Magdalenbrother
December 18th 2004, 01:24 AM
We have a thread on the Matthean Magi on this board and the charming story has reminded me of late of the (in)famous Star Prophecy.
I didn't know about it until I read Robert Eisenman's formidable volume on James, the Brother of Jesus, a (difficult) book I recommend to everyone who wants to know the truth about early Christianity.
The Star prophecy played a very important role in the religious expectations of the suffering Jewish people during the Second Temple period. Even the pagans could not remain indifferent to it.
Now what is the Star Prophecy? This God-breathed prediction (it is recorded in the Bible!) was uttered by a pagan, the prophet Balaam, son of Beor, 1450 years before the advent of the Galilean Messiah from humble Nazareth. Here it goes:
There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the sons of Sheth.(Numbers 24,15-17)
The "wise men of the East" who followed the star when the Lord was born were probably from the same country as Balaam, -- so long did these Syrian people preserve their knowledge about the Lord !
Another interesting anecdote about the star of Bethlehem is that it has a number of similarities with a star that appeared over Jerusalem in 66 AD/CE (at the beginning of the great Jewish uprising against Caesar) that was described by Josephus in The Jewish War (6.5.3 289). Our famous Jewish turncoat speaks, like Matthew, of a star that stood in the sky in an apparently miraculous way, contrary to the natural movements of the heavens. The rebels in 66 used the same terminology and connected the star to Biblical the prophecies of Balaam. Matthew, who is believed to have written only a few years later, may have borrowed their terminology, regarding it as an authentically Jewish way to describe a star predicting the imminent coming of the Davidic Messiah.
As we all know, the first Jewish revolt was followed by another one in 135 (which by the way shows that the estruction of the Second Temple did not bring about the total demise of the Jewish nation and cannot therefore be equated with the end of the world supposedly predicted by Jesus!). This rebellion was led by a certain Bar Kochba. "Bar Kochba" means in Aramaic: son of the star !
The Star Prophecy is often connected with the Davidic "World Ruler prophecy" in Isaiah:
And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious." (Isaiah 11:1,10 KJV)
Why did I say that this is an infamous prophecy?
Apart fom the fact that it misled thousands of Jews in the first and second century AD/CE to die for absolutely nothing, the prophecy was used by Josephus and Ben Zakkai, the leader of the Pharisees, to flatter the Roman Emperor (as a result Josephus was adopted into the imperial family of the Flavians and the Pharisees became the dominant sect of Judaism after the Temple had been razed to the ground !):
What did the most to induce the Jews to start this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth. The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea. (Flavius Josephus Jewish War 6.312-313)
The pagans knew about it too:
There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated for men coming from Judaea to rule the world. This prediction, referring to the emperor of Rome -as afterwards appeared from the event- the people of Judaea took to themselves. (Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 4.5)
By a strange coincidence a comet appeared in 69, the year before Vespasian was proclaimed Emperor after a coup d'Etat.
But the real reason why I say that these prophecies are infamous is because of the absurd ethnic infatuation of the Jews with themselves that they betray.
We know that all the peoples of Antiquity considered themselves the most civilized and human representatives of the race. The Greeks considered non-Greeks as immature, half-human creatures, barbaroi. But to my knowledge the Jews are the only people on earth who have gone so far as to
1. Consider the gods of other nations as worthless or worse still, devilish;
2. Consider themselves God's special, elected people;
3. Claim nothing less than total world leadership for a member of their little group.
What we have here is not only a pathologically (and pathetically) overbloated national ego, a trait that can easily be explained considering the long history of oppression and humiliation of the Jews, but also the seeds of intolerance and fascism, alas! Notions of a "superior" race and divine right to rule the world are essential elements of fascism, aren't they? This leads me to the painful conclusion that the Jewish holy book and its narrow monotheism (who said that monotheism is better than polytheism?) are not totally foreign to...Mein Kampf. What better illustration could we have of the Chinese principle that all opposites are in fact intermingled?
IOW, how can Gentiles feel safe and comfortable with the Jews as long as the latter regard themselves a God-appointed superior race destined to rule the universe? How can Christians, who are the spiritual heirs of Judaism, stop doing mischief as long as they believe in exclusive salvation, a natural outgrowth of Jewish monotheistic faith?
These are not vicious questions, guys, they are serious questions that Christians and Jews must face. And that non-Jews and pagans have a right to ask.
Paradoxically, the Christians, who have specialized themselves throughout the long centuries of their (mis)rule of the West in brutal, bloody antisemitism, have themselves spread the xenophobic and ethnocentric idiocies of the Bible to the farthest corners of the earth and still cling to the belief that
a Jew is God !!!
(while the Jews believe simply and modestly that God is for the Jews: Gott mit uns!)
Oh by Zeus when will all this all too human biblical nonsense stop?
PS: If you don't want to discuss the content of this sulphurous post, we may chat about whether it is permissible to criticize the Jews and their religion in our tolerant and enlightened 21st century :lol: :lol: :lol: .
I didn't know about it until I read Robert Eisenman's formidable volume on James, the Brother of Jesus, a (difficult) book I recommend to everyone who wants to know the truth about early Christianity.
The Star prophecy played a very important role in the religious expectations of the suffering Jewish people during the Second Temple period. Even the pagans could not remain indifferent to it.
Now what is the Star Prophecy? This God-breathed prediction (it is recorded in the Bible!) was uttered by a pagan, the prophet Balaam, son of Beor, 1450 years before the advent of the Galilean Messiah from humble Nazareth. Here it goes:
There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a Scepter shall rise out of Israel, and shall smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the sons of Sheth.(Numbers 24,15-17)
The "wise men of the East" who followed the star when the Lord was born were probably from the same country as Balaam, -- so long did these Syrian people preserve their knowledge about the Lord !
Another interesting anecdote about the star of Bethlehem is that it has a number of similarities with a star that appeared over Jerusalem in 66 AD/CE (at the beginning of the great Jewish uprising against Caesar) that was described by Josephus in The Jewish War (6.5.3 289). Our famous Jewish turncoat speaks, like Matthew, of a star that stood in the sky in an apparently miraculous way, contrary to the natural movements of the heavens. The rebels in 66 used the same terminology and connected the star to Biblical the prophecies of Balaam. Matthew, who is believed to have written only a few years later, may have borrowed their terminology, regarding it as an authentically Jewish way to describe a star predicting the imminent coming of the Davidic Messiah.
As we all know, the first Jewish revolt was followed by another one in 135 (which by the way shows that the estruction of the Second Temple did not bring about the total demise of the Jewish nation and cannot therefore be equated with the end of the world supposedly predicted by Jesus!). This rebellion was led by a certain Bar Kochba. "Bar Kochba" means in Aramaic: son of the star !
The Star Prophecy is often connected with the Davidic "World Ruler prophecy" in Isaiah:
And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious." (Isaiah 11:1,10 KJV)
Why did I say that this is an infamous prophecy?
Apart fom the fact that it misled thousands of Jews in the first and second century AD/CE to die for absolutely nothing, the prophecy was used by Josephus and Ben Zakkai, the leader of the Pharisees, to flatter the Roman Emperor (as a result Josephus was adopted into the imperial family of the Flavians and the Pharisees became the dominant sect of Judaism after the Temple had been razed to the ground !):
What did the most to induce the Jews to start this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth. The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea. (Flavius Josephus Jewish War 6.312-313)
The pagans knew about it too:
There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated for men coming from Judaea to rule the world. This prediction, referring to the emperor of Rome -as afterwards appeared from the event- the people of Judaea took to themselves. (Suetonius, Life of Vespasian 4.5)
By a strange coincidence a comet appeared in 69, the year before Vespasian was proclaimed Emperor after a coup d'Etat.
But the real reason why I say that these prophecies are infamous is because of the absurd ethnic infatuation of the Jews with themselves that they betray.
We know that all the peoples of Antiquity considered themselves the most civilized and human representatives of the race. The Greeks considered non-Greeks as immature, half-human creatures, barbaroi. But to my knowledge the Jews are the only people on earth who have gone so far as to
1. Consider the gods of other nations as worthless or worse still, devilish;
2. Consider themselves God's special, elected people;
3. Claim nothing less than total world leadership for a member of their little group.
What we have here is not only a pathologically (and pathetically) overbloated national ego, a trait that can easily be explained considering the long history of oppression and humiliation of the Jews, but also the seeds of intolerance and fascism, alas! Notions of a "superior" race and divine right to rule the world are essential elements of fascism, aren't they? This leads me to the painful conclusion that the Jewish holy book and its narrow monotheism (who said that monotheism is better than polytheism?) are not totally foreign to...Mein Kampf. What better illustration could we have of the Chinese principle that all opposites are in fact intermingled?
IOW, how can Gentiles feel safe and comfortable with the Jews as long as the latter regard themselves a God-appointed superior race destined to rule the universe? How can Christians, who are the spiritual heirs of Judaism, stop doing mischief as long as they believe in exclusive salvation, a natural outgrowth of Jewish monotheistic faith?
These are not vicious questions, guys, they are serious questions that Christians and Jews must face. And that non-Jews and pagans have a right to ask.
Paradoxically, the Christians, who have specialized themselves throughout the long centuries of their (mis)rule of the West in brutal, bloody antisemitism, have themselves spread the xenophobic and ethnocentric idiocies of the Bible to the farthest corners of the earth and still cling to the belief that
a Jew is God !!!
(while the Jews believe simply and modestly that God is for the Jews: Gott mit uns!)
Oh by Zeus when will all this all too human biblical nonsense stop?
PS: If you don't want to discuss the content of this sulphurous post, we may chat about whether it is permissible to criticize the Jews and their religion in our tolerant and enlightened 21st century :lol: :lol: :lol: .