after death is planned for none.

The second is that in the general judgment, called the Day of Yahveh or Judgment of Yahveh in the biblical texts; which will take place after the return of the Messiah, if the Jewish people and the Jerusalem of the time are exalted, glorified, it will not be the case of the non-Jews who will have only the singular honor to pay them homage, to come there in embassies with presents, etc. a little like the three wise men in some way 1).

The second level, what Judaism expects from Jews.

The 7 laws of Noah are a list of seven moral imperatives that were given by God to Noah (according to Jewish tradition).

Here they are according to Orthodox Judaism

Obligation to establish courts.

Prohibition of blasphemy.

Prohibition of idolatry.

Prohibition of illicit sexual relations.

Prohibition of murder.

Prohibition of theft.

Prohibition of eating from a live animal.

N.B. Leviticus (11.1 to 23) gives an exhaustive list of animals that they have or not the right to eat. Among those they are not allowed to eat, there is hare and pig that Christians eat merrily.

Exodus and Leviticus contain dozens of detailed guidelines on animal sacrifice in order to honor God. Example Exodus 29.38 and following. This is what you are to offer on the altar regularly each day (it is God who is supposed to speak to Moses): two lambs a year old. 39 Offer one in the morning and the other at twilight. 40. With the first lamb offer a tenth of an ephah of the finest flour mixed with a quarter of a hin of oil from pressed olives, and a quarter of a hin of wine as a drink offering. 41. Sacrifice the other lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning—a pleasing aroma, a food offering presented to the Lord. 42 “For the generations to come this burned offering is to be made regularly, etc.

Compared to the brehon law in Ireland THEREFORE THE ASSESSMENT IS POOR ENOUGH.

If we put aside the stupidity of eating flesh from a live animal (what to do with infinitely small, microbes, oysters?); it remains 4 commandments interesting by themselves but without is detailed how to practice them: the obligation to do justice (to have courts), the prohibition of illicit sexual relations, the

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prohibition of murder, the prohibition of theft ; and 2 highly questionable commandments: prohibition of idolatry, prohibition of blasphemy.

It is obvious that idolatry and blasphemy are combined in the minds of the drafters of these texts but little question now.

Did the idolaters of Biblical times believe that the idols they worshiped were real gods or spirits, or did they regard them as representations of these gods or spirits?

Yehezkel Kaufman says that in some passages, some biblical writers had already understood that the idolaters didn’t worship the idols themselves but the gods and spirits whose existence was independent from the idols. For example, in a passage of 1 Kings 18:27, the Hebrew prophet Elijah challenges the priests of Baal atop Mount Carmel to persuade their god to perform a miracle, after they tried to convince the Jews to engage in idolatry. The pagan priests beseeched their god without the use of an idol, what, in Kaufman’s view, indicates that Baal was not an idol but one of the deities that could be worshiped through the use of an idol. Kaufman nevertheless thinks that generally the biblical authors interpreted idolatry well in its most literal form: according to them therefore most idolaters believed really that their idols were some gods.

Biblical authors would have committed the sin of hybris therefore in making the huge mistake of assuming that every idolatry was of this type, although idols were often only representations of gods. Kaufman writes that "we may perhaps say that the Bible sees in paganism only its lowest level, the level of mana-beliefs...the prophets ignore what we know to be authentic paganism (i.e., its elaborate mythology about the origin and exploits of the gods and their ultimate subjection to a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal power representing Fate or Necessity). The biblical author's condemnation revolves around the taunt of fetishism."

Isaiah, 41.23-24. (Yahweh speaks to other gods.): Do something, whether good or bad, so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear. But you are less than nothing and your works are utterly worthless; whoever chooses you is detestable.

As for the notion of stealing it is clear that it depends entirely on the concept of personal or collective, property, which has many varied and even continues to vary widely. In the field of copyright, for example, we went from the absence of such rights (the oldest literature is usually anonymous) to the tendency to place more and more things and longer and longer under royalties. Fortunately that the one who invented fire wheels even the two plus two = four did not have the idea to prohibit others from copying it or being inspired by it because we would be still obliged to pay billions of small cents to his descendants. Until that one day a whatshisname...... see the current definition of the author and of the justification of copyright .... also decrees himself inventor owner of the air that we breathe or of all that is living. In France, it is already sufficient to claim oneself as a private owner IN AN EXCLUSIVE WAY of a common passage ( without property’s title supporting one’s claim) FOR THE COURTS AGREE WITH YOU (and too bad for the neighbors who need to use the common passage to enter or leave their home).

More important.

Slavery is not recommended in the Old Testament, but it seems self-evident 2). Deuteronomy 15: 1-18 distinguishes between Jewish and non-Jewish slaves. Jewish slaves are generously freed every seven years apart from contrary will of the Jewish slave in question. Deuteronomy 15, 12 makes it clear that this freeing applies only to Jewish slaves.

The analysis of the data shows that the Hebrew slave lives more a mishap than a fatality and that the foreign slave is treated ..... a bit like everywhere else at the time, better than in the Greek civilization perhaps, but certainly less well than within Celtic or Germanic or even Egyptian societies. For Pharaonic Egypt does not experiment slavery in the Greco-Roman sense of the word and the designation of the Egyptian slave is close to that of the Celtic slave namely "a war prisoner.” The hieroglyph of what is translated by a slave represents a pestle beside the representation of a man or a woman, and means "he servant" or she servant; the same tool accompanied by the hieroglyph designating the god means indeed "servant of the god" (priest).

As for the Jewish law, the foreign slave is a good comparable to other goods.

"If [a person] said: my property will be bequeathed to x, slaves are included [word for word are called property]" (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Bathra 150b) .From the origins of biblical times, slavery is considered a punishment ("Cursed be Canaan, the lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers" Gen. IX 25), and as a downgrading, a consequence of an immoral behavior ("Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside."(ibid., 22).

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In Hellenistic and Roman times, Jews could buy slaves at slave markets that were besides in the hands of Greeks or Romans.

Some rabbis nevertheless have taught that it is allowed to go to the market of idolaters to buy slaves or maidservants, or cattle and Resh Lakisch adds that it is not only allowed to acquire Hebrew slaves, but also pagan slaves, because they are thus brought closer to God.

“Said R. Jeremiah to R. Zera: It was taught, ‘We may buy of them cattle, menservants and maidservants.’ Is this to be applied to a Jewish slave or to a heathen slave also? — Said he in reply: According to common sense, a Jewish slave [is meant]; for were it to apply to a heathen slave, what [meritorious] use could he make of him?

When Rabin came,he said in the name of R. Simeon b. Lakish: “It may even apply to a heathen slave ; because he brings him under the wings of the Shechinah” (Jerusalem Talmud Avodah Zarah, I 1-4).

The importation of slaves was often done by diverting the laws of the Roman tax authorities :" If, when passing the custom house, a person declared, 'This is my son,” and then he retracted, and said, 'He is my slave,' he is to be believed. [If, however,] he declared, 'He is my slave,' and then he retracted, and said,'He is my son', he is not believed for, if his latter statement were correct, he would not have declared his son upon whom there is no tax) to be his slave for whom a tax is payable "(Babylonian Talmud Baba Bathra 127b).

The purchase was done either by cash payment, by contract or by de facto service. The master had the purchased slave a collar bearing his seal, which indicated his right of ownership. See the frightening quibbles of the Babylonian Talmud on this subject, the commentary of commentary (gemara) on the terms oni and nimus (Babylonian Talmud Gittin 43b). According to Ex. XXI: 32, the price of the slave was thirty shekels (sum of money received by the owner for his slave killed by the horns of an ox ). However, the age, the sex, the capacities of the slave made vary the price.

The foreign slave is not on an equal footing with the Jewish slave (temporary status and not the property of the master):

“‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly"(Lev 25 44-45).

There is no marriage for foreign slaves, so a family cannot be legally constituted and kinship does not exist. The slave (like the woman) does not have the right to testify and cannot take an oath (Babylonian Talmud, Baba Kamma 88). Josephus, when describing the laws of Moses to the people confirms this prohibition " Nor let servants be admitted to give testimony, on account of the ignobility of their soul: since ’tis probable that they may not speak truth, either out of hope of gain, or fear of punishment "(Antiquities of the Jews IV 8).

On the other hand, according to Jewish law, the slave when he accepts circumcision, is integrated into the Jewish community and this situation leads to his freeing (among other things by his marriage with a free Jew). His integration, however, had limits: he cannot access to royalty ("be sure to appoint over you a king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite.

It is one of your brothers that you must appoint for your king, you will not have the right to submit to a stranger who would not be your brother "Deut. XVII 15) or the office of judge" (offices inaccessible even to proselytes and freedmen, if not in civil trials at least in criminal trials ,” as Zadok Kahn points out in his thesis “slavery according to Bible and Talmud” Paris 1867, p. 138).

As for polygamy it is not recommended , but it is not either reproved as the story of Jacob who took successively for wife Leah then Rachel shows it (Genesis 29.15 to 30).

Illicit relation is therefore a rather vague concept, is it reduced to a mere prohibition of incest between first biological parents?

You shall not kill. Is there murder in case of self-defense, is there murder in case of war (for example when a soldier kills an enemy by surprise ???As it is often the case in the Old Testament or the Quran such a prohibition (see for example the verse 32 of chapter 5: "Whosoever killS a human being it shall

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be as if he had killed all mankind”); this assassination notion too deserves to be clarified. This verse is therefore very interesting. But it is to be read in full: "For that cause (the crime perpetrated by Cain). We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killS a human being for other than manslaughter (retaliation law) or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind.” What changes everything is the mention or reservation: "other than manslaughter or corruption on the earth.”

These words remove the absolute nature of the murder prohibition ; they even suggest that it is lawful or necessary to kill to defend God's order on earth. Of course, one may wonder if they were not added later (they come badly in the text). But as this text is authoritative today, this verse can only have the following meaning: murder is an evil unless it is to avenge a murder or the besmirched honor of God on earth (that is to say, ultimately the honor ... of Islam). Murder is lawful in this case.

The extermination of the vanquished peoples.

In Numbers and Deuteronomy, God recommends the extermination of some of the peoples conquered by the Jewish people and who do not share its faith in him.

Example: You must destroy all the peoples the LORD your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity (Deuteronomy 7:16).

The Book of Joshua contains stories of massacres unworthy of having been attributed to the will of God, unworthy of having been subjected to approval or even mere meditation, of posterity, of so many human generations, for centuries .

The Bible therefore does not contain only divine truths revealed or inspired for the salvation of our souls. Archaeology proves beyond doubt that no movement of population occurred at that time in this region of the world, despite the efforts of many biblical scholars and historians to prove the contrary. This is a story invented by the writers of the Bible to unite their nation. The first lie of many others in the Old and the New Testaments.

Other real or imaginary massacres it is the same because in morals it is the intention which is important, the apology of a crime is also a crime, ditto for the attempted sacrifice of Abraham on the person of his son Isaac, what is indeed subjectively speaking a crime, about which the Bible boasts.

The list includes only those with a single killer where the number of victims is specified.

2 Kings 2:22-23.Elisha (with help from God) sends two bears to kill 42 children for making fun of his bald head.

Judges 9: 5. Abimelech kills 69 of his brothers on a stone.

1 Samuel 22:18-19. Doeg the Edomite kills 85 priests and all the men, women, children, infants, oxen, donkeys, and sheep with a sword.

2 Kings 1:10-12. Elijah (and God) burns to death 102 men.

1 Samuel 18: 25-27. David kills 200 Philistines to purchase his first wife with their foreskins.

2 Samuel 23:18, 1 Chronicles 11:20. Abishai kills 300 men with a spear.

1 Chronicles 11: 11. The chief of Davids’ captains kills either 300 (or 800 in 2 Samuel 23: 8) men with a spear.

1 Kings 18: 22-40. Elijah kills 450 religious leaders in a magic force (prayer) contest. 850 with the priests of the sacred groves.

Judges 3:31 Shamgar kills 600 Philistines with an ox goad.

Judges 15: 14-15. Samson kills 1000 men with the jawbone of an ass.

Death penalty.

Leviticus (20.8 to 27) lists sins that lead to the putting to death. They are still sins for Christians today, but they no longer cause the putting to death.

For example (20.10): "'If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.

21.9: "'If a priest's daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

We also find some of them in Exodus (31:14): 'Observe the Sabbath, because it is holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death; those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people.

The ethical assessment of Judaism is therefore poor.

Finally, the obligation to have courts in order to hear all that.

Justice is a very old concept among humans (see Hammurabi’s code) but which has varied through the ages and will vary still a lot, it is enough to see the evolution of certain currents of thought risen in

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the 18 or the 19th century and which come now to support sometimes in good faith, the exact opposite of their spiritual ancestors of previous centuries.

Let us repeat it therefore again, the asset of Judaism is rather poor at the universal ethical level (Reda in druidism).

1) The non-Jewish Goyim who are not satisfied with the destiny that Jewish theology has in store for them can always imagine finding better in Christianity but they waste their time , the two judgments of souls (a particular judgment a general judgment) that Christianity plans are not much better.

2) See for example Luke (12: 37): It will be good for those servants whose master finds them watching when he comes.

THE TRUE HISTORY OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

Surely you've seen that in movies or on the television, but a little reminder is nevertheless needed! The scenario is the following one. After the Exodus, Moses and the Hebrews move into in the desert. Arrived before Mount Sinai, Moses climbs it, alone, and there, in a deluge of fire, he receives engraved in the stone God's Ten Commandments, that the Hebrews must respect (if they do not want it troubles happen to them). These Ten Commandments are a summary intended to facilitate the memorization of the most important laws of the community, those that imply the death penalty for a member of the clan, whoever he is. In short, we would have here a kind of first list of "deadly sins.”

The Torah tells us that Moses received it atop Sinai and gave it to the people, during a solemn ceremony at the foot of the mountain.

But the Exodus narrative recounting this episode (19, 25) has a uniqueness that can only intrigue anyone endowed with a minimal reflection. It is written indeed that Moses came down the mountain and took the floor to say ... to say ... but we do not know what, because the narrative is interrupted precisely at this place. And immediately after this is not Moses who is supposed to speak, but God himself who promulgates thus personally the Ten Commandments (20: 1). Exactly as if somebody had replaced in this place a remark attributed to Moses by another one later, but ascribed to God this time.

Besides we have to admit that these commands do not seem really to match the time of Moses, which was a time of peregrinations through desert and wandering life. We can therefore assume that they were rather settled at the time of Judges, around 1100 before our era, that is to say some 150 years after his supposed death.

Furthermore, the Bible repeats that these commands (these "words") are 10 in number (Deuteronomy 4,13; 10,4), but when we count them, we find not 10 but 12 ....

Here they are (Exodus 20: 3-17):

1. You shall have no other gods before me (verse 3).

2. You shall not make any graven image, etc., etc. (Verse 4.)

3. You shall not bow down to these images or worship them, etc., etc. (Verse 5.)

4. You shall not misuse the name of Yahweh your God (verse 7).

5. Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy (verse 8).

6. Honor your father and your mother (verse 12).

7. You shall not murder (verse 13).

8. You shall not commit adultery (verse 14).

9. You shall not steal (verse 15).

10. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor (verse 16).

11. You shall not covet your neighbor's house (verse 17 a).

12. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his servant, etc., etc. (Verse 17, b.)

So there is reason to be intrigued.

What sense may well have indeed the prohibition of coveting the neighbor’s “house,” for men or women who do not lodge in houses but in tents? It is only after their "settling" in the Promised Land that the Hebrews will build permanent houses. The commandment against false testimony supposes

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as for it the existence of courts, judges and legal trial. Impossible during the wandering in the desert. And when is imposed the Sabbath, it is stated: "You shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female slave.” But how could these people have slaves, while they were themselves all fugitives, recently gone out of Egypt?

All this, then, led historians to believe that the Ten Commandments in reality belong to a period when the people is already settled in Canaan, and has an organization including moral or legal standards, adapted to a different era.

Assumptions about the process having led to this result.

At one point, facing the abundance of laws and the need for a summary in which would be included the most serious crimes, such as to endanger the life of the community; they decided to draw up a short list of the latter. And for this purpose they sought among all those laws that included the death penalty, that is to say all those which ended with the words: "Thus you must purge the evil from among you." Most of these dictates besides were, of course, in Deuteronomy, since this book, by definition (Deuteronomy means second law in Greek language) was a collection of laws.

Here below the legal dictates appearing here and there, separately, in the Deuteronomy.

Dt 13, 2-6. If someone says, "Let's follow other gods,” distinct from Yahweh, that man must be put to death.You must purge the evil from among you.

Dt 17, 2-7. If a man or woman served other gods and worshiped them, or the sun or the moon or any of the heavenly host, you shall stone them to death.So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Dt 17, 8-13. The man who acts presumptuously by not listening to the priest who stands there to serve Yahweh, etc...that man shall die; thus you shall purge the evil from Israel.

Dt 21.18 to 21. If a man has a rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Dt 19, 11-13. If someone kills a neighbor, the killer shall be handed over to the avenger of blood to die. No pity. You must purge from Israel the guilt of shedding innocent blood.

Dt 22, 13-21. If a man takes a wife and if no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, the men of her town shall stone her to death. You must purge the evil from among you.

Dt 24: 7. If someone is caught kidnapping a fellow Israelite, the kidnapper must die. You must purge the evil from among you.

Dt 19, 16-19. If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you.

Dt 22, 22. If a man is found sleeping with another man's wife, both the men who slept with her and the woman must die. You must purge the evil from Israel.

Editorial Note. The only command which was not already in Deuteronomy is that relating to the Sabbath rest. Probably because in ancient times, being not considered as a matter serious enough to form a "mortal sin," it was not included in the series of acts punishable by the death penalty. But later, on the return from exile, when Sabbath observance became a key criterion,it was therefore added to the list.

Over time, this list took on such importance among the Hebrews, that they came to ascribe to Moses himself (other deception). It was then admitted as sure indeed that Moses was the lawgiver and the organizer of the legal life of the people. To say that Moses gave these laws at Sinai, it was therefore, in a way, do not lie, in every case remain in the realm of the possible, even of the likelihood.

Let us note finally that the various religions of the Book don’t agree completely about this Decalogue; and that Catholicism spreads in its teaching a text which is not recognized, for example, by the mad biblical scholars that are the Jehovah's Witnesses.

In addition, if there are well Ten Commandments, how to count them to come at this number? Long-time Jews and Christians have debated this issue and proposed various ways to solve it.

The first attempts were those of the Jew Philo of Alexandria and of the historian Josephus. This classification distinguishes four commandments relating to God and six about the neighbor. It was accepted by several ancient writers as Origen, Tertullian and the Christian taliban or parabolanus Gregory of Nazianzus. It is also that is currently adopted by the Lutheran, Calvinist or Anglican Reformists.

But the official Judaism itself, refused the classification of Philo and Josephus. When the rabbis drafted the Talmud, their holy book, they proposed another way to divide the commandments.

From the sixteenth century, when the catechisms began to be spread, the need to fix the Ten Commandments in the memory of the populations was foreseen; in order to facilitate the self-examination preparatory to confession, and to give a stimulus to spiritual life. However, as they were

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written, these commandments appeared somewhat outdated, as they referred to a time when the Israelites were still following a primitive morality.

The Decalogue mentioned for example other gods, since that time, the Israelites believed that there were other deities for other peoples; it prohibited images, whereas in the New Testament (Col 1:14), Christ is presented as the image of the invisible God, and therefore it is permissible to use images to express one’s faith. It commanded to sanctify the Sabbath, while Christians celebrated the Sunday, considered by them as the Lord's day.

The Church therefore decided to develop a new Decalogue for its catechism. It had already acted in the same direction, by excluding the animal sacrifices prescribed by the Old Law, the slaughtering of sheep, the young bulls burning, and the bloody sacrifice of lambs, which were to take place each day in the Temple.

THE TALMUD AND THE 613 COMMANDMENTS (MITZVOT) OR ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE TALMUD ON THE JEWISH PSYCHE.

What we have seen is part of the Torah or Law of Moses. Over time it was necessary for those who aligned themselves with it to clarify certain issues or to answer certain questions that these various verses might raise. All these commentaries on the Torah or Law of Moses are called Talmud (Talmud in Hebrew means teaching or repetition) and these debates are grouped into two main categories: the Mishnah and the Gemara.

The Mishnah refers to the teachings of masters called Tannaim. The Gemara or Talmud is strictly speaking the set of the discussions raised by the Mishnah in the subsequent teachers, the Amoraim. The Talmud in the broadest sense is a commentary on the Law, of the Torah (Mishnah) followed by a comment on this comment (Gemara).

The Talmud is originally made of oral comments, direct or indirect, on the Bible, we said. This fact, apparently insignificant, raises many problems, at the top of which ...the very writing of this book. Its writing down. This book, written transcript of oral traditions should never have come into being. An oral tradition, by definition, is intended to remain oral, and thus to evolve! See in this regard the prudent wisdom of our barbarous druids in the West (the writing is dangerous and is not advisable, only oral handover has the ability to be constantly adapted over generations).

There are two main Talmud, the Talmud known as of Babylon and that known as of Palestine or Jerusalem.

Judaism is therefore based not only on the Torah (the Old Testament part of the "Bible"), but also about this dual oral tradition.

The Babylonian Talmud. The Jews were not all returned from deportation so it persisted in Babylon, an important Jewish community which continued its reflection on the site. The finalization date varies according to the authors. Rabbi Abba bar Aybo, better known by his nicknames Abba Arika, and especially that of Rav is the Babylonian rabbi of the third century before our era considered as the first and greatest of the Amoraim ( doctors of Talmud). His discussions with his friend and opponent Samuel formed the basis for what would become the Talmud of Babylone.His work is in the period when the Judaism unifies its religious interpretations and practices, by breaking with the diversity of the pre-existing sects and schools. This religious unification is done in the context of a Judaism heir to the Pharisee Judaism.

The Palestinian Talmud itself was completed in the 4th century in Sepphoris and Caesarea. The abruptness of the text and its poor condition made it difficult to be read and it was so quickly overlooked. Many of its sheets were irretrievably lost. This incompletion status of the Jerusalem Talmud is due to historical circumstances, Christianity having become the official religion in the Roman Empire. The authors therefore lacked time to give it coherence and to improve it. And every subsequent effort will be nullified when Theodosius abolished the institution of the Patriarchate deposed the Sanhedrin and prohibited the formal ordainment of the rabbis. Judaism nevertheless remained the only religion allowed in the Roman Empire with Christianity, the pagan worship being banned starting from 391.

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THE VIEW OF THE GERMAN HISTORIAN HEINRICH GRAETZ (Geschichte der Juden).

It is as little possible for an historical event to be evolved, as for a natural birth to occur without labor. For a new historical phenomenon to struggle into existence, the comfortable aspect of things must be destroyed, indolent repose in cherished custom disturbed, and the power of habit broken. This destructive activity, although at first painful, is eventually favorable to the growth of healthy institutions, for thereby all vagueness is dissipated, all pretense destroyed, and dim reality brought more clearly to light. Opposition, the salt of history, which prevents corruption, had been wanting in Jewish history for several centuries, and religious life had been molded in set forms, and had there become petrified.

Pauline and post-apostolic Christianity in its day supplied just the opposition required. It abrogated the

standard of the Law, did away with knowledge, substituted faith, and thus produced in the evolution of Judaism a disposition to cling firmly to the Law, and to develop a system of religious teachings which should deal with the minutest details. The Talmud resulted from this movement of opposition; it was the sole prevailing authority in Judaism, and

succeeded in supplanting the Bible in the estimation of the people.

Even the study of the Talmud, which had possessed a refreshing and enlightening influence in the time of the Amoraim, had degenerated in the following century and in the first Gaonic period into a mere matter of memory, entirely devoid of any power of intellectual fructification.A free current of air was wanting to clear the heavy atmosphere.

Opposition to the Talmud, the password of the two heralds of the Messiah, Serene and Abu-Isa, had left no lasting impression, partly because the movement, accompanied by fanatical agitation in favor of a pretended Messiah, led to no other result than the undeceiving of its partisans, and partly because it had been set on foot by obscure persons, possessed of neither importance nor authority.

It appears that the Exilarch Solomon died (761-762) without issue and that the office ought to have been conferred on his nephew, Anan ben David.

The biography of this man, who exercised so profound influence upon Jewish history, is quite unknown. Their nephew of the Exilarch held that certain decisions of the Talmud possessed no religious authority, and that his anti-Talmudic tendency was known, at all events, to the representatives of the two academies, who directed the election of the Exilarch. The Gaonic office was at that time held by two brothers, sons of Nachman: that of Sora by Judah the Blind (759-762), and that of Pumbeditha by Dudaï (761-764).

These two brothers united with their college to prevent Anan from succeeding to the dignity of Exilarch, and to choose in his stead his younger brother Chananya (or Achunaï). The Ananite party were not sparing in their efforts to obtain the nomination of their chief by the Caliph Abu Jafar Almansur, who, they supposed, was favorably disposed towards them but their opponents gained the day. They are said to have accused Anan of planning a rebellion against the Caliph, who thereupon threw him into prison, where, the legend goes on to relate, a Mahometan was incarcerated. Both of them were to have been hanged, but Anan's companion in misfortune advised him to explain to the Caliph that he did not belong to the same sect as his brother Chananya. Thereupon Almansur is said to have liberated him and permitted him to emigrate with his followers to Palestine.

One thing only among all these doubtful statements is certain, namely, that Anan was obliged to leave his country and settle in Palestine. Anan became hostile to the Gaonate, and directed all his animosity against the Talmud, the principal source of its importance. He displayed, in fact, a fierce hostility to the Talmud and its supporters.

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Desirous of returning to the Bible in the ordering of religious life he reproached the Talmudists with having corrupted Judaism, and accused them at the same time, not only of adding many things to the Torah, but also of disregarding many of its commandments, which they declared to be no longer obligatory.

The advice which he impressed on his followers was "to seek industriously in the Scripture." On account of this return to the letter of the Bible (Mikra), the system of religion which Anan founded received the name of the Religion of the Text or Karaism.

As his opponents rightly affirmed, he set up a new and much stricter Talmud.Religious life was thus invested by Anan with a gloomy and unpoetic character. The forms of prayer, which had been employed during many centuries, some of which had been in use in the Temple, were forbidden by the founder of this sect and they were banished, together with the prayers of the paytanim. Instead of them, only Biblical selections were to be read. As the Jews of the Islamic empire were possessed of their own jurisdiction, Anan's innovations also dealt with points of civil law. In opposition to the

text of the Bible, he placed the female heirs on an equal footing with the males with reference to property inherited from parents, while, on the other hand, he denied to the husband the right of succeeding to the property of his deceased wife.

But although Anan gave great impetus to the study of the Bible, the age in which he lived was neither ripe enough nor his mind sufficiently comprehensive to enable him to produce a healthy, independent exposition of the text.

He himself was obliged, in order to establish his innovations, to have recourse to forced interpretations, such as would hardly have been proposed by the Talmudists whom he reviled. In short, by rejecting the tradition, he closed the gates of the sanctuary on the newly awakened poetical impulse.

It is singular that Anan and his followers justified their opposition to the Talmud by the example of the founder of Christianity. According to their idea, Jesus was a God-fearing, holy man, who had not desired to be recognized as a prophet, nor to set up a new religion in opposition to Judaism, but simply to confirm the precepts of the Torah and to abrogate laws imposed by human authority. Besides acknowledging the founder of Christianity, Anan also recognized Mahomet as the prophet of the Arabs. But he did not admit that the Torah had been repealed either by Jesus or by Mahomet.

His disciples called themselves, after him,Ananites and Karaites (Karaim, Bene Mikra), while to their adversaries

they gave the nickname of Rabbanites, which is equivalent to "Partisans of Authority." At first the irritation existing between the two parties was extremely violent. It is hardly necessary to say that the representatives of the colleges placed the chief of the party and his adherents under a ban of excommunication, and excluded them from

the pale of Judaism. But on their side, the Karaites renounced all connection with the Rabbanites, entered into no marriage with them, refused to eat at their table, and even abstained from visiting the house of a Rabbanite on the Sabbath, because they considered that the holy day was desecrated there. The Rabbanites pronounced the Karaites heretics(minim, apikorsim), preached against them from the pulpit, and refused to allow the followers of Anan to take part in the prayers. The Karaites, on the other hand, could not sufficiently abuse the two colleges of Sora and Pumbeditha.

Thus, for the third time, the Jewish race was divided into two hostile camps. Like Israel and Judah, during the first period,and the Pharisees and Sadducees in the time of the Second Temple, the Rabbanites and Karaites were now in opposition to each other. Jerusalem, the holy mother, who had witnessed so many wars between her sons, again became the scene of a fratricidal struggle. The Karaite community, which had withdrawn from the general union, acknowledged Anan as the legitimate Prince of the Captivity, and conferred this honorable title on him and his descendants.

It is impossible, however, for impartial judgment to endorse this encomium, for it is impossible to discern in Anan any greatness of mind. He was not a profound thinker, and was entirely devoid of philosophical knowledge. He had so mean a conception of the soul that, in painful adherence to the letter of the Bible, he designated the blood as its seat. But he was also inconsistent in his opposition to Talmudic Judaism, for he did not allow a few religious laws to continue

in force that could no more be traced to a Biblical origin than the institutions which he rejected. After Anan's death, the Karaite community conferred the leadership on his son, Saul.

Anan's disciples, who called themselves Ananites, differed on various points with their master and there arose divisions which increased with every generation.

This schism caused the Karaites to study the Bible more closely, and to support and strengthen their position against one another, and against the Rabbanites, from Holy Writ. It was for this reason that the study of the Bible was carried on by the Karaites with great ardor. With this study went hand in

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hand the knowledge of Hebrew grammar and of the Massora, the determination of the manner of reading the Holy Scripture.

While the Karaites thus were extremely active, the Rabbanites were most unfruitful in literary productions. A single work is all that is known to have appeared in those times. Judah, the blind Gaon of Sora, who has already been mentioned, and who had done much to oppose Anan's claim, composed a Talmudic Compendium, under the title "Short

and Established Practice" (Halachoth Ketuoth). In this work Judah collected and arranged, in an orderly manner, the subjects which were scattered through the Talmud, and indicated briefly, omitting all discussions, what still held good in practice. The work penetrated to the most distant Jewish communities, and became the model for later compositions of a similar description.

The Karaite disturbances also contributed to lessening the authority of the Exilarch. Until the time of Anan the academies and their colleges had been subordinate to the Prince of the Captivity, and to the principals of the schools chosen or confirmed by him. But having once succeeded in dispossessing Anan of the Exilarchate, the Gaons determined that this

power should not be wrested from their hands, and accordingly from this time exercised it. So the Exilarchate, which had been hereditary since the time of Bostanaï, became elective after Anan.

As it was expected, the religious discussions among Muslim intellectuals had an impact among the Eastern Jews. The Karaites for the most part were of Mutazilist (rationalistic) tendency, while the Rabbanites, on the contrary, having to defend the strange Agadic statements concerning God, were antagonistic to science.

The first person known to have imparted the Mutazilist tendency of Islamic theology to Judaism was Judah Judghan, the Persian, of the town of Hamadan (about 800). His adversaries relate of him that he was originally a camel herd. He himself pretended to be the herald of the Messiah, and when he had gained adherents, unfolded to them a peculiar

Doctrine. In opposition to the ancient traditional views, in accordance with which the Biblical account of God's deeds and thoughts must be taken literally, Judah Judghan asserted that we ought not to represent God with material attributes or anthropomorphically, for he is elevated above all created things. The expressions which the Torah employs in this connection are to be taken in a wholly metaphorical sense. Nor may we take for granted that, by virtue of His omnipotence and omniscience, God predetermines the acts of man. Much rather ought we to proceed from God's justice, and assume that man is the master of his actions, and possessed of free will, and that reward and punishment are meted out to us according to our merit. While Judah of Hamadan was possessed of liberal views concerning theoretical questions, he recommended the severest asceticism in practice. His adherents abstained from meat and wine, fasted and prayed frequently. His followers, who long maintained themselves as a peculiar sect under the name of Judghanites, believed so firmly in him that they asserted that he was not dead, but would appear again, in order to bring a new doctrine with him, as the Shiites believed Of Ali. One of his disciples, named Mushka, was desirous of imposing the doctrine of his master on the Jews by force. He marched out of Hamadan with a troop of comrades of similar sentiments, but, together with nineteen of his followers, was killed, in the neighborhood of Koom (east of Hamadan, southwest of Teheran), most probably by the Mussulmans.

Judah Judghan attached more importance to an ascetic mode of living than to the establishing of the philosophical basis of Judaism, and was therefore rather the founder of a sect than a religious philosopher. A contemporary Karaite, Benjamin ben Moses of Nahavend (about 800-820), spread the Mutazilist philosophy among the Karaites. He was scandalized, not only by the physical and human characteristics of God contained in the Scripture, but also by the revelation and the creation. He could not rest satisfied with the idea that the spiritual Being had created this earthly world, had come into contact with it, had circumscribed himself in space for the purpose of the revelation on Sinai, and

uttered articulate sounds. In order not to abandon his elevated idea of God, and at the same time to preserve the revelation of the Torah, he adopted the following notion, as others had done before him: God had himself created only the spiritual world and the angels; the terrestrial universe, on the other hand, had been created by the angels, so that God ought to be regarded only as the mediate creator of the world. In the same way the revelation, the giving of the Law

on Sinai, and the inspiration of the prophets were all the work of an angel only. Certain disciples adopted Benjamin's views, and formed a peculiar sect, called (it is not known for what ) the Makariyites or Maghariyites.

While Benjamin Nahavendi, as is generally acknowledged, deviated widely from the Jewish system with respect to religious philosophy, he approached the Rabbanites on the subject of morals; he adopted many Talmudic ordinances, and left it to the free choice of the Karaites to reject or adopt them as their standard. In order to enforce obedience to the laws, Benjamin Nahavendi introduced a species of excommunication, which differed only slightly from the excommunication of the Rabbanites.

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When an accused person refused to obey the summons served on him, and attempted to evade judgment, he was to be cursed on each of seven successive days, and then excommunication pronounced on him. The excommunication consisted in the prohibition of intercourse with all the members of the community, who were also forbidden to greet him, or to accept anything from him; until he submitted. If he obstinately disregarded the decree, it was lawful to hand him over to temporal justice. Although Benjamin Nahavendi inclined to Rabbanism on certain points, he adhered firmly, nevertheless, to the Karaite principle of unrestrained research in the Bible. One ought not to tie one's self down to the authorities, but to follow one's own conviction. "Inquiry is a duty, and

errors occasioned by inquiry do not constitute a sin."

In the same manner as the orthodox Mahometan teachers of religion worked counter to the unrestrained subtlety of the Mutazilists, and, falling into the opposite extreme, conceived the divinity as possessed of a bodily form, so also did the Jewish adherents of the orthodox doctrine go astray, and, regarding the rationalistic innovation as a defection from Judaism, they conceived the most absurd ideas concerning the materiality of God. They even desired to accept in their most literal sense the Biblical expressions, "God's hand, God's foot, his sitting down, or walking about." The Agadic Exposition of the Scripture, which occasionally made use of material, tangible figures, adapted to the comprehension of the people, promoted the acceptance of this theory. It gives a minute, corporeal description of the Deity, measures his height from head to foot by the parasang-scale (1 parasang = 5250 meters), speaks in blasphemous detail of God's

right and left eye, of his upper and lower lip, of his beard and of other members, which it would be sacrilegious even to mention.

In order, however, not to prejudice the sublimity and majesty of God, this theory enlarges each organ to enormous proportions, and considers that justice has been done to the case when it adds that the scale by which the members are measured considerably exceeds the whole world (Shiur-Komah). To this God, whom it thus dissected and measured, the theory assigned a special house in heaven with seven halls (Hechaloth). In the uppermost hall, God is seated upon an elevated throne, the proportions of which are measured by the same enormous scale. The halls are populated by this materialistic theory with myriads of angels. The chief angel, however, is a certain Metatoron, and the theory adds that he was Enoch or Henoch, originally a man, but transported by God into heaven, and converted into flames of fire. It even dared place him at the side of the Divinity, and call him the "little God."

This theory, which was a compound of misunderstood Agadas, and of Jewish, Christian, and Mahometan fantastic notions, clothed itself in mysterious obscurity, and pretended to be a revelation.

As there is no nonsense, however apparent, which cannot find adherents when earnestly and impressivelyenunciated, this doctrine of mystery, which was based upon a grossly material conception of God, found many followers. Its adepts called themselves "Men of Faith." They boasted of possessing the means of obtaining a view of the divine household. By virtue of certain incantations, invocations of the names of God and the angels, and the recitation of certain prayer-like chants, combined with fasting and an ascetic mode of living, they pretended to be able to perform

supernatural deeds. For this purpose they made use of amulets and cameos (Kameoth), and wrote upon them the names of God or the angels with certain signs. They asserted that every pious man had the power of performing miracles, if he only employed the proper means. To this end they wrote a number of works on the theory and practice of the esoteric doctrine; for the most part they contained downright nonsense, but here and there they rose to poetry. But this mystical literature only gave hints; the adepts would surrender the real key to a knowledge of the divine secrets and to the power of performing miracles only to certain persons, in whose hand and forehead they pretended to discover lines that proved them to be worthy of this favor.

This mystical doctrine flourished chiefly in Palestine, where the real study of the Talmud was languishing; little by little it made its way into Babylonia. This became apparent on the occasion of the election of a principal of the Pumbeditha academy (814). The best claim to this office was that advanced by a certain Mar-Aaron (ben Samuel), by reason of his erudition and on account of his having acted up till then as chief judge. Nevertheless, preference was given to the claim

of a rival, the aged Joseph bar Abba, who was far inferior to him in learning; the reason for this preference being that the latter was an adept in mysticism, and was believed to be favored with the intimacy of the prophet Elijah. One day when this same Joseph bar Abba was presiding at a public meeting, he exclaimed with rapture, "Make room for the old man who is just coming in." The eyes of all present were immediately turned to the entrance, and those to the right of the

principal respectfully stepped aside. They saw no one enter, however, and were therefore all the more positively convinced that the prophet Elijah had entered invisible, had seated himself on the right of his friend Joseph, and had been present during the whole of his discourse.

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After that time no one dared occupy the place at the side of the principal of the Pumbeditha academy, for it had been honored and hallowed by Elijah, and it became the custom to leave it vacant.

Joseph's successor, Mar-Abraham ben Sherira (816-828), was likewise a mystic. It was said that he could foresee the future from the rustling of palm leaves on a calm day.

More liberal views, and even Karaism, found a way into the halls of learning, just as mysticism had done before. Through these opposed views quarrels naturally arose, which came to light when the office of Exilarch was to be filled.

We have a sad picture of the condition of Karaism scarcely a century after Anan's death. New sects, too, arose from it, the founders of which had strange ideas about some customs of Judaism. Musa (or Mesvi) and Ishmael, from the town of Akbara (seven miles east of Bagdad), are said to have held peculiar views (around 833-842) about the observance of the Sabbath. What these views were we do not now know, but the two Akbarites further declared that the Pentateuchal prohibition against eating certain parts of the fat of an animal only referred to the sacrifices, and that it was permissible to use them otherwise. Simultaneously with these there arose another false teacher, Abu-Amran Moses, a Persian from the little town of Safran who had emigrated to the town of Tiflis in Armenia. Abu Amran had peculiar views about the calendar. There was to be no fixed calendar, nor was the month to commence when the new moon became visible, but at the moment of its eclipse. Moses, the Persian, denied bodily resurrection. (HEINRICH GRAETZ, Geschichte der Juden.)

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THE (MORE CRITICAL) VIEWPOINT OF THE FRENCH HISTORIAN BERNARD Lazare.

As wrote very well BERNARD Lazare, even more than the Bible, it was the Talmud which united the dispersed Jews.

CHAPTER I.

Everywhere they wanted to remain Jews, and everywhere they were granted the privilege of establishing a State within the State. By virtue of these privileges and exemptions, and immunity from taxes, they would soon rise above the general condition of the citizens of the municipalities where they resided; they had better opportunities for trade and accumulation of wealth, whereby they excited jealousy and hatred.

Thus, Israel's attachment to its law was one of the first causes of its unpopularity, whether because it derived from that law benefits and advantages which were apt to excite envy, or because it prided itself upon the excellence of its Torah and considered itself above and beyond other peoples.

Still had the Israelites adhered to pure Mosaism, they could doubtless, at some time in their history, have so modified that Mosaism as to retain none but the religious and metaphysical precepts; possibly, if they had no other sacred book but the Bible they might have merged in the nascent church, which enlisted its first followers among the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Jewish proselytes. One thing prevented that fusion and upheld the existence of the Hebrews among the nations; it was the growth of the Talmud, the authority and rule of the doctors who taught a pretended tradition. The policy of the doctors to which we shall return further made of the Jews sullen beings, unsociable and haughty, of whom Spinoza, who knew them well, could say: "It is not at all surprising that after being scattered for so many years they have preserved their identity without a government of their own, for, by their external rites, contrary to those of other nations, as well as by the sign of circumcision, they have isolated themselves from all other nations, even to the extent of drawing upon themselves the hate of all mankind."

Man's aim on earth, said the doctors, is the knowledge and observance of the law, and one cannot thoroughly observe it without denying allegiance to all but the true law. The Jew who followed these precepts isolated himself from the rest of mankind; he retrenched himself behind the fences which had been erected around the Torah by Ezra and the first scribes, later by the Pharisees and the Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, deformers of primitive Mosaism and enemies of the prophets. He isolated himself, not merely by declining to submit to the customs which bound together the inhabitants of the countries where he settled, but also by shunning all intercourse with the inhabitants themselves. To his unsociability the Jew added exclusiveness.

With the law, yet without Israel to put it into practice, the world could not exist, God would turn it back into nothing; nor will the world know happiness until it be brought under the universal domination of that law, i.e., under the domination of the Jews. Thus the Jewish people is chosen by God as the trustee of His will; it is the only people with whom the Deity has made a covenant; it is the choice of the Lord. At the time when the serpent tempted Eve, says the Talmud, he corrupted her with his venom. Israel, on receiving the revelation from Sinai, delivered itself from the evil; the rest of mankind could not recover. Thus, if they have each its guardian and its protecting constellation, Israel is placed under the very eye of Jehovah; it is the Eternal's favored son who has the sole right to his love, to his good will, to his special protection, other men are placed beneath the Hebrews; it is by mere mercy that they are entitled to divine munificence, since the souls of the Jews alone are descended from the first man. The wealth which has come to the nations, in truth belongs to Israel, and we hear Jesus

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Himself reply to the Greek woman: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and so cast it unto the dogs."

This faith in their predestination, in their election, developed among the Jews an immense hubris. It led them to view the Gentiles with contempt, often with hate, when patriotic considerations supervened to religious feeling.

When Jewish nationality was in peril, the Pharisees, under John Hyrcanus, declared impure the soil of strange peoples, as well as all intercourse between Jews and Greeks. Later, the Shamaites advocated at a synod complete separation of the Jews from the heathens, and drafted a set of injunctions, called The Eighteen Things, which ultimately prevailed over the opposition of the Hillelites. As a result Jewish unsociability begins to engage the attention of the councils of Antiochus Sidetes; exception is taken to "their persistence in shutting themselves up amid their own kind and avoiding all intercourse with pagans, and to their eagerness to make that intercourse more and more difficult, if not impossible." And the high priest Menelaus accuses the law before Antiochus Epiphanes, "of teaching hatred of the human race, of prohibiting to sit down at the table of strangers and to show good will towards them."

If these prescriptions had lost their authority when the cause which had produced and, in a way, justified them, had disappeared, the evil would not have been great. Yet we see them reappear in the Talmud and receive a new sanction from the authority of the doctors. After the controversy between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had terminated in the victory of the latter, these injunctions became part of the law, they were taught with the law and helped to develop and exaggerate the exclusiveness of the Jews.

Another fear, that of contamination, separated the Jews from the world and made their isolation still more rigorous. The Pharisees held views of extreme rigor on the subject of contamination; with them the injunctions and prescriptions of the Bible were insufficient to preserve Man from sin. As the sacrificial vases were contaminated by the least impure contact, they came to regard themselves contaminated by contact with strangers. Of this fear were born innumerable rules affecting everyday life: rules relating to clothing, dwellings, nourishment, all of which were promulgated with a view to saving the Israelites from contamination and sacrilege; all these rules might properly be observed in an independent state or city, but could not possibly be enforced in foreign lands, for their strict observance would require the Jews to flee the society of Gentiles, and thus to live isolated, hostile to their environment.

The Pharisees and the Rabbinites went still farther. Not satisfied with preserving the body, they also sought to save the soul. Experience had shown them that Hellenic and Roman importations imperiled what they deemed their faith. The names of the Hellenistic high priests, Jason, Menelaus, etc., reminded the Rabbinites of the times when the genius of Greece, winning over one portion of Israel, came very near conquering it. They knew that the Sadducean party, friendly to the Greeks, had paved the way for Christianity, as much as the Alexandrians…….

And it may be said that true Mosaism, purified and enlarged by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, broadened and generalized by the Judeo-Hellenists, would have brought Israel to Christianity, but for Ezraism,Pharisaism and Talmudism, which held the mass of the Jews bound to strict observances and narrow ritual practices.

To guard God's people, to keep it safe from evil influences, the doctors exalted their law above all things. They declared that no study but that of the law alone became an Israelite, and as a whole lifetime was hardly sufficient to learn and penetrate all the subtleties and all the casuistry of that law, they prohibited the study of profane sciences and foreign languages. "Those among us who learn several languages are not held in esteem," said Josephus; contempt alone was soon thought insufficient, they were excommunicated. Nor did these expulsions satisfy the Rabbinites. Though deprived of Plato, had not the Jew still the Bible, could he not listen to the voice of the prophets? As the book could not be proscribed,[14] it was belittled and made subordinate to the Talmud; the doctors declared: "The law is water, the Mishna is wine." And the reading of the Bible was considered less beneficial, less conducive to salvation than the reading of the Mishna.

However, the Rabbinites could not kill Jewish curiosity with one blow; it required centuries. It was as late as the fourteenth century, after Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Bechai, Maimonides, Bedares, Joseph Kaspi, Levi Ben Gershom, Moses Narboni, and many others, were gone, all true sons of Philo and the Alexandrians, who strove to verify Judaism by foreign philosophy; after Asher Ben Yechiel had induced the assembly of the rabbis at Barcelona to excommunicate those who would study profane sciences; after Rabbi Shalem, of Montpellier had complained to the Dominicans of the Moreh

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Nebukhim, and this book, the highest expression of the ideas of Maimonides, had been burned it was only after all this that the rabbis ultimately triumphed.

Their end was attained. They had cut off Israel from the community of nations; they had made of it a sullen recluse, a rebel against all laws, foreign to all feeling fraternity, closed to all beautiful, noble and generous ideas; they had made of it a small and miserable nation, soured by isolation, brutalized by a narrow education, demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable hubris.

With this transformation of the Jewish spirit and the victory of sectarian doctors, coincides the beginning of official persecution. Until that epoch there had only been outbursts of local hatred, but no systematic vexations. With the triumph of the Rabbinites, the ghettos come into being. The expulsions and massacres commence. The Jews want to live apart a line is drawn against them. They detest the spirit of the nations amidst whom they live the nations chase them. They burn the Moreh their Talmud is burned and they themselves are burned with it.

It would seem that no further agency was needed to render the separation of the Jews from the rest of mankind complete and to make them an object of horror and reprobation. Still another cause must be added to those just mentioned: the indomitable and tenacious patriotism of Israel.

Certainly, every people was attached to the land of its birth. Conquered, beaten by the conquerors, driven into exile or forced into slavery, they remained true to the sweet memories of their plundered city or the country they had lost. Still none other knew the patriotic enthusiasm of the Jews. The Greek, whose city was destroyed, could elsewhere build anew the hearth upon which his ancestors bestowed their blessings; the Roman who went into exile took along with him his Penates; Athens or Rome had nothing of the mystic fatherland like Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the guardian of the Tabernacle, which received the divine word; it was the city of the only Temple, the only place in the world where God could efficiently be worshiped and sacrifices offered to Him. It was only much later, at a very late day, that prayer houses were erected in other towns of Juda, or Greece, or Italy; still in those houses they confined themselves to the reading of the law and theological discussion; the pomp of Jehovah was known nowhere but at Jerusalem, the chosen sanctuary. When a temple was built at Alexandria, it was considered heretical….

It was because in Jerusalem only, in the land given by God to their ancestors, their bodies would be resurrected. There those who had believed in Yahweh, who had observed his law and obeyed his word, would awake at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the appointed hour; every other land but that washed by the yellow Jordan was a vile land, fouled by idolatry, deprived of God…...

God ought not to abandon his children, reasoned the pious and naive legends came to comfort the exiles. Near the tombs of the Jews who die in exile, they said, Jehovah opens long caverns through which the corpses roll as far as Palestine, whereas the pagan who dies there, near the consecrated hills, is removed from the chosen land, for he is unworthy of remaining there where the resurrection will take place.

Still that did not satisfy them. They did not resign themselves to visiting Jerusalem merely as pitiable pilgrims, weeping before the ruined walls, many of them so maddened by grief as to let themselves be trampled upon by horses' hoofs, embracing the ground while moaning; they could not believe that God, that the blessed city had abandoned them; with Judah Levita they exclaimed: "Zion, have you forgotten your unfortunate children who groan in slavery ?"

They expected that their Lord would by his mighty right hand raise the fallen walls; they hoped that a prophet, a chosen one, would bring them back to the promised land; and how many times, in the course of ages, have they left their homes, their fortunes they who are reproached of being too much attached to worldly goods in order to follow a false Messiah who undertook to lead them and promised them the return so much longed for ! Thousands were attracted by Serenus, Moses of Crete, Alroi, and massacred in the expectation of the happy day.

With the Talmudists these sentiments of popular enthusiasm, this mystic heroism underwent a transformation. The doctors taught the restoration of the Jewish empire; in order that Jerusalem might be born anew from its ruins, they wanted to preserve the people of Israel pure, to prevent them from mixing with other people, to inculcate on them the idea that they were everywhere in exile, amidst enemies that held them captive. They said to their disciples: "Do not cultivate strange lands; soon you will cultivate your own; do not attach yourself to any land, for thus will you be unfaithful to the memory of your native land; do not submit to any king, for you have no master but the Lord of the Holy Land, Jehovah; do not scatter among the nations, you will forfeit your salvation and you will not see the light of the day of resurrection; remain such as you left your house; the hour will come and you will see again the hills of your ancestors, and those hills will then be the center of the world, which will be subject to your power." …

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This solicitude for worldly goods, which is a marked feature of the Hebrew character, has not been without effect upon the conduct of the Jews, especially since they left Palestine; by directing them along certain avenues, to the exclusion of all others, this feature of their character has drawn upon them the most violent animosities.

The soul of the Jew is twofold: it is both mystic and positive. His mysticism has come down from the theophanies of the desert to the metaphysical dreaming of the Cabbala; his positivism, or rather his rationalism, manifests itself in the sentences of the Ecclesiastes as well as the legislative enactments of the rabbis and the dogmatic controversies of the theologians. Still if mysticism leads to a Philo or Spinoza, rationalism leads to the usurer, the weigher of gold; it creates the greedy trader. It is true that at times these two states of the mind are found in just opposition, and the Israelite, as it occurred in the Middle Ages, can split his life into two parts: one devoted to meditation on the Absolute, the other to business……..

CHAPTER V.

Their doctors endeavored to confine Israel to the exclusive study of the law in order to preserve Israel from outside influences, pernicious, it was said, to the integrity of the law. Efforts to this effect had been made since the time of the Maccabees, when the Hellenizers constituted a great party in Palestine. Beaten at first, or, at least, hardly listened to, those who later acquired the name of obscurantists, kept at their task. When Jewish intolerance and bigotry grew in the twelfth century, when exclusiveness increased, the struggle between the partisans of profane science and their opponents became fiercer, it blazed up after the death of Maimonides and ended in the victory of the obscurantists.

In his works, particularly in the Moreh Nebukhim (Guide of the Perplexed) Moses Maimonides attempted to reconcile faith and science. As a convinced Aristotelian, he wished to unite peripatetic philosophy with the Mosaic faith, and his speculations on the nature of the soul and its immortality found followers and ardent admirers as well as fierce detractors. As a matter of fact, especially in France and Spain, the Maimunists were led to neglect the ritual practices and petty ceremonies of worship: bold rationalists, they had allegoric interpretations for the biblical miracles, as the disciples of Philo before them, and thus they escaped the tyranny of religious precepts. They claimed the right of taking part in the intellectual movement of the time and mingling in the society in which they lived without giving up their beliefs. Their opponents clung to the purity of Israel, to the absolute integrity of its worship,[64] its rites, and its beliefs; in philosophy and science, they saw the most deadly enemies of Judaism and maintained that the Jews were destined to perish and scatter among the nations, if they did not recover their wits and did not reject everything that was not of the Holy Law.

In 1232, Rabbi Solomon of Montpellier issued an anathema against all those who would read the Moreh Nebukhim or would take up scientific and philosophic studies. This was the signal for the struggle. It was violent on both sides, and all weapons were resorted to. The fanatical rabbis appealed to the fanaticism of the Dominicans, they denounced the Guide of the Perplexed and had it burned by the inquisition. At the instigation of a German doctor, Asher Ben Yechiel, a synod of thirty rabbis met at Barcelona, with Ben Adret in the chair, and excommunicated all those who read books other than the Bible and the Talmud, when under twenty-five years.

A counter-excommunication was proclaimed by Jacob Tibbon, who, at the head of all Provencal rabbis, boldly defended condemned science. All was in vain: those wretched Jews, whom everybody tormented for their faith, persecuted their co-religionists more cruelly and severely than they had ever been persecuted. Those whom they accused of indifference had to undergo the worst punishments; the blasphemers had their tongues cut; Jewish women who had any relations with Christians were condemned to disfigurement: their noses were subjected to ablation. Despite this, Tibbon's followers persisted. It was due to them that Jewish thought did not completely die out in Spain, France and Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even such men as Moses Narboni and Levy de Bagnols, as Elias of Crete and Alemani, the teacher of Pico di Mirandola, as well as later Spinoza, were all isolated men. As for the mass of Jews, it had completely fallen under the power of the obscurantists. Hereafter it was separated from the world, its whole horizon was shut out; to nourish its spirit it had nothing but futile talmudic commentaries, idle and mediocre discussions on the Law.

Henceforth the Jew thought no longer. And what need had he of thinking since he possessed a minute, precise code, the work of casuist legists, which could give the answer to any question that it was legitimate to ask ? For believers were forbidden to inquire into problems which were not mentioned in this code the Talmud.

The Jew found everything foreseen in the Talmud: the sentiments, the emotions, whatever they might be, were designated; prayers, formulas, all ready-made, supplied the means for expressing them. The

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book left room neither to reason nor to freedom, inasmuch as in instruction the legendary and gnomic portions were almost proscribed to lay stress upon the law and ritual. True, by the tyranny they had exercised over their flock they developed in each the ingenuity and spirit of craftiness necessary to escape from the net which closed without pity; but they also increased the natural positivism of the Jews by presenting to them as their only idea the material and personal happiness, a happiness which one could attain on earth if one knew how to bind oneself to the thousand religious laws. To attain this selfish happiness, the Jew, whom the prescribed ceremonies rid of all care and trouble, was fatally led on to strive after gold, for under the existing social conditions which ruled him, as they ruled all the people of that epoch, gold alone could give him the gratification which his limited and narrow brain could conceive. He was prepared to be changer, lender, usurer, one who strives after the metal, at first for the pleasures it could afford and then afterwards for the sole happiness of possessing it; one who greedily seizes gold and avariciously immobilizes it. The Jew having become such, anti-Judaism became more complicated, social causes intermingled with religious causes; the combination of these causes explains the intensity and gravity of the persecutions which Israel had to undergo.

Indeed, the Lombards and Caeorsins, for instance, were the object of popular animosity; they were hated and despised but they were not victims of systematic persecutions. It was deemed abominable that Jews should have acquired wealth, especially because they were Jews. Against the Christian who cheated him, and was neither better nor worse than the Jew, the poor wretch when plundered felt less anger than against the Israelite reprobate, the enemy of God and man. When the deicide, even so the object of terror, had become the usurer, the collector of taxes, the merciless agent of the fisc the terror increased; it became intermingled with hatred on the part of the oppressed and downtrodden. The simple minds did not seek the real causes of their distress; they only saw the proximate causes. For the Jew was the proximate cause of usury; by the heavy interest he charged he caused destitution, severe and hard misery; accordingly, it was upon the Jews that enmities [66] fell. The suffering populace did not trouble themselves about responsibilities; they were neither economists nor reasoners; they only ascertained that a heavy hand weighed upon them: that was the hand of the Jew, and the people rushed upon him. They did not rush upon him alone; when at the limit of their endurance, they often attacked all the rich, indiscriminately killing Jews and Christians alike.

In Gascony and southern France the Pastoureaux destroyed 120 Jewish communities, but the Jews were not their only victims; they invaded castles, they exterminated the nobles and the propertied. Only that among the Christians the propertied alone suffered violence at the hands of the rebels, the poor were spared; among the Jews the rich and the poor were exterminated indiscriminately, for, before any crime, they were guilty of being Jews.

CHAPTER VI.

So far from decreasing, the Talmudic tyranny had even increased since the sixteenth century. At this time Joseph Caro * had edited the Shulchan Aruch, a Talmudic code, which according to the traditions inculcated by the rabbinists set up as laws the opinions of the doctors. Up to our time the European Jews had lived under the execrable oppression of these practices. 72 The Polish Jews improved even upon Joseph Caro * and refined the already enormous subtleties of the Shulchan Aruch by making additions thereto, and they introduced the method of Pilpul (pepper grains) into their instructions.

Accordingly, as the world grew kinder to them, the Jews at least the masses retired into themselves, straightened their prison, bound themselves with tighter bonds. Their decrepitude was unheard of, their intellectual sinking was equaled only by their moral debasement; this nation seemed dead.

However, the reaction against the Talmud had proceeded from the Jews themselves. Mordecai Kolkos, of Venice, had already published a book against the Mishna; in the seventeenth century, Uriel Acosta violently fought the rabbis, and Spinoza exhibited little affection for them. But anti-talmudism displayed itself particularly in the eighteenth century, at first among the mystics, such as, e.g., the Zoharites, disciples of Franck, who declared themselves enemies of the doctors of the law. At any rate these opponents of the rabbinites were unable to extricate the Jews from their abjection.

To begin this task, it was necessary for Moses Mendelssohn, a Jew and philosopher at the same time, to array the Bible against the Talmud. His German version (1779) was a great revolution. It was the first blow dealt to the rabbinical authority. The Talmudists, too, who had once wished to kill Kolkos and Spinoza, violently attacked Mendelssohn, and prohibited, under penalty of excommunication, to read the Bible which he had translated.

These outbursts of rage were of no avail. Mendelssohn had followers: young men, his disciples, founded the periodical Meassef, which advocated the new Judaism, endeavored to snatch the Jews from their ignorance and humiliation, and prepared their moral emancipation. As for political emancipation, the humanitarian philosophy of the eighteenth century was working hard to bring it

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about. Though Voltaire was an ardent Judoephobe, the ideas which he and the Encyclopedists represented were not hostile to the Jews, as being ideas of liberty and universal equality.

* The Shulhan Aruk or Shulchan Aruch is a kind of Jewish Sharia written in 1563 by the Talmudist Joseph Caro (Spain 1488 Turkey 1575).

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Note by PeterDeLaCrau on what is above. Personally, I am harder than BERNARD Lazare with regard to the Bible or Moses and his Law (I have much less indulgence for it) and even towards Maimonides (I have less admiration than him for his work because he remains fundamentally creationist). On the other hand, I am less severe towards the Talmud. Saint Paul had words of unheard anti-Semitism about the Jews in verses 15 and 16 of the second chapter of his first letter to the Thessalonians. They killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets……The wrath of God * has come upon them at last.

Against such racism from the Christians, they therefore found everything allowed, they advocated every defense. The anti -Pagan or anti-Christian literature of the Jews ended up becoming considerable and the Talmud echoed all these passionate reactions. BERNARD Lazare himself acknowledges this, since he too evokes the problem of the Minim (Minaeans under his pen) and the Jewish curse concerning them.

* The destroying of Jerusalem.

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CHAPTER XI.

After they had left Palestine, in the first centuries before the Christian era, a bond always tied them to Jerusalem; after Jerusalem had been plunged in flames, they had their exilarchs, their Nassis and Gaons, their schools of doctors, schools of Babylon, Palestine, then Egypt, finally of Spain and France.

The chain of tradition has never been broken. They have ever considered themselves exiles and have deluded themselves with the dream of the restoration of Israel's kingdom on earth. Every year, on the eve of the Passover they have chanted from the depth of their whole beings, three times the sentence: "Leshana haba b'Yerushalaim" (next year in Jerusalem !) They have preserved their ancient patriotism, even their chauvinism; in spite of disasters, misfortunes, outrages, slavery, they have considered themselves the elect people, one superior to all other peoples, which is characteristic of all chauvinist nations, the Germans as well as the French and English of today. At one time in the beginning of the Middle Ages, the Jew was really superior, because, he, the inheritor of an already ancient civilization, the possessor of a literature, philosophy and above all experience, which should have given him the advantage, came into the midst of barbarian children. He lost that supremacy, and in the fourteenth century even, his was already a culture lower than the general knowledge of those in the same class with him. But he has religiously kept this idea of supremacy, has kept on looking with[134] disdain and scorn upon all those who were strangers to his law.

However, he was taught to be such by his book, the Talmud pervaded by a narrow and ferocious patriotism. The book has been charged with being anti-social, and there is some truth in this accusation; it has been claimed that it is the most abominable code of law and ethics, and therein lay the error, since it is neither more nor less execrable than all particularist and national codes. If it is anti-social, it is so only in that it represented and still represents a spirit differing from that of the laws in force in the country where the Jews lived and that the Jews wanted to follow their code before following the one to which every member of society was amenable, and again it is unsocial only in a relative sense, as the law was not always uniform and custom invariable in all parts of the States.

At one moment of history it appeared fatally anti-human, because it remained immutable while everything was changing. Its brutality has been exposed by the Christian anti-semites, because this brutality shocked them directly, but in saying, "Kill even the best of Goyim," Rabbi Simon ben Jochai was no more cruel than was Saint Louis, who thought that the best way of arguing with a Jew was to plunge a dirk in his belly, or than the Pope Urban III when he wrote in his bull: "Everybody is allowed to kill an excommunicate if it is done from zeal for the church."

Some modern Jews and philosemites have rejected with horror those aphorisms and axioms that had been national aphorisms and axioms. They say that the invectives against the goyim, the Mineans, were directed at the Romans, the Hellenes, the Jewish apostates, but they were never aimed at the Christians. There is a great deal of truth in these assertions, but there is also a great deal of error.

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When Judaism was fought by the rising Christianity, all the hatred and wrath of hired assassins, patriots, pious people turned upon the Jews who were converting themselves Mineans. When deserting the national faith, they deserted the battle against Rome and the enemy; they were traitors to their country, to the Jewish religion; they lost interest in a struggle that was vital for Israel; gathered around their new temples they looked with an eye of indifference upon the fall of the national glory, the disappearance of their autonomy, and not only did they not fight against the she-wolf, but they even unnerved the courage of those listening[135]to them. Against them, against these anti-patriots, formulas of maledictions were drawn up; the Jews placed them under the ban of their society, it was lawful to kill them, just as it was lawful to kill "the best of goyim." Similar exhortations would be found at all periods of patriotic struggles, among all nations; the proclamations of the generals, the calls to arms of the tribunes of all ages contain just as odious formulas. When the French, for instance, invaded the Palatinate, it must have been a rule, nay, even a duty, for all Germans to say: "Death even to the best of Frenchmen !"

CHAPTER XIV.

The moral charge of the anti-semites, may be summed up thus: the Jew is more dishonest than the Christian ; he is entirely unscrupulous, a stranger to loyalty and candor.

Is this charge well founded? It was true and still is true in all those countries where the Jew is kept outside of society; where he receives only the traditional Talmudic education; where he is exposed to persecution, to insult, and to oppression; where people refuse to recognize in him the dignity and the independence of the human being. The moral condition of the Jew is due partly to himself, and partly to exterior circumstances. His soul has been molded by the law which he imposed on himself, and the law which has been forced upon him. Throughout the centuries he lived twice a slave: he was the bondman of the law, and the bondman of everyone. He was a pariah, but a pariah whom teachers and guides united to keep in a state of servitude more complete than the ancient Egyptian bondage. From without, a thousand restrictions impeded his way, arrested his development, restrained his activity; within, he was confronted by an elaborate system of prohibitions. Outside the Ghetto, he experienced the constraint of the law; within the Ghetto, he suffered the oppression of the Talmud. If he attempted to escape from the one, a thousand punishments awaited him; if he ventured to depart from the other, he exposed himself to the Cherem, that awful excommunication which left him alone to the world. It would have been vain to attack these two hostile powers boldly; and therefore the Jew attempted to triumph over them by guile. Both forms of oppression developed in him the instinct of cunning. He attained to an unequaled talent for diplomacy, to a subtlety rarely found. His natural finesse increased, but it was employed for base purposes -- to deceive a tyrannical God and despotic rulers. The Talmud and anti-Judaic legislation united to corrupt the Jew to his very depths. Impelled by his teachers, on the one hand, by hostile legislation on the other, by many social causes besides,245 to the exclusive occupation of commerce and of usury, the Jew became degraded. The pursuit of wealth ceaselessly prosecuted, debauched him, weakened the voice of conscience within him, taught him habits of fraud. In this war of self-preservation which he was forced to carry on against the world and against the secular and [165] religious law, he could conquer only by intrigue, and the unhappy wretch, given over to humiliations, to insults, forced to bow his head under blows and curses and persecution, could avenge himself on his enemies, his tormentors, his executioners only by guile. Robbery and bad faith became his weapons; they were the only weapons of which he could possibly make use, and therefore he exerted himself to elaborate them, to sharpen them, and to conceal them.

When the walls of the Ghetto were overthrown, the Jew, such as he had been made by the Talmud and the legislative and social restrictions imposed upon him, did not change all at once. Upon the morrow of the revolution, he lived just as he had lived upon its eve, nor did he alter his customs, his manners, and, above all, his spirit, as quickly as his condition in life had been altered. Liberated, he retained the soul of a slave, that soul which he is losing day by day as one by one the memories of his degradation are disappearing.

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WORK DOCUMENT.

FOR COMPARISON BELOW SOME EXTRACTS FROM THE TEACHING OF THE NAZARENE HIGH RABBI YEOSHUA BAR YOSEF (JESUS).

John 8: 3 to 11.

The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Editor's note. The falsification of the initial divine revelation is obvious. God who is righteous cannot stand idly by facing this example of fornication. Everyone knows that the woman must be either whipped or stoned according to some other doctors of the Law.

Luke, 6:27.

But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

Luke, 10: 29-37.

Who is my neighbor? In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other

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side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

Editor’s note. Here too, the falsification of the initial teaching is obvious. The Samaritans were pagans. How could a heathen do this to a believer?

Luke 22: 47.

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?” When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.

Luke 23:33.

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Luke 15, 11 to 32.

There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. “Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living. After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ So he got up and went to his father.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.

The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’

But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick! Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’

Editor’s note. Here again the falsification is obvious because these verses have no sense!

Luke 20 : 20-26.

Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

He saw through their duplicity and said to them, “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied. He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

Matthew 20, 1 to 16.

“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

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“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon, he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ “‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. “He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’

“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’

“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’

“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

N.B. How can God command to be unjust? The workers of the eleventh hour have worked less, so they must be paid less. It's elementary.

Matthew 6: 5-6.

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites (Quranic Arabic munafiqun), for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.”

The last straw of the last straw! How could God accept to be worshiped or prayed as if we one were ashamed of him?

Matthew 6: 16.

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen.”

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A RELIGION NEITHER NATURAL NOR REVEALED,

BUT ARTIFICIAL AND SUPERFICIAL.

Unlike *the religions of nature, seasonal and cyclical, or the god of philosophers; or the individual Grail quests, the Judaism claim to be based on historical foundations, on characters who really have existed, on revelations that would have been made to them.

This means that a dialogue between Buddha and Plato or the god of the philosophers is possible **; but with the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob one cannot argue, one can only "credere obbedire combattere" (to believe, obey, fight).

Hence an unprecedented catastrophe for mankind!

However to what is generally believed, and undoubtedly for religious reasons at the origin (the dogma of the immutability or the inviolability of any revealed religion, which left traces in our collective unconscious, see the principle number 9 of the "creed" of Maimonides); the Jewish then Jewish religion experienced, too, many and deep changes.

* Or infinitely more.

** And besides, it took place, in Gandhara and in the Kushan Empire, which resulted in the Mahayana.

DEUTERONOMISTIC REVOLUTION OR COUNTER-REVOLUTION. Also called REFORMATION OF JOSIAH (2 Kings 23, 5.15 and verses 19-20).

The first of these reforms was undoubtedly that of King Hezekiah. The religious unification around "Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh" and centered on the temple in Jerusalem, had obvious political reasons.

Hezekiah drew the logical consequences of the collapse of the Northern Kingdom and of the move to Jerusalem of the priests and religious men having taken refuge on his territory. He prohibits the religions and worships other than that of Yahweh in his country. Closes a certain number of traditional shrines, of mounds with steles, sacred groves, and altars (bamoth) , and centralizes the worship in Jerusalem. It is not already monotheism rather a monolatry (an exclusive and jealous god or demon), but the result of this forceful Reformation is the emergence of the beginning of the Bible we know.

And especially the Pentateuch.

Below is what Professor Dany R. Nocquet of the University of Theology at Lausanne concluded from his study on the subject.

"The proposed reading of the different territorial and international traditions that the Pentateuch is working on brings to light several interesting clues as to the completion of the Pentateuch.

The desire for openness and surpassing regarding the representation of the link to the promised land and regarding the relationship with other peoples reflects the experience of the communities of

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Samaria and the diaspora from the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 4th century to the Persian period. This centrifugal and decentralized vision of salvation conveyed by the Pentateuch suggests that it is the circles of the Yahwist communities in Samaria and the diaspora that are responsible for the elaboration of this body of texts relating to territoriality and internationality. The study highlighted the eminently strategic place of the texts studied in their final state: they most often frame older traditions.

…….

The framing of the narrative and legislative traditions of a part of the Pentateuch bears witness to an editorial work of the Torah, a work that comes very probably from the communities of Samaria and the diaspora.

On this basis, the circles linked to the Temple of Garizim and the Diaspora contributed to the final composition of the Pentateuch (and of the Hexateuch?) by complementing the work of priestly writing, and that of the School of Holiness, with their own representations of the salutary intervention of Yhwh.

…..

This editorial work was done in part to give another perspective than the Judeo-Centric view of Israel's history and the salutary intervention of Yhwh as presented by Deutero-Nomist history. For this reason, the Pentateuch, in its final form, reworked the themes of territoriality and relations with other peoples, and in a subsidiary way the problematic of exogamous marriages. Putting aside the Jewish centrality of the end of the monarchical period, the editorial completion of the Pentateuch reflects the political and religious situation of the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th century, according to which Samaria and Egypt remained more important regional political entities than that of Jerusalem. In the light of history, it would be more consistent to consider the Pentateuch more than a "compromise document." The Pentateuch is the result of a collaboration in which Samaria and the diaspora are the communities that were the main bearers of the finalization of the Pentateuch, while the Jewish community remained shaky throughout the 5th century...... due to the absence of the mention, in one form or another, of Judea or Jerusalem, because of the importance of the territorial exteriority described positively, and the consideration of the neighboring populations all around Samaria and Judea, the Torah in its completion appears as a Samaritan and diasporic production more than Judean .production.

Many of the locals, however, continued to worship gods other than Yahweh. Jeremiah 11.13 to 14. " You, Judah, have as many gods as you have towns; and the altars you have set up to burn incense to that shameful god Baal are as many as the streets of Jerusalem.” See also Jeremiah 8,19, Deuteronomy 27.15; 30,17, etc.

Although antedated since Moses never existed, these accounts reflect the reality of the situation of the time of King Josiah.

The continuation of the centralizing reformation begun by Hezekiah will cause the decline of the last local shrines, and will oblige the Levites to withdraw to the central royal temple, where they will submit to the priests of Jerusalem.

After this somewhat forced reunification of the people in the kingdom of Judah in the South and of Israel in the North; the king of Judah (from 640-609 before our era) will start a huge compilation of sacred texts and of literary or folk traditions of the two kingdoms; in order to unify the two peoples around him, with one capital, his, Jerusalem.

As some Roman emperors several centuries after him, as for religion Josiah will impose his ideas through force,through (divine of course) terror and through Inquisition before the word is invented. A new way of celebrating Passover is therefore developed: pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and no longer feasts hardly exceeding the local family circle (2 Kings 23, 23). King Josiah will be the first true pioneer of Judaism since it was during his reign that is "rediscovered" opportunely the Deuteronomy, or more likely a germ of Deuteronomy, during the Temple renovation work in - 622 (2 Kings 22 8). This book will be published by the king, who will make a solemn reading of it.

His style is strikingly similar to that of the vassalage Assyrian treaties of the early seventh century before our era, which listed the rights and duties of the peoples subjects to their overlord (in this case, Israel and Yahu/Yaho/YHWH).

For more details see above our chapter on the covenant or pact signed with God and the succession of Assarhadon king of Assyria.

Josiah made these texts attributed to a man named Moses, but this is probably a pseudonym covering several different personalities, synthesized into one by a group of scribes in his service. In order to give more weight to the requirements that Josiah wants to defend or impose, the Deuteronomy will

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come even to assign to this fictitious or artificial personality some expressions reserved in principle to God:" great terror" etc.(Deuteronomy 34.12)

These texts depict a God- or-demon vindictive, pitiless and bloodthirsty, making mistake after mistake, but spends his time in starting again everything.

For good measure, they will make the whole preceded by stories about the appearance of mankind (Adam and Eve) borrowed from the dominant ideology of the time in this region: the Sumerian-Babylonian mythology. The Jewish Bible includes two different accounts of the creation. The elohist story (Genesis 1: 2-3) which is in reality the most recent, where the higher being is appointed by the plural term "Elohim"; and the Yahwist narrative, the oldest, where he was also named Yahweh, very precisely Adonai YHWH Elohim (Genesis 2: 4-25). Adam is initially somewhat the gardener of Adonai YHWH Elohim of on earth, he his equipped with grace and his original immortality, as well as his state of happiness, symbolized by the earthly paradise, of which he is the regent; show the supernatural or preternatural gifts that have been granted to him. But the story then moves on to the alleged fault Adam and Eve against God.

Also after, insertion of the many stories about a legendary hero named Abraham and his family, in order to give the Judeans the great ancestor they needed at that time. We can consider this first draft of the Bible as strategic politico-religious work. Some propaganda or language elements for a policy in a way.

Josiah's idea was simple: reconcile the two Hebrew kingdoms, or at least what remained of them, in order to better resist the major regional empires, Assyria, Egypt. This first draft of the Jewish Bible (Torah) was therefore primarily a work of propaganda that aims to strengthen the national unity facing the threats from the neighboring empires. The aim was clear. A strong and unified Jewish kingdom around a single God-or-demon and a single capital, Jerusalem, then in full demographic and economic expansion. One people (Judah), one king, one God-or demon (Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh). This biblical epic served the military-religious vision of the king of Judah and galvanized his people, but kindled the hatred of the other nations because of its dangerous concept of divine choosenness (am segullah am nahalla am nishvar).

The invention of the sufferings of the Hebrews in Egypt justified their hatred against this kingdom, and many stories put forward the ugliness or impurity of the neighboring nations in order to develop the pseudo-purity that the Hebrews claimed. They became the instrument of a new religion.

What appears indeed clearly in this literary process is that the essential challenge of King Josiah was to establish, from Jerusalem, the unity of Israel (north) and of Judah (South); the underlying idea being to legitimize the annexation of the remains of Israel to his kingdom. To make it definitive Josiah will even destroy the rival Hebrew Temple in Bethel, in order to let only that of Jerusalem persist.

Editor's note.

Porphyry of Tyre in his time already thought that this "Law" of Moses was perhaps just something reinvented in the time of Ezra, after being more or less lost. The Bible admits it almost itself. The law of Moses was "rediscovered" (in fact more or less reinvented) by a high priest named Hilkiah (2 Chronicles 34 and 2 Kings 22: 8-10), at the time of the last king before the Exodus, in the seventh century before our era. The story, however, has all the appearances of a post-exilic fable, or of post Babylonian legend; intended to suggest that the religion of the kingdom of Judah before the disaster that was the capture of Jerusalem by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar was well the same as that after the Exile. And not the kind of very open secularism, open to all worships, which prevailed in it really in the sixth century.

The real psychic trauma that was the Babylonian Exile was indeed the cause of new texts and new ways of designing the deity, coming from different even contradictory Schools of thought. New literary and philosophical genre appeared thus: Jonah, Job or the Ecclesiastes. And it is only then that arose what might be called Judaism. The confrontation with the Persian religion will mark durably the Jewish religion, both in the direction of the monotheism of Zoroaster (Ahura Mazda, his chariot and his heavenly angels) and of the dualistic background of its theology (which will be found again among the Essenes for example). The sacrifices will be called into question in favor of the interiority, but where the Persian religion is positive, rejecting any mortification; the Judeans, because of this exile that lasted fifty years, will develop in it somewhat magical concept of retribution. Any evil deed is, sooner or later at time or at the wrong time, punished by God, and vice versa, mutatis mutandis, as for the good deeds. See the principle No. 11 of the creed of Maimonides.

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The return to Judea involved several tens of thousands, at least 60,000, persons, in three successive waves. But the Jews returning from exile in Babylon, to live in Jerusalem under the Persian protectorate, are not the same ones.

After the death of Zerubbabel, the Davidic family plays no longer a role, and the visionary prophets will give way to the doctors (of the Law). The Levites are downgraded, but will be no longer clearly distinguished from the priests as before. Let's say they will be regarded as priests, but of a lower rank.

The clergy, of which the importance was affirmed during the exile, who had played a major role among those who stayed behind, kept its authority. Therefore, during the following decades, Judea was ruled by a dual system, politically by high commissioners appointed by the Persian authority, without any connection with the Davidic royal family; religiously by priests. The monarchy playing no longer a role, the Temple became therefore the core of the identity of the Jewish people.

The crucial turning point in history and profound differences with the worship of the Hebrews stayed in the country, the Samaritans. Their Bible besides begins with Abraham and stops at the Pentateuch, everything after having been brought by the Judeans returned from deportation, according to them. In other words, the Samaritan Bible is that which prevailed before the deportation and which was due to the religious reformation of King Josiah. The Bible of the Samaritans is that of before the exile in Babylon. And it was they who were accused of illegitimacy heresy or treason!

The taking in hand of the area by the repatriates, in the name of the Persian Empire, will not be done without problems.

The Bible preserved for us nevertheless the text of a surprisingly explicit letter from King Darius to his governor reminding of the ritual prescriptions (wheat and salt for the feast of unleavened bread, demanding bread without yeast, oil, wine); and ending with the words: " I Darius have decreed it. Let it be carried out with diligence." (Ezra. 6, 6-12).

The promotion of this new Law by Ezra will give it a precise and finicky content, where the Persian religion contented itself with the opposition (in principle) of good and evil. The importance of the written law, this contribution of Ezra, will have serious consequences, because the notion of Holy Scripture will feed all the subsequent Jewish thought (commentaries, jurisprudence) and will produce the Talmud; thus inaugurating a religion of the writing which will be imitated by Christianity and Islam.

Let us repeat it, the biblical texts have been neither revealed by God nor written by Moses, they were written by multiple authors adapting them according to the quarrels and problems of their time; what explains their many aberrations, contradictions or mistakes.

Regarding the origin of the universe, the repatriates will bring from exile the account, at the forefront of scientific thinking OF THE TIME, found by them in the Mesopotamian libraries; and that they will place in the beginning, before the other, after having somewhat changed it.

As we have seen, the book of Genesis comprises two different accounts of the creation. The one through which the Bible begins today, the story known as priestly or Elohist (Genesis 1: 2-3) is nevertheless the most recent. It was written by priests returned from their exile in Babylon in the fourth century before our era. The god-or- demons of the Sumerian-Babylonian mythology are evoked in it by the plural term "Elohim." The elohist story emphasizes the idea that man was created in the image of the Elohim.

The Yahwist narrative (chapter 2 of Genesis) is defined relatively to the Babylonian creation stories, showing that Man is both half-angel half-beast (some dust animated by the blood of a god-or-demon). It is older though coming after, dating back to the tenth century before our era about. Initially, there is only the dry and barren land, for there was no rain. God then made fresh water gush (rivers and springs); man and animals can appear. The land is an oasis in the desert.

There are also two stories of the covenant between God and Abraham, two announcements of the birth of Isaac.

Same thing regarding the book of Exodus, written in Babylon or after the return from Babylon, from existing, but reworked documents.

Chapter 14 is, for example, made of two different texts, the story known as Yahwist and the story known as priestly or elohist. Each of the two is in reality autonomous text that has its own logic.

To note.

- The most recent text, the one that was written by priests repatriated from Babylonia after - 538, is the one that has an explanation of miraculous type for the crossing of the Red Sea (like split with a knife by a gesture of Moses); the oldest is the one with a more naturalistic and rationalistic type of explanation (a strong east wind repelled back the sea).

- The conclusion of the Yahwist is on the authority of the Lord, while the priestly added that of Moses.

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- The Yahwist describes a scene in which the Lord is directly involved, while the priestly attributes all the action to Moses, who acts as a priest (what is one of the reasons which suggest that the real authors of this text are well priests).

The final editor who combined these two stories has unified the various names of God or of the Demiurge, who is here still called "the Lord."

But there is also in the same book two descriptions of the holy dwelling.

The ancient legends were therefore rewritten by removing or adding to them whole passages. It is perhaps in that time, that was added to the cycle of Abraham the story of Genesis 24, in which he refuses to marry his son Isaac with a daughter from Canaan, but sends Eliezer to find a wife for him in Babylonia .

And it's probably at that time that was suppressed or deleted the book of the wars of Yahweh, mentioned in Numbers 21,14, but which has since disappeared.

Another example of this rewriting of the work originally performed in the reign of Josiah.

Numbers.

11, 6 to 9. The manna is used to make loaves (no comment).

11, 31 to 34. Problems with the quails. 10 homers per person or about 30 to 40 liters. Indigestion?

Exodus.

16, 12 to 13. Quails. (No comment.)

16, 13 to 36. Problems with the manna. 1 homer per person or about 3 or 4 liters. It rots.

Another example.

According to 2 Samuel (21, 19) the famous Goliath, for example, was not killed by David and his sling (like in 1 Samuel 17, 49-51), but by one of his men, named Elhanan. What is not at all the same thing! So there are stories that have been sewn together from memories, remains of old customs, legends about the birth of the various peoples of the region, or concerns about the conflicts of the time.

Their more or less successful merger (they sometimes content themselves to make the Tetragrammaton YHWH simply preceded by the words Adonai Elohim, in order to get everyone to agree) therefore makes the Bible we know today.

The redesign of the religion was such that it is reckless, given the current state of our knowledge, to determine the share of innovations of Josiah and that of Ezra in the final version of the Deuteronomy.The contribution of Josiah is perhaps still overstated and the Babylonian element, which is decisive in its constitution and its state organization, is still underestimates. Of course, in terms of literature we distinguish two versions of the Deuteronomy, corresponding to what was likely to have been written before or after the exile; but the whole, set circa - 444 by Nehemiah (the governor appointed by Artaxerxes, the Persian ruler) is a rewriting of the past; a pure product of the political and religious struggles of that time, making the previous realities difficult to understand, as archeology shows it.

The new Jewish holidays will refer from now on to pseudo-historical events (like the Egyptians, whose rites renew the creating source present in the original event); but this time oriented towards the future - apocalypses messianisms like Persians - rather than towards the restoration of a lost paradise. It will be the commemoration / repetition of founding myths and no longer the return of a cyclical , seasonal, external, event. Hence the elimination of the annual rites of resurrection from pagan origin like those of Dumuzi-Tammuz.

Purim (Esther 9, 21) will also be introduced in the Jewish calendar, but in a completely different perspective from that of before. It is likely indeed that it originates in the spring celebrations common to the former East where,on the occasion of the renewal of the seasons, was celebrated the victory of the forces of good against the forces of evil . This festival is foreign to the Mosaic tradition and has no liturgical dimension. As for the nationalist feast of Hanukkah, another major Jewish holiday foreign to the Mosaic tradition, it will appear only in the Greek period (1 Maccabees 4, 59) to counter (or to recover) the celebrations of the winter solstice .

THE TWO PRINCIPLES (JUDAISM AS A SYSTEM OF ONE TRACK THINKING).

DA’AS TORAH (principle of the Simon says).

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The religion of the Hebrews in the kingdom of Judah was the first monotheistic (in fact henotheistic / monolatrous. This religion is not based on philosophical premises, the word monotheism is not that which suits it) mass religion having been able to structure and develop until today.

Judaism is therefore in this field one of the most interesting to watch religious deceptions.

A historical past rich in full with conflicts and socio-cultural exchange episodes, made Judaism a multicultural and cosmopolitan religion ACTUALLY. Judaism has its roots in many religions. Influenced by Egypt without having ever set a foot in it for much of its mysticism, from Persian, Babylonian or another one origin, for the rest of its religiosity.

The "original" Judaism has managed to solve certain theological contradictions inherent in the worships of the time. This religious interbreeding is, of course, refuted by Orthodox authorities who support the contrary thesis of the metaphysical uniqueness of the Jewish people.

The essential characteristic of every revealed religion is immutability. See the principle number 9 of the “creed” of Maimonides. In its claim to immutable possession of the absolute truth, no religion like this therefore can admit that it changes according to passing time and follows the progress of human ideas in their successive changes.The truth from God is immutable. Judaism suggests therefore that its religion, despite the centuries, has undergone no changes. As it was revealed to Moses, as it has continued to the present day, away from the influence of various eras and civilizations. Points number 7,8,and 9 of the faith principles by Maimonides.

Of course, it is not so, and we will not deprive ourselves of reminding of it constantly in this book; but nevertheless we will act as if, for our microscopic study of today Judaism. What is undeniable indeed it is that a certain number of traditions from multiple worships over time ended shaping a real religious identity.

The Bible ascribes to Abrahham the first foundation of Judaism (archaeologists are now convinced of the contrary) and therefore the Jews claimed they belonged to an original nomadic Semitic community. They would have developed a rudimentary first worship, paid to the agrarian deities of the time, and based on a writingless belief, without writing but with founding myths. But their God-or demon is, and whatever the so-called prophets could have said about that, a baal, that is to say a god- or- demon guardian of soil, rain, and fertility (see the story of Noah and his Mesopotamian parallel. Genesis 6).

The famous episode of the calf or more accurately of the gold bull (Exodus 32: 7) shows well that persistence of Canaanite fertility worships; because, far from being eradicated, this worship has on the contrary survived in the form of the altars (adorned with horns. Lev. 4, 18), the sacrifice of bulls, and the erection of sacred steles (Exodus, 24, 4 et seq.)

What remains to be established, however, is under what conditions and following what circumstances (mercenaries alliances, marriages?) the [cult of a] small place god, or god of storms and war, of a family of Shasu Bedouins from southern Jordan or from the Negev or from the land of Midian, could have arrived and settled in Judea or even Samaria, initially lands of Baal and El. The episode of Shechem (Joshua 24:1-28) is not very clear in this regard.

I suggest the following hypothesis.

In the course of their wanderings northwards, the Yaweh sectarians meet in Shechem, thus already settled on the west bank of the Jordan River, Hebrews who hold the dominant religion in this part of the world, namely El and his heavenly court.

A religious confederation will emerge from there, with Shechem (now Nablus) and its two high places, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, as its center. In other words, a double amphyctiony.

The biblical text shows us a Joshua obtaining that Yahwe becomes the official god of the new confederation thus created but we can doubt it. It was probably only nominal. The insistence of our text to claim the opposite is indeed very suspicious. The members of the confederation will then participate for themselves or as allies or even mercenaries in the various conflicts that then tore the country of Canaan but always in the camp opposed to the Philistines.

After the advent of the kingdom of David, some scholars of King Josiah put in the mouth of a man named Moses the laws of their time that seemed most useful.

But as Spinoza himself noted it, the laws revealed by God to Moses were ultimately nothing but that the laws of the government of the Hebrews ... in the seventh century before our era!

All the past of Hebrews was reinvented at this time to lay the foundation of an independent kingdom. A common history glorifying it was necessary to unite this people, a single past, in a unified kingdom

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under the protection of a “single” god- or- demon in a single capital (Jerusalem) equipped with a “single” temple.

The various oral traditions about the founding fathers (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob ...) were then brought together with the Egyptian stories speaking of the Habiru.

The governments that followed the return from exile in Babylonia changed this legislation in order to base their theocracy.

Judaism, like other religious traditions, human enterprise by definition, comprises also potentially wicked elements, that it is necessary to recognize in order to better neutralize them through a salutary vaccine. It may be added that if the criticism of Judaism would have been shocking in periods such as 1933-1945, it appears today – when any persecution of the Jews by a foreign ideology is absolutely excluded - as particularly timely. Facing the extreme seriousness of the "Zionist" slide of Judaism, it proves even particularly urgent.

ROLE OF THE HAKHAMIM.

Every thought, every action is governed by the sacred texts. There is no possible combination with another source of inspiration, another philosophy. And religious law is not supposed to govern a specific field of life, but life in its entirety.

Democracy is an operating principle that puts the opinion of the majority above God. Democracy does not bother orthodox Jews among non-Jews (who are free to do as they please). But among Jews, it is a clear challenge to the Da’as Torah and the Emunat Hakhamim.

Two principles are indeed applied in Judaism: Da’as Torah: "what the Torah says,” and Emunat Hakhamim: "trust in the sages" (at first glance that, it is good) .

The first principle of Da’as Torah means that the Torah must be the source of all legislation, so there can be no Constitution .

In Israel the Zionist movement accepted this principle and only put in place "fundamental laws.” The distinction is symbolic, Haredim insist on it.

DA’AS TORAH we have said but also HAKHAMIM.

ROLE OF THE HAKHAMIM.

Since the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 there was no longer a high priest or any priest at all (cohen/cohanim) in activity. There are descendants of cohen/cohanim but they no longer have any cultic responsibility as the Temple of Jerusalem has not been rebuilt (the site is besides currently occupied by an even more untouchable mosque). The cohen/cohanim now have only an honorary role.

Synagogues are not initially mini temples but places of prayer or study.

The hazzan (initially a "supervisor") was originally responsible for the good conduct of services but his role has evolved towards that of a prayer leader or even a simple singer equivalent of a cantor in Christian liturgy. He therefore masters the liturgical cantillation of Hebrew texts and the vocal arts, directing the sung prayer of the synagogue.

The rabbis are not new priests but specialists in the Torah. Since Judaism is especially a law (Moses’s law) , they are, of course, also Doctors in Jewish Law.

Every pious Jew must give himself a rabbi, who will guide his life, down to the smallest details (sic). In the same way, every rabbi refers himself to his own rabbi. At the top of the pyramid are the leading figures, commonly known as "sages,” or "great of the Torah.” They may be distinguished by their extreme erudition, which makes them the greatest decision makers in rabbinic law, or by their extreme piety, earning them then the title of Tsadik (literally "righteous,” or "saints"). They are often the object of what resembles a personality cult, for « they have access to supreme knowledge » (again sic).

N.B. This situation without a supreme decision-making authority can nevertheless lead to sometimes virulent, even physically violent confrontations between supporters of this or that "chief rabbi,” each one being convinced of the absolute superiority of the point of view of his "sage.”

These two principles also exist among "modern" Orthodoxes, but the power of the referent rabbi is limited especially to the religious field in this case, not to other fields (for the Haredim, everything is religious and we have a similar problem with radical Islam for which everything or almost everything is also religious).

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CONCLUSION.

The religion of the ancient Hebrews is, of course, not monotheism but an exclusive and monolatrous henotheism.

The ancient Hebrews believed, of course, in the existence of other gods as their tribal god to them.They believed in the existence of as many gods (angels or Elohim) as there were peoples. A god or angel for each people (= the Elohim).

"When the Most High God distributed the land to the inhabitants of the earth, he fixed the boundaries of peoples. He told each people to be heaven (Deuteronomy 32: 8).

Deuteronomy 32.8: When the Most High (Elyon) gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. N.B. The word was replaced today by the name of Israel but the former expression suggests the existence of other deities whose Masoretes have erased the mention.

There are several references to Asherah, consort associated with Yahweh: the ostraca (ostraca singular ostracon: pottery shard used as a draft notebook) of Kuntillet Ajrud, found in the Sinai dating back to the 8th century before our era say: "I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" or "I have blessed you by Yahweh our guardian and his Asherah.”

The mention "Yahweh and his Asherah" is also found on an inscription dating from around 600 before our era, in the region of the Shephelah (kingdom of Judah).

The only thing is that some of these Hebrew required from the members of their people they worship only their god to them (= monolatry).

The most serious crime was indeed for them to worship another god than that of their tribe. Exodus 20.3: Thou shalt have no other God before me.

Let us note here that the first 5 books or the Torah or Pentateuch of the Bible have nothing historical, these are only legends in the etymological sense of the word (what is to read).

Let us also note that the science of history or the archeology are very skeptical about the continuation and particularly the history of the conquest of the Promised Land. The first of its character who really existed being apparently the great or little king named David (and therefore his son Solomon, a half Jew born from his liaison with a probable Hittite and therefore Aryan princess named Bathsheba). Here also surrounded by a whole swarm of legends.

The Babylonian exile will be necessary so that to the intellectuals of their remaining tribes, mainly that of Judah gradually accept the idea that there could be one God ruling over the universe; and that the god who watched over their people should also consequently rule over the others. That it could be only the same god, valid for everyone.

The whole question then became for them "What must do this single God with the other peoples? "The answer to this question especially by the Jewish eschatology was besides never very homogeneous.

Let us note finally that the latest evolution of the ideas that lead to the current Judaism was the one that came after a historical event somewhat similar to the Babylonian exile, the end of the semi-independent Jewish state allowed by the Romans until the year 70 of our era, an episode commonly called "Destruction of the second Temple."

It was the work of the great Pharisaic Rabbi Johanan ben Zakai settled in Yavne/Jamnia the crushing of the last Jewish revolt that of Bar Kokhba, and the destruction of his capital Jerusalem, in 135, made

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this Pharisaic rabbinical school Yavneh the only source of religious legitimacy for the Jewish Diaspora that followed.

What is striking in the books attributed to Moses by this Academy in Jamnia , it is the absolute silence kept by him on the immortality of the soul and the future life.

As in almost all cultures of the time, the Jewish design of the other world and of the destiny of the soul / mind after death, was dismal. The soul / mind descended to Sheol. All, good and bad, were also submitted to it. This Sheol was designed by the Hebrews as a pit (Psalm 69, 15; 88, 6) a place of silence, oblivion and darkness (Psalm 88, 10-12). In it the dead led a larval and crepuscular existence, deprived of all that is desirable in life, foreign to every relationship with God. These designs of the life in the hereafter were besides very similar to those of Greeks and Romans. The ancient Jews (Hebrews) did not believe in a real life after death, and it was only later, under the influence of the great Aryan religion that was the Zoroastrianism, perhaps; that the they admitted the concept of immortality of soul.

Only the barbarians of the Far West deviated from such a conception, according to the Bernese Scoliae commenting on the Pharsalia of Lucan.

Hermann Usener. Scholia in Lucani bellum civile/Commenta Bernensia. Liber I (1869).

451. "Druids deny that souls may perish [Driadae negant interire Animas]. OR GO TO HELL [aut contagione inferorum adfici]."

So there is on this subject radical opposition between the Jew and the "Barbarian.” It is difficult to find two people more dissimilar (regarding the destiny of the soul).

“One of the precepts they teach has leaked into common knowledge, namely, that souls/minds are immortal and that there exists another life at the Dead” (Pomponius Mela, in his book - in Latin - De Chorographia 3 , 2, 19).

Situation in the Jewish world, 2000 years or more ago.

The Sadducees believe in no resurrection. The Bible admits indeed that the human soul is not immortal. "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing"(Ecclesiastes 9: 5). The Bible also contains this severe warning: "The soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18: 4).

The Essene sects believed only in the resurrection of the soul. The Pharisees believed as well as in the resurrection of the soul than in that of the dead.

Judaism has never distinguished very well the soul from the body. Judaism arouses no one of the essential metaphysical questions about the hereafter. The notion of individual salvation does not exist in Judaism. Or more precisely it merges with the overall earthly salvation of the chosen people as a nation.

Chapter 11.

« ……..No religion has ever molded soul and spirit as has the Jewish religion. Nearly all religions have had a philosophy, ethics, a literature alongside of their religious dogmas; with Israel religion was simultaneously ethics and metaphysics, nay, more, it was law. The Jews had no symbolic independence from their legislation; no, after the return from the second captivity, they had Yahweh and his Law, each inseparable from the other. To become part of the nation one had to accept not its God only, but also all legal prescriptions emanating from Him and bearing the stamp of sanctity. Had the Jew had only Yahweh, he would probably have vanished in the midst of the different peoples that had received him, just as had vanished the Phoenicians who carried only Melkart with them. But the Jew had something more than his God he had his Torah, his law, and by it he has been preserved. He not only did not lose this law when losing his ancestral territory but, on the contrary, he has strengthened its authority; he has developed it; he has increased its power as well as its property. After the destruction of Jerusalem, the law became the bond of Israel; he lived for and by his law. But this law was minute and meddlesome, it was the most perfect manifestation of the ritual religion into which the Jewish religion turned under the influence of its doctors, an influence which may be contrasted with the spiritualism of the prophets whose tradition Jesus carried on. These rites which foresaw every act in life, and which the Talmudists made infinitely complicated, have given shape to the Jewish brain, and everywhere, in all lands, they have shaped it in the same manner. Though scattered, the Jews thought the same way in Seville, York, Ancona, Ratisbon, Troyes and Prague; they had the same feelings and ideas about human beings and things; they viewed things through the same eyeglasses; they judged according to similar principles. The Jewish type has been formed in a way analogous to that in which were formed and are still forming the type of a physician, the type of a lawyer, etc., types produced by the identity of the social and psychic function. The Jew is a confessional type; such as he is he has been made by the law and the Talmud; more powerful than

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blood or climatic varieties, they have developed in him the characteristics which imitation and heredity have perpetuated……….

In Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the legislation against the Jews was identical, a fact quite easy of explanation as in all these lands the legislation was inspired by the church. The Jew was placed under the same restrictions, the same barriers were built around him, he was ruled by the same laws. The Jew obtained a territory on the day he was imprisoned in these Jewries, and the Israelites lived since then exactly like a people that had a fatherland of its own; in these special quarters they preserved their customs, manners and secular habits, scrupulously transmitted by an education which was everywhere guided by the same invariable principles.

This education did not preserve the traditions only, it was preserving the language. The Jew spoke the language of the country he inhabited, but he spoke it only because it was indispensable in his business transactions; once at home he made use of a corrupt Hebrew or of a jargon of which Hebrew formed the basis. For writing purposes he employed Hebrew…….

Thus, consequently, the Jews had the same religion, manners, habits and customs, they were subjected to the same civil, religious, moral and restrictive laws; they lived in similar conditions; in each city they had their own territory, they spoke the same language, they enjoyed a literature, they speculated over the same persisting and very old ideas. This alone was sufficient to constitute a nation. They had even more than that: they have had the consciousness of being a nation that they had never ceased to be one. After they had left Palestine, in the first centuries before the Christian era, a bond always tied them to Jerusalem » (BERNARD Lazare).

Chapter 12.

« ………Their ideal not being one of those which are satisfied with hope they had not placed it high enough for that they never could lull their ambitions with dreams and phantoms. They thought they had a right to demand immediate satisfactions and not remote promises. Hence this constant agitation of the Jews, which had manifested itself not only in prophetism, Messianism and Christianity that was its supreme consummation, but as well since the time of the dispersion, and then in an individual manner.

The causes that gave birth to this agitation, which kept it up and perpetuated it in the souls of some modern Jews, are not external causes such as the tyranny of a ruler, of a people or ferocious code: they are internal causes, i.e., such as pertain to the very essence of the Hebrew spirit. The reasons of the sentiments of revolt with which the Jews were animated must be sought in the idea they had of God, in their conception of life and death.

To Israel, life is a boon, the existence granted to man by God is good; to live is in itself good luck.

By contrast, death is the only evil that can afflict man, it is the greatest of calamities; it is so horrible, so frightful that to be struck by it is the most terrible of punishments. "May death serve me as expiation," the dying would say, for he could not conceive of a more serious punishment than that consisting in death. The only recompense that the pious earnestly desired was that Yahweh might make them die sated with days, after years passed in abundance and jubilation.

Besides, what recompense other than this could they have expected? They did not believe in the future life, and it was late, perhaps only under the influence of Parsism, that they began to admit the immortality of the soul. For a Jew, his existence ended with life, he was sleeping till the day of resurrection, he had nothing to hope for except from existence, and the punishments that threatened vice, just as the satisfactions that accompanied virtue, were all of this world.

Having no hope of future reward the Jew could not resign to the misfortunes of life; it was only at a very late date that he could console himself in his misfortunes by dreaming of celestial happiness. To the scourges befalling him he replied neither with the Mohammedan's fatalism, nor with the Christian's resignation, but with revolt. As he possessed a concrete ideal, he wanted to realize it, and whatever retarded its advent aroused his wrath.

The peoples that believed in a world beyond, those who deluded themselves with sweet and consoling chimeras and let themselves be lulled to sleep with the dream of eternity; those that possessed the dogma of rewards and punishments, of paradise and hell, all these peoples accepted poverty and sickness with bowed heads. The[143] dream of future rejoicing kept them up, and without anger they put up with their sores and their privation. They consoled themselves of the injustices of this world by thinking of the mirth that would be their idyllic pleasures, they consented to bend, without complaint, before the strong who tyrannized them.

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But this idea of the continuity and persistence of the personality contributed nothing to the formation of the moral being with the Jews. In earliest times they did not share the hopes of the later Pharisees; after Yahweh had closed their eyelids, they expected only the horror of Sheol. Accordingly, life was for them the important thing; they sought to beautify it with all blessings, and these mad idealists, who had conceived the pure idea of one God were, by a startling yet explicable contrast, the most intractable of sensualists. Yahweh had assigned to them a certain number of years on earth; in this existence, always too short to suit the Hebrew, He demanded of them a faithful and scrupulous worship; in return, the Hebrew claimed positive advantages from his Lord.

The idea of contract dominated the whole of Jewish theology. When the Israelite fulfilled his duties towards Yahweh, he demanded reciprocity. If he thought himself wronged, if he considered his rights had not been respected, he had no good reason to temporize, for the minute of happiness he lost was a minute stolen from him, one which could never be returned to him. Accordingly, he looked to a punctual fulfillment of mutual obligations; he wanted a correct balance to exist between his God and himself; he kept a strict account of his duties and his rights, this account was part of the religion, and Spinoza could justly say : "With the Jews the religious dogmas did not consist in instructions, but in rights and prescriptions; piety meant justice, impiety meant injustice and crime."

The man whom the Jew lauds is not a saint, not a resigned: it is the just man. The charitable man does not exist for those of Judah's people; in Israel there can be no question of charity, but only of justice: alms is but restitution. Besides, what did Yahweh say? He has said: "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah and a just hin shall you have’; he has also said: "You shall not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbors."

From this conception of the primitive times of Israel came the law of retaliation. Simple spirits, imbued with the idea of justice, were obviously bound to come to: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The rigor of the code softened only then when a more exact idea of equity was obtained.

The Yahwehism of the prophets reflects these sentiments. What the God they praise wants is: "Let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream”; he says: "I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth; for in these things, I delight." To know justice is to know God, and justice becomes an emanation from divinity; it takes on the character of a revelation. With Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, it formed part of the dogma, it had been proclaimed during the Sinaitic theophanies, and little by little is born this idea: Israel must realize justice.

On returning from Babylon, the Jewish population formed a considerable nucleus of poor, just, pious, humble, and saints. A great portion of the Psalms came from this midst. These Psalms are for the most part violent diatribes against the rich; they symbolize the struggle of the Ebionim against the mighty. When addressing the possessors, the sated, the Psalmists readily say with Amos: "Hear this, O you that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail," and in all these poems written between the Babylonian exile and the Maccabees (589-167) the poor is glorified. He is God's friend, His prophet, His anointed; he is good, his hands are pure; he is upright and just; he is part of the flock of which God is the shepherd.

The rich is the wicked, he is the man of violence and blood; he is knavish, perfidious, haughty; he does evil without motive; he is contemptible, for he exploits, oppresses, persecutes and devours the poor. But his great crime is that he does not do justice; that he has bribed judges who condemn the poor beforehand.

Incited by the words of their poets, the Ebionim did not slumber in their misery, they did not delight in their misfortunes, they did not resign to poverty. On the contrary, they dreamed of the day that would avenge the iniquities and opprobriums heaped upon them, the day when the wicked would be hurled down and the just exalted: the day of the Messiah.

When Jesus comes he will repeat what the Ebionim Psalmists had said, he will say: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled”; he will anathematize the rich, and will exclaim: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." On this point the Christian doctrine will turn out to be purely Jewish, not at all Hellenic, and Jesus will find his first adherents among the Ebionim.

Thus the conception the Jews formed of life and death furnished the first element of their revolutionary spirit. Starting with the idea that good, that is justice, was to be realized not beyond the grave for beyond the grave there is sleep, until the day of the resurrection of the dead but during life, they sought justice, and never finding it, ever dissatisfied, they were restless to get it.’

Editor's note about this paradox of BERNARD Lazare.

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The two books, Ecclesiastes and Book of Job, have been included in the Jewish canon only after many discussions. For different reasons besides. God appears hardly in Ecclesiastes and Job was not Jewish. The fact that they have been kept by the rabbis having started modern Judaism, shows nevertheless that the Jews of the time also found a way in them.

Judaism was the first state religion known in the world. But it has a multitude of dictates (613 mitzvot) prohibiting behaviors that in themselves most of the time, have nothing reprehensible in the eyes of universal morals.

Now it is important to know that for the rabbis the teaching of the Torah, including its laws and commandments, is the most sacred of the duties. Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be cut away from it. See the principle number 9 of the “creed” of Maimonides. Same intransigence in land of Islam with the dogma of the uncreated Quran.

Whoever adds, cuts away, or changes something or who would say of the mitzvot (divine commandments), they are only symbols, which are to have no impact in reality, is an apostate and a heretic. See the quarrel of Rabbinites and Karaites. The moral authority of Moses the lawgiver, Nabi and almost God has given the judicial and governmental provisions of the time of King Josiah or of the return from the exile in Babylonia, the same authority as his alleged religious precepts; that is to say that of a divine revelation.

The god- or-demon of Moses said, "You shall worship one God,” but has also prescribed hygienic or moral rules, as in the case of Muhammad. These laws ascribed to Moses are a mixture of Mesopotamian jurisprudence style Code of Hammurabi, of tribal customs, or various rules regarding the ritual purity of the priests (see particularly the Leviticus).

Each of these laws, whether it is agrarian, civil, prophylactic or moral, has the same authority, so that these different codes form a single set, a rigorous body from you may remove nothing on penalty of sacrilege.

Among the pagan Gentiles, the separation between religious doctrine comes from the god-or-demons and civil laws from human legislators (some laws which can be changed. What man has done man can undo it) has always been very clear on the contrary.

If the Jews had been able to do the same thing with their Torah, by distinguishing the religious orders from the civil orders, many problems could have been avoided. But now, for pious Jew, all have a similar sacred nature, and these laws, the Jews did not want to give up on entering the community of nations. They remained for them religious obligations (613), that they were committed to fulfill. 613 mitzvot. What a damned Decalog!

The dietary laws of the Jews are very selective: herbivores are pure, carnivores are impure, etc. It is appropriate

in Judaism to abstain from eating meat of animals considered as being impure, we wonder why indeed. The only notion of impurity indicates sufficiently that the field where such laws are enacted is that of the sacredness ,and not, as some trials of rather hypocritical rational justification maintain it today, a commendable food hygiene concern.

Not to eat pork or to be locked in sabbatical meditations, excluding every other activity , is an act of faith which has nothing to do with reason. Swine, among Egyptians, was already held as an unclean beast. According to the description of Egypt left to us by Herodotus (fifth century before our era), in this country whoever touched one of them in passing would immediately dip himself in the river, clothed as he was, in order to be purified.

On the notion of stain Pharisees besides had ideas of an extreme rigor. The defenses and the requirements of the Bible, and for instance of the Leviticus, which, however, deals only with that, were not enough, they say, indeed , to preserve man from sin.

Animals must be healthy, like priests, like humans. Dwarfs, hunchbacks, anyone who has poor sight, crippled, blind and lame, those who suffer from itching diseases, are excluded from the assembly of the Lord. But the worst wound is that of the man who had his testicles cut or crushed. Eunuchs and castrated animals are impure by definition.

As the slightest touch contaminated the sacrificial vases, ultra-orthodox Jews came to consider themselves defiled by any foreign touch. From this fear resulted innumerable rules concerning everyday life: rules on clothing, housing, food, in order to avoid defilement and sacrilege.

Another editor's notes.

A) It always existed an ascetic movement in Judaism, related to the puritanism that the religion of YHWH conveys. The word love (eros) appears once in the Greek translation of the Bible, and with a rather negative meaning (Book of Proverbs, 7.18).

This fundamentalist current before the word is invented , for which the only acceptable sacrifice to God is the sacrifice of the desires in the name of faith and religious fervor; will extend into the Essenisms

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(which shows constantly as we have seen, its horror of women) into Judeo-Christianity, and even in the ultra-Pauline Schools (Marcion, Tatian); as into the Montanism of the second or third centuries. While the Pharisaism, less rigorist, will inspire in this field the moderate Pauline Schools of Irenaeus or of the official Gospels.

Orthodox Judaism preaches the fear YHWH, the penance and the ritual sacrifices, but doesn’t encourage specifically to sacrifice his life. His prophetic current, on the other hand, gives us many examples of visionaries whose vengeful exaltation called upon them the wrath of political power. See among others the case of John the Baptist.

Judaism, like any religion, has different religious currents, from the more flexible to the more rigid. We may call more flexible the liberal and traditionalist currents who practice Judaism as a family celebration, opportunity of a generous meal and of friendly exchanges.

But there are also the hard, very hard, branches of Judaism, a Judaism as the filmmaker Amos Gitai shows it in his film Kadosh (Sacred); living therefore in a total self-sufficiency, taking refuge in an ideological bubble to protect itself from the realities of life. We may have some compassion on seeing these men, and especially women, thus prisoners of their fears. But no mistake, behind the false modesty and the reverent smiles is hidden a murderous ideology, a virulent fanaticism, that we must at all costs denounce.

This same fanaticism (see the ideas of din moser and din rodef) which indoctrinated for years Yigal Amir the murderer of Yitzhak Rabin, shapes still today by thousands the same fundamentalists. In Israel but also in the United States, among the Hasidim (Lubavitch) even in Europe.

B) A God-or-demon like that of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob] who from his believers to mutilate themselves in order to mark them as cattle is branded, is a figure with a very questionable morals . We can understand that male or female circumcision, like any other surgery, may be justified in specific cases and on individual medical indication. But mutilate children, boys or girls, while pretending to do good to them, falls within cynicism and fanaticism.

To this end, no reason exists that can justify the distinction between female circumcision and male circumcision. Doctor Zwang goes further. He says that we can never stop female circumcision as long as male circumcision will continue to be performed. How do you want to convince an English (or French or German, etc.) not to circumcise his daughter if at the same time you allow him to circumcise his son?

Religion has been an instrument to justify male and female circumcision. We must unmask their irrational nature and denounce the pernicious role of some religious circles which defend it or which refuse to fight it. Dr. Sami A. ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH. Webmaster@lemanlake.com.

Circumcision was not invented by Abraham, since drawings dating back to the fifth dynasty and showing priests circumcising adults, show that it was practiced from teenage years, in Egypt, before the birth of Abraham .

But some mummies of pharaohs not bearing the scar, we must believe that it was not mandatory.

In Judaism circumcision is not only a practice inherited from another age - despite attempts to give it a medical justification in the last century - it also has a specific meaning. It is the sign of the eternal covenant of an individual with the God of the Hebrew mythology. Judaism will thus comprise, compared to other religious traditions, a dimension that is practically specific to it: the racial dimension. Now this child that is born as a Jew will be no longer - whatever his future spiritual options - absolutely free. The sequelae of his mutilated sex remind him every day that he is a member of a separate "people,” that he is not like the others (unless, of course, that he considers himself as “normal” and others as "abnormal").

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EPILOGUE.

The human ego always needs to be flattered to live, because the truth is often difficult to assume. This is probably the ultimate explanation for the persistence of the theme of the divine choosenness. It serves as a crutch for offended hubris or vanity.

One can also affirm without fear of much error that peoples and nations also need a minimum of esteem to live happily, and that conversely, as the French polemicist Eric Zemmour says very well, a nation constantly denigrated, vilified or constantly covered with spittle from all sides, including from its own ranks, CANNOT DEVELOP, AND CAN ONLY GROW SMALLER TO BECOME STUNTED....THEN TO COLLAPSE ! And thus disappear, impoverishing human biodiversity or the common cultural heritage of mankind. An attitude as stupid and cowardly, but as easy it is true, as deeply negative, is therefore culturally the equivalent of genocide.

Ethnocentrism, Jewish or otherwise, in this respect, therefore has a positive role that cannot be rejected a priori: THAT OF HELPING TO LIVE (only abuses or excesses of this legitimate pride are condemnable).

To those who deplore the current reflux of religions, it is necessary to reiterate how much, in their traditional forms at least they continue today to be the source of almost all the wars and conflicts that cause bloodshed on the earth. God or, more precisely certain conceptions of God are the greatest common divisor of Mankind. All religious traditions, all peoples, like individuals, are carriers of some psychosis encouraging them to develop feelings of superiority in a field or another. Judaism ... (let us say the vast majority of Jewish thinkers) by ignoring largely its true ideological ancestry, Mesopotamian, Canaanite, and Egyptian; by seeing in the Bible the alpha and omega of human thought, by claiming both the discovery of the "true God" and the word of this same true God; by giving oneself the specific vocation to show men nothing less than the path of Truth and Justice; found a reason to feel superior. And especially as its myths have been legitimized by Christianity and Islam.

If truth had not been altered at this point by the hubris of rulers and the deviousness of historiographers, Judaism would certainly get faster out of breath, and would have left his people being molten in other nations. But given the main elements of Judaism, the myth of the Covenant, the rabbinic law establishing the heredity of the Jewishness as well as the scriptural data, every evolution could be only very slow.

As we saw at the beginning of this book, about the Sumerian, or Egyptian, religion, the myths which structure the mass religions still experience several phases before losing their sacrosanct nature and their ability to inspire.

Now, in the twenty-first century, it is clear that the myth; for religious Jews and also for many Christians besides, is still in its first phase. Yahweh remains the world's god, the Jews form the Chosen People, Palestine is the land of the Jews, the Messiah will return to this earth in Jerusalem. Only a minority, made up of unbelieving Jews, got a full freedom as for this myth. This means that it is far from having completed its evolution. Only the emergence of non-Christians and non-Muslims global cultural and economic poles, such as that in the Far East (India, China, etc.) supplanting the West,

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will be able to succeed in that. Though from China comes to us another appalling new: the rapid expansion of Christianity on the spot ... It seems that human stupidity has no limits.

Some Diaspora Jews have left everything to become settlers in Palestinian territory, with as stimulant Bible verses which galvanize. They are ready to die to serve the divine cause with an Uzi machine pistol in their hand. The religious conditioning is frightening, their lives are based on an absolutized past, and this withdraw rolls all the values of progress in education, lifestyles, status of women. For these fanatics of God or the Demiurge, life is worth to be lived only in the expectation of the Messiah who will restore full sovereignty to the Jewish people. This fundamentalism has many similarities with Islamic fundamentalism. This fundamentalism rejects all that is foreign, that is to say, the non-Jew, but the Jew accused of being unjudaized. He has the will to influence politics, and that's what makes him very dangerous. Fundamentalist rabbis explain very seriously that mankind having entered a pre-messianic period; in order to prepare the Jewish people to his coming, it is necessary to be present in what they call, in reference to the Bible, Judea and Samaria. They bring a religious justification to the staying in the occupied territories. In the Orthodox youth, the majority is ready to fight to impose a completely religious state. Indoctrination is perpetuated from birth to death. Children from the age of three years are conditioned to a real destructive ethnocentrism. Significant psychological damage is perpetrated on the psyche of the child, and many imbalances incite them to violent acts later. The Bal Teshuvah (repentant) are also dangerous. Those Jews who did not receive religious education, return after a long period of identity problems, to the religion, believe to find in Orthodox Judaism a relief to their personal neuroses. The psychological problem is then hidden by the study of texts, and they experiment a form of sublimation to God that causes them to become harden in an unspeakable dogmatism, a distressing egocentrism, and a consuming hatred of Arabs. Jewish fundamentalism is as dangerous for the Rights of Men and the democracy that Islamism. Orthodox communities are gaining ever ground. In Paris was even recently created an ultra-Orthodox rabbinical court; and religious schools flourish or are consolidated, secularism is not doing its job, the French 1905 Act on the separation of church and state, is constantly violated.

Politicians are more concerned with their electorate than with the future of democracy. Indeed, many voters exchange votes in compensation for a funding of their religious buildings. This is unacceptable, it is necessary that the secular world positions itself rapidly against this major problem which is now corrupting from inside democratic values. In no case should the state put religion ahead the good functioning of society.

We are often asked, "but what is therefore your position to you today Tolandians about the Jewish question? "Well, here what it is!

Unlike the judges of the Bible, for the true high-knowers, there can be no confusion between the first priestly function and second warlike and political function. Druids and kings, spiritual leaders and military leaders, had a quite separate role. It was considered a major fault for a high-knower of the druidiaction (druidecht) le fact of seizing the sovereign power. See the case of the high-knower called Nede in Ireland. This Nede will seize the kingship of Connaught, usurpation aggravated in our story by the use of the chariot of the legitimate king, his uncle Caier, his pursuit and his death. He will reign for a year before finding a symbolically exemplary death (poetic justice. For more details see the glossary of Cormac).

Another example of abusive druid who will ultimately be punished simply by political power: Aithirne Ailgesach. His nickname ailgesach means "Demanding.” Aithirne Ailgesach is the prototype of the perverted high-knower , known for requiring the impossible and who avenges himself by using his magic, including the deadly satire of the glam dicinn. The reaction of King Conchobar will be merciless: he will raze the fortress of Dun Etair, and will kill the perverted druid.

Here is what we think of the problem of Judaism, a word more accurate than that of Jewish "problem" (or if not it is then necessary to define the word ... "problem").

1. According to Bauer the only solution is that the Jew renounces Judaism. And the whole world too, Catholics, reformists, Orthodoxes, or other, we will add . (Editorial Note.)

2. According to Marx, as long as he is a Jew, the restricted nature which makes him a Jew is bound to triumph over the human nature which should link him as a man with other men, and will separate him from non-Jews…the particular nature which makes him a Jew is his true, highest nature, before which human nature has to give way (Karl Marx in his book entitled “On the Jewish Question").

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3. According to Pauline Bebe, a she liberal rabbi who studied in the Leo Baeck School "Judaism must submit itself to a universal morality at the risk of being changed." Because, she adds, every religious system that does not put into practice the concepts of toleration or of morality, is to be changed.

The problem of Judaism is that it is based on a passed but absolutized past, it is nostalgic, and it hopes still to inspire its followers the desire to relive this definitely dead past. Judaism conveys with it an outdated ideological burden. Otherwise it would be longer, and it is the fear of being no longer which paralyzes or hardens it in his beliefs. Very Shakespearean dilemma. If it has no longer a divine “task” to accomplish for God on Earth, it has no reason for being, its ego cannot be supported by the valuation of a perfect and immortal, entity. Judaism as a religion therefore appears a little lost in this world where cultural exchanges are increasing, where old religious identities blend in through assimilation. All are mixed, and live in peace anyway. Judaism too would be part of this large family, but for that it must sacrifice his selfish dreams and return to a certain simplicity. To admit humbly that it does not have more than its fellows a task to perform.

- This option is not possible for Orthodoxy, it would mean the loss of all its privileges.

- To blend in is difficult for liberal Jews, it would imply the loss of their traditions.

- Assimilation is feasible for the Yom Kippur Jews when they will succeed in being detached from family possessiveness and shaming.

Let us hope that many Jews will become aware of these things, so that we can all tend towards our single assignment on earth: to live in peace together. As once a great Tibetan mystic man said once: "When I saw him from afar, I thought he was an animal. When he got closer, I thought he was just a man.When we were face to face, I realized that he was my brother.”

When Judaism will perceive finally the highly wicked elements that it conveys for more than three thousand years , elements that make the woe of its people and of the "other?”

The guide value of a non-violent , non-racialist, and without a traditional enemy,struggle for reconciliation and peace in a multi-ethnic state (preferably single), cannot be the religion of the Book, but the open and inclusive secularism. The religious tri-functionalism must be clear.

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APPENDIX No. 1.

AN INSULT TO HUMAN INTELLIGENCE: THE CREATIONIST CURRENT.

Judaism presents a wide range of opinions about creation, the origin of life, and the role of evolution in it. There are nevertheless in the Bible historical or scientific mistakes, at least traces of knowledge very limited in these fields.

The first of them being to suppose a creation ex nihilo, due to an Almighty God having suddenly decided to create us, one wonders why, we who had asked nothing. Out of love Christians answer (God indeed needs love to exist), which does not prevent them from arguing that God will end this experiment on his part (end of the world, end of times last judgment). The wisest is.......

1) To take note of existence. Of the matter. Of the life.

2) To try to understand how all that runs.

3) To possibly intervene in its working.

4) And leave the rest to our imaginations (atheism agnosticism pantheism).

There is nevertheless a fundamentalist current hostile to transformism and which sticks to the text of Genesis , regarding the birth of the universe.

For the Haredim or ultra-orthodox Jews science has no particular value. To the scientific truth which is dependent on its axioms and method, they oppose the "absolute truth" to which only the study of the sacred texts gives access. There is a certain hostility, or at least a certain contempt, for science. The Ultra-Orthodox newspaper Yated Neeman reminds of many scientific errors and concludes, "why should we spend our time studying 'facts,” half of which will be considered false in ten years' time?

But the products of science, such as machines or medical treatments, are not necessarily rejected.

On the other hand, inventions or concepts that are likely to violate Jewish religious law are refused: the Internet or television (because of their "indecent" images), the theory of evolution (which opposes religious creationism). Thus, for one of the leaders of the Shass (Sephardic Haredi Party) " a Sephardic woman who devoutly embraces a scroll of the Torah is better than fifty professors who teach that Man is a descendant from the ape.’

And the degree of rejection varies from one community to another. For example, the seventh Rabbi of Lubavitch taught that technological progress was the work of Divine Providence, with the aim that Jews should serve God even more effectively and in fields hitherto inaccessible. In fact, he was the first instigator of Torah lessons on radio, television and even by satellite, as early as the 1980s.

Creationist theologians seek to show that the age of the universe cannot exceed ten thousand years and that Earth suffered a catastrophic flood there is even less time.

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We will therefore examine the creationist ideas, especially on the age of the universe and the evolution of species, and show that they are not admissible scientifically speaking, after further examination.

From Genesis therefore from the Sumerian cosmogonic myths and from other books, creationism tries to describe rigorously how things have gone since the creation of the world.

Some believers, particularly theologians and some scientists, often questionable and of low level moreover, set themselves up as creationist researchers in order to defend scientifically their views. They claim that, during Creation, God would have created "heavens and earth" in six days, from the creation of the inert matter to that of the living and from that of animals to that of Man and Woman . All human beings are descendants from a single couple and likewise all species descend respectively from a single pair by species, the idea of evolution being ruthlessly dismissed by them as anti biblical. This theory is called Fixism in Biology. Now Fixism is no longer defendable today. It cannot withstand a little bit thorough analysis, and is permanently replaced by the theory of the neo-Darwinian evolution, only adapted to give a coherent explanation of the living world. Like any science, this theory is progressing step by step, by being corrected and completed, among bitter or fraternal, discussions, which form the civilizational heritage of Mankind gradually.

Using biblical chronology, creationist researchers make a time countdown which comes to an age of the Earth located between six thousand or twelve thousand years according to the authors, with longer variations in time. Similarly, for them, at least three thousand years before our era, a cataclysm on a planetary scale, the flood, would have covered the Earth with water, and only a small group of humans and a pair of each animal species, would have survived. Note here that, according to the creationist literature, dinosaurs would have disappeared during the flood because not saved by Noah and were therefore contemporaries of early man. Having established starting from the biblical texts the chronology of the evolution of the world, these researchers have to find experimental justifications for these theoretical and bookish deductions.

And that's, of course, there that the big problems appear for creationists; scientific theories in Astrophysics, Geology, Paleontology and Biology, agreeing absolutely not with such a young age of Universe and Earth; with an immutable biological creationism and a hypothetical recent universal flood.

Creationists claim, with the support of Genesis, that the Earth and the Universe are not more than 6000 to 12,000 years (according to the authors) old. Therefore, we should not be able to observe objects located at more than ten thousand light years. In particular, we should not see all extragalactic supernova galaxies that exploded before the birth of the universe, and therefore before God's creation, as well as the other quasars that are further away. The brightest supernova discovered on 24 February 1987 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, at one hundred and seventy thousand years light, for example would never to be seen! But yet astronomers detect objects located at twelve billion light years, that is to say to twelve billion years in the past. The universe therefore has at least twelve billion years of existence and certainly not ten thousand years, an object that being not able to emit light before it exists !! Let us point out for the record that the speed of light is finite and that a distant object is seen at a much earlier era than it is more distant from us.

Some creationists respond to this argument by stating that God created the universe by giving it an apparent old age being able to mislead astronomers. It is in our humble opinion to have a strange idea of the divine morality. God would be a twisted being who would look for confusion by going as far as creating light radiation corresponding to no emitting object, and therefore a movie showing us non-existent objects, only to muddy the average believer! Creationism swim here in a complete delirium and explains absolutely not the observed facts, going even as far as opposing them.

To understand the mechanism of the creationist reasoning well, we will quote some passages characteristic of this literature. A book is for this very significant: "The world that perished" by J. C. Whitcomb Jr. (The Bible is given in it as a scientific reference book.)

On page 25 we read……

Question: how could kangaroos have traveled from Australia to Noah's Ark? Answer: They didn't. At least two of each of all the kinds of air-breathing animals - including kangaroos - must have lived on the same continent where the Ark was built, so they could come to Noah by divine guidance (Genesis 6: 20; 7:9) without having to cross oceans

Question: how did kangaroos reach Australia from Mount Ararat after the Flood? Answer: A great land bridge apparently connected Asia and Australia in the early post-flood period. Such vast quantities of water were locked in the polar regions that ocean levels were hundreds of feet lower than they are now. The map of the Pacific Ocean Floor clearly shows the shallow continental shelf that extends now from Indochina almost to Australia.

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These excerpts show the creationist thinking well. The creationist scientist faces a tough job: he must come to reconcile two very different views of the universe. After an important bibliography work that makes him able to know what he attacks, that is to say the unbiblical scientific theories; he must try to prove the falsity of the latter with generally rather weak arguments. Admittedly, this work is not really simple and puts the Creationist researcher in the position, uncomfortable role if any, of an enemy of Science! Scientists will often regard him as retarded fixist, placed there as a living fossil, only to prevent them from working quietly. Many Christians or Muslims are creationists by lack of information, scientific ideas often having much difficulty to be spread in that kind of background what paves the way for the most appalling superstitions!

Haredim circles, for example, are relatively sensitive to the notion of curses. Rabbis even once organized a collective prayer in the offices of the Israeli Social Security in Tel Aviv to ward off a curse allegedly put on its employees by people deprived of benefits.

In 1985, the Minister of the Interior (of the Haredi Shass Party) explained a dramatic accident in which a train collided with a school bus by God's vengeance caused by the desecration of the Shabbat following the opening of cinemas on Friday night.

And after the brutal death in December 1989 of Zion Garmi, deputy director of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, a rumor circulated that he had been cursed by three officials of the ministry, and that even Itshak Kadduri, the famous cabbalist of the time, had not succeeded in thwarting this curse despite his incantations.

I will not resist the pleasure, finally, to complete the picture by reminding of a famous anecdote already mentioned above and here below.

In 2011 an ultra-orthodox rabbinical court of Jerusalem has sentenced to death by standing a wandering dog accused of being the reincarnation of a secularist lawyer who had insulted the religious judges 20 years before (cf, the information website Ynet).

Let us be serious and to return to the basic beliefs by definition.

Let us repeat once again: the first woman, for example, has not been taken from the rib of a man, and the devil does not appear to her in the form of a snake. These stories are legends! The first chapters of Genesis are not or are no longer a valid scientific historical account of creation. These first chapters of Genesis are not or are no longer a valid scientific paper on the origins of man.

These are stories that their authors have learned from the Sumerian-Babylonian myths about this subject.

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APPENDIX No. 2.

ON ANTHROPOMORPHISM AND PERSONAL GODS.

It is quite useless that various sycophants of the great Tetragrammaton attack, always rather cowardly, moreover, in the Bible, what they call idolatry (the bamoth the asherah Baal, etc.) and those whom they call idolaters. It would have been easy already at the time indeed (if all these texts had not been written AFTER THE FACTS) to give them the answer that one day a famous king of Ireland will give their successors (for all the "idolaters" were not rude people).

Lebor Na hUidre, Book of the dun cow, folio 50 b, page 127.

"Senchas na relec inso….Ar baí cretim in óenDé oc Cormac do réir rechta. Ar ro ráidseom na aidérad clocha ná crunnu acht no adérad intí dosroni & ropo chomsid ar cul na uli dúla .i. in t-óenDia nertchomsid ro crutaig na dúli is dó no chreitfed".

“Cormac… said he would not adore stones or trees but that he would adore him who made them and had powers over all the elements. He who made the trees grow……is God alone.”

In other words.

- There is no other god but God, prophets and King Josiah say. You carve a piece of wood, and you call it God. But it is always a piece of wood.

- Yes, Cormac answers, it is indeed always a piece of wood. But the tree of which it comes was created by God, in the same way in truth as all lower gods. But he created them to be his agents in the world, so that we can approach him through them.

God or the Demiurge is not a thing, but what through which and in which things exist, and let themselves be understood. He is necessarily beyond the personality , but also beyond its opposite, the impersonal one.

Is there a means to avoid the superimposition , that is to say to give of God or of the Demiurge an anthropomorphic representation?

The question is difficult, but there is no lack of attempts in this direction in the history of philosophy. From the moment when the thinking is involved , intelligence becomes its own light and its own authority, and there is no need to make intervene the support of any revelation. See the god of the Greek philosophers or of the Celtic druids mentioned by Clement of Alexandria in his stromata (Book I chapter 15).

“Alexander, in his book On the Pythagorean Symbols, relates that Pythagoras was a pupil of Nazaratus the Assyrian

(some think that he is Ezekiel; but he is not, as will afterward be shown), and will have it that, in addition to these, Pythagoras was a hearer of the Galatæ and the Brahmins. Clearchus the Peripatetic says that he knew a Jew who….

Heraclitus says that, not humanly, but rather by God’s aid, the Sibyl spoke...

Thus philosophy, a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterward it came to Greece. First in its ranks were the prophets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans among the Assyrians; and the druids among the Celts; and the Samanæans among the Bactrians; and the philosophers of the Celts; and the magi of the Persians, who foretold the Savior’s birth, and came into the land of Judea guided by a star.”

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What a jumble! So let's not talk about druids or gymnosophists, Galatian dikastes or Brahmins, let's say HIGH-KNOWERS and so that everyone will understand.

Essence, Being, Substance, Infinity, Eternity ... No trace of a reference to human needs for drawing a customized God or Demiurge. The stress is then put on the Vast, the Infinity, joined to the eternal and limitless expansion of Being. The Universal including is impersonal and should not be viewed through the wrong end of the telescope of the human person ...

Spinoza's Ethics is one of the first modern writings that have taken over critically the anthropomorphic versions of the representation of God or of the Demiurge. The subject is briefly mentioned in the note about proposition 15, but it is much more developed in the appendix. " Some assert that God, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. How far such persons have strayed from the truth is sufficiently evident from what has been said.” In the appendix, the criticism will be even clearer: men have prejudices about the nature of God that it is necessary to do a serious examination.

Why the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, who is omnipotent and omniscient, for example could create a world so bad that he is obliged to destroy it one day, to save just a chosen few? Was he not powerful enough himself to wipe immediately the original sin? Why did he need to do this, to send his son in order to be crucified ?? Why has he not prevented this sin from happening, if he was really omniscient? If God is almighty, how is it possible that his will is not be done?

The problem being insoluble, the upholders of this Book religion had to resign themselves to accept that God's will could be countered. So it was therefore necessary for them to assume this strange idea that God cannot get what he wills. Just as man, lost in the middle of a difficult nature, cannot get what he wills, it was assumed that God also could not get what he would. But how can God's creatures thwart Creator's Will? It is, of course, necessary first to assume that the aforementioned creatures are separated from him. For if the creatures are separated from the Creator, and that God whilst leaves them free will, it is possible for them to do what God does not want them to do. The biblical myth of Adam and Eve is a remarkable illustration of that. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve enjoyed eternal life and communion with God. But God had put on it a condition that was to be respected. Do not touch the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The mother of all living (Eve) tasted the fruit and disobeyed. It was not entirely her fault, because she was tempted by the serpent. The serpent is the representation of the devil, a fallen angel who dared to want to be as great as the Creator. The divine sanction of such breach could therefore only come, marking thus the curse of the Sin, the tearing of the Fall, the radical separation between man and God. Was to follow then the sentence for that, the cartload of woes that is the human existence. Punishment was reflected in the finitude being to lead to death. Now the Fault was printed, as an indelible stain, on the soul, even before birth (original sin).

Some theologians have even been very categorical on this point. This stain on soul, no act can erase it, even with a sincere repentance. God's grace only can do it, but beware, it can be got only if man comes to God in the right way.

God is very stubborn, he will not consider goodness, generosity, it is also necessary to come to him in the right way, in professing the right religion. Only then will righteous people be entitled to sitting at the right hand of the Almighty. (And again, this is not even won because some theologies go as far as to claim that God selects in advance his happy few!)

God's will is a serious thing. The consequence is, of course, since it is God who has willed it so,that it is necessary in the same way that men judge each other and, in the light of the requirement laid by God. The judgment can be duplicated ad infinitum. We must always see in others above all imperfection. What is bad, the evil tendencies, the bad sexuality, the wrong political party, the wrong nationality, the wrong religion, etc.? They may well do, men will never be up to the requirements of God. Prejudices therefore have a theological justification. It is God or the Demiurge who started by prejudging every individual, it's him who printed the first blemish on his soul, so it is easy to imitate him; to prejudge in turn every man, before even he can prove his worth.

Finally height of misfortune this religion teaches that God will destroy man if he did not fully meet his requirements. The prodigious moment of creation is over; now the world does only run its course, and this course of events is uncertain; because the creation threat at any moment to fall back into Nothingness, from which it came (and in which it would have done better to stay!) Man must tremble, a fit of anger of God will be sufficient so that everything disappears. The Apocalypse is, for some believers imminent. Signs of God’s irritation can be found everywhere but death will be a relief for

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none, because even if this bitter existence is only a passage, in the hereafter there will still be a judgment.

The soul will be evaluated and will receive the moral retribution for his actions. Rivers of pus and thorns, the torments of Hell in hot or cold hell, wait those who have been some instigators of iniquity, for the eternity. See about the subject the terrifying aislingi or Irish medieval visions (the aisling of Adamnan , the Purgatory of St Patrick, etc.). Nearer us also read the Quran on this subject. The resentment of God is terrible and will pursue even all those who dared not to believe in him. Life is like a school where you can, if you have worked well, receive at the end a prize. Only the righteous persons will be entitled to the reward of heaven.

All this is only a discourse of fear! This moralizing discourse has even no connection with the essence of all true spirituality, which should be a path towards the Divinity. This has no connection with the Divinity. This is only a strictly human representation of men or women fulfilling, to reach it, what they think a necessary asceticism. The initial mistake, superimpose the human over the divine nature, is developed in a series of illusions characteristic of the religions of the revealed type.

APPENDIX No. 3.

ORIGIN AND DESTINY OF MANKIND.

It is necessary to revisit our beliefs, and to see our weakness despite the terrifying power of our science (we are dwarfs on the shoulders of giants). The only reasonable attitude towards religions is to make the history of them.

The main topics of Genesis, for example the direct creation of the world by God as well as the flood, are borrowed from very questionable Mesopotamian designs.

Nobody seriously believes in the historicity of Adam and Eve, of Noah's Ark or of the narrative of the Tower of Babel destroyed by God.

The story of Noah and of the flood, for example, has its source in a story appearing on the XI tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the latter being also the copy "revised and corrected" of the Sumerian story of Nippur on the same subject.

To take literally the myths is a kind of interpretive madness, pertaining to paranoia. It is crucial for the religious and spiritual truth to detach oneself from the historical and material meaning opposing the facts (archeolog) with the delirium of the texts or of their interpretations.

"A new use of ancient myths."

Website of Port Saint-Nicholas (La Queue-en-Brie).

"Babylonians and Egyptians, too, had their myths of origin, and the legend of the flood is found elsewhere than in the Bible at the same period. The originality of the Bible is not in the used pictures!

But in the first story, the Jewish monotheism mocks the Babylonian idols: the sun and the moon are no longer God- or- demons and goddess-or-demonesses, or fairies, but merely "lights!’ a). As for the second story, it distances itself from the Babylonian epic of Atrahasis. In the Babylonian story, man is created to ease the god-or-demons from their effort. In the Bible, God creates man selflessly then establishes him master of the creation. In one case as in the other, man is created from the earth and from a divine element. But in Babylon, it is with the blood of a god-or-demon fallen and vanquished: in his very nature, man is thus marked by a kind of original curse. In the Bible, he becomes a living being when God breathes his own breath: it is the breath of God that animates him! Pessimism on one side, optimism on the other.

Finally, in the Babylonian story, the god-or-demons decide to destroy mankind by the flood, because he troubles them in their peace. Human destiny is decided according to the interest in the least selfish, of the gods. In the Bible, if God resolves to send the flood, it's because of the immorality of men which requires judgment. Men are thus responsible for their destiny and not subject to the whims of God's versatility. "

End of the quotation and start of our comment.

Dear Friends of Port Saint-Nicholas. Your site is aptly named: you believe in Saint Nicholas. I concede not handle as well as you the language of Moliere, but as for that of Voltaire I have a good grasp of it. Dear dear friends of Port Saint-Nicholas, do you know the meaning of the nevertheless very French

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locution thus expressed to see the mote in the eye of his neighbor, while the beam in his own you do not notice it!

a) The sun and the moon simple lights ...

The progress, of course, is real, but does not change the MAIN default of this worldview: the creationism.

As to what you write of the second biblical account, it is necessary to very optimistic indeed to see in this creation of man by God a gratuitous and totally disinterested gesture; BECAUSE IN BOTH CASES THE RESULT WAS IDENTICAL OR WORST PERHAPS.

In terms of divine versatility, I also think that your God should be an expert in it, just read a little the text of the Bible; as it is, and not like you, with Romeo's eyes for Juliet, or more accurately, how do you say already ?? Oh yes, that's right: with Chimene’s eyes for Rodrigue.

As for the pessimists, do you know what we say where I come from? Pessimists are well-informed optimists.

It goes without saying by cons that we fully agree with this French website to recognize that the biblical account used ancient myths in order to work out its own message. But the importance to be given to the innovations which are in the Bible (up to what point indeed there was a break with Sumerian religious thought?) their (positive or negative, good or catastrophic) characterization and finally their paternity (to whom attribute them?) remain the main stumbling blocks that may be encountered in every a little bit serious dialog with those who, alas, take this book as an inspiration source (the spiritual heirs to Abraham ).

The Jewish intellectuals authors of the collection of texts that produced the first part of the Bible, had to visit the huge libraries of the Babylon of the Exile time, and they have brought back from them many new ideas; at least for them.

The myth of the lost paradise refers us to the Neolithic Mesopotamia, the one which invented agriculture, because the Hiddekel and Perat rivers irrigating the Biblical Garden of Eden, can only be the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Genesis 1,1 to 2, 4, and even Genesis 2, 4 to 3, 24 are variants of old Sumerian or Babylonian myths about the respective roles of men and God-or-demons.

Scientists or scholars thinking out on these questions, and anxious to interpret in a way a little more considered their popular myths, were not to be missing in the former Babylonia .

Is it to them or to the Jewish intellectuals in exile that we owe the main innovations of this collection of texts, including those of the priestly narrative? (Genesis 1,1 to 2, 4?)

No one knows for now, but archeology will show it one day.

What is certain, on the other hand, it is that biblical myths and Sumerian-Babylonian myths, at least in their form known to date, always agree on the main thing, the place reserved for man in this story. He is destined to serve the gods or demons (the Elohim, the Cherubim with a whirling sword and so on ... whatever their names: Allah, God and his saints ...) through the sweat of his brow. N. B. Let us point out for the record as we shall see below, there existed mythologies having a completely different way of seeing things in this field (men and gods rival, equal, or then parents, ancestors, descendants ...)

The main characteristic of these biblical texts, including the priestly account we are told, is that they react to the way through which the Babylonians then saw the things.

Of course, of course, but up to what point ?

That is the question, the first questions, which can arise.

The only apparent innovation of the biblical text about the creation and the place of man in the universe was in fact to hold the man, or more precisely the woman in this case (Eve) responsible for this situation. Man is destined to continue to serve God or the Demiurge (the Elohim, the cherubim with whirling sword, etc.) and it will be for him a situation far from being paradisiac.

The second question is this: was the innovation brought by the biblical text (the excessive making man and his descendants feel guilty, an idea apparently absent in the original Sumerian myth); a good thing, a breakthrough for mankind or the opposite?

It is up to each one to see!

Subsidiary question.

Judeo-Christians and Muslims make the inspiration that led to this "break" with the dominant religious thinking of the time (at least in this part of the world) coming from a supra human being.

We can doubt it strongly, because the share of divine inspiration seems very POOR in all this, again let us repeat it!

Most cosmogonies, including those of Mesopotamia, of the Phoenician cities or of the Biblical lands mentioned, agree on the key points. Man is not on earth by chance, he was designed and created by the assembly of the gods, or God, and that, for a specific purpose: to serve the god-or-demons or to

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worship God or the Demiurge . His role is to offer the god-or-demons the foods they await, or to God or the Demiurge, the prayers he awaits.

But there is paganism and paganism!

What is appalling is to see that Mankind is still influenced by this more than 5000 years old (Sumerian and Babylonian) paganism taken over by the Bible, a book increasingly more and more widespread in China.

The direct creation of man by God is a myth!

There existed men before the Adam of the Bible. The Adam of the Bible is only a pagan symbol!

And as Pelagius saw it very well in his time, the story of the original Sin too is therefore only a myth (still Sumerian-Babylonian in this case).

APPENDIX No. 4.

RELIGION AND MIRACLES.

What is a miracle? It's an amazing phenomenon! But this notion varies with time.

The Mahabharata and the Ramayana, two of the oldest books of India, for example seems to speak of thermonuclear explosions before this weapon is invented, compared to a column of 10 thousand suns! A single explosion would have reduced to ashes of the Vrishnis and of the Andhakas.

A single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame, as bright as ten thousand Suns, rose in all its splendor...

It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis and Andhakas….

The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. Their hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected.

The destruction of the enemy army by the "iron thunderbolt" (certainly a more appropriate name than the "Fat Man" dropped on Nagasaki) is described in the following excerpt from the Samsaptaka-Badha Parva of the Drona Parva:

...Then Vayu (the presiding deity of that mighty weapon) bore away crowds of Samsaptakas with steeds and elephants and cars and weapons, as if these were dry leaves of trees... Borne away by the win.

And again, in the Naryanasatra Mokshana Parva (Drona Parva) , reference is made to the "Agneya weapon" incapable of being resisted by the very gods.

Meteors flashed down from the firmament...A thick gloom suddenly shrouded the host....Inauspicious winds began to blow ...the sun seemed to turn round, the universe, scorched with heat, seemed to be in a fever. The elephants and other creatures of the land, scorched by the energy of that weapon, ran in flight...The very waters being heated, the creatures residing in that element began to be cooked...hostile warriors fell down like trees burned down in a raging fire - huge elephants burned by that weapon, fell down on the earth...uttering fierce cries ...others scorched by the fire ran hither and thither, as in the midst of a forest conflagration, the steeds...and the cars (chariots) also, burned by the energy of that weapon looked...like the tops of trees burned in a forest fire...

...winds dry and strong and showering gravel blew from every side...... Meteors, showering blazing coals fell on the earth from the sky...the Sun's disk...always seemed to be covered with dust....A little while after the King, Yudisthira, heard of the wholesale carnage of the Vrishnis in consequence of the iron bolt….

A most unusual excerpt from the Mausala Parva contains even the following specification:

In great distress of mind, the King caused that iron bolt to be reduced into fine powder. Then men were employed, O King, to cast that powder into the sea...

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The machine fits the description of an atomic bomb, but the domesticated elephants (trained for war) are rather to be placed between - 3000 and - 2000 and even the "chariots" imply the invention of the wheel.

Is it a coincidence that the main Vedic god-or-demon Indra was considered as the god-or-demon of the lightning that made walls collapsing ?

Moses crossing the Red Sea, the burning bush, Joshua at Gibeon or Jericho with his trumpets, compared with that it's only cat’s pee!

Nevertheless the Bible mentions other phenomena equally strange and bizarre.

The nabi or visionary by the name of Elijah, after having walked 40 Days and 40 Nights, comes to Mount Horeb in Sinai (1 King 19) ... After having handed over his powers to his disciple Elisha, he would have flown away in the heaven carried away by a chariot and horses of fire ... (2nd Book of kings, chap. 2). The (apocryphal) Book of Enoch too, speaks of such abductions in heaven.

But what seemed extraordinary to a contemporary of Ramesses, Vercingetorix or Jesus may seem commonplace today. Particularly for cures. Modern psychiatry explains or causes cures that would have seemed miraculous in olden days. This is particularly true for deaf, blind persons, epileptic persons, and for paralytics, often mentioned in ancient witness statements.

It is also necessary to emphasize that the meaning of the word varies from one religion to another, or even that it changes within the same religion, according to the cultural level in which the phenomenon occurs. Miracles can then look "more normal" events, part of the everyday relationship between man and divinity. Just think of the capabilities of fakirs and yogis, of the knowledge of Shamans and Hindu mystics, to realize that the world of miraculous phenomena is vast and limitless.

In ancient pagan tradition, miracles and extraordinary cures were very common (many monuments were erected to vouch for it) and created a substrate of beliefs that continued, including until today.

Strabo tells us that the ancient temples were filled with ex voto describing cases of miraculous recovery made by certain god-or-demons including that of two blind men having recovered their sight thanks to Alcides (Hercules) in the presence of a crowd of witnesses.

Zoroaster, on the request of a king of the time, one day made a tree grow in a courtyard, a tree so huge that people could not measure its trunk with a rope.

Torah supposes to Moses a formidable magic wand (used by the nations of the land of Midian).

"And take in your hand this staff….And Yhwh said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power” (Exodus 4,17 -21).

The Bible also attributes to the Egyptian priests prodigious powers.

They didn’t succeed, of course, at least according to this myth, to change dust into lice; but they nevertheless came to turn their staffs into snakes, the Nile water into blood, and to multiply frogs or toads (Exodus chapter VII).

The miracle of the manna.

Numbers 11, 7. The text is very clear on this, it is enough to read it objectively and not as a religious extremist. Manna is a desert plant exudation, like coriander seeds or bdellium, a secretion produced by the trees and shrubs of tamarisk, when attacked by some cochineals of the Sinai. A European traveler Friar Felix Fabri described in 1480 that bread from heaven that falls early in the morning and, like dew or drizzle, forms many drops on grass, stones and tree branches.

“The Arabs collect this manna, and sell it to pilgrims. I myself have seen and eaten much of this manna. The manna which is found at the present day does not cover the surface of the earth, but hangs upon the leaves of plants and the points of stones, like dew …So that morning we sucked up the exceeding sweet dew of this wilderness with pleasure. When we were at St. Catharine's convent, we bought manna…”

No one is fussing with that nevertheless!

Same thing as for the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea. Exodus 7.11 to 8.14.

It is enough to see that the exact name of the place crossed at the time was "Sea of Rushes" or "Sea of Reeds" (Suf. Exodus 13:18, Deuteronomy 11:4) and that it was therefore not a deep sea, but a simple lagoon. What is not at all the same thing!

EDITOR’S NOTE.

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OBJECTIVE RATIONAL AND SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF THE HISTORICAL FACT THAT INSPIRED THE LEGEND and whatever the place or the time it took place. A skirmish between an Egyptian patrol and a Habiru raid? Whatever!

A strong east wind having lowered the water level the Hebrews, pursued by the Egyptians, veNture in a swampy area or a lagoon (a reed sea, suf in Hebrew language) to hide.

The Egyptians followed them, but the wind having turned during the night, the waters came again to their normal level, what forced them to turn back, not without difficulty.

A certain number of them perished with all hands. How exactly? It's difficult to say (the " Not so much as one of them remained” is a later addition). The Hebrews in question ascribed the stroke of luck that avoided to them the capture (a vagary of the weather) to various supernatural interventions and then they resumed their journey.

But a crossing of the red, sea, there never was, on that day in any case!

Ditto for the pillar of fire and cloud guiding the Israelites in their march. It was not a miracle, but a simple way also used by other people in the region not to get lost in the desert, in a way the land equivalent of the lighthouse for sailors (John Toland. Tetradymus. 1720).

Krishna in India (circa - 1400) brought to life two boys bitten by a snake.

The whole life of Krishna, the eighth incarnation of Vishnu, of the Hindu Vedas, is besides in itself literally miraculous. Krishna would be born in Mathura, from a black hair of Vishnu, son of the prince Vasudeva and of Devaki. But he was immediately exposed to the persecution of the wicked king called Kamsa. This Kamsa - like Herod – made all newborns killed, but Krishna escapes him nevertheless. Then he sends him several demons to fight him, but without success. His brother Balarama having found him again and joined him, Krishna performs, helped by this one, many miracles, to counterbalance all these evil spells. Finally, he decided to end the embarrassment that Kamsa causes him, overthrows him and restores on his throne the rightful king their grandfather. But Krishna and Balarama will then have to defend the city against the attacks of the powerful King Jarasandha of Magadha, a relative of Kamsa.

After eighteen indecisive battles, the intervention of a hero of the Mahabharata will be necessary to end. Krishna's adventures with the gopi, cowgirls, girls or married women of Vrindavan, are the subject of many stories. One of the most famous, many times illustrated with miniatures, is the episode when, finding the gopi bathing naked in a pond, he steals their clothes and took refuge at the top of a tree; deigning to give back them their belongings only when they come to ask him for them. (The relationship of Krishna and the gopi symbolizes the divine principle with which individual souls seek to be united in order to get release.)

Krishna is also opposed to the older Indo-European god-or-demons, what tends to confirm his aboriginal origin. Young man, he persuaded his father-in-law and the other cowmen of Vrindavan to worship no longer the god or demon Indra, God- or-demon of rain and harvest, but instead to make offerings to Govardhan Hill and to the sacred cows. The god-or-demon, irritated not to receive offerings, triggers a flood, but Krishna lifts the hill and thus make the villagers able to take refuge under it.

Later he will take part, along with Arjuna and the Pandavas too, in the great battle evoked by the Mahabharata (the part of the book titled Bhagavad-Gita describes the teaching of Krishna in it).

The god-or-demons warn him one day that he has to come away with all his family if not his line will be extinguished, but as hey stop on the way, men get drunk and fightings break. Krishna and his brother Balarama try to restore calm, without success. They enter the forest and go into a meditation to find a solution. Then Krishna is struck by the arrow of an aboriginal hunter named Jaras - Old age - who had taken him for a deer. Touched in his heel, the only vulnerable part of his anatomy [like Achilles], he died and his body, lost, will remain a long time unburied.

Ditto for Buddha (around - 600).

The founder of Buddhism was called in reality Siddhartha Gautama ; Siddhartha is his own name, his first name somehow, Gautama probably the family name (gotta) of the woman who raised him. He is also called Sakyamuni (the wise man of the Sakyas) because of his membership of the Sakya clan. He would have lived around the sixth century before our era and would have died when he was about eighty years old.

Buddhist scriptures concerning his life mix metaphysics and legends. The legendary version of his birth indicates that he would be born in a sacred wood and that his mother, whose name means "illusion" (Maya) would have conceived Siddhartha in a dream, entered by a white elephant with six

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tusks. No sooner born, the child would stand up and would have "taken possession" of the universe by turning towards the cardinal points, then would have taken seven steps towards the north.

His mother died shortly after (seven days after the legend says) and Siddhartha was raised by his maternal aunt Prajapati Gautami.

The Buddhist scriptures which depict the life and character of Buddha, mention his accomplished education and his training in the fields appropriate to a warrior aristocrat, such as martial arts, management of agricultural estates, and literature; but also a deep understanding of the religious and philosophical ideas of the culture of his time. Siddhartha Gautama was a sportsman, an expert in martial arts as in wrestling and archery, who was able to cross kilometers and to camp in the wilderness.

Siddhartha will insist that he was neither a god nor the messenger of God and that enlightenment was not the result of a supernatural process or agent; but rather the result of careful attention paid to the nature of the human mind, which could be discovered by anyone.

He will travel during the last forty-five years of his life, in the region of the Ganges and of its tributaries and will teach his practice in the field of meditation. He will found the community of the Buddhist monks and nuns (sangha) to perpetuate his teachings after his disappearance.

Several legends tell how Mara, the demon of death, afraid of the power he was going to get against him by freeing men from the fear of death, attempt to disturb his meditation by casting against him hordes of terrifying demons; or girls all more attractive as each other.

Tradition also says that once he fed 500 people with a small basket of cakes, that he was teleported in Sri Lanka, etc.

But back to the Mediterranean world.

Pausanias reports that Asclepius resurrected several people, including a named Hippolytus, and that a monument was erected to voucher that. The ex-voto engraved on the walls of the temple of Serapis also bore the names of people miraculously cured or operated by him.

The miracles of the pool of Bethesda, Bezetha or Bethsaida.

The Aramaic word Bethesda can be translated as "house of grace." The pool was located in the district of Bezetha, north of the Temple Mount. Its spring, the Bethesda stream, was one of the largest water springs in ancient Jerusalem.

The water of the Bethesda Fountain was known since ancient times (from the Jebusites?) for its miraculous recoveries; since were found, close by, to the east, a series of small bathroom being part of a cult facility dedicated to Serapis, the healing god-or-demon (and then located outside the city walls ).

It may seem surprising today, but the 1st century of our era was rich in all kinds of miracle workers.

The best known is probably Apollonius of Tyana, but there was also the Nazorene Jesus of course (a little before, even if the first complete collections of writings about him are somewhat later than those Philostratus used for Apollonius).

This type of healer finds his ideal ground in the inhabited by doubt societies, where landmarks tend to disappear, largely challenging traditional medicines considered as ineffective. Then appears a strong personality, with sure charisma , having the ability to offer new solutions that integrate the whole of the man, body, mind, intellect, society.

In the 1st century most famous is therefore Apollonius of Tyana . Legends attribute to him a score of miracles, including a (reported in detail) resurrection, five recoveries, four expulsions of demons and six interventions also on an inanimate nature (locked doors that open, sea which is calmed). For the record, let us remind of that which was performed in Rome itself. " A girl had died just in the hour of her marriage, and the bridegroom was following her bier lamenting as was natural his marriage left unfulfilled, and the whole city was mourning with him, for the maiden belonged to a consular family. Apollonius then witnessing their grief, said: "Put down the bier, for I will stay the tears that you are shedding for this maiden."And withal he asked what her name was……He did nothing of the kind, but merely touching her and whispering in secret some spell over her, at once woke up the maiden from her seeming death......Now whether he detected some spark of life in her, which those who were nursing her had not noticed - or whether her life was really extinct, and he restored it by the warmth of his touch, is a mysterious problem which neither I myself nor those who were present could decide” (Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana IV, 45).

Emperor Vespasian himself performed miracles.

"In the months during which Vespasian was waiting at Alexandria for the periodical return of the summer gales and settled weather at sea, many wonders occurred which seemed to point him out as the object of the favor of heaven and of the partiality of the Gods. One of the common people of

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Alexandria, well known for his blindness, threw himself at the Emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to heal his infirmity. This he did by the advice of the God Serapis, whom this nation, devoted as it is to many superstitions, worships more than any other divinity. He begged Vespasian that he would deign to moisten his cheeks and eyeballs with his spittle. Another with a diseased hand, at the counsel of the same God, prayed that the limb might feel the print of a Cæsar's foot. At first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them. They persisted; and he, though, on the one hand, he feared the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were within the reach of human skill. They discussed the matter from different points of view. "In the one case," they said, "the faculty of sight was not wholly destroyed, and might return, if the obstacles were removed; in the other case, the limb, which had fallen into a diseased condition might be restored if a healing influence were applied; such, perhaps, might be the pleasure of the Gods, and the Emperor might be chosen to be the minister of the divine will; at any rate, all the glory of a successful remedy would be Cæsar's, while the ridicule of failure would fall on the sufferers." And so Vespasian, supposing that all things were possible to his good fortune, and that nothing was any longer past belief, with a joyful countenance, amid the intense expectation of the multitude of bystanders, accomplished what was required. The hand was instantly restored to its use, and the light of day again shone upon the blind” (Tacitus. The History IV 81).

N.B. When a miracle worker of that time heals a blind man, he mixes indeed some mud with his saliva, spread it over the eyes and said: "Go and wash." The poor wash themselves hardly in this time and crust was often formed around their eyes. So you mix saliva with sand as an abrasive, and therefore you rub the eye with it. All healers knew that. Including the Jesus of the Gospels, of course.

Miracles were also held in high esteem by the Greek philosophers, people besides attributed many to some of them, like the neo-Platonist Plotinus.

The priests of the true pagan Lourdes that was become the city of Grand in the Vosges, at the end of antiquity, were known for their miracles throughout the Roman empire; for it is certainly to Grand that alludes a passage of the Alethia from the rhetor of the fifth century named Claudius Marius Victor; and mentioning the emigration of the Delphian Apollo among the Leuci where he would become a healer.

We also know by the Greek historian Cassius Dio that the emperor Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) kept visiting the temples of the god-or-demon he considered able to bring him the "healing of his body and of his soul / mind. " However among them is quoted Grannus.

The old idea that any disease of body is also a disease of the soul / mind is an integral part of the thought of that time, as of the thought of many other peoples besides who did not wait for the progress of medicine and modern psychology to notice the existence of psychosomatic disorders.

A century later, the healing priests of this temple for Grannus Belenus also quickly realized that Constantine aspired to the Empire, and therefore carefully oriented in that direction the interpretation of his famous dream. For the most famous of the "tarbfess" took place in 309 in Grand and it is by no means to a future king that it was applied, but to a future emperor.

" Fortune herself [ Roman interpretation of the Fate or Tocade] so ordered this matter that the happy outcome of your affairs prompted you to convey to the immortal gods what you had vowed at the very spot where you had turned aside towards the most beautiful temple in the whole world, or rather, to the deity made manifest, as you saw. For you saw, I believe, O Constantine, your Apollo (Roman interpretation of Grannus Belenus] , accompanied by the goddess Victory, offering you laurel wreaths, each one of which carries a portent of thirty years. .. And now why do I say, "I believe"? You saw, and recognized yourself in the likeness of him to whom the divine songs of the vates had prophesied that rule over the whole world was due.” (The panegyric of Constantine and the origin of the Constantinian labarum or chrism.) See also in the same vein, the ex-voto in Chamalières or in the springs of the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy or if you prefer that term, Sequana, and the fabulous health Fountain of Glanum in Provence; (Or that of the herbs of the god-or-demon Diancecht in the second battle of the plain of mounds in Ireland.)

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APPENDIX No. 5.

ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ABRAHAM AND THE HEBREWS OR THE FORMER NOMADIC SEMITES.

IF ONE ACCEPTS TO PLAY THE GAME OF THE CURRENT BIBLICAL TEXT, I REPEAT, IF ONE ACCEPTS TO PLAY THE GAME OF THE CURRENT BIBLICAL TEXT,

THE GENERAL FRAMEWORK BEING HISTORICAL, IT IS TRUE,

THERE ARE ONLY THE CHARACTERS ABRAHAM ISAAC AND JACOB

THAT ARE A PROBLEM.

Let us begin in this regard by reminding of the fundamental work of André Lemaire, from whom we will quote this brief outline of his "Histoire du peuple hébreu" (History of the Hebrew people 1982).

"The origins of the Hebrew people are not directly accessible to the historian: no external testimony speaks to us of Israel before its mention on the stele of year 5 of Pharaoh Merneptah (1207 before our era), and the first writing of the epic of the origins of Israel, in the form of a genealogy of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-Israel, probably dates only from the time of the unified kingdom under David and Solomon, or from a later period... "

ABRAHAM.

The legend makes Abraham be born in Ur in Chaldea, that is to say in the south of today's Iraq. Probably to confer certain prestige upon him, the city of Ur having once been very important, its memory was still very present in the minds of those who perfected the details of this story around ………...

In any case the site of Ur was still occupied at the time of the arrival from Jerusalem of the Hebrews deported by Nebuchadnezzar at the beginning of the 6th century before our era.

The second track is more serious.

JACOB.

With Jacob we enter safer ground. For a very simple reason: THE BIBLE CALLS HIM AFTER...ISRAEL.

"The cycle of the patriarch Jacob, probably originally independent of Abraham-Isaac's, was not attached to it until David became king of Israel and Judah... »

The study of patriarchal traditions shows us that a certain number of them are centered on Upper Mesopotamia or Jezira in Arabic and more precisely the Aram-Naharayim, a name which means in Hebrew "the country -Aram- of the two rivers" rivers one of which is certainly the bend of the Euphrates THEREFORE THE REGION AROUND HARRAN not far from the Turkish-Syrian border.

Genesis 24:10 The servant then took ten of his master's camels, bringing along the best things his master owned. He set off and went to Mesopotamia [Aram Naharayim], to the city of Nachor.

The Israelites kept the memory that some of their ancestors were Arameans by repeating: "My father was a wandering Aramean" (Deuteronomy 26:5).

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Part of the population lived in fortified cities that controlled the surrounding territory and were grouped into various kingdoms, but another part of the Aramaic population was made up of semi-nomads who grazed their herds of small livestock on the edge of the cultivated areas.

It can be stated about these tribes therefore that they were shepherds speaking a Semitic language , from the country of Aram on the upper Euphrates, north of present Syria .

They are pastors living on their flocks and on their trades. Grouped into tribes, they were great family men. Although wandering and dispersed, they have common beliefs and customs. They worship the god El, represented as an old, nicknamed the Most High or the Ancient of Days. Around him various deities gravitate who form his heavenly court.

Their worship is simple. They worship menhirs on hills (the baetylus) symbols of the deity , and regularly go on pilgrimage to holy places.

They perform sacrifices of camels and rams, in honor of the god El, and also human sacrifices. (On the psychology of these sacrifices, see for example that of Isaac by Abraham.) These tribes claimed to have common ancestors, the patriarchs. The character of Abraham has nothing historical in the strict sense of the term; since until the thirteenth century before our era that is to say, until the time of Moses, it can be, as for him only oral traditions. Some people make him the chieftain of a clan influenced by Hittites and Hurrians, in no case by Indo-Europeans; a little like Hyksos, some Semites supervised by Indo-European (using war chariots) who at the time of the Iranian empire in Mitanni, will invade Egypt circa - 1600. What remains to prove, of course.

The departure from Ur of the Hebrew clan of Terah and his sons Abram and Nahor and corresponds in every case, if it really happened, to a large reflux westward of Semitic tribes of Akkadian culture; driven back by the pressure of the Mitanni Aryans in Assyria or by the pressure of the Kasi Aryans in Sumerian country. As a result this set in motion the Amuru Semites (the Amorites of the Bible) towards Egypt. The prosperity of its delta indeed attracted nomads of the Middle East suffering from periodic famines. The only element of synchronism that we have to locate all this is the mention of King Hammurabi of Sumer who reigned from - 1728 to - 1686 and of his vassal Kudur Lagamar king of Elam, in Genesis 14. (Amraphel king of Shinar and Kedorlaomer king of Elam.)

A nephew of Abraham called Lot, having been taken prisoner by the armies of Hammurabi during the capture of the city of Sodom, and leaving in exile behind them; Abraham, through a clever commando action had managed to free him and his family. (Again, the conditional is required.)

Abraham's clan was to have Akkadian for language. Its migration towards the West of the Fertile Crescent made him get in touch with Canaanites who spoke a similar Semitic language. Hence its influence on Hebrew.

As it was often done at the time, in Canaan, Abraham would have attempted to sacrifice his son Isaac in order to please his god-or-demon (Genesis 22, 1.19). The conditional is still required.

Secondly, Isaac precisely.

Apparently, a (too much) good son and a good father, unfortunately victim of a blindness of which his younger son, Jacob, took advantage shamelessly (to steal the birthright of his brother Esau).

Still according to these legends, of course.

Finally, Jacob / Israel, presented in Genesis (25-49) precisely as a character usurping unscrupulously the birthright, and tenacious in his enrichment will.

Still according to legends.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob ... are in reality three legendary heroes presumably with no relationship originally, and got together in one line by the first scribes who concocted the original biblical text.

By syncretism of themes known in the northern kingdom (Jacob's cycle, exodus) or in the southern kingdom (Judah): the Abraham cycle. Merged in Jerusalem at an unknown date after the fall of the northern kingdom (Israel) and its capital Samaria.

This is the opinion of the great expert on the subject, Thomas Römer (The Cycle of Abraham: Covenants, Wars and Outrageous Sacrifice).

There is no doubt that Jacob is the oldest of the three patriarchs. He is clearly a figure from the North and was put in third place in the genealogical construction of Israel's ancestors to give primacy to Abraham, the Judean. It is indeed very plausible that the traditions of Jacob and Abraham at first

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existed independently of each other and that they were only put together after the disappearance of the Kingdom of Israel in 722 before our era. 

The northern origin of Patriarch Jacob is first manifested in the places with which he is connected: Bethel, Gilead, Penuel, Mahanaim and Shechem. The episode of the founding of the sanctuary of Bethel by Jacob in Gen 28, 10-22......

Relationship between the traditions on Abraham and Isaac.

It is plausible that there was a second ancestral figure in the south, venerated in a shrine in Beer-Sheva.

In texts outside the Pentateuch, Isaac is not mentioned outside the phrase "Yhwh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob," except in Amos 7 and in later writings. In Amos 7, Isaac seems to represent the south as opposed to the north. "The high places of Isaac will be devastated, the sanctuaries of Israel razed to the ground”. If these two verses come from a pre-Exile version of Amos, then they would attest to the existence of a southern ancestor named Isaac, important enough to represent the south. Isaac must have become Abraham's son early on, as is evidenced in Genesis 18, with the play of words on Sarah's laughter.

……

European research has rediscovered in recent decades the importance of the Persian period, when the birth of the concept of a Pentateuch was to be situated. Indeed, there is little doubt that the Pentateuch, or even the Hexateuch, did not exist before this period and that the "Torah of Moses" was born at a time when the transformation of the Israeli-Jewish religion into Judaism was beginning. For some time now, research has also realized that the "Samaritans" must have played a far greater role in the compilation and publication of the Pentateuch than the traditional and very Judaeo-Centric view had imagined. Excavations on Mount Garizim have shown that a shrine existed there as early as the fifth century before our era. which, like Jerusalem, apparently had the status of a central, if not unique, shrine. Against the background of this major discovery, it is much easier to understand why the Pentateuch never specifies the place that Yhwh would choose to live there (Deut 12); it is apparently a compromise between the representatives of the two religious centers who guaranteed each other the recognition of their sacrificial worship while forbidding it together to others, as shown by the case of the community of Elephantine. When the leaders of the Temple of Elephantine wanted to rebuild their destroyed altar, they approached both the religious authorities of Samaria and Jerusalem, both of which forbade the existence of another altar outside the Garizim and the Temple of Jerusalem.

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APPENDIX No. 6.

EGYPTIAN PERIOD.

Archaeology and History (the true one, the History of objective and scientific type) teaching us nothing on the Hebrews of that period; the only Jews on which we have information are those in Elephantine (a garrison of mercenary soldiers in the service of the monarchs ruling over Egypt), we are therefore reduced to probabilities; because it is obvious that the biblical text is to be taken with utmost caution.

Millions of readers thinking like us that what follows is not proven nor established, and we understand them, may refer directly to the next step. That of the kingdom of David.

But nevertheless let us try together to see if the outlines of the biblical account are at least consistent with science.

Jacob's clan would have settled in the region of Goshen in the time of the Heka khasut (foreign kings) i.e., the Hyksos, probably during the reign of Auserre Apopi (Apophis I) (-1613 - 1595).

It is indeed a Semitic Hyksos invaders like him who, having apparently enjoyed the services of Joseph (become vizier under the name of Zaphnath Paaneah) invited his brothers to settle in the Egypt he had just submitted .

It was to be some Aryans mainly Hurrians and / or Amuru Semites, mostly.

These Semites exploited Lower Egypt from - 1730 to - 1550.

The vizier Joseph married Asenath the daughter of a high priest called Potiphera.

From this mixed marriage were born at least two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh (probably Egyptian names).

The Hyksos occupation lasted about two centuries, until their expulsion by the Pharaoh Ahmose around - 1550, but the descendants of Joseph and his brothers, more or less mixed, however, remained in the region of the Nile delta named Goshen. Their number is impossible to specify. It was perhaps only a few families.

During the wavering having followed the death of Ramses II, an ambitious Egyptian politician Mosis or Moses (= son in Egyptian language) willing to have his State for himself; would have one’s heart set on the Hebrews for that (if the Hebrews were a chosen people, it was firstly by Moses).

The Ptolemaic Egyptian historian Manetho (quoted by Philo) gives us the first name of this Moses, Osarseph i.e., the "dedicated to Osiris."

The little Mosis was not contemporary with the beginning of the reign of Akhenaten, adopted by a daughter or granddaughter of Ramesses II, he was contemporary with the reign of the latter. (-1259 - 1299).

The representative of the pharaoh in the region, to calm his ambitions, had perhaps begun by conferring on him the function of "high scribe"of the worship of Osiris.

Moses is the very prototype of the theocrat involved in politics, that is to say governing the lives of his people, including the smallest details. He was a fearsome tyrant, using the constant fear of a "heavenly ogre or policeman" repressive and almost terrorist (Yahweh said ...) to annihilate any opposition to his plans.

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It was under the reign of Akhenaten’s successor, already old, Baenre Merenptah (Merneptah) (- 1299 -1220) that would have occurred the Exodus of the Hebrews accused of collaborating with the Hyksos occupiers.

Yahweh ... this theonym was that of a small topical god -or demon in Midian (part of Saudi Arabia bordering the Gulf of Aqaba, at the south of the Jordanian border).

This country was indeed that of his father-in-law, Jethro, also called Reuel or Hobab, what would tend to show that there has been a mix of several traditions about him. Unless this is a character as artificial and syncretic as Moses.

That some people make a Midianite high priest.

Anyway, Moses repudiated his daughter Zipporah (we are far from the fairy tales in the way of Walt Disney) as soon as she ceased to be useful to him (or to please him). See Exodus 18, 2. Women adore that. They consider that as being "divine.”

About forty years of nomadic life in the Sinai Peninsula followed.

This exodus has concerned only a few families and their relatives and servants. At most a few hundred people (as in the case of Erik the Red, for example, and of the Greenland); but these families played later a crucial role in the emergence of the kingdom of David, from where the exaggeration of their numbers and the chauvinism biblical legends about this subject.

The religion of the former scribe of the cult of Osiris (or Aton?) was then in no way monotheism but an intolerant henotheism or monolatry. ( henotheism is the preferential worship paid to a deity without denying that there are others.)

We find traces of it in many accounts of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy. See for example the curious passage in which a mysterious entity named Azazel (another one of the Elohim?) is placed almost on the same level as Yahweh. (Lev. 16, 8 to 10.) These passages had to escape the vigilance of the working group which, at some point, falsified or rewrote all these texts (cf. Ezra).

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APPENDIX No. 7.

OTHER ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT MOSES AND MONOTHEISM.

As we have said, Archaeology and History (the true one, the History of objective and scientific type) tell us nothing about the Jews of that period; but we learn through it, on the other hand, a lot about the Egyptians and the land of Canaan. The excavations provide us clear evidence of the importance of the Egyptian presence in all the land of Canaan during the thirteenth century before our era. (Summary of the very big work of Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silbermann about the subject entitled The Bible unearthed.)

The key figure of Judaism is therefore Moses, an undoubtedly very intelligent man, who was raised in the court of a governor of Pharaoh with all the honors due to a prince (according to the Bible). Therefore he had no difficulty for manipulating a people of uncritical poor wretches as that of the Hebrews.

Moses had well learned the lessons of the Egyptian priests. How it is convenient indeed to withdraw away from the sight of the curious people to "hear the voice of God" and to bring back gathering (presumably previously engraved and placed at the desired place by him or one of his accomplices ) “tables.”

This noble Egyptian scribe managed thus to impose the worship of the "single god-or-demon" that had been inspired to him by that of the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, better known under the name of Akhenaten, but renamed by him Yahu/Yaho/Yhwh.

For Freud, monotheism therefore was not the doing of the Hebrews, but of the Egyptians, during the period known as "the Amarna revolution" at the end of the seventeenth dynasty, between 1375 and 1358 before our era. This Pharaoh proscribed the ancient religion of Ra and Osiris to establish purest monotheism instead, with rituals in honor of the eternal single god-or-demon ATEN, creator of all things, who appears in the glare of the sun light.

As worship, everyone should behave as " living always in Maat,” that is to say following truth and justice. Maat was the only goddess-or-demoness, or fairy if you prefer that term - of Truth, Order and Justice - of the ancient Egyptian pantheon, that the religion of Aten kept. Besides Maat appeared here no longer as a goddess-or-demoness or a fairy, but as a philosophical guiding principle, regulating the life and destiny of men. What fell within the practice of sorcery and divination was proscribed.

On the death of this pharaoh, the clergy restored the former god- or- demons, and it erased everything that could remind of the heresy of Akhenaten. The ruins bearing the inscriptions of this reformation were found only in 1875, so it was only starting from 1880 that this first monotheistic undertaking was known.

Freud postulates that Moses was a high official close of Akhenaten, and won over to his monotheistic ideas. He would run away during the collapse of the Aten religion by taking with him a group of Semites he had submitted during one of his campaigns against the "Habiru.”

Here therefore what was for Freud the reality of Exodus!

Moses would have tried to convert the Jews to the Aten religion, but this people "being a stiff-necked people" missed no opportunity to turn to other God-or-demon: Baal, golden calves, Astarte (Akkadian Ishtar), etc. The Bible also mentions several episodes related to such misappropriations and such revolts that Moses would have repressed with bloodshed. Nevertheless there was one who was held

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otherwise: Moses was killed but the Hebrews, without a leader, without landmarks, wandered for forty years. They then adopted the worship of the Canaanite gods or of the other peoples with whom they merged. Also according to Freud.

Only the Levites, who were Egyptians,and who were to form the guard of Moses, continued to proclaim the principles of the Mosaic religion; until the prophets resume the message of Akhenaten, encouraging the people to worship one God-or-demon, and to live "in truth as in justice."

Of course, Freud's thesis was violently contested by the rabbis and the supporters of the Jewish orthodoxy. To this work, we have to join the testimony of Josephus in the 1st century of our era, which in a tract against an Alexandrian historian named Apion; echoes a tradition preserved by Manetho, an Egyptian priest who lived at Sebennytus in the third century before our era. According to this tradition Moses was an Egyptian priest of Heliopolis, called Osarseph, who would have changed religion and took the name of Moses; and reportedly against the advice of a pharaoh named Amenhotep by Manetho would have led out of Egypt leprous Asians. But for the Egyptians all foreigners were considered as impure, and therefore as "leper.”

The description that Herodotus (fifth century before our era) makes of the behavior of Egyptians is nevertheless puzzling.

" They are religious beyond measure, more than any other people and the following are among their customs….no Egyptian man or woman will kiss a Greek man, or use a knife, or a spit, or a cauldron belonging to a Greek, or taste the flesh of an unblemished bull that has been cut up with a Greek knife.”

“After a death most nearly concerned let their hair and beard grow.”

“ Swine are held by the Egyptians to be unclean beasts. If an Egyptian touches a hog in passing, he goes to the river and dips himself in it, clothed as he is; in order to be purified.”

“They practice circumcision for cleanliness' sake….”

Circumcision, which according to the Bible, is the act by which is made the covenant of the chosen people with God, was therefore known and practiced by the Egyptians and other peoples in the East.

While fleeing from Egypt around - 1250, Jews therefore will keep this rite they had adopted and which signs the belonging to the divine community, extending, perhaps, in all its abstraction (prohibition of representing Aten ) the synthetic religious experiment of Akhenaten.

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APPENDIX No. 8.

DID THE ANCIENT HEBREWS INVENT MONOTHEISM?

THE ANSWER IS, OF COURSE, NO THEY DIDN’T!

It is only the Bible worked out in Jerusalem in the 7th century before our era that suggests it and yet. And that for political purposes and not primarily religious!

The second known attempt to impose a religion of the one god was indeed that of the priests of Judah in the 7th century before our era. This mountainous and poor southern region developed only slowly, while the northern state,Israel, had long been prosperous. These two regions have lived separately for a long time, with different customs related to economic and social differences. Richer, Israel was much more open to the outside world with which he traded. The two regions did not have the same god: Elohim in the north and Yahweh in the south. It is the Assyrian invasion that invades, occupies the north and deports the population that gave a chance to the south (Jerusalem). The latter affirmed, through the biblical text, that God had chosen the south because of the too much open customs in the north and its lesser religious rigor. Judah received a supply of Israelite populations from the north and its development has grown considerably. Hence the statement, through the Bible, that Judah is the grouping of all Israelites and the affirmation of a religion in fact being reduced to their religion whose characteristic is not monotheism but rather rejection other gods (YOU WILL NOT WORSHIP ANOTHER GOD BEFORE MY FACE) for the benefit of the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In fact, this religion will evolve much from the Sumerian-Cannanean God El (the breath, the voice, the name of Israel given to Jacob meaning the one who fought against El) to Yahweh (God of volcanoes, warrior and jealous, result of a mute compromise, symbolized by the Ark of the Covenant, between the Southern and Palestinian clans in Shechem) then Elohim ("All the gods" but followed by a singular, contemporary of the two kingdoms) before being stabilized in YHWH / Adonai after the exile in Babylon under the influence of the Persian religion and its monotheism.

But until the great reform of King Josiah, at the end of the 7th century before our era, it seems well that Yahweh was combined with other deities who were more or less subordinated to him.

We remember that the descendants of these mythical Hebrews were then divided into two kingdoms: Israel and Judah. Israel, agricultural, more prosperous, accepted the gods of the neighboring peoples with whom he traded. Judah, centered on the breeding, had a claim to more piety in order to accuse his neighbor in the north of having broken with God. This single god was therefore imposed by one power, that of the King of Jerusalem. It is easy to understand that one king and one God are necessary to a (self-proclaimed) unique people. King Josiah therefore strove to eliminate any mention other than that of Yahweh:

2 Kings 23:4: King Josiah ordered to remove from the temple of Yahweh all the objects made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts.

Same thing in 2 Kings 23:14-15.

Deuteronomy - the first “monotheistic” Jewish text even though it does not yet deny the other gods - seems to have been written around 622 before our era, when King Josiah wanted to make Yahweh the only God in Judah and prevent him from being worshiped under different other forms as it seems to be the case in Samaria or Teman (south-east Judah), with the idea of making Jerusalem the only legitimate holy place of the national deity and the royal power the sole power of the Jewish people. Yet

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it is still a monolatry, that of a tribal god jealous, sectarian and cruel, the only god of a people whose unity is problematic (opposition of the kingdoms of Judas and Israel). We can say that this God is reduced to the idea of the unity of this people but even in the days of kings, this state religion is not binding on everyone. The Canaanite religion insists and imposes its representations.

The final consolidation of the Jewish monolatry or exclusive monotheism will be linked to the crisis of Exile. In 597 before our era, the Babylonian army defeats the Kingdom of Judah, occupies it and exiles in Babylon the royal family, the intelligentsia and the upper classes. Ten years later, the Babylonians wreck Jerusalem and destroy its Temple; the result is a second deportation, which seems to leave about 85% of the population, mostly rural, the future Samaritans.

It is only after this destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar in - 587 and the Babylonian captivity that will truly be formed the biblical tradition attributed to Moses (Deuteronomy), all that precedes being reworked. The Babylonian exile brings the Judean writers into contact with the Mesopotamian myths of the Creation and of the Flood, and the first books of Genesis present Yahweh as the creating deity of the entire universe. The name of God is then Elohim, indicating a certain syncretistic tendency among priestly authors: indeed the word can be translated by God or gods, suggesting that the gods of other peoples are only manifestations of Yahweh.We have therefore, to summarize a little, a Judaism that has its source in various polytheisms: Sumer (Iraq) / Ugarit (Syria) / Sinai / even Iran (Zoroastrianism, cf. Shlomo Sand).

The development of the monotheistic Jewish doctrine took place in a background favorable to such ideas: the Babylonian king Nabonides tries to make the lunar god Shin the one god of his empire, in Greece, the Presocratics advocate the oneness of the divinity against the Pantheon and the Achaemenid successors of Cyrus II the Great - himself considered a messiah of Yahweh - influence Judean monotheism by making Ahura Mazda the official god of the empire.

It is therefore within this deported elite and its descendants that we find most of the writers of the Old Testament texts that will bring the monotheistic response to the terrible shock and profound questioning of the official religion generated by this succession of disasters.

After the destruction of the Jewish kingdom, it was necessary to justify that the chosen people had lost his kingdom. Such is the goal of Jewish intellectuals who explain that God punished his people for his lack of piety. The people will return to his country and will have again a state for himself when the Messiah returns onto earth and, at the end of time, will restore "the kingdom of God in Canaan.”

Not only is the defeat not due to an abandonment by Yahweh, but on the contrary it is an opportunity to present him as one and single God: in the stories that the Judean intellectuals write then, the destruction of Jerusalem, far to be a sign of weakness of Yahweh shows the power of a god who has instrumentalized the Babylonians in order to punish his kings and his people who did not keep his commandments. Yahweh then becomes, beyond his people, the master of the enemies of Judah.

Monotheism therefore was truly born in Judaism upon the return of Babylon's Exile (- 538) when Cyrus King of Persia invaded the entire Middle East and sent back free the deported peoples like Israel. The - new – existence of a single and benevolent king for many peoples suggested the idea that it was the same thing in the universe. It is at this moment that is born the idea that there exists only one God, unique, for all the peoples.

Isaiah 41: 23-24. (Yahweh speaks to the other gods): Do something, whether good or bad,so that we will be dismayed and filled with fear. But you are less than nothing and your works are utterly worthless.

But how to call this single god? Yahweh? Adonai? Or El? Three names for a single god, there is well to be a whole story behind this quirk! And three names that are mingled in the biblical text, made of odds and ends of various origins and various eras ...

Three names and multiple expressions: the eternal, the one, the lord, the one who is ... El, Elohim, Sabaoth, Elyon, Ehyeh , Adonai, Jah, JHVH (or Jehovah) and El-Shaddai for one text but which is not the text of all the Hebrews (cf the Samaritans).

Yahweh? Adonai? Or Yahweh? The three names are quoted in the Bible where it is especially advised not to discuss the name of God ....

“They discuss and impart to the youth many elements respecting the stars and their motion, respecting the extent of the world and of our earth, respecting the nature of things, respecting the power and the majesty of the immortal gods” (Caesar, BG, Book VI, 14).

“When you see those who meddle with Our revelations, withdraw from them until they meddle with another topic. And if the devil causes you to forget, do not sit, after the remembrance, with the congregation of wrongdoers” (Holy Quran chapter VI, verse 68).

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The Jews as for them impose on themselves a prohibition to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, perhaps in relation with the third commandment: " You shalt not take the name of YHWH your God in vain.”

The experience of exile establishing the domination of priests will therefore create a corpus designed to preserve the singularity and unity of the exiles. Freed in -538 by the Persian Cyrus to oppose Egypt, the rebuilding of the Temple makes it the center of Judaism. It is Nehemiah (former dignitary at the court of Artaxerxes I) who restores Jerusalem (-444), while Ezra the scribe bases the Law (Torah) on writing, preparing the constitution of the Bible, on a model close to Hammurabi's code. The confrontation with the Iranian religion will durably mark the Jewish mysticism both in the direction of Zarathustra's monotheism (Ahura Mazda, his chariot and his heavenly angels) and the dualistic background of their theology found among the Essenes, for example. The sacrifices will be questioned for the benefit of more interiority, but where the Iranian religion is positive, rejecting all mortification, the Jews will intensify in theirs, their torn awareness of the otherness, of the remoteness of God (Paul Romans 5: 20. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase, the Law testifies against Israel). The external misfortune must become the inner pain of man: he must feel himself as the negation of himself, recognize that his misfortune is that of his nature, that he is in himself that which is separated and divided.

However, it is only in -167, in reaction to the forced hellenization by Antiochus IV, that the revolt of the Maccabees will definitively establish the religion of the Book (zeal against the Law created the zeal for the Law), a bias for the sacred letter against the trivialization of writing, which will not prevent the penetration of the Platonizing Greek philosophy especially in Alexandria (Philo). The promotion of the Law gives a content, where the Persian religion is satisfied with the opposition of good and evil, this content besides being reduced to the laws of speech (well speaking, not saying negative things). The intervention of a written law, in the relations to the other and as the foundation of the unity of the people, will nourish the Jewish reflection on the law (commentaries, case law) which forms the Midrash,thus inaugurating a religion of writing which will be imitated by Christianity, Manichaeism, Islam, etc. As we have already had the opportunity to say it before, but repetere = ars docendi, as a religion of History, of divine interventions, Jewish holidays refer to historical events (like the Egyptians, whose rites renew the creating source present in the original event, but this time oriented towards the future - Apocalypses, messianisms like the Persians - rather than towards the restoration of a lost Paradise). It is the repetition of our own foundation, and no longer the return of a cyclical, seasonal, external event (suppression of pagan resurrection rites). The Jewish religion is based, unlike the pagan religions, on the paradoxical relation of the eternal transcendent and of the historical time forming the sacred history.

The last known and worldwide disseminated version of this religion will be called "Judaism" of the name of the country, Judah, where it was founded and developed around the Jewish religious hierarchy of Jerusalem. But modern Judaism begins only in Yabne after the destruction of the temple in 70, and especially after the defeat of the last Jewish revolt in 135, the death of its Messiah Bar Koziba / Bar Kokhba, the break-up of the Jews (Jerusalem is from now on forbidden to them) and the transfer from the Yabne Academy in Galilee near Nazareth.

The appearance of new scriptures (the new Testament) will separate the Judeo-Christians from other Jews (Sadducees or Pharisees) for whom the Talmudic commentary of the Mishnah and the observance of the rites become really the only foundation of their community (taking the place of the Ark of the Covenant then of the Temple in Jerusalem) with a Messianic hope giving up its earthly claims in favor of a mysticism of the Law and of the Text become again obscure * i.e., which is to be reinterpreted (Talmud + Kabbalah).

This new Jewish people will not have a racial , biological, basis, but a sectarian foundation, only formed by the communal law that is authoritative ( rites, signs, separation) and accepting at least until the twelfth century the conversion of many foreigners ( Ashkenazi).

* In fact, it had always been obscure, given the conditions and circumstances of its elaboration or the enlargements of his canon (the multiplicity of sources involved contradictions) , but shush, let's talk no more about it! "Israelite religion was an original creation of the people of Israel. It was absolutely different from anything the pagan world knew; its monotheistic world view has no antecedents in paganism."(Yehezkel Kaufman 1889-1963).

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APPENDIX No. 9.

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ALLEGED MONOTHEISM OF HEBREWS.

"Israelite religion was an original creation of the people of Israel. It was absolutely different from anything the pagan world knew; its monotheistic world view has no antecedents in paganism."(Yehezkel Kaufman 1889-1963).

Let's start by reminding the fact that, in the history of religions, the monotheism, belief in the existence of one God-or-demon in the universe, is opposed to polytheism, belief in many god-or-demons. These two antonyms have a kind of medium term, the "henotheism,” belief in a god-or-demon for each particular, social or ethnic, group, without denying the existence of other God-or-demons.

Other terms describe the worship practice. Monolatry is the worship of one deity, idolatry the worshiping "idols" that is to say images or statues of these deities, etc.

We can also describe the religion according to the name of the worshiped deity. Thus, for Israel, it is often spoken for example of Yahwism (after Yahu/Yaho/ or Yhwh, the Tetragrammaton, the god of the tribe of Judah centered on Jerusalem).

Let us remind also that there is idolatry and idolatry! As Yehezkel Kaufman admits it in his book on the religion of Israel from its beginning to the Babylonian exile (1960); the different (human) authors having taken part in the development of the Bible, made the mistake of thinking (Christ, what understatement!) than the idolaters were all convinced that their idols were really some gods; when it is obvious that in many cases, these idols were only representations (see the simulacra or arcana of druidism for example).

Bible sees in paganism only its lowest level, the level of mana belief ... The prophets ignore what we now know the true paganism (that is to say its elaborate mythology about the origins and exploits of the god-or-demons, and their ultimate subjection to a meta-divine reservoir of impersonal power representing Fate or Necessity). The condemnation of idolatry, which is often repeated in the Bible will usually consist of simple taunt (the so-called prophet derides the competing worship) and not of very convincing philosophical analyzes.

The religion of ancient Israel is often presented, we said, as a typical example of a monotheistic religion. A careful analysis of the biblical texts and of the archeological data reveals a more complex religious history.

It is completely wrong to believe that the Hebrews were the first monotheists in history. The Hebrews are indeed on the contrary remained for a long time polytheists. Moreover, the Hebrew monotheism, when it appeared, was far from being universal, and Yahu/Yaho/Yhwh remained for a long time before all the god or demon only of the Hebrews of the tribe of Judah.

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The true universal ethical monotheism rose in Persia with Zoroaster and the true religious monotheism itself rose in the Nile Valley.

The Pyramid Texts (- 3000) state clearly the reality of a single divine power, inaccessible to the human mind. "

Utterance 254: “Great God whose name is unknown.”

Utterance 456: "Greetings to you, Great One. "

Hymn to Aten, " O sole God, apart from whom there is no other!”

Over two thousand years before the Bible, the idea of an initial principle previous to creation existed in Egypt (Theology of Memphis). Over two thousand years before the Bible, a creation of the world was developed with at least as much poetic force that the one in the Bible. (Papyrus entitled "Instruction for Merikare.”) And the Little and Great Hymn of Akhenaten develop ideas about it that we find later in the Bible.

We should not confuse the biblical text with a historical text. Many are the biblical texts uncertain. No comparison with the sure data of hieroglyphic texts. The multiplicity of sources (Yahwist, Elohist ... causes besides contradictions within the biblical text itself. How many passages of the Bible were they thus changed at the discretion of the kings or emperors who ruled the Hebrews? The Second Vatican Council has besides admitted that the Old Testament contained imperfections or outdated data.....There is no archeological evidence of the existence of the Hebrews, as described in Genesis and Exodus. Despite centuries of efforts, archeology never found concrete evidence likely to confirm a specific event of the original biblical story. Yet it is not lack of looking for! Of all the lands in the world, Palestine is the one which was the most searched and searched again. Vainly !!

The origins of the divine name.

The oldest epigraphic attestations of the Tetragrammaton, the four consonants noting the proper noun of the God-or-demon of Israel, YHWH, are on the stele of Mesha, king of Moab (ninth century before our era).

This stele reminds of the confrontation between Moab and Israel, between CHEMOSH and YHWH (line 18). According to Exodus 3, 15, the proper noun of the God-or-demon of Israel was revealed to Moses. "YHWH ... has sent me to you.' This is my name forever.” The original pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton (Yahu? Yaho?) is difficult to specify because, as soon as the fourth century before our era, it is avoided pronouncing it by replacing it with a title: Adonai, "my master / lord,” translated as Kyrios in the Greek of the Septuagint.

Can we clarify the origins of this divine name? The theonym Yahweh is not attested in the Canaanite onomastics of letters of El-Amarna (fourteenth century before our era ) and seems to arrive in the West Bank of the Jordan River along with the Israelites.

A southern origin is mentioned in several ancient biblical poetry.

"Yahweh came from Sinai

and dawned over them from Seir;

he shone forth from Mount Paran. "(Deuteronomy 33: 2).

"When you, Yahweh, went out from Seir,

when you marched from the land of Edom,

The mountains quaked before the Lord, the One of Sinai” (Judges 5: 4-5).

" God came from Teman,

the Holy One from Mount Paran"(Habakkuk 3: 3).

These place names make it possible to locate approximately the origin of this name, and therefore this design of the divine one, in the mountains of the central Negev, or of the eastern Sinai.

According to Exodus 3: 1, Yahweh therefore appeared to Moses while the latter "was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian."

We know almost nothing about Midian, north-Arab confederation of the thirteenth century before our era. However, this old tradition seems credible because the Midianites became the enemies of the Israelites before disappearing in the early tenth century.

Moreover, this old biblical tradition can be compared with the mention of the "Shasu (Bedouins) of YHW" being in a list of Amenhotep III in Soleb, list copied at Amara west and at Aksha . This comparison is all the more intriguing than the expression "Shasu of YHW" evokes the "Shasu of Seir" and the "Shasu land in the mountain of Seir" attested in the inscriptions of Ramesses II (ca. - 1279 to -1212).

What are the characteristics of this first Yahwism?

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Several poems show Yahweh, the god-or-demon of Israel, as the member of an assembly of gods, of a "pantheon" (heavenly court), therefore involving a certain polytheism (cf. Psalm 82.1; 89, 6-8 ...) Other texts say that Yahweh is the God of Israel, but admits as clearly that other nations too, have also their god- or- demon.

"All the nations may walk in the name of their god; but we will walk in the name of Yahweh our God, for ever and ever "(Micah 4: 5 ).

According to this former Yahwism therefore, each people has its national deity: Yahweh is the "God of Israel" and Israel is "the people of Yahweh." This special relationship is expressed by the image of the "marriage" and of the "covenant” between Yahweh and Israel. It is found in the qualifier of "jealous" applied to Yahweh, and this exclusive link is underlined by the numerous prohibitions made to Israel of "serving" foreign deities.

So monotheistic or polytheistic? The primitive religion of ancient Israel will not be confined in this alternative. As it is not the result of a philosophical or theological reflection, the word "henotheistic" translates only a limited aspect of it. It is clearer to recognize it as a monolatry: Israel must worship only a god, Yahweh, while admitting that there are other gods for the other peoples.

To locate the source of the universal monotheism in the Bhagavad Gita way, among the Hebrews, is therefore a myth or a fraud, at least a mistake.

In Semitic languages, the same stem, EL, refers both to the Higher, inaccessible to men, Being and the divine being, present concretely in the world, in various forms (see Elohim, Incarnation and angels in Christianity, Allah in Islamic land). The God-or-demon of Hebrews therefore initially began as a god-or-demon like so many in the local pantheon. All agreed indeed at the time in the region to believe in the existence of a very high god-or-demon (El Elyon) having sons or angels. To each son was assigned a particular people (e.g., Dagon for the Philistines, to name only them).

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God (Deuteronomy 32: 8). N.B. The word was replaced today by the name of Israel but the former expression suggests the existence of other deities whose Masoretes have erased the mention.

In addition, each god- or-demon had a consort, that is to say, a female counterpart, that we compare with a wife (what is called Shakti in Hinduism). That of Yahweh for example was Asherah.

WARNING TO THE READER. IT GOES WITHOUT SAYING THAT WE DO NOT TAKE INTO ACCOUNT IN THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES THE ARGUMENTS OF THE KIND:

"Yes, but by gods, it is necessary to understand false gods ... the word false is each time implied , etc., etc. "

As the great Syrian poet Abul-Ala al-Ma’ari (970-1059) said rightly: "'The inhabitants of the earth are of two sorts: those with brains, but no religion, and those with religion”.

SUCH ARGUMENTS ARE INADMISSIBLE ARE UNWORTHY OF HUMAN RACE, UNWORTHY OF EVERY MAN HAVING UNDER HIS SKULL SOMETHING THAT LOOKS THE SLIGHTEST BIT A BRAIN, UNWORTHY OF ANY (SERIOUS) HISTORIAN OF RELIGIONS ... THE BIBLICAL TEXT IS VERY CLEAR: IT SPEAKS OF "GODS" OR “OF ANGELS” PERIOD!

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MYTHICAL EPOCH.

a) Time of Genesis.

The word Elohim is not singular but plural and means "gods."

When God (Yahweh?) says: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1, 26) he necessarily talks to other gods (we do not consider it is a plural of majesty, nor it is a careful consideration of God with his angels).

Abraham receives the blessing of the hands of Melchizedek, the head of the priesthood, to whom he and his descendants pay the tithe: Melchizedek, king of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of El Elyon. He pronounced this blessing: "Blessed be Abram by El Elyon creator of heaven and earth, and praise be to El Elyon who delivered your enemies into your hand." Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Gen 14, 18-20.)

El Elyon is a compound name, each element is attested in separate deities of the Phoenician pantheon. Anyway the priest-king Melchizedek was a Canaanite name.

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Polytheism is common at that time. (Gen 31, 19, Gn 31, 30 Gn 31, 34.) Jacob son of Isaac (Isaac, Abraham's son) told his household and to all those who were with him: "Get rid of the foreign gods you have with you ..." (Genesis 35: 2).

b) Time of Exodus.

The Hebrews admit the existence of other gods and they know that many of them worship other gods. (Ex 18, 11, Ex 20: 5, Ex 34, 14.)

c) Time of Numbers.

The Hebrews worship other gods. (Numbers. 25, 1 - 9).

d) Time of Deuteronomy.

Polytheism again: "You shall not bow down to them ... I am a jealous God" (Dt 5, 8-9).

"Cursed is anyone makes an idol or statue ... and sets up it in secret" (Dt 27, 15).

Some aspects of this monolatrous Yahwism! From the Mosaic beginning, it was "aniconic,” that is to say, rejecting the figurative representations of the deity. This aniconism nevertheless admitted the evocation of the deity by a standing stone, an uncut stele, a menhir, since the ancient biblical traditions describes the Israelites shrines as consist of an "altar,” a "stele" and a "sacred tree" (asherah?)

Patriarchal legends highlight the three aspects: Jacob sets up a stone as a stele in Bethel (Genesis 28, 19-22); Abraham "plants a tamarisk tree in Beersheba" (Genesis 21, 33); then Isaac built an altar (Genesis 26, 25); "Joshua took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of Yahweh" (Joshua 24, 26). Archaeology confirms this steles worship, not only at the time of the Middle Bronze (Gezer, Shechem) or early Bronze (Hazor), but in the Israelite royal era. Two standing stones were thus found in the cella of the Yahwistic temple in Arad (Negev), while the remains of a big horned altar, out of carved stone, were unearthed at Beersheba.

The ancient Israelite worship was expressed especially during two major holidays of the full moon: that of the spring (Passover, related to Exodus) and that of the Autumn (harvest festival). They were an opportunity to do a festive meal with animal sacrifices. After the settlement in Canaan, they will be celebrated in various local sanctuaries, especially in Shiloh.

The covenant of Shechem (Josh. 24). The "Yahwists" Hebrew clans going north occupy the mountain of Ephraim. They meet the B’nai Yakov, a clan came from Syria and conclude with it the covenant of Shechem, a pact that founded a confederation dominated by the B'nai Israel. The proclaimed unity is essentially religious, it is a double amphictyony (around the Mounts Ebal and Gerizim). The current account is strongly influenced by Deuteronomistic themes, but the underlying tradition is undoubtedly old. Joshua offers Yahweh as God to groups that have not yet accepted him (verses 14-15), although they have a common origin with his. They did not take part in the exodus and do not know the god- or- demon from the Sinai. Having gotten in touch with the group of Joshua because neighbors of the place of its location, they join the Yahwism only reluctantly. Even not at all! These groups are the northern tribes who later will form the kingdom of Israel rival of the kingdom of Judah centered on Jerusalem. The author has generalized the event and extended it, as the movement of conquest itself, to all the tribes, what was probably not the case. The Yahwism, of which the mosaic group was the carrier, was therefore gradually extended to other similar Hebrew groups. This is the meaning of the covenant of Shechem where Joshua asks other immigrants to reject their gods from beyond the river and to accept only Yahweh/Yahu/Yaho from the Sinai (Joshua 24); with a minimum of worship and social rules, probably a primitive form of Decalogue.

e) Time of Joshua (1220-1200 before our era according to the Bible).

The recommendations of Joshua (what to do amid foreign populations) prove his fears with regard to religious freedom among the Hebrews. " Do not invoke the names of their gods or swear by them. You must not serve them or bow down to them " (Joshua 23:7). " If you violate the covenant of Yhwh your God, which he commanded you, and go and serve other gods and bow down to them, the LORD's anger will burn against you, and you will quickly perish from the good land he has given you."(Joshua 23, 16). " If you forsake Yahweh and serve foreign gods, he will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after he has been good to you" (Joshua 24 : 20). "“Now throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to Yahweh, the God of Israel” (Joshua 24 : 23). But despite his promise (Joshua 24, 21), the people will serve other gods (see the time of Judges which follows).

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PREHISTORIC PERIOD.

Prehistoric because it is a mishmash over two hundred years of various microscopic conflicts not always including Hebrews.

f) Time of Judges (1200-1025 before our era according to the Bible).

The Israelites deny Yahweh and serve all kinds of gods. "The Israelites did evil in the eyes of Yahweh; they forgot Yahweh their God and served the Baals and the Asherahs. The anger of Yahweh burned against Israel... "(Judges 3, 7-8). The Israelites do not serve the Lord: " They served the Baals and the Ashtoreths, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the people of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines and they forsook Yahweh and did not serve him. So the anger of Yahweh was hot against Israel; and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the people of Ammon "(Judges 10, 6 to 7).

g) Time of Samuel.

Even Saul, king of Israel disobeyed Yahweh. Between Yahweh who chose it and the people who cheered and admitted him, Saul sought a compromise; he gave up fulfilling literally the (criminal besides) orders oft Yahweh , and let his men take their share of the booty (1 Samuel 15). So Yahweh rejected Saul in order he is no longer king of Israel.

Even David disavowed Yahweh. The execution of what seems a divine order (serving to do what???) will be considered for a brief moment by him, the new king of Israel, as a sin. To avenge this moment of hesitation or remorse, Yahweh exterminates seventy thousand men. (2 Samuel 24).

Let us point out in passing how this king is profoundly amoral. He works hard to get rid of Uriah in order to have Bathsheba his wife. David sent for Bathsheba and he sleeps with her. (2 S 11, 3-4). She becomes pregnant. (2 Samuel 11: 5). David then sets a Machiavellian trap to get rid of the husband of Bathsheba and Uriah died in battle (2 Samuel 11, 14-17).

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MORE OR LESS HISTORICAL PERIOD.

h) Time of the Kings (970-587 before our era, from the death of David to the second deportation in Babylonia).

King Solomon himself is polytheistic. "As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to Yahweh..." (1 Kings 11, 4-8). Among these other gods, we have: Ashtoreth (goddess of the Sidonians), Molek (god of the Ammonites), Chemosh (Moabite deity). Yahweh promises to take revenge on the descendants of Solomon. (1K 11, 9-13 and 11 K 1, 33). The danger is great for Yahvism.

After Solomon's death, political and religious schism.

Rehoboam son of Solomon will be king of Judah and Jeroboam (son of Nebat) king of Israel.

Jeroboam 1 king of Israel (- 931-910): "He made for himself other gods, molten images." "He made two golden calves" (1 K 12, 28 and 1 K14, 9).

Rehoboam king of Judah (- 931-913): Judah did evil in the eyes of Yahweh. By the sins they committed, they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles……..There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations that Yahweh had driven out " (1 Kings 14, 22-24).

Editorial Note. Mae prostitutes and not female prostitutes .... This is either a mistake or an insult intended to the priests of these temples. If it female sacred prostitutes and not male sacred prostitutes, here's what we can say about that.It is a symbolic role that must be given to that prostitution, which function was to honor the goddess-or-demoness, or fairy, of fertility and life. The offering of the woman, to a male deity, was a self-sacrificial gift. This male deity was represented by the priests or strangers. Sacred prostitution is originally linked to fertility cults. Priestesses and priests of the deity must have sexual intercourse in order to perpetuate according to the principles of the sympathetic or imitative magic the fertility of land and the abundance of game. Or the groups of women and men related to the shrines appear and periodically have sexual intercourse with the priestesses and priests or with the faithful in order to hand over the fertile power. The wife of the prophet Hosea was also herself a sacred prostitute (cf. Hosea 1: 2; 4: 13-14).

Abijam king of Judah (- 913-911): "He committed all the sins his father had done before him; his heart was not fully devoted to Yahweh ..." (1 Kings 15: 3).

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Asa king of Judah (- 911-870): "... He even deposed his grandmother Maakah from her position as queen mother, because she had made a repulsive image for the worship of Asherah” (1 Kings 15, 13).

Nadab King of Israel (- 910-909): "He did what is displeasing to Yahweh: he followed the example of his father and the sin which he had caused Israel" (1 Kings 15, 26). [In other words, to worship gods other than Yahweh].

Baasha king of Israel (- 909-886): "He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh, following the ways of Jeroboam and committing the same sin Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit” (1 Kings 15, 34). Again what is intended by this phrase is the fact to worship other gods than Yahweh.

Ela king of Israel (- 886-885): like his father Baasha, he urged Israel, what aroused the anger of Yahweh, to worship idols (1 Kings 16, 13).

Zimri King of Israel (- 885): sinned by doing what is displeasing to Yahweh (1 Kings 16, 19). Idem. It is to worship other gods.

Omri king of Israel (- 885-874): "Omri did evil in the eyes of Yahweh and sinned more than all those before him" (1 Kings 16, 25-26). Same thing ! Worship paid to other gods!

Ahab king of Israel (- 874-853): he serves the god Baal and sets up an altar for him (1 Kings 16, 30-33).

Jehoshaphat king of Judah (- 870-848): Despite his good behavior in the eyes of Yahweh, "...The high places were not removed, and the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there"(1 Kings 22, 43-44).

Ahaziah (son of Ahab) king of Israel (- 853-852): "He served and worshiped Baal and aroused the anger of Yahweh, the God of Israel, just as his father had done” (1 Kings 22, 53). Wounded, he sends messengers to consult Baal Zebub, i.e., Baal Zebul (Baal the prince), god of Ekron (2 Kings 1, 2).

Joram (son of Ahab) king of Israel (- 852-841): "He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh ..." (2 Kings 3: 2). More ambiguous behavior nevertheless.

Jehoram (son of Jehoshaphat) king of Judah (- 848-841): "... And he did evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 8:18). Polytheism still!

Ahaziah (son of Jehoram) king of Judah (- 841): "... and he did evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 K 8, 27). Still the same thing. To have other gods before Yahweh!

Jehu king of Israel (- 841-814): he sets up a vile trap to Baal worshipers (2 K 10,18), but he does not follow faithfully or with all his heart the law of Yahweh. (2 K 10, 29-31) because he continues to worship the golden calves at Bethel and Dan.

Joash (son of Ahaziah) king of Judah (- 835-796): "... The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there " (2 K 12,3).

Jehoahaz king of Israel (- 814-798): "He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh" (2 Kings 13: 2).

Joash (son of Jehoahaz) King of Israel (- 798-783): "He did evil in the eyes of Yahweh” (2 Kings 13, 11).

Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc. Etc.Etc.

And so on until the first deportation in Babylonia.

Note: repeatedly about these kings, figure a statement such as "The rest of the acts of ... whatever he did ... is in the book of records of the kings of Israel.....in the book of the chronicles of Judah and so on."

This proves that the writer of these notices for his work used pre-existing written documents. Goodbye the divine inspiration! Place to the selection of information as in the journalism and media today!

During this period, the personality of Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh God-or-demon of Israel is enriched by confrontation/assimilation of the characteristic functions of the other deities. Originally, Yahweh was a warrior god-or-demon: Yahweh Sabaoth, "Yahweh of hosts,” the one who frees his people. He was also a god-or-demon of mountains and storm. By settling in the West Bank of the Jordan River, he will absorb through syncretism the ancestral deities of the region. And thus, Yahweh therefore will take on the functions that the local population attributed to El, particularly to El Elyon, "God Most High,” creator of heaven and earth, as it is shown by Genesis 14, 19 and 22.

The monolatrous Yahwism of the monarchical era was nevertheless encountered the worship of several foreign god-or-demons. Thus, during the reign of Ahab, the exclusive worship of Yahweh in Israel was threatened by the spread of that of the Baal from Tyre. The reaction of the prophet Elijah appears in the Mount Carmel spar, on the border between Israel and the Phoenician kingdom of Tyre; the people must choose its god: Yahweh or Baal (1 Kings 18, 21). The victory of the "druidic" magic of Elijah having failed, having been short (he was forced to flee), the official exclusiveness of the worship of Yahweh is restored by the coup of Jehu in 841 (2 Kings 10, 27) followed in 835, by that of the priest Jehojada against Athaliah in Jerusalem.

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In the seventh century, the Assyrian-Aramaic domination causes the spread of the cult of the stars, attested in the sigillography and in the Bible. King Manasseh himself " bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. He built altars in the temple of Yahweh" (2 Kings 21: 3-5). However, after the disappearance of the Assyrian domination, the reformation of Josiah "

“He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem--those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts" (2 Kings 23: 5).

The heresy could also come from Israel itself, with two trends: the exaggerated sacralization of certain pertaining to worship objects and the diversity of the traditional shrines.

Rather naturally, the stele and the sacred tree of the traditional shrines came to be so much sacralized that they became almost divine hypostases (vyuha in Hinduism). In the paleo-Hebraic inscriptions of the first half of the eighth century, the asherah, that is to say, the sacred tree in the sanctuary is mentioned alongside Yahweh in the blessing formulas. "I have blessed you by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah" (inscriptions on the site of Kuntillet Ajrud, Khirbet el-Qom.

Development of a strict aniconism. 1)

This development caused a strong reaction of the fundamentalists of the worship of Yahu which lead to the religious reformations of Hezekiah (2 Kings 18: 4) and Josiah (2 Kings 23: 6), codified in Deuteronomy 16, 21.

"You shall not plant any tree as an Asherah beside the altar of Yahweh your God."

" You shall not set up for yourself a sacred pillar which Yahweh your God hates.”

We will have thus a aniconism stricter than that which characterized the worship of Yahweh in the beginning, in which even the stele and the sacred tree were forbidden. The priestly blessing of Numbers 6, incised on two silver amulets of Ketef Hinnom, around 600 before our era, will now invoke Yahweh alone, and non-longer Asherah.

In short and in summary. Evolution of the Yahwistic religion during the royal era (eleventh to sixth centuries before our era). Only the construction of the temple in Jerusalem will formalize the worship of Yahweh as national god-or-demon gathering Israel and Judah. A time in competition by the sanctuary of Bethel and that of Dan, of which we can see still some remains.

The Israelite high place (Bamah) of Dan.

The mound of the biblical city of Dan is located northeast of the country, at the foot of Mount Hermon. The Dan, one of the springs of the Jordan river gushes at the foot of the mound, which covers some 20 hectares.

North of the mound overlooking the source, stood the cultic precinct of the Israelite city of Dan. The existence of a pertaining to worship center at Dan is confirmed in the biblical text: "The Danites set up for themselves the idol..." (Judges 18, 30). The high-place of Dan was developed by Jeroboam 1st king of Israel at the end of the tenth century before our era.

In both cities, Jeroboam1st made built altars bearing a gold bull, "One he set up in Bethel, and the other in Dan…and the people went as far as Dan to worship the other (1 Kings 12: 29-30).

This shrine occupied an area of approximately 60 x 45 meters. In the vast courtyard enclosed by a wall along which were rooms, an altar was erected. It was restored in the mid-ninth century before our era by Ahab, king of Israel, who had built there a gigantic high-place of eighteen meters on twenty. The outside walls of this high place were built with huge cut stones including, between the foundations, a slot containing originally a wooden beam.

In the beginning of the eighth century before our era, during the reign of Jeroboam II, a monumental staircase was added to the north side of this high place, and an altar of smaller dimensions was erected. In one of the rooms bordering the courtyard enclosure, were discovered three iron shovels (54 cm long); that we can consider as identical to that used in the Temple of Jerusalem to remove the ashes from the altar.

This high place was destroyed during the conquest of the city by the king of Assyria in 722 before our era. Although restored shortly after, it never regained its first importance.

The gates of the city, and a large section of the wall of the Israelite Dan were unearthed on the northern side of the mound. The inside gate, the best preserved, provides a good example of the arrangement of the Israelite cities gates of the biblical times. It consists of four staff rooms, laid out in pairs on each side of a paved alley. The threshold is an enormous basalt stone, including a doorstop and the hinges on which rested formerly the heavy wooden doors.

Before that door, five natural stones (maximum height 60 cm) were discovered. They were some matzevot (standing stones) marking the location of a place of worship. We can evoke in this context the King Josiah's actions: " He broke down the high places of the gates which were at the entrance of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city" (2 Kings 23: 8).

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The Kuntillet Ajrud blessing formulas mentioning "Yahweh of Samaria" and "Yahweh of Teman"; reveal also that the association of the God-or-demon Yahweh with his various shrines (as in the case of the countless Our Lady of the Catholicism) obscures the fact that in principle he was to be the same deity. This evolution of the popular religion therefore caused the criticism of the local shrines by the fundamentalists; and resulted in their official suppression during the reformations of Hezekiah and Josiah (see also Deuteronomy 12: 2-5), as the excavations in Beersheba and Arad seem to confirm it. This opposition to the Yahwistic worship of the various local shrines explains the insistence of Deuteronomy on the uniqueness of the deity kept being the one of the Jewish nation: "Yahweh our God is one" (Deuteronomy 6, 4). The centralization of the worship in the temple of Jerusalem highlighted this unity.

Yahweh’s temple in Jerusalem, of which perhaps we have perhaps kept a part of the eastern retaining wall; will gather again North Israelis and South Judeans for the "pilgrimage festivals" after the fall of the Northern Kingdom, in - 722.

The destruction of the Temple in - 587, by removing this cornerstone of the former Yahwism, will lead the exiled Jews to take the next step; coming this time finally perhaps to a true universal monotheism, already visible in the Deutero-Isaiah around - 550-539 (Isaiah 43: 10-11; 44: 6-8).

It is therefore the deepening of the aniconism in the context of the Babylonian Exile which seems to have, and alone, made possible the passage from the monolatry of the Mosaic origins to the monotheism in the strict sense of the term; that is to say to the idea that Yahweh is the only God or Demiurge, dominating the universe, although having still favorite (see the concept of chosen people).

1. Warning! Warning ! When it is imposed and results in the removal of every representation, aniconism becomes iconoclastic, case for examples of the two mass religions known as Abrahamic and of the two iconoclastic periods of the Byzantine Empire.

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APPENDIX No. 10.

THE FUTURE OF A PSYCHOSIS (Die Zukunft einer Illusion.1927).

What is most characteristic in the psychoanalytic interpretation of religion is not that it considers it as a response to the distress of the adult; but rather the fact that it connects the latter to the distress of the child, and thus, with the "father complex,” which has already been discussed in Totem and Taboo by Freud. In other words, religion is the repetition of a childhood phenomenon. This is why it is neurotic.

Moses and Monotheism, to which Freud devoted the last years of his life, is only applying to Judaism previous opinions of Freud about religious phenomena, comparable to individual neurotic symptoms, rooted in the "father complex.” In his "Moses,” however, Freud emphasizes more something that had already been underlined in "Totem and Taboo,” that is to say, the historical core,the truth core of the religion kernel. This historical core would be that Moses, Egyptian prince sharing Akhenaten’s faith in a single God or Demiurge, was murdered in the desert. His killers were able, thanks to their meeting with another people supporter of the worship of a conqueror and bloodthirsty God, to repress their first religion, as the memory of their murder and the memory of the founder of their religion. Then appeared a well-known phenomenon in psychoanalysis: the return of the repressed, which is expressed in the messianic hopes of the end of exile. This is the repentance of the murder of Moses that caused the fantasy of the desire for a Messiah. It is also the return of the repressed, which after a latency period, made that Judaism became more and more similar to the Egyptian religion of Moses; and that the God-or-demon of Judaism (Yaho/Yahu/Yhwh) became more and more similar to the former Egyptian god -or-demon Aten.

The (repressed) return of the primal father is therefore accompanied, among Jews, by a (repressed) return of guilt linked to the murder of the father. In short, there would be, in the individual and in a whole people, mnemic hereditary or phylogenetic traces, which would have as result that archaic events (such as the murder of a primal father, the "original sin") continue 'to act.

So is justified the Freudian approach of the religion in general and of Judeo-Christianity in particular, approach which, since Totem and Taboo, equates the social phenomenon of religion with the individual phenomenon of neuroses and delirium.

It is true that churches and religions are marked by what Freud found in them. Childishness, but also paternalism and maternalism,obsessive rituals and illusions of sublime feelings, hypocritical moral laws, all things from which the "elite" can distant themselves , but which overwhelm the most culturally deprived.

In fact, Freud substitutes a mythology to another mythology. Freud replaces the myths of the creating God, of the original happiness,of the sin of Adam and Eve, of God's intervention in human history, by the myths of the murder of the primal father, of the horde of brothers, of the murder of Moses…

We believe, with many Freudian psychoanalysts, that the hypothesis of the murder of the primal father, of the horde of brothers, as well as the assumption of the murder of Moses in the desert; cannot resist the progress of anthropology, nor do they resist the thinking of psychoanalysts. 1)

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1. As to the God who would not be that of the [Judeo-Christian] religion, the God of the Greek philosophers, Freud did not think highly of him either. According to him the philosophers extend and expand so much the meaning of the words that they end up to have no longer something of their original meaning. They call God a vague abstraction that they made for themselves and then pose as deists, as believers, before the universe. They can even boast of having reached a higher , purer,design of God; although their God is only, in fact, a shadow without substance, and has no longer something of the powerful personality of the primal Judeo-Christian-Muslim] religious doctrine.

APPENDIX No. 11.

SECTARIAN DRIFTS.

A curse on anyone who is lax in doing the Lord’s work! A curse on anyone who keeps from carrying out his destruction! (Jer. 48.10).

It is necessary here to raise the issue of the religious sects in Judaism.

Haredim living in countries outside Israel normally have a job (salaried or self-employed), and are therefore forced by economic realities to accept a certain degree of openness to the world. Sociologists have noted that those who emigrated to Israel (there are several tens of thousands over the last 30 years) sometimes had tensions on this point with Israeli Haredim. The Lubavitch Hasidim, too, show a certain openness, and are not afraid to appear on television, just like the Sephardic Haredim of Shass.

Many Israeli (especially Ashkenazi) Haredim currents are more reserved. Technical modernity is accepted. But television and mixed media remain objects of mistrust or rejection. It was nevertheless noted that the education of young girls had developed a lot in these groups compared to the situation at the beginning of the 20th century.

Finally, a third current, a very small minority, rejects this modernity largely, and considers that the traditional Haredim have become too lax. These groups are mainly those of the Edah Haredit. The education of girls, for example, is voluntarily kept at a very primary level.

In conclusion. While there is a consensus on the distrust in "modernity,” the degree of this distrust is nevertheless variable. The common mistrust of modernity (especially social and political) leads to positions ranging from fairly broad accommodations to fierce hostility, and it is in this case, of course, that sectarian aberrations can occur.

It is therefore important to understand the ideological basis of the Haredim in order to effectively fight such indoctrination.It is a real social problem, which may one day or another be threatening for democracy.

It exists still in democratic countries obscure individuals who are convinced of the usefulness of the restoration of a theocratic regime. These men are very dangerous, because they manipulate the weak by their demagogic words. Do not believe pretentiously that the battle against religious obscurantism is finished, it would be a serious mistake! The obscurantists of all religions are still present, Islamists, Christianists, and in the present case Judaists or religious Zionists. The Jewish orthodoxy is a silent threat, but it is real. The Judaists take advantage indeed of the interest of media and state authorities regarding the Islamist phenomenon to spread their teaching insidiously.

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As elsewhere there are various market segments. To stand out from the fundamentalist competition, Judaists prefer to distribute most legally possible their teachings. They use secularism which tolerates religious freedom, to create religious associations apparently normal. They take advantage of the respectability of Judaism, due to a tragic past and fear of the media to be considered anti-Semitic, to freely develop their sects. Indeed, few people dare to attack the Jews for fear of being brought to court for antisemitism, or incitement to racial hatred and the fundamentalist sects therefore benefit from this advantage to prosper.

Among the most dangerous Judaist sects recorded to date, there is one which should attract our attention, is that of the Lubavitch or Hasidim. The sect of the Lubavitch has within it engineers, computer scientists, financiers. In the image of the Church of Scientology, the sect is fueled by men of high standing. Profound ramifications exist between the American, European and Israeli financial lobby groups, with a power too often underestimated by the public authorities. The Lubavitch schools are allowed, because their statutes meet the criteria established by States in regard to private religious schools. Taking advantage of this, these schools freely carry within them the pernicious extremist ideologies, such as the worship of the chosen people, the Messianic nature of the Jewish people, as well as a form of hatred of the others disguised in devotion to God. Students in these schools are subjected daily to a true ideological conditioning, which shapes their malleable minds, in a uniform and liberticidal thinking. They undergo a real brainwashing, beginning with prayers, true scourges, and continuing with the study of discriminatory laws, ending in a mysticism developed around the cult of the savior and an overflowing ethnocentrism. The teachers continue to make the child believe that he is chosen by God and must fulfill the will of God on Earth. A form of hatred of the others is well conveyed, it is not explicit, but it is implicitly suggested in the study of the sacred texts, and the dogmatic comments on them that the religious authorities make to consolidate their power over the community.

These sects attempt by a false propaganda to invite as many people as possible to come and study with them. They even accept conversions for that, by starting from the principle that the most possible soul / minds are needed to study the Torah so that the Messiah comes on Earth to bring back all the Jewish people in the Holy Land. And destroy his enemies, as it is written, " Esau…For your violence against your brother Jacob shame shall cover you and you shall be cut off for ever. For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen: as you have done, it shall be done unto you: your reward shall return upon your own head. But upon mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions.And the house of Jacob shall be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord has spoken it. And saviors shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's "(Obadiah 1, 10 to 21).

The children of Esau represent the enemies of the Jewish people. It is a true time bomb, because potential Ygal Amir are thus formed in these schools. The brainwashing is very heavily used, making them unique one-track thinking machines. For now, not feeling mainly threatened, these sects are not openly busy, but the individuals working within them are in no way different from the Islamists of September 11, 2001. Il is necessary to denounce at all costs this type of orthodoxy that the state monitors their behavior, and especially sanctions such an education, which goes in reality against the specific values of a democratic regime. It is an insult to the universal rights of human beings.

It is urgent to worry about it before it's too late, so that finally we can all live together on this planet. And that the differences resulting from the fears and ignorance of men can no longer undermine the values of peace and harmony dear to us.

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APPENDIX No. 12.

WAR AND PEACE VOYNA I MIR.

The prohibition You Shalt Not Murder' applies only "to a Jew who kills a Jew," write Rabbis Isaac Shapira and Yosef Elitzur of the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar. Non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and attacks on them "curb their evil inclination," babies and children of Israel's enemies may be killed since "it is clear that they will grow to harm us."

These two rabbis having seen fit to refer to Maimonides to expound on the war, it seemed to us wise to come back here on the subject.

Let us point out that what interests us particularly in this book, it is not what we can deduce for current conflicts but the way in which the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible answered about the wars of antiquity.

The book entitled Torat Hamelech (or King’s Torah) is an analysis of the texts of the Torah concerning the proper halakhic attitude during wartime towards the goyim. Is killing a civilian of the enemy camp, for example in wartime , considered as being a murder? Who is to be saved or be put to death? The question of prisoners ...

It is especially in Deuteronomy, that are concentrated the first ideas about war. The Bible designates thus the God of Israel as the ultimate warrior (Exodus), valiant in battle (Psalms), who moves forwards like a hero, like a warrior (Isaiah) and leads his army (Psalms) . Israel's wars are those of God or of the Demiurge, hence the symbolic presence of the Ark of the Covenant, arrived to the battlefield, in the time of Moses (Numbers), and later, during the monarchic period (Isaiah).

The war rules listed in Deuteronomy are amplified in the part of the Talmud called Mishnah:

According to the Mishnah, there are three categories of war.

- Mandatory in case of enemy attack.

- Optional, with exclusively political aims.

- Dictated by God and Torah, also called "Mitzvah war.”

-The first category, especially at the time of the writing the Talmud, limited to the destruction of Amalek and of the Canaanite nations, is outdated for Progressive Judaism, still relevant for the ultra-Orthodox Judaism of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank apparently.

-The optional wars, undertaken to expand the territory and push back the boundaries, or improve its economy, could be decided only by the king, and with the consent of the Sanhedrin.

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-The wars dictated by God or Mitzah wars are these famous holy wars during which all biblical prohibitions are lifted. The various attempts at dating the concept of holy war, make it back to the time of the settlement in Palestine of the tribes of Israel told in the books of Joshua and Judges.

As God was supposed to be invincible if his army was defeated on the ground, it could only be the result of a breach of the people, even partial, to the Covenant. For example, any disbelief. And many of the efforts of the religious elite to understand the reason for these defeats are probably responsible for many religious dictates, resulting in a tight web of constraints and prohibitions. The writing down of the traditions or legends about it was also a reinterpretation of the history of Israel in the prophetic circles, which then precisely give a negative image of it. We see then the war theme used in two ways:

- The positive one, which is to glorify the old battles, by showing the presence of Yahweh alongside victorious Israel (Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel). This is the speech of Moses which contains a true codification of war.

- The other negative one, explaining the contemporary defeats of the Hebrew kingdoms by the wrath of Yahweh against his unfaithful people. These are the curses of the prophets.

Among the various dictates related to the war in the Bible there is the herem, which was to cast the ban on certain enemies and make the vow to destroy them completely, persons and goods, in case of victory. This practice is repeatedly attested. Thus in Numbers: " Then Israel made this vow to the LORD: "If you deliver these people into our hands, we will put their cities under herem" or in Joshua about Jericho" (...) Deuteronomy specifies even the peoples for whom it is necessary to apply the herem ": “However, in the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Put under ban the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise, they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshiping their gods, and you will sin against the Lord your God” (20, 16-18).

It is parallelly, it seems,with this glorification,that the negative vision is spread, through the activity of the Prophets. This new interpretation is organically linked to the previous one, since in one case as in the other, Yahweh /Yahu shows his presence in the war and that he punishes those who turn away from his worship.

Yet the pathetic tone which sounds in the oracles cast (after the fact of course) against Israel evokes a higher moral sense that the cries of victory of the Hebrews massacring their enemies.

The evolution of the Israeli society towards more settled life, which is accompanied by the giving up of certain dictate (affecting the food for example, or the mandatory time of prayers) probably provoked firstly the anger of a part of the religious elite, who interpreted the defeat as punishment against various breaches. How, when you believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not to link the impending destruction of the Jewish kingdoms in the north and the south with the anger of Yahweh who wants to punish the infidelity of his people?

After the Roman conquest and the destruction of Jerusalem, it is in the different components of the Jewish Diaspora that are developing the perceptions of war ... and peace.

The establishment of the State of Israel, of course, will change radically the situation after the Nazi Holocaust, but not for all Jewish communities, which react very differently.

Most of the Orthodox circles regarded the Israel War of Independence (1948-1949) as a justified war. All subsequent wars of Israel received the same approval, with the exception of the Lebanon war in 1982, about which religious opinion was divided; according to some authorities, it was an optional war fought for reasons that went beyond self-defense.

The rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur compiled in the Talmud and other rabbinic sources, including Maimonides, the passages and the laws relating to conflicts between the people of Israel and the nations around him.

Regarding Maimonides, here below the laws in question about dhimmitude or war.

Mishneh Torah: Hilkhot Melakhim. Laws of Kings and their wars.

Chapter VI

Part dhimmitude of the laws about war.

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War, neither an optional war nor a holy (mitzvah) war, should not be waged against anyone until they are offered the opportunity of peace as Deuteronomy 20:10 states: 'When you approach a city to wage war against it, you should propose a peaceful settlement.'

If the enemy accepts the offer of peace and commits itself to the fulfillment of the seven mitzvot that were commanded to Noah's descendants 1), none of them should be killed. Rather, they should be subjugated as ibid.:11 states: 'They shall be your subjects and serve you.'

If they agree to tribute, but do not accept subjugation or if they accept subjugation, but do not agree to tribute, their offer should not be heeded. They must accept both.

The subjugation they must accept consists of being on a lower level, scorned and humble. They must never raise their heads against Israel, but must remain subjugated under their rule. They may never be appointed over a Jew in any matter whatsoever.

The tribute they must accept consists of being prepared to support the king's service with their money and with their persons; for example, the building of walls, strengthening the fortresses, building the king's palace, and the like as I Kings 9:15-22) relates: "This is the tribute which Solomon raised to build the House of God, his own palace, the Milo, the wall of Jerusalem,... and all the store cities which Solomon had... All the people that remained from the Amorites... upon them did Solomon lay a tribute of bond service until this day.In contrast, Solomon did not make bondsmen out of the children of Israel. They were men of war, his personal servants, his princes, his captains, the officers of his chariots, and his horsemen.”

In the settlement he offers, the king may propose that he is entitled to take half their financial resources. Or he may propose to take all their landed property and leave them their movable property; or to take all their movable property and leave their land.

It is forbidden to lie when making such a covenant or to be untruthful to them after they have made peace and accepted the seven mitzvoth (laws).

End of the part dhimmitude of these laws.

If they do not agree to a peaceful settlement, or if they agree to a peaceful settlement, but refuse to accept the seven mitzvoth, war should be waged against them.All males past majority should be killed. Their money and their children should be taken as spoil…

Under what circumstances is it done in this way? The above applies to an optional war fought with other nations. However, if either the seven nations or Amalek refuse to accept a peaceful settlement, not one soul of them may be left alive as ibid. 20:15-16 states.

How do we know that these commands are only referring to those who did not accept a peaceful settlement? Because Joshua 11:19-20 states: 'There was no city which accepted a peaceful settlement with the children of Israel except the Chivites who lived in Gibeon. All the rest, they conquered in battle. This was inspired by God, Who strengthened their hearts to engage in battle against Israel so that they would be destroyed.' From these statements, we can infer that a peaceful settlement was offered, but they did not accept it.

………….

When a siege is placed around a city to conquer it, it should not be surrounded on all four sides, only on three. A place should be left for the inhabitants to flee and for all those who desire, to escape with their lives, as it is written Numbers 31:7: 'And they besieged Midian as God commanded Moses.' According to tradition, He commanded them to array the siege as described.

You should not cut down fruit trees outside a city nor prevent an irrigation ditch from bringing water to them so that they dry up, as Deuteronomy 20:19 states: 'Do not destroy its trees.' Anyone who cuts down such a tree should be lashed.

This does not apply only in a siege, but in all situations. Anyone who cuts down a fruit tree with a destructive intent should be lashed.

Nevertheless, a fruit tree may be cut down if it causes damage to other trees or to fields belonging to others, or if a high price could be received for its wood. The Law only prohibited cutting down a tree with a destructive intent………..

………………….

It is forbidden to defecate in an army camp or in an open field anywhere. Rather, it is a positive commandment to establish comfort facilities for the soldiers to defecate as Deuteronomy 23:13 commands: 'Designate a place outside the camp to use as a lavatory.'

Similarly, it is a positive commandment for every single soldier to have a spike hanging together with his weapons. When he goes out and uses those comfort facilities, he should dig with it, relieve himself, and cover his excrement as ibid.:14 states, 'You must keep a spike among your weapons.'

Our comment: so much intelligence devoted to justify such Muslim before Islam was invented, aberrations, it's hopeless! Religion makes crazy. The book Torat Hamelech (or King’s Torah ) of the

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rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur takes over the religious rules dictated for the conquest of the Promised Land of which the reverend Father Dom Augustin Calmet had once written: "This war was terrible and cruel, and if God had not ordered it, we could accuse Moses of injustice and robbery. " Dom Antoine Augustin Calmet dictionary of the Bible . Regarding the "holy" (actually mitzvah) war against the unfortunate Midianites.

But now, without being totally materialistic atheist, what is certain and we claim it and we are proud of it, it is that with regard to the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, we are totally atheistic. Such a god, a god like the one whose portrait emerges from that part of the Bible, cannot exist.

The God of the philosophers is an impersonal and theoretical absolute one. The God of the philosophers represents generally the primary cause of the universe and of the perfection. He holds his existence from any other source than himself. He is therefore the result of no revelation or act of faith. For the philosophoi God is an abstract principle that reason, in the form of a philosophical discourse, tries to understand. Each philosophos emphasizes in this way some of the attributes of God, according to the thesis that he intends to defend.

1) Prohibition of idolatry. Prohibition of murder. Prohibition of the theft. Prohibition of incest ? Prohibition of blaspheming. Prohibition of eating flesh of a living animal. Duty to have courts and laws governing the city.

Regarding murder, robbery and incest, many people had not in reality awaited for this revelation to prohibit them. Who shall say that among the Sumerians for example, the basic rules of social life were: you will defecate anywhere, you will kill, you will steal, and you will also sleep with your sister. As for Egypt, the incest taboo was lifted only for the pharaohs. By cons, in terms of idolatry and blasphemy, it goes without saying that any man having a religion other than that of the Jews (including Christians or Muslims) could be concerned by such an accusation.

APPENDIX No. 13.

JEWS AND NON-JEWS TODAY.

This text has as starting point the reflections shared by a few friends who were concerned by the difficulty in our country, to agree between Jews and non-Jews. They wondered about the unease, the injury felt, on seeing incomprehension persisting: Jews experiencing the feeling of being a stranger among their fellow citizens, non-Jews shocked by seeing Jews in this country define themselves in font even against them .

The object of the unease through its manifestations.

- The antisemitism widespread among many of our fellow citizens of Arab origin and the blindness in front of these phenomena, long denied, or deemed as expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

- The split between Jews and non-Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the collapse of the peace process.

[Editor's Note. Let us point it out , however, that the Palestinian people, too,is a martyred people, entitled to a homeland and a State; and that to have a single democratic peaceful and secular state in Palestine, instead of two, Israel and a West Bank Arab state, necessarily rivals or antagonists; was or is still a not dishonorable ideal].

To understanding how happened the removal, to name the values and aspirations that would make us, Jews and non-Jews, happy to live together in the same country, is this possible?

Misunderstandings and even hostility that affect us hit on a historical background of historical inability, inability of which the poverty of our thinking on the mass industrial extermination perpetrated from 1942 by the German National Socialists, seems to be the key.

Judaism found itself at the center of the redefinition of the common existence, with the taking into account of this extermination as a keystone of the dominant value systems ( "Never ever again!"); but without that to the hardly gained awareness of this end corresponds a project. The memory of the genocide of the five million Jews counted by the most serious evaluations is a very negative reference; it is genocide if not without Jew, at least without Judaism; a horrible and senseless crime, due to almost everyone, which acts as a foil for us, but of which we think nothing. It is this forgetting, much less of the facts than of their meaning, which made that the memory of the extermination has become a "negative memory" of an overwhelming negativity, with consequences from which we do not come to release us.

How, indeed, not to see the direct link between the "new antisemitism" and the crisis of national identities? The emancipatory vision of the nation has ceased to be the driving force of the Western

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culture, and nationalism became an evil to fight in all circumstances. A post-national exhilaration which today turns against the Jewish people itself.

It is therefore through a tragic misinterpretation that some Jews believed not long ago, in the possibility of an alliance between the Jewish identity affirmation and the glorification of the Other against Nation.

[Editor's Note. Let us point out indeed that if chauvinism must be rooted out of our reflexes; the concept of nation gathering and uniting in the same culture some ethnos groups , all related , but all different, united by a minimum of basic values: common history and destiny, community of language, culture, etc. ; remains a not dishonorable ideal].

This incompatibility is not natural, but cyclical, we are facing the morbid reaction to a deadlock situation, despondency and resentment against the Jews sometimes cloaked in a sterile exceptionalism. The answer therefore can only be essentially pertaining political and moral creativity.

Editor's note. We humbly recognize not understand very well what exactly means the term "despondency and resentment, etc." In the writings of these intellectuals. We do not see indeed in what to consider sterile the fact of cloaking oneself in a permanent exception, what amounts to believing that we are not human beings like the others; could arouse such feelings as strong as that the despondency and resentment against the Jews when irritation and compassion are largely sufficient. But it is true that we are neither a philosopher nor an intellectual. And that the language of Molière is not always easy to understand even if we try hard to do that for a few decades.

APPENDIX No. 14.

A REMINDER ABOUT THE NECESSARY NON-RACISM WHICH IS

TO GUIDE BETTER THAN MAIMONIDES EVERY GREAT IDEA!

Whether it is Judaism, anti-Judaism, monotheism, polytheism, atheism, neo-paganism!

Let's begin at the beginning! With due respect to the mystics, the visionaries, or the ultra-Orthodox people kind General Eitam, the Hebrews were not aliens having moved to Earth, and Abraham was not a UFO or flying saucer pilot.

They were human beings, like the others, members of families of known people, and therefore necessarily sharing with them their civilization.

If there is a language with no known equivalent on Earth, it is the Sumerian language! Hebrew itself is a Semitic language like the others. The culture of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (their religious, theological or moral concepts) was a distant branch of the Mesopotamian civilization adapted to the more rustic and less urban lifestyle of the nomadic tribes in the region. (The great innovation of the Sumerian civilization was indeed the city.) Nothing shows the decidedly innovative characteristic or non-human origin of their main moral concepts, even theological; especially not the so-called monotheism of the Egyptian prince that was perhaps Moses (if he did exist); because the only true monotheistic revolution in the region was that of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, towards - 1730 - 1354 before our era. It was, however, not of the inclusive kind as in the case of the god of the Greek philosophers or of the Celtic druids even of the Galatian dikastes mentioned by Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata; but of exclusive type therefore in reality monolatrous.

Let us repeat once again: Abraham’s chromosome does not exist! Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, if they existed, could only have the culture of the people of their time or of their region; only the sabbath celebration, perhaps, distinguished them from the rest of the population; and yet it is not even sure!

Yehezkel Kaufman is therefore completely wrong to maintain that “"Israelite religion was an original creation of the people of Israel. It was absolutely different from anything the pagan world knew; its monotheistic world view has no antecedents in paganism."

Racial or ethnic prejudice is a universal prejudice. Philo-Semites and Anti-Semites agree on doctrine, they separate only when it is a question to award the supremacy.

If the anti-semite reproaches the Jew to be the member of a foreign and vile nation, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox, as for him, by cons, clings to his idea of a nation chosen by God. He attaches to this pseudo-nobility the highest importance, and even now he feels great pride.

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He protests against Arab terrorists who see him as the representative of a foreign nation camped on their land, but he doesn’t keep less deep in his heart this conviction justifying his right to a promised land.

It is possible that Trojans were Semites and then now?

The idea of the Semitic superiority is in no way justified, yet there were theorists to maintain it. According to them the Semites were a superior race, the cream of Mankind, and all that was good in the Aryans would have risen from them.

This is a terribly dangerous idea, as it helps to support the belief in a hierarchy of races. See in this regard the work of the French Arthur de Gobineau on the inequality (of civilizations).

There are, certainly, nations which, under specific conditions, have founded more powerful empires and more sustainable civilizations. Some people have found themselves in geographic, climatic and historical, conditions, more favorable than those enjoyed by others.

But the people who were most important in the religious history of Mankind, we have seen, were neither the Semites nor the Aryans, but the Sumerians and the Egyptians.

CHAPTER X.

" …………..We possess no documents to determine the ethnology of the nomadic Bene-Israel, but probable it is that the twelve tribes constituting this people, according to the tradition, did not belong to a single stock. They were doubtless heterogeneous tribes, for, in spite of its legends, the Jewish nation cannot, any more than the other nations, boast of having originated from a single couple, and the current conception which represents the Hebrew tribe as subdividing into subtribe is but a legendary and traditional conception that of the Genesis and one which a portion of historians of the Hebrews have wrongly accepted. Already composed of various unities among which doubtless were Turanian and Kushite groups, i.e., yellows and blacks, the Jews added still other strange elements while living in Egypt and in the land of Canaan which they conquered. Later on Gog and Magog, the Scythians, coming in Josiah's reign to Jerusalem's gates, probably left their impress on Israel. But starting with the first captivity the mixtures grow in number. "During the Babylonian captivity," says Maimonides, "the Israelites mingled with all sorts of foreign races and had children, who formed, owing to these unions, a kind of a new confusion of tongues," and yet this Babylonia, where there were cities like Mahuza, almost entirely peopled by Persians converted to Judaism, was deemed to contain Jews of a purer race than the Jews of Palestine. Said an old proverb: "For the purity of the race, the difference between the Jews of the Roman provinces is just as perceptible as the difference between dough of mediocre quality and dough made of the flour of meal but, compared to Babylonia, Judea itself is like mediocre dough………

This means that Judea had undergone many vicissitudes. It had always been the transit ground for the Mizraim and Assur (Egypt and Assyria); afterwards, on returning from captivity, the Jews united with the Samaritans, Edomites and Moabites. After the conquest of Idumea by Hyrcan, there were Jewish and Idumean unions, and it was said that, during the war with Rome, the Latin conquerors had begotten sons. "Are we perfectly sure," said Rabbi Ulla, melancholically, to Judah-ben Ezekiel, "that we are not descended from pagans who dishonored the young daughters of Zion after the capture of Jerusalem?"

But what was most conducive to the introduction of foreign blood into the Jewish nation was proselytism. The Jews were a propagandist nation par excellence, and from the construction of the Second Temple and particularly after the dispersion, their zeal was considerable. They were exactly those of whom the Gospel says that they ran over "earth and sea to make a proselyte," and with perfect right could Rabbi Eliezer exclaim: "Wherefore has God scattered the Jews among the nations? To recruit for Him proselytes everywhere." There are abundant proofs of the proselyting ardor of the Jews, and during the first centuries before the Christian era Judaism spread with the same vigor as characterized Christianity and Mohammedanism later on. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch where nearly all the Jews were converted gentiles Damask, Cyprus were the centers of fusion, as I have already pointed out. Nay, more, the Hasmonide conquerors compelled the vanquished Syrians to circumcise; kings, carrying their subjects along, converted, as, e.g., the family of Adiabenus, and the population was very mixed in certain cantons of Palestine itself, as was the case with Galilea, in that "circle of gentiles" where Jesus was to be born……

All over Europe the Jews attracted proselytes, thus rejuvenating their blood by the admixture of new blood. They made converts in Spain where successive councils at Toledo forbade mixed marriages; in

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Switzerland, where a decree of the fourteenth century sentenced young girls to wearing Jewish hats for having begotten children by Israelite fathers; in Poland, in the sixteenth century, in spite of Sigismund I's edicts, if we are to believe the historian Bielski. And they not only made these unions with the so-called Aryan nations in Europe, but also with the Uralo-Altaians and Turanians; there the infiltration was more considerable…………….

About 620 they converted there a whole tribe, the Khazars, whose territory was in the neighborhood of Astrakhan. Legend seized upon this fact, which greatly stirred up the Jews of the West, but, despite this, there can be no doubt about it. Isidore of Seville, a contemporary of the event, mentions it, and afterwards Chasdai Ibn-Shaprut, minister of the Khalif Abd-er-Rahman, corresponded with Joseph, the last Khagan of the Khazars, whose kingdom was destroyed by Svyatoslav, prince of Kieff. The Khazars exercised a great influence over the neighboring Slav tribes, the Polyane, Syeveryane and Vyatichi, and made numerous proselytes among them.

The Tartar peoples of the Caucasus also embraced Judaism in the twelfth century, according to the report of the traveler Petachya of Ratisbon. In the fourteenth century, there were numerous Jews in the hordes, which, with Mamay at their head, invaded the lands surrounding the Caucasus. It was in this nook of E:astern Europe that actively went on the fusion of Jews and Uralo-Altaians; here the Semite mixed with the Turanian, and even now, in studying the nations of the Caucasus, one meets with traces of this mixture among the 30,000 Jews of that country and the tribes surrounding them.

Thus this Jewish race represented by Jews and antisemites as the most unassailable, most homogeneous of races, is strongly multifarious. Anthropologists would in the first place divide it into two well-defined parts: the dolichocephals and the brachycephals. To the first type belong the Sephardic Jews the Spanish and Portuguese Jews as well as the greater part of the Jews of Italy and Southern France; to the second may be assigned the Ashkenazim,[127] i.e., the Polish, Russian and German Jews……..

In Africa are found agricultural and nomadic Jews, allied with the Kabyls and Berberians, near Setif, Guelma and Biskra, at the frontier of Morocco; in caravans they go as far as Timbuctoo, and some of their tribes, on the borders of Sahara, like the Daggatouns, are black tribes, 195 as also are the Fellah Jews of Abyssinia. 199 In India, one finds white Jews in Bombay, and black Jews in Cochin China, but the white Jews have in them melanian blood. They settled in India in the fifth century, after the persecutions of the Persian King Pheroces, who banished them from Baghdad. Their settling is at all events assigned to a more remote date: the coming of the Jews into China, i.e., before Christ. As to the Jews of China, they are not only related to the Chinese surrounding them, but they have also adopted the practices of the Confucian religion.

The Jew, consequently, has incessantly been transformed by the environments in which he stayed. He has changed because the different languages which he has spoken, have introduced into his mind different and opposite notions; he has not remained such as a united and homogeneous people ought to be, but, on the contrary, he is, at present, the most heterogeneous of all nations, one that presents the greatest varieties. And this pretended race whose stability and power of resistance friend and foe agree in extolling, affords us the most multifarious and most opposite types, since they range from the white to the black Jew, passing by way of the yellow Jew, not to speak of the secondary divisions Jews with blond and red hair, and brown Jews with black hair…………….

Consequently, the ethnological grievance of the antisemites does not rest upon any serious and real foundation. The opposition of the Aryans and the Semites is artificial; it is not correct to say that the Aryan race and the Semitic race are pure races, and that the Jew is a single and unvarying people. Semitic blood has mingled with Aryan blood and Aryan blood has mixed with Semitic blood. Aryans and Semites have both, furthermore, received an admixture of Turanian blood and Hamite, Negro or Negroid blood, and in the Babel of nationalities and races which the world is at present, the preoccupation of those who seek to discover who among his neighbors is an Aryan, a Turanian, a Semite, is a vain pursuit.

……..We have said that there are no races, but there are peoples and nations. What is improperly called a race is not an ethnological unit, but is an historic, intellectual and moral unit. The Jews are not an ethnos, but they are a nationality, they are diversified types, it is true, but what nation is not diversified? What makes a people is not unity of origin, but unity of sentiments, ideas, ethics…………

CHAPITRE XI.

THERE are about eight million Jews scattered over the face of the earth, nearly seven eighths of which inhabit Europe. Among these Jews figure the Bedouin Jews living on the confines of Sahara,

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the Daggatouns of the desert, the Fellahs of Abyssinia, the black Jews of India, the Mongoloid Jews of China, the Kalmuk and Tartar Jews of the Caucasus, the blond Jews of Bohemia and Germany, the brown Jews of Portugal, Southern France, Italy and the Orient, the dolichocephalous Jews, the brachycephalous and sub-brachycephalous Jews, all Jews, who, according to the section of their hair, the shape of their skull, the color of their skin, could be classified, on the strength of the best principles of ethnology, into four or five different races, as we have just shown………………

Still, proceeding in this way, we shall really have proven that the race is not an ethnological unity, i.e., that no people is a descendant of common parents, and that no nation has been formed from the aggregation of cells of this kind. But we shall by no means have proven that there exists no French people, a German people, an English people, etc., and we should not be able to do it, since there exists an English literature, a German literature, a French literature, different literatures all of them, expressing in a different way common sentiments, it is true, but whose objective and subjective play upon the various individuals affected by them is not the same, sentiments common to human nature, but ones which each man and each collection of men feels and expresses in a different way. We have had to reject the anthropologic notion of race, a notion which is erroneous and which we shall see to have given origin to the worst opinions, the most detestable and least justifiable vanities, that anthropologic notion which tends to make of each people an association of proud and egoistic recluses, but we are forced to admit the existence of historical units i.e., separate nations………..

Religion was formerly one of the most important forces that contributed to the formation of peoples. We cannot possibly realize what Rome, Athens or Sparta had been if we disregard the Gods of Olympus and the Capitolium; the same is true of Memphis, Nineveh, Babylon and Jerusalem, and what becomes of the Middle Ages if we leave out Christianity? …………..

Nations, consequently, do exist. These nations may sometimes not be organized under the same government; they may have lost their fatherland, their language, but the nation continues as long as this self-consciousness and the consciousness of that community of thought and interests which they represent by the fictitious background of race, filiation, origin and purity of blood have not disappeared. " (BERNARD Lazare).

BERNARD Lazare often uses the word race in speaking about Jews.

But there is no pure race, and even the word "race" is to be handled with care. Scientists now prefer to speak of populations and gene frequency. We must reject the notion of pure race, a false notion, generating the least justifiable vanities, seeking to make each nation an association of selfish or arrogant cloistered peoples.

We can almost say that today's Jews are not the descendants of those who long ago left Palestine. With due respect to the great French philosopher Marek Halter, the genealogical line going from the Judeans of antiquity to the Judeo-Spanish people or the Yiddish-speaking people of the modernity is as imperious as fanciful. The idea of a genetically homogeneous people having a continuity of thousands of years is a myth. From an ethnological point of view the current Jewish people is the result of deep mixing. It is enough to look at the extremely varied typologies of Jews today.From the blond, blue-eyed of Russia (Ashkenazim) descendant of the Khazar kingdom, to Ethiopian Black (Falasha) supposedly heir to the union of King Solomon with the Queen of Sheba. Needless to say, that, at least genetically speaking, the Jews are certainly not from the same stock, as biologically divine it can be. See in this regard the work of the Israeli writer Shlomo Sand.

The same remark about the word race for Arthur Koestler according to whom every prayer, every rite proclaims the membership of an ancient race, which automatically places the Jews outside the historical past of the people among whom they live. The Jewish religion, as it is shown by two thousand years of tragedies, nationally and socially generates its segregation. It makes the Jew separate, it calls for the setting him apart. It automatically creates the material and cultural ghettos. The word race used by Arthur Koestler is therefore also to handle with utmost caution.

There is no longer pure race since a long time! There are only human ethnic groups characterized by a particular gene frequency (appearance). What matters are the spiritual races.

The Jewish religion (unlike Christianity, Islam, Buddhism) supposes the membership of a historical nation, a chosen people.

All Jewish holidays commemorate events of national history: the Exodus from Egypt, the revolt of the Maccabees, the death of the oppressor Haman, the destruction of the Temple. The Old Testament is a national history book and its creed is more tribal tan universal. Such is, briefly summarized, the Arthur Koestler position on the question.

You can for example be spiritually Semitic according to Pope Pius XI, while being physically and biologically a pure descendant of Abraham, or of Hercules, or of Keltos, or of whoever, is only mythical hypothesis.

Diodorus of Sicily. The Library of History. Book V, XXIV.

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" Now in the course of his campaign against the Geryones, Heracles visited Celtica and founded there the city of Alesia; the king’s daughter, on seeing Heracles, wondered at his prowess and his bodily superiority and accepted his embraces with all eagerness, her parents having given their consent. From this union she bore to Heracles a son named Galates, who far surpassed all the youths of the tribe in quality of spirit and strength of body. And when he had attained to man's estate and had succeeded to the throne of his fathers, he subdued a large part of the neighboring territory and accomplished great feats in war. Becoming renowned for his bravery, he called his subjects Galatians after himself, and these in turn gave their name to all of Galatia.”

See also Parthenius of Nicaea. Love stories. XXX.

This book wants to a contribution to the humanist building of a tolerant and inclusive but firm secularism.

It is therefore urgent, given the conflicts and unnecessary violence that religions cause , as well as internationally as individually (God is the greatest common divisor of mankind), to establish a solid basis for understanding these phenomena.

This understanding must be peaceful, it must be the basis of the toleration of others by understanding their habits, concepts and hopes. In the words of the judges who deliberated in favor of the great French writer Michel Houellebecq; the content of this essay "contains no invective will, disdain or contempt towards the group of people made up of the followers of the religion considered [...] criticism of ancient texts is not in itself constitutive of an insult and can in no event target the regular mosque goers of today. This review is in no way a violation of basic human rights, it wants to be the criticism of a system of thinking. "

This book is intended to everyone, especially to women and men of Jewish origin, in order to offer them a reflection basis promoting their progressive religious deprogramming. It is also for the men and women of Muslim , Christian or otherwise origin. In order to make them better understand the psychological processes constituting Judaism and, by extension, all religious phenomena. And thus to enable them to have a deep understanding and toleration towards their fellow men, prisoners of religious ideology. Hoping that this reflection will lead them to ask the same questions on their religion.

The very existence of the "League Against Racism and Antisemitism" (LARA) shows a fundamental mistake in this regard. The fight against racism can be only joint and overall, under penalty of a "boomerang effect" on the distinguished community. If it is divided or fragmented, as evidenced by the expressions become now common in the media of "fight against racism and antisemitism" or of "racist and antisemitic acts"; expressions in which two types of racism are both combined and distinguished (one for the Jews taken as a reference and that against non-Jews); then the result of this specific anti-racist struggle to protect only the Jews will be only contrary to the feverish efforts with which it will have been led. This action will have a result contrary to that sought as for the judgment and behavior of the non-Jews towards the Jewish community as a whole. Because there never will be one fight that is worth, that concerning racism towards "others" whatsoever.

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APPENDIX No 15.

ANTISEMITISM ANTIJUDAISM ANTIZIONISM AND OTHER -ISMS IN RELATION BY BERNARD Lazare.

THE PROVEN FACTS.

-First fact. Semitic languages have existed or still exist. Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Babylonian, Phoenician, Punic, but also, in the Horn of Africa, Guez and even Amharic. This is an inescapable massive fact that cannot be disputed.

-Second fact. Any language corresponding to a way of thinking we can therefore deduce that men or women whose mother tongue is a Semitic language have conditioned reflexes or cognitive biases different from those of speakers in other languages with a very different nature.

This fact is neither massive nor inescapable and is debatable because it is RELATIVE. Not being a professional linguist, I will only mention two cases: the notion of religion which is equated to a law (to be followed): DIN. Verbs that are not used according to the past present future line but according to the completed uncompleted mode. NB. This has importance only for ancient Hebrew because modern Hebrew knows the notions of present and future regarding the verb conjugation.

Greek Anti-Judaism. See Roman anti-Judaism,

-Roman anti-Judaism. The Roman religion being polytheistic

(a) in no way denied the existence of the national god of Jews.

(b) Opposed in no way to the fact he is honored.

With Julius Caesar and Augustus Judaism even became a legal religion, a religio licita.

Things nevertheless had a bad start, before a clever compromise was found.

a) The Jews were exempted from a certain number of obligations too much contrary to their idea of piety.

b) They are granted a certain number of privileges.

c) But in exchange they accept to sacrifice in honor of gods and emperors (OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM).

-Christian anti-Judaism. Since Jesus and the early Christians were themselves Jews, there could be no question of race-based anti-Judaism in Christianity. It quickly ended up being even no longer religious, as the Christian authorities soon gave up converting Jews. On the other hand, it was marked by a very strong violence in the cultural field and often criminal at the individual level. Conversion to

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Christianity put an end to it, but then had a negative effect. The converted Jew could from now on be accused of heresy like everyone and be tortured or burned alive.

-Original Zionism. A socialist and humanist utopia with the aim of founding somewhere in the world a state where Jews could finally live happily and securely, in peace with other peoples. Between 1890 and 1948 Argentina, Madagascar, Uganda, China and Russia were even envisaged. The symbol of this Jewish socialism was the kibbutz.

-Current religious Zionism. Dangerous Christian or Jewish alienation based on the threefold postulate that there is a creating god of this world, that this creating god has chosen a people for himself, and that he has taken from others a particular land to give it to it. NB. Christian Zionists add to this triple postulate that the return of this land to its original divine vocation ACCORDING TO THE BIBLE (Eretz Israel) will de facto bring about the parousia and the return of Christ.

-Race in the biological and fantasized sense of the term. Criminal madness in the Lyssenko style born in the 18th century and having culminated in the 20th century with the Wannsee Conference which in 1942 decided to exterminate millions of Jews (holocaust by bullets from the einsatzgruppen on the Eastern Front, gas chambers, hard labor, beatings, torture, disease, malnutrition).

Raul Hilberg 5.1 million dead. 6 million is a symbolic figure (quoted at the Nuremberg trial).

NB. Abraham's chromosome does not exist and has never existed! Races absolutized or fantasized to this extent are therefore not a proven fact. There are only more or less strong gene frequencies depending on the degree of endogamy or isolation and therefore related phenotypes.

-Economic anti-Semitism. Various biblical religious dictates having led certain trades to become almost monopolies of professionals of the Jewish denomination, they are accused of exploiting non-Jewish populations or of enriching themselves to their detriment. See Alphonse Toussenel " The Jews kings of the epoch " and Edward Drumont " The Jewish France ."

APPENDIX No. 16.

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS ACCORDING TO THE HOLY QURAN

CHAPTER 9 VERSE 30.

" The Jews say: Ezra is the son of God, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of God. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. God (Himself) fights against them. How yufakuna are they! "

Semantic specification about the Arabic word "yufakuna" which essentializes or characterizes Jews and Christians according to Surah 9 verse 30 and which is often expressed in translations as something like "Jews and Christians .... do not understand .”

They are…

-Beguiled.

-Perverted.

-Perverse.

-Deluded.

-Turned away.

It is a derivative of the word afaka, at least according to the volume 1 of the book by Muhammad Mohar Ali entitled "Word for word translation of the Qur’an.”

But the word does not imply a simple ignorance, it rather suggests a misguided intelligence, or that one prevents from functioning normally.

And the "one" in question is to be taken in the strongest sense: it can be God as well as the devil.

Being an atheist, however, we will reject this hypothesis and we will opt for a more natural impediment.

"Jews and Christians ...... are naturally unable to see, to know, to understand! "

At the philosophical level "Jews and Christians’ faith…has nothing to do with Reason! ”

More bluntly "Jews and Christians……are morons.”

In short in summary "Jews and Christians ... are persons with Down’s syndrome.”

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AFTERWORD IN THE WAY OF JOHN TOLAND.

Pseudo-druids with fabulous initiatory derivation (the famous and indescribable or hilarious perennial tradition) having multiplied since some time; it appeared us necessary to put at the disposal of each and everyone, these few notes, hastily written, one evening of November, in order to give our readers the desire to know more about true druidism.

This work claims to be honest but in no way neutral. It was given itself for an aim to defend or clear the cluto (fame) of this admirable ancient religion.

Nothing replaces personal meditation, including about obscure or incomprehensible lays strewing these books, and which have been inserted intentionally, in order to force you to reflect, to find your own way. These books are not dogmas to be followed blindly and literally. As you know, we must beware as it was the plague, of the letter. The letter kills, only spirit vivifies.

Nothing replaces either personal experience, and it’s by following the way that we find the way. Therefore rely only on your own strength in this Search for the Grail. What matters is the attitude to be adopted in life and not the details of the dogma. Druidism is less important than druidiaction (John-P. MARTIN).

These few leaves scribbled in a hurry are nevertheless in no way THE BOOKS TO READ ON THIS MATTER, they are only a faint gleam of them.

The only druidic library worthy of the name is not in fact composed of only 12 (or 27) books, but of several hundred books.

The few booklets forming this mini-library are not themselves an increase of knowledge on the subject, and are only some handbooks intended for the schoolchildren of druidism.

These simplified summaries intended for the elementary courses of druidism will be replaced by courses of a somewhat higher level, for those who really want to study it in a more relevant way.

This small library is consequently a first attempt to adapt (intended for young adults) the various reflections about the druidic knowledge and truth, to which the last results of the new secularism, positive and open-minded, worldwide, being established, have led.

Unlike Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, which swarm, concerning the higher Being, with childish anthropomorphism taken literally (fundamentalism known as integrism in the Catholic world); our druidism too, on the other hand, will use only very little of them, and will stick in this field, to the absolute minimum.

But in order to talk about God or the Devil we shall be quite also obliged to use a basic language, and therefore a more or less important amount of this anthropomorphism. Or then it would be necessary to completely give up discussing it.

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This first shelf of our future library consecrated to the subject, aims to show precisely the harmonious authenticity of the neo-druidic will and knowledge. To show at which point its current major theses have deep roots because the reflection about Mythologies, it’s our Bible to us. The adaptations of this brief talk required by the differences of culture, age, spiritual maturity, social status, etc. will be to do with the concerned druids (veledae and others?)

Note, however. Important! What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are not (higgledy-piggledy).

A divine revelation. A (still also divine) law. A (non-religious or secular) law. A (scientific) law. A dogma. An order.

What I search most to share is a state of mind, nothing more. As our old master had very well said one day : "OUR CIVILIZATION HAS NO CHOICE: IT WILL BE CELTISM OR IT WILL BE DEATH” (Peter Lance).

What these few notes, hastily thrown on paper during a too short life, are.

Some dream. An adventure. A journey. An escape. A revolt cry against the moral and physical ugliness of this society. An attempt to reach the universal by starting from the individual. A challenge. An obstacle fecund to overcome . An incentive to think. A guide for action. A map. A plan. A compass. A pole star or morning star up there in the mountain. A fire overnight in a glade?

What the man who had collected the core of this library, Peter DeLaCrau, is not.

- A god.

- A half god.

- A quarter of God.

- A saint.

- A philosopher (recognized, official, and authorized or licensed, as those who talk a lot in television. Except, of course, by taking the word in its original meaning, which is that of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge.

What he is: a man, and nothing of what is human therefore is unknown to him. Peter DeLaCrau has no superhuman or exceptional power. Nothing of what he said wrote or did could have timeless value. At the best he hopes that his extreme clearness about our society and its dominant ideology (see its official philosophers, its journalists, its mass media and the politically correct of its right-thinking people, at least about what is considered to be the main thing); as well his non-conformism, and his outspokenness, combined with a solid contrariness (which also earned to him for that matter a lot of troubles or affronts); can be useful.

The present small library for beginners “contains the dose of humanity required by the current state of civilization” (Henry Lizeray). However it’s only a gathering of materials waiting for the ad hoc architect or mason.

A whole series of booklets increasing our knowledge of these basic elements will be published soon. This different presentation of the druidic knowledge will preserve nevertheless the unity as well as the harmony which can exist between these various statements of the same philosophical and well-considered paganism : spirituality worthy of our day, spirituality for our days.

Case of translations into foreign languages (Spanish, German, Italian, Polish, etc.)

The misspellings, the grammatical mistakes, the inadequacies of style, as well as in the writing of the proper nouns perhaps and, of course, the Gallicisms due to forty years of life in France, may be corrected. Any other improvement of the text may also be brought if necessary (by adding, deleting, or changing, details); Peter DeLaCrau having always regretted not being able to reach perfection in this field.

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But on condition that neither alteration nor betrayal, in a way or another, is brought to the thought of the author of this reasoned compilation. Every illustration without a caption can be changed. New illustrations can be brought.

But illustrations having a caption must be only improved (by the substitution of a good photograph to a bad sketch, for example?)

It goes without saying that the coordinator of this rapid and summary reasoned compilation , Peter DeLaCrau, does not maintain to have invented (or discovered) himself, all what is previous; that he does not claim in any way that it is the result of his personal researches (on the ground or in libraries).

What s previous is indeed essentially resulting from the excellent works or websites referenced in bibliography and whose direct consultation is strongly recommended.

We will never insist enough on our will not be the men of one book (the Book), but from at least twelve, like Ireland’s Fenians, for obvious reasons of open-mindedness, truth being our only religion.

Once again, let us repeat; the coordinator of the writing down of these few notes hastily thrown on paper, by no means claims to have spent his life in the dust of libraries; or in the field, in the mud of the rescue archaeology excavations; in order to unearth unpublished pieces of evidence about the past of Ireland (or of Wales or of East Indies or of China).

THEREFORE PETER DELACRAU DOES NOT WANT TO BE CONSIDERED, IN ANY WAY, AS THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING TEXTS.

HE TRIES BY NO MEANS TO ASCRIBE HIMSELF THE CREDIT OF THEM. He is only the editor or the compiler of them. They are, for the most part, documents broadcast on the web, with a few exceptions.

ON THE OTHER HAND, HE DEMANDS ALL THEIR FAULTS AND ALL THEIR INSUFFICIENCIES.

Peter DeLaCrau claims only one thing, the mistakes, errors, or various imperfections, of this book. He alone is to be blamed in this case. But he trusts his contemporaries (human nature being what it is) for vigorously pointing out to him.

Note found by the heirs to Peter DeLaCrau and inserted by them into this place.

By respect for Mankind , in order to save time, and not to make it waste time, I will make easier the work of those who make absolutely a point of being on the right side of the fence while fighting (heroically of course) in order to save the world of my claws (my ideas or my inclinations, my tendencies).

To these courageous and implacable detractors, of whom the profundity of reflection worthy of that of a marquis of Vauvenargues equals only the extent of the general knowledge, worthy of Pico della Mirandola I say…

Now take a sheet of paper, a word processing if you prefer, put by order of importance 20 characteristics which seem to you most serious, most odious, most hateful, in the history of Mankind, since the prehistoric men and Nebuchadnezzar, according to you….AND CONSIDER THAT I AM THE COMPLETE OPPOSITE OF YOU BECAUSE I HAVE THEM ALL!

Scapegoats are always needed! A heretic in the Middle Ages, a witch in Salem in the 17th century, a racist in the 20th century, an alien lizard in the 21st century, I am the man you will like to hate in order to feel a better person (a smart and nice person).

I am, as you will and in the order of importance you want: an atheist, a satanist, a stupid person, with Down’s syndrome, brutish, homosexual, deviant, homophobic, communist, Nazi, sexist, a philatelist, a pathological liar, robber, smug, psychopath, a falsely modest monster of hubris, and what do I still know, it is up to you to see according to the current fashion.

Here, I cannot better do (in helping you to save the world).

[Unlike my despisers who are all good persons, the salt of the earth, i.e., young or modern and dynamic, courageous, positive, kind, intelligent, educated, or at least who know; showing much hindsight in their thoroughgoing meditation on the trends of History; and on the moral or ethical level: generous, altruistic, but poor of course (it is their only vice) because giving all to others; moreover deeply respectful of the will of God and of the Constitution …

As for me I am a stiff old reactionary, sheepish, disconnected from his time, paranoid, schizophrenic, incoherent, capricious, never satisfied, a villain, stupid, having never studied or at least being unaware of everything about the subject in question; accustomed to rash judgments based on prejudices without any reflection; selfish and wealthy; a fiend of the Devil, inherently Nazi-Bolshevist or Stalinist-Hitlerian. Hitlerian Trotskyist they said when I was young. In short a psychopathic murderer as soon as

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the breakfast… what enables me therefore to think what I want, my critics also besides, and to try to make everybody know it even no-one in particular].

Signed: the coordinator of the works, Peter DeLaCrau known as Hesunertus, a researcher in druidism.

A man to whom nothing human was foreign. An unemployed worker, post office worker, divorcee, homeless person, vagrant, taxpayer, citizen, and a cuckolded elector... In short one of the 9 billion human beings having been in transit aboard this spaceship therefore. Born on planet Earth, January 13, 1952.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Antisemitism: Its History and Causes. BERNARD Lazare.

Born in 1865 in Nimes within a rich Jewish family BERNARD Lazare died in 1903. Contrary to what he had categorically asked, two rabbis recited the Jewish prayer called kaddish on the grave of this atheist; and in 1983 an unpleasant history opposed Mireille Cherchevsky (Carole Landrel) distant heiress to BERNARD Lazare, to his new editor during the reprinting of the book. To help it, the Frenchwoman Francoise Giroud and a veteran of the Liberation of Paris went even as far as claiming that BERNARD Lazare died without will.

BERNARD Lazare, who however sees the Jewish culture as essential cause of the “ antisemitism”, dwells only on the will of the Jews to remain separate. In his work of the end of the 19th century, he writes: “Wherever the Jews settled after ceasing to be a nation, one observes the development of antisemitism, or rather anti-Judaism […….] If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. But this race has been the object of hatred with all the nations amid whom it ever settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races, as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different laws and governed by opposite principles; as they had not the same customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself, and not in those who antagonized it”.

N.B. In Addition to the reservations or condemnations to make on the use of the word race, it should be noted that BERNARD Lazare did not insist more in his analysis on the devastating consequences of the concept of chosen people.

CONTENTS.

Quranic warning Page 002

Prolog Page 003

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ON RELIGIONS IN GENERAL

True genesis of the appearance of life and mankind Page 007

Appearance of religion Page 008

------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SCIENTIFIC HISTORY Page 010

The ancient Aryans Page 011

Persia Page 012

The worship of Mithra Page 018

India Page 020

Egypt Page 021

The books of the dead: some optimistic books Page 022

The Egyptian monotheism Page 027

Great hymn for Aten Page 030

The Sumerians Page 031

History begins at Sumer Page 035

Holy History begins at Sumer Page 038

Mesopotamian literature Page 043

The organized in city-states Semites Page 046

Mythology and pantheon Page 048

First warning for the readers. Page 050

The mythical Hebrews Page 052

Second warning: the religion of the true ancestors of the ancient Jewish people Page 054

The various religions in the area Page 057

The case of Jerusalem Page 060

Chronology theoretically common to all the Hebrews in the Palestine of this time Page 063

The kingdom of Israel Page 065

The Judaean Kingdom Page 066

The deportations in Babylon Page 072

Persian period and completion of the Jewish Bible Page 074

Hellenistic and Roman period Page 076

Short analysis of the first Judeo-Roman war Page 080

The Amidah or shmoneh essreh Page 083

Causes and reasons for the appearance of the birkat haminim in the eighteen blessings Page 085

The various branches of the Judaism in the first centuries Page 087

……….

………..

The Diaspora phenomenon according to Shlomo Sand Page 104

Examples of Jewish proselytism Page 107

The Diaspora phenomenon according to BERNARD Lazare Page 110

Homage to Marek Edelman Page 121

New and final warning to the reader Page 125

The foundation of the State of Israel Page 127

---------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But what is a religion now? Page 135

Kant and Judaism Page 138

Reminders Page 140

-------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Names of God Page 142

Dreamed (or “revealed”) or fantasized History of Hebrews Page 145

The true history of the ancient Jewish people. Page 147

A) The Egyptian country of Canaan

B) The invasion of the Sea Peoples and the Canaanite resistance (-1200 – 1000)

C) The true origins of the biblical narrative

D) The kingdom of Judah

E) Conclusion

Reminder: On the fake or distorted of the materials used for the composition of the Torah Page 154

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First part according to our one division of the Law the major prophets the minor prophets and the other writings Page 161

Visiting card of the biblical library Page 180

First part according to the tradition the Law the major prophets the minor prophets and the other writings Page 181

What is a religious ideology ? Page 188

The ancient jewish religious ideology Page 190

Short outline of the Jewish ideology according us therefore Page 192

Jewish creed Page 194

Dogmas Page 195

Creator of the universe Page 195

Jealous Page 196

Warrior Page 198

Pitiless Page 200

Other dogmas Page 202

The possibility of knowing the future Page 202

The divine or sacred nature of the Tanakh Page 205

The divine or sacred nature of the prophets and other writings Page 207

The Messiah or savior sent by God Page 211

The end of time Page 213

1st other idea in the composition of Judaism Page 215

2nd other idea in the composition of Judaism Page 218

Epicleses Page 221

The dogma of heredity Page 222

The dogma of the Promised Land Page 224

Jerusalem Page 227

The tax due to the Temple of Jerusalem Page 228

The angels Page 232

Devil demons and anti-God Page 234

Misogyny Page 235

The voice of the Ghetto Page 236

The national preference Page 245

Ethics and morals Page 247

The true history of the ten commandments Page 251

The Talmud and the 613 commandments (mitzvot) Page 253

The view of the German historian Heinrich Graetz Page 254

The view of the French historian Bernard Lazare Page 259

Extracts from the teaching of the Nazarene high rabbi Jesus Page 266

A religion neither natural nor revealed in fact but rather artificial and superficial Page 269

Conclusion Page 276

Epilogue Page 282

Appendix No. 1 Page 285

Appendix No. 2 Page 288

Appendix No. 3 Page 290

Appendix No. 4 Page 292

Appendix No. 5 Page 297

Appendix No. 6 Page 300

Appendix No. 7 Page 302

Appendix No. 8 Page 304

Appendix No. 9 Page 307

Appendix No. 10 Page 315

Appendix No. 11 Page 316

Appendix No. 12 Page 318

Appendix No. 13 Page 321

Appendix No. 14. Page 322

Appendix No. 15 Page 327

Appendix No 16 Page 328

Afterword in the manner of John Toland Page 329

335

Bibliography Page 332

BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

1 Quotations from the ancient authors speaking about Celts or druids.

2. Various preliminary general information about Celts.

3. History of the pact with gods volume 1.

4. Druidism Bible: history of the pact with gods volume 2.

5. History of the peace with gods volume 3.

6. History of the peace with gods volume 4.

7. History of the peace with gods volume 5.

8. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 1.

9. Irish apocryphal texts.

10. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 2.

11. From Fenians to Culdees or “The Great Science which enlightens” volume 3.

12. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 1 (druidic mythology).

13. The hundred paths of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 2 (druidic mythology).

14. The hundred ways of paganism. Science and philosophy volume 3 (druidic mythology).

15. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 1.

16. The Greater Camminus: elements of druidic theology: volume 2.

17. The druidic pleroma: angels jinns or demons volume 1.

18. The druidic pleroma angels jinns or demons volume 2

19. Mystagogy or sacred theater of ancients Celts.

20. Celtic poems.

21. The genius of the Celtic paganism volume 1.

22. The Roland’s complex .

23. At the base of the lantern of the dead.

24. The secrets of the old druid of the Menapian forest.

25. The genius of Celtic paganism volume 2 (liberty reciprocity simplicity).

26. Rhetoric : the treason of intellectuals.

27. Small dictionary of druidic theology volume 1.

28. From the ancient philosophers to the Irish druid.

29. Judaism Christianity and Islam: first part.

30. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 1.

31. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 2.

32. Judaism Christianity and Islam : second part volume 3.

33. Third part volume 1: what is Islam? Short historical review of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

34. Third part volume 2: What is Islam? First approaches to the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

35. Third part volume 3: What is Islam? The true 5 pillars of the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

36. Third part volume 4: What is Islam? Sounding the set QUR.HAD.SIR. and SHAR.FIQ.MAD.

37. Couiro anmenion or small dictionary of druidic theology volume 2.

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Peter DeLaCrau. Born on January 13rd, 1952, in St. Louis (Missouri) from a family of woodsmen or Canadian trappers who had left Prairie du Rocher (or Fort de Chartres in Illinois) in 1765. Peter DeLaCrau is thus born the same year as the Howard Hawks film entitled “the Big Sky”. Consequently father of French origin, mother of Irish origin: half Irish half French. Married to Mary-Helen ROBERTS on March 12th, 1988, in Paris-Aubervilliers (French department of Seine-Saint-Denis). Hence 3 children. John Wolf born May 11th, 1989. Alex born April 10th, 1990. Millicent born August 31st, 1993. Deceased on September 28th, 2012, in La Rochelle (France).

Peter DELACRAU is not a philosopher by profession, except taking this term in its original meaning of amateur searching wisdom and knowledge. And he is neither a god neither a demigod nor the messenger of any god or demigod (and of course not a messiah).

But he has become in a few years one of the most lucid and of the most critical observers of the French neo-druidic or neo-pagan world.

He was also some time assistant-treasurer of a rather traditionalist French druidic group of which he could get archives and texts or publications.

But his constant criticism both domestic and foreign French policy, and his political positions (on the end of his life he had become an admirer of Howard Zinn Paul Krugman Bernie Sanders and Michael Moore); had earned him moreover some vexations on behalf of the French authorities which did everything, including in his professional or private life, in the last years of his life, to silence him.

Peter DeLaCrau has apparently completely missed the return to the home country of his distant ancestors.

It is true unfortunately that France today is no longer the France of Louis XIV or of Lafayette or even of Napoleon (which has really been a great nation in those days).

Peter DeLaCrau having spent most of his life (the last one) in France, of which he became one of the best specialists,

even one of the rare thoroughgoing observers of the contemporary French society quite simply; his three children, John-Wolf, Alex and Millicent (of Cuers: French Riviera) pray his readers to excuse the countless misspellings or grammatical errors that pepper his writings. At the end of his life, Peter DeLaCrau mixed a little both languages (English but also French).

Those were therefore the notes found on the hard disk of the computer of our father, or in his papers.

Our father has of course left us a considerable work, nobody will say otherwise, but some of the words frequently coming from his pen, now and then are not always very clear. After many consultations between us, at any rate, above what we have been able to understand of them.