Judaism discovered

"A Hedge Around the Law"

2. The aforementioned making of a "hedge around the law," attributed to the Great Assembly (Avot 1:1) is a generic euphemism invoked to cover falsification and abrogation of the Biblical text under a benign, or at the least, a bland heading. When attempting to understand some escape clause or demented loophole in the meaning of a Biblical text, one discovers that the distortion can be under the heading "make a hedge around the law." In the dunce-filled church world, Babylon's "Judeo-Christians" explain the rabbis' "hedge" as "...Detailed exposition of the law appeared in the form of innumerable and highly specific injunctions that were designed to 'build a hedge' around the written Torah and thus guard against any possible infringement of the Torah by ignorance or accident." ¹³⁹

So you see, dear little bumpkins and bumpkinesses in the pews, by means of their "hedge around the law," the rabbis are guarding against any possible infringement of God's Word. Ah, the strict probity of the heirs of the Pharisees! One question for the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Encyclopedia, however: if the Pharisees and successor "sages" and rabbis have so sedulously guarded the Bible against any infringement, how it is that they came to infringe on that very Word by denying that the Scriptures testify of Jesus

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Christ? Actually, (as is usually the case when extravagant claims are made for the piety and rectitude of the rabbis), exactly the reverse is true:

"Although there were 613 commands in the Old Testament, they had added prohibitions to the law as a hedge around the law so that people would not break the law...It is important to understand that their 'hedge' commands were not really a hedge at all. They were designed to allow the Jews to break all the Ten Commandments. I'm sure they would deny this and perhaps they didn't do it intentionally, but because of their natural evil human nature, they had ways of getting around all the commandments. For example: they could swear on the door of the temple and that was not binding, but to swear on the doorknob of the temple was. That allowed them to get around the command to not bear false witness. They had very liberal divorce laws which allowed them to get around the command not to commit adultery. They just got divorced, married the one they wanted to be with and then divorced her when they found someone new (cf. Matt 5:32). The Sermon on the Mount goes through this in detail. They set up 39 prohibitions to supposedly protect the Sabbath...No. 39 was that you can't carry your bed on the Sabbath. Jesus goes right for that, to challenge the tradition. In reality, their Sabbath prohibitions kept them from bringing rest to mankind as the Sabbath was originally intended..." ¹⁴⁰

Certain Christians well understood the mechanics of Judaism's scriptural nullification. The Puritan exegete John Owen (1616-1683), quoting the antiquarian and philologist John Selden's (1584-1654) description of the Gezera Shava: "It is a most common thing among the Talmudists to seek for some support for their additional customs from some words of the Scriptures, and, as it were, to try to hedge them up behind some Biblical word, interpretation or analogy. Those even tolerably familiar with their works will know this well. So the original words are twisted and distorted with great

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boldness to give some seeming confirmation to their customs, far out of the sense of the original." ¹⁴¹

The "hedge around the law" is known inside Judaism for what it truly is: "eis la'asos leHashem heifeiru Torasecha" (a bending of the rules of the Torah in order to protect it). This is how the "hedge around the law" has actually been intended to function across the centuries, by the leaders of historic Judaism: distorting God's Word to suit the rabbis' distorted version of what God says and decrees, on the pretext that the distortion is a form of "protection." ¹⁴²

Permissible Dissimulation through Dispensational Revelation

The "hedge around the law" is the foundation of the loophole/escape clause mechanism that forms the systematic theology of Judaism. Without an understanding of yet another devious mechanism, the rabbinic escape clause, Judaism is a hall of mirrors that can and does lead astray all types of seekers, scholars and investigators, including even well-educated skeptics. The key teaching of the thousands of rabbinic texts devoted to rabbinic exegesis and halacha and responsa is the concept of situation ethics related to temporal dispensations. Built into many decisions, rulings, statements and laws, are alternate rulings, decisions, statements and laws.

These alternates largely exist to mislead the researcher who happens to penetrate the inner sanctum of the rabbinic canon. Almost all of these alternates are invoked only in specific times: for example, when Judaics are heavily suppressed. In many cases the alternates are ignored in times of rabbinic supremacy. When to invoke and when to ignore is the subject of a goodly portion of the huge pile of treatises just cited.

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Case Law: Medical Treatment for Gentiles Relative to the Era

Israel Shahak of Hebrew University, Jerusalem, gives an example of this with regard to the rabbinic law governing medical treatment of gentiles:

"According to the Halakhah, the duty to save the life of a fellow Jew is paramount. It supersedes all other religious obligations and interdictions, excepting only the prohibitions against the three most heinous sins of adultery (including incest), murder and idolatry. As for Gentiles, the basic tahnudic principle is that their lives must not be saved...In particular, a Jewish doctor must not treat a Gentile patient. Maimonides — himself an illustrious physician — is quite explicit on this; in another passage he repeats the distinction between 'thy fellow' and a Gentile, and concludes: 'and from this learn ye, that it is forbidden to heal a Gentile even for payment...' However, the refusal of a Jew — particularly a Jewish doctor — to save the life of a Gentile may, if it becomes known, antagonize powerful Gentiles and so put Jews in danger. Where such danger exists, the obligation to avert it supersedes the ban on helping the Gentile. Thus Maimonides continues:'... but if you fear him or his hostility, cure him for payment, though you are forbidden to do so without payment.' ...Maimonides...insistence on demanding payment — presumably in order to make sure that the act is not one of human charity but an unavoidable duty — is however not absolute. For in another passage he allows Gentile whose hostility is feared to be treated 'even gratis, if it is unavoidable. The whole doctrine — the ban on saving a Gentile's life or healing him, and the suspension of this ban in cases where there is fear of hostility— is repeated by other major authorities, including the 14th century Arba'ah Turirn and Karo's Beyt Yosef and Shulhan Arukh.

"Another response of Hatam Sofer¹⁴³ deals with the question whether it is permissible for a Jewish doctor to travel by carriage on the sabbath in order to heal a Gentile. After pointing out that under certain conditions traveling by horse-drawn carriage on the sabbath only violates a ban imposed 'by the sages' rather than by the Torah, he goes on to recall Maimonides' pronouncement that Gentile women in labor must not be helped on the sabbath, even if no desecration of the sabbath is involved, and states that the same principle applies to all medical practice, not just midwifery. But he then

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voices the fear that if this were put into practice, 'it would arouse undesirable hostility/ for 'the Gentiles would not accept the excuse of sabbath observance,' and 'would say that the blood of an idolator has little worth in our eyes.' Also, perhaps more importantly, Gentile doctors might take revenge on their Jewish patients. Better excuses must be found. He advises a Jewish doctor who is called to treat a Gentile patient out of town on the sabbath to excuse himself by saying that he is required to stay in town in order to look after his other patients, 'for he can use this in order to say, 1 cannot move because of the danger to this or that patient, who needs a doctor first, and 1 may not desert my charge.' With such an excuse there is no fear of danger, for it is a reasonable pretext, commonly given by doctors who are late in arriving because another patient needed them first.' Only 'if it is impossible to give any excuse' is the doctor permitted to travel by carriage on the sabbath in order to treat a Gentile. In the whole discussion, the main issue is the excuses that should be made, not the actual healing or the welfare of the patient. And throughout it is taken for granted that it is all right to deceive Gentiles rather than treat them, so long as 'hostility' can be averted.

"...the provision that a Gentile may be saved or cared for in order to avert the danger of hostility is curtailed on the sabbath. A Jew called upon to help a Gentile on a weekday may have to comply because to admit that he is not allowed, in principle, to save the life of a non-Jew would be to invite hostility. But on Saturday the Jew can use sabbath observance as a plausible excuse. A paradigmatic case discussed at length in the Talmud is that of a Jewish midwife invited to help a Gentile woman in childbirth. The upshot is that the midwife is allowed to help on a weekday 'for fear of hostility,' but on the sabbath she must not do so, because she can excuse herself by saying: 'We are allowed to desecrate the sabbath only for our own, who observe the sabbath, but for your people, who do not keep the sabbath, we are not allowed to desecrate it.' Is this explanation a genuine one or merely an excuse? Maimonides clearly thinks that it is just an excuse, which can be used even if the task that the midwife is invited to do does not actually involve any desecration of the sabbath. Presumably, the excuse will work just as well even in this case, because Gentiles are generally in the dark as to precisely which kinds of work are banned for Jews on the sabbath. At any rate, he decrees: 'A Gentile woman must not be helped in childbirth on the sabbath, even for

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payment; nor must one fear hostility, even when (such help involves) no desecration of the sabbath.' The Shulhan Arukh decrees likewise. Nevertheless, this sort of excuse could not always be relied upon to do the trick and avert Gentile hostility. Therefore certain important rabbinical authorities had to relax the rules to some extent and allowed Jewish doctors to treat Gentiles on the sabbath even if this involved doing certain types of work normally banned on that day. This partial relaxation applied particularly to rich and powerful Gentile patients, who could not be fobbed off so easily and whose hostility could be dangerous. Thus, R. Yo'el Sirkis, author of Bayit Hadash and one of the greatest rabbis of his time (Poland, 17th century), decided that 'mayors, petty nobles and aristocrats¹ should be treated on the sabbath, because of the fear of their hostility which involves 'some danger.' But in other cases, especially when the Gentile can be fobbed off with an evasive excuse, a Jewish doctor would commit 'an unbearable sin' by treating him on the sabbath.'

"...All this is far from being a dead issue. The most up-to-date halakhic position on these matters is contained in a recent concise and authoritative book published in English under the title Jewish Medical Law. This book, which bears the imprint of the prestigious Israeli foundation Mossad Harav Kook, is based on the response of R. Eli'ezer Yehuda Waldenberg, Chief Justice of the Rabbinical District Court of Jerusalem. A few passages of this work deserve special mention. First, 'it is forbidden to desecrate the sabbath...for a Karaite.' This is stated bluntly, absolutely and without any further qualification. Presumably the hostility of this small sect makes no difference, so they should be allowed to die rather than be treated on the sabbath. As for Gentiles: 'According to the ruling stated in the Talmud and Codes of Jewish Law, it is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath — whether violating Biblical or rabbinic law — in order to save the life of a dangerously ill gentile patient. It is also forbidden to deliver the baby of a gentile women on the Sabbath.' But this is qualified by a dispensation: 'However, today it is permitted to desecrate the Sabbath on behalf of a Gentile by performing actions prohibited by rabbinic law, for by so doing one prevents ill feelings from arising between Jew and Gentile." ¹⁴⁴

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When Talmudists have supreme power over gentiles and when the opinion of gentiles concerning Judaism no longer matters, and no longer threatens rabbinic security, then the rabbinic law regarding the ban on medical treatment of gentiles will go fully into effect. At present, the citation of the laws against gentiles by Shahak is countered with current Judaic medical practices on behalf of gentiles. This is the escape clause that allows Talmudists to counter criticism of their rabbinic law. The truth about the Torah SheBeal Peh and the halacha derived from it can no more be admitted than the truth about rabbinic strictures against medical treatment of gentiles. Until near-total power over gentiles is achieved, dissimulation is an absolute requirement for the advance of the dominion of Judaism. Hence, the huge defense mechanisms in place to counter any negative citation from the Talmud or rabbinic law with a seemingly benevolent Talmudic alternate passage, sometimes accompanied by the claim that the negative citation was "fabricated," or quoted "out of context" or quoted "incompletely." When those denials cannot be issued because proof of the existence of the offending texts is provided, then the next stage of the damage control goes into action: escape clauses are summoned, as follows: "Judaism is really just a series of debates and while one rabbi may have made a hostile statement at some distant time and place, here is another rabbi who said something eminently positive, liberal, humanist and decent."

The other tactic is to concede that the ruling is indeed rabbinic law, but to explain it away by pointing an accusatory finger at the dehumanized gentiles whose medical care has been withheld. Chayyei Sarah, a Jerusalem-based Orthodox journalist writes: "Regarding the story about the rabbi who said that one should only break Shabbat to save the life of a non-Jew if doing so will avoid harmful relations between Jews and non-Jews...The passages in the Talmud...suggest that the life of a Jew is inherently more valuable than that of a non-Jew...We all can understand why, in a world in which Jews were a persecuted minority, in which the non-Jews around them did not assign any inherent value to Jewish lives, that the Jewish leaders would declare that the lives of the persecuting majority are important only insofar as they help maintain some peace and quiet for the Jews." ¹⁴⁵

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Even incitement to medical murder by willful neglect cannot be blamed on the rabbis. It's the gentiles' fault that Judaics want to kill them! The preceding statement is the Talmudic mentality, purely distilled.

President Harry S. Truman observed: "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D(isplaced) P(ersons) as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog." ¹⁴⁶

Whereas prior to the ascent of Judaic supremacy the rabbinic law on medical neglect of gentiles was denied, in our day it is occasionally justified, even as the posturing about the fundamental decency and wisdom of the rabbinic religion is sustained. But this only has apparent credibility if Judaism's underlying, fundamental and irrevocable dogma about Jews being human beings and everyone else being a lesser creature, is overlooked or denied. Furthermore, the posturing only has apparent credibility if Judaism's exegetical principle of dispensational revelation concerning rabbinic law being admitted or denied based on the spirit of the times, is overlooked or denied. The elucidation of this rabbinic exegetical principle is, after the

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revelation about Judaism as a form of self-worship, perhaps the most momentous insight this writer can make about the religion of Orthodox Judaism. All other insights into Judaism are subsidiary to this one, when it comes to the maintenance of rabbinic power on earth, because by this means, authentic knowledge of Judaism's epistemology and core reality are evaded time and again. Certain rabbinic crimes may be detected, sinister sayings documented, vile practices confirmed, but all of these can be countered as mere "abuses" when investigators dwell in ignorance, unaware of Judaism's underlying system of permissible dissimulation through dispensational revelation.

Modern Protestant View of Judaism

To better investigate the root of the confusion about Judaism, let us now examine a classic statement of modern Protestantism's view of Judaism, as presented by conservative Presbyterian theologian Douglas Jones: "...consider the case of Abraham, that ancient father of Judaism and Christianity..-One of the best ways of beginning to think about the nature of Christianity is to think of it in the light of Judaism. Today, we so often think of Judaism and Christianity as two distinct religions, almost like Buddhism and Islam. But early Christianity never saw itself in that way. The earliest Christians saw themselves as faithful Jews simply following Jewish teachings. In fact, the first main dispute in the Christian church was whether non-Jews, the Gentiles, could even be a part of Christianity! Christianity self-consciously saw itself as the continuing outgrowth, the fulfillment, of true Judaism. As such, Christianity didn't start in the first century but long before with King David, Moses, Abraham, and ultimately the first man, Adam. Everything in older Judaism was building up and pointing to the work of Jesus Christ. Over and over, the early disciples explained that Christ was the fulfillment of the ancient promises of Judaism...So when we start thinking about Christianity, we have to understand its very Jewish roots. We should assume that Christianity ought to look and sound like Judaism except when it explicitly claims to change something. We should expect that the Scriptures, institutions, basic principles, laws, meditations, family life, etc. of Judaism would carry over into Christianity, unless Christ, the final prophet,

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authoritatively changed a practice....Christianity's Jewishness is pervasive indeed." ¹⁴⁷

By improper application of the words "Jew" and "Judaism," the preceding statement of a leading modern conservative Presbyterian's view of Judaism, extols a palimpsest of confusion. First and foremost, by terming the Old Testament religion of Yahwehism as "Judaism," an inevitable and inexorable connection is established between the religion of those who rejected Jesus as the Messiah, and the Old Testament religion of His Father, Yahweh. The reader is given the distinct impression that modern Judaism bears within it the seeds of the religion of the Old Testament, that it is the Old Testament religion without Christ. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Nothing could be a greater source of delusion. To ascribe to the ancient Israelite religion the term "Judaism" is a grave lexical and hermeneutic error. It gives to the creed of the entire Twelve Tribes of Israel and their Covenant Elohim, the title of a perverse man-made tradition that flourished among one segment of the offspring of the fourth son of the patriarch Jacob (the tribe of Judah). The word "Jew" is a corrupted form of the word Judah. It refers to two of the twelve tribes of Israel, Judah and Benjamin, and does not even appear in the Bible until II Kings 16:6, and then again in 25:25 and II Chronicles 32:18. Paul's allusion to the "Jews' religion" in this context is instructive. Paul's reference in this regard is negative: "And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers." (Galatians 1:14). The hallmarks of the "Jews' religion" according to Paul, are two-fold: persecution of God's Church (I Thessalonians 2:14-16), and allegiance to the "traditions" of men.

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Jesus teaching in the synagogue (Matthew 13:54-58)

Inclinable woodcut from The Vita Christi by Ludolf of Saxony (Antwerp: Gerard Lieu, 1487)

The Pharisees asked Jesus why His followers disobeyed the Talmud (at that time known as the "tradition of the elders" and not yet in written form), by refusing to engage in ritual hand-washing: "Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread."

"But Jesus said unto them, 'Why do ye transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" (Matthew 15: 2-3).

How can it be said that "Judaism" (the "Jews' religion") is the root of Christianity, when according to Paul, it is a religion of man-made traditions and according to Jesus Christ, Judaism's traditions of men made the Law of Yahweh of "none effect"? (Matthew 15:9). How can it be said that "Judaism" is the root of Christianity, when in the Old Testament there was no "Judaism"? One searches in vain for the term, yet modernist Christians today

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use it almost exclusively to describe the religion of the Old Testament, of Yahweh and His people.

After some Jews rejected their Messiah they formalized the tradition of the elders condemned by Christ as the very nullification of the Law of God, and that new religion is accurately and properly termed Judaism: "This new system, treated at first as simply provisional because of the surviving hope of restoring the Jewish commonwealth, had soon to be accepted as definitive...Then it was that Rabbinical or Talmudical Judaism fully asserted its authority...the Mishna 'Oral Teaching' completed by Rabbi Juda I, committed ultimately to writing in the form of the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds and expounded by generations of teachers in the schools of Palestine and Babylonia, held undisputed sway over the minds and consciences of the Jews. In fact, this long acceptation of the Talmud by the Jewish race, before its center shifted from the East to the West, so impressed this...Law (Mishnah) upon the hearts of the Jews that down to the present day Judaism has remained essentially Talmudical both in its theory and in its practice...Orthodox Judaism...distinctly admits the absolutely binding force of the oral Law..."¹⁴⁸

Self-Worship

Rabbi Samuel ben Nahman was one of the leading Amora'im of Judaism, circa A.D. 300, taught: "Oral laws have been proclaimed and written laws have been proclaimed and we cannot tell which of these is more precious." So there goes our thesis that Judaism places the oral law above the written law, right? Wrong. That's the first part of his statement, which is often quoted, incompletely and out of context, to prove to Christians and gentiles that Judaism is in fact a Biblical religion. Let's read the rest of his statement, however: "But since it is written 'For in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel,' we may infer that the oral precepts are more precious."¹⁴⁹

"The expositions of the sages possess decisive authority and deserve at least the same place in the scale of religious values as the Written Torah, and in truth, transcend it. According to Rabbi Johanan the covenant was made at Mount Sinai only on account of the Oral Teaching (BT Gittin 60b; Shevuot

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39a)...the Amora'im came and elevated the Sages of the Oral Torah to the level of the Prophets and even gave the former precedence over the latter...The realization of the difference between written and oral regulations finds expression in the appraisal that 'The sages safeguarded their own enactments more than those of the Torah..." (BT Yebamoth 36b).

The religion of Judaism has as its god, not Yahweh, but the Judaic people themselves, whose self-worship is at the center of the Talmud and rabbinic halacha. It has as its law, not the Tanakh (books of the Old Testament), but the Talmud. Jesus proclaimed that the initial stage of Talmud, the Mishnah, which existed in its oral form in Christ's time — was the tradition of the elders which nullifies the word of God: "Then came together unto him the Pharisees and certain of the scribes which came from Jerusalem, gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with 'unclean' — that is, ceremonially unwashed — hands, and they found fault.

"For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the marketplace, unless they wash, they do not eat. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. "Then the Pharisees and scribes asked Jesus, 'Why do your disciples not live according to the traditions of the elders, instead of eating their food with 'unclean' hands?

"He answered and said unto them, "Well hath Isaiah prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honors me with their lips but their heart is far from me.' How be it in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. For laying aside the commandments of God you observe your own traditions. You reject the commandment of God that you may keep your own tradition. For Moses gave you this law from God: 'Honor thy father and thy mother' and 'Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.' But you say that a man may say to his father or mother, 'I can't help you, for I have vowed to give to God what I could have given to you.' You let him disregard his father or his mother. "Thus you make the word of God of none effect by your tradition that you have handed down." (Mark 7:1-13). The issue here is not God's laws of hygiene for prevention of insanitary conditions, but burdensome and useless, ritual purification based on man-made additions to God's laws. (The rabbis are

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fascinated by filth). Jesus alludes to the hypocritical effects of such rituals in Matthew 23:25-26.¹⁵⁰

Here, as in Matthew 15:1-9, is direct and incontrovertible refutation in the Gospel of Jesus Christ of the falsification inherent in the Oral Law and its traditions, which the Pharisees and their heirs mendaciously claimed was a secret teaching from Moses. Jesus contrasts the Law of God as Moses actually gave it, with the nullification of that law by adherence to the tradition of the elders, which would soon be committed to writing, forming the Mishnah and the rest of the Talmud, and upon which the religion of Judaism would be based. Yet Christ's admonition was not heeded by the Pharisaic leadership and an entire religion of hypocrisy would subsequently arise, founded upon these "traditions of the elders," and their Talmudic counterfeit of God's word; all performed in the name of God, His Word and of Israel.

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A copper engraving depicting the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai. Below are four angels holding a table which symbolizes the supposed divine origin of the

Shulchan Aruch ("Set Table"), the rabbinic law code derived from the Talmud,

which is one of the sources of the halakha which regulate every detail of the life of

an adherent of Orthodox Judaism (Amsterdam, 1698).

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Judaic theologians claim that "...ancient rabbis taught that the revelation granted to Moses had been delivered in two forms, a smaller revelation in writing and the larger one kept oral. This 'Oral Torah' had been transmitted faithfully by the leaders of each generation to their successors, by Moses to Joshua, and then to the elders, then to the prophets, to the men of the Great Assembly, to the leaders of the Pharisees, and finally to the earliest rabbis. The earliest rabbis saw themselves, as noted, as heirs to the Pharisees."¹⁵¹ This supposed transmission of the "Oral Torah," the tradition of the elders, from Moses to Joshua, to the prophets, was challenged by Jesus Christ who termed it not Torah, but the commandments of men which nullify irrevocably the word and doctrine of God, making the tale of the transmission itself a fraud.
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It is a lie concocted in hell to claim that Moses issued two sets of laws, one written and public, the other an oral tradition that was secret. In all of the Bible there is nothing to support this imposture. This diabolic fantasy is the basis of the religion of Judaism, and it is this institutionalized, dogmatic delusion which distinguishes Judaism from the only Bible-based faith — Christianity — representing as it does the continuation of the Old Testament religion of Israel as it finds its prophetic fulfillment in the Gospel of the Messiah of Israel. This too was the historic belief of Christianity until the post-modern age: "(Jonathan) Edwards read the Pentateuch and the entire Old Testament as essentially a Christian document" ¹⁵²

What follows is a folk story told within Judaism in a number of variants. There is no standard version, but this one best exemplifies the gist of the instruction imparted, concerning the rabbis' superiority to Moses, derived from BT Menachot 22b: They told that when Moses went above to receive the Torah, he found the Holy One, blessed be He, sitting and attaching crowns to the letters. Apparently, Moses didn't see any need for these crowns. He asked, 'Master of the Universe! Who forces You to go to such extremes?' G-d answered, 'There is a man who will live many generations after you and his name is Akiva, son of Yosef. He will examine every single spike of every letter and draw from them piles upon piles of halachot.' So Moses asked, 'Master of the Universe! Show him to me!' G-d replied, 'Step backwards.' And Moses stepped back until he found himself standing in the 18th row of Rabbi Akiva's class. You see, the students were arranged in this class by order of their understanding. It seems the only thing left after the eighteenth row was out in the hallway. So Moses stood there and listened—and was unable to follow a thing that was said. He became weak with despair. Until finally, the story tells, a ruling came up for which Rabbi Akiva could provide no source. A student asked of Rabbi Akiva, 'Where do you learn this from?' Rabbi Akiva responded, 'This is an oral tradition passed down from Moses."

The preceding is an admission of the non-divine, non-Mosaic, man-made provenance of the rabbinic Oral Law, a shocking admission woven into the folklore of Judaism by Judaics themselves. This truth does not trouble them in the least or sound any alarm or cause them to scruple to reexamine the

The Works of Jonathan Edwards Volume 24, Part I (Yale University Press, 2006), p. 25.
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fraudulent nature of their religion. Judaism does not share in the morals or ethics of Biblical belief, of those who worship a being greater than themselves. In Judaism, the Law is what the rabbis say it is, and admissions that this is in fact the case, alter nothing and do not cause controversy, since the essence of Judaism is not worship of God, but worship of one's self as one's own god, the hallmark of the eastern religions.

The Marcion heresy consists in the occult-gnostic doctrine that Christianity is exclusively a New Testament religion and that the Old Testament in some manner constitutes defective doctrine. This was refuted as early as 180 A.D. by Irenaeus (140-200 A.D.) in his work, Against Heretics. Irenaeus "affirmed that there was a systematic line of argument, proof, inspiration and illumination running between the two sets of scriptures, the Hebrew and the Christian...Irenaeus was fighting not only the Marcionites, but also the Gnostics."¹⁵³ Marcion is easily refuted when we consider the hundreds of instances in which the Old Testament is quoted in the New Testament. ¹⁵⁴

The spurious claim of an oral tradition of the elders bequeathed by God to Moses, is anti-Biblical and it was denounced by Jesus Christ Himself. In the divine brilliance of Jesus upon which the cunning and cleverness of the Pharisees was turned against them time and again, Jesus simply and forthrightly illuminated the fact that if the Pharisees' tradition had been from Moses, then the Pharisees would have become Christians: "For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5: 46-47). Christ has just annihilated, in two sentences, the basis for the religion of Judaism and its conceit of a tradition given to it by Moses, for had such a tradition existed it would have testified of Jesus. Instead, He tells them point-blank that they don't believe Moses. Jesus crushed the whole beguiling system of indoctrination predicated on the Pharisaic myth of a divinely inspired, oral tradition of the elders. The response of last resort to these facts is to rehabilitate the Pharisees by casting doubt on the New Testament account of Christ's words. The establishment now promotes the view that the Pharisees were misunderstood victims of four bigoted evangelists and two mendacious

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apostles. Judas was a scapegoat. Jesus was "confused" and His Resurrection merely "symbolic." This is the revised life of Christ as put forth by the "Jesus Seminar" and similar Talmudic "Christian" front-groups.

"...the system so jealously maintained by the Rabbis was not Mosaism at all, but an immense superstructure of precedents..." (Frederic W. Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 112).

"The Halachic Midrash (or exegesis and development of the passages of the Law) dealt with the exact purport of the various divine commands contained in the Torah, or Law of Moses. It explained in full detail how these precepts were to be carried out in common life. It professed to be nothing more than an exposition of the original Law; but in reality it contained vast additions to what was written in the Books of Moses, and claimed to possess an equal authority with the original charges contained in the Pentateuch. Roughly, these so-called Halachic developments were divided into...categories...A great mass of Halacha containing traditional ordinances professedly based on the original Mosaic commands, but in reality connected with the Mosaic ordinances by the very slightest of ties...A number of enactments really only emanating from the Schools of the Scribes, but which were taught to be equally binding with the original Pentateuch ordinances. These Halacha largely dated from the years which preceded the Christian era; they were...codified and arranged in the Mishnah." (Prof. H.D.M. Spence-Jones, The Early Christians in Rome [1911]. p. 376).

"This is not an uncommon impression and one finds it sometimes among Jews as well as Christians — that Judaism is the religion of the Hebrew Bible. It is of course a fallacious impression...whoever would seek to compare the classic Jewish tradition with the biblical world of faith and life would find some startling contrasts...Much of what exists in Judaism is absent in the Bible, and much of what is in the Bible cannot be found in Judaism....Judaism is not the religion of the Bible." Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, Judaism and the Christian Predicament (1966), pp. 59 and 159.