The Hiram Key

The Hiram Key
Tobit, Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus .. , Baruch, the Prayer...2!
Manasseh and, within e ook of Danie~ the Song of the Three Holy
Children, the Hist0 !Y-2!~ san nah , and Bel a!!2. ~ Dragon. -
For a time the Christians were happy with their ' new' Old Testament
but as more serious scholars such as the third-century Alexandrian
Origen began to study texts afresh, real doubts were raised ::yhich led to a
realisation that the original Jewish versiol).,}"as th ~ Q. l) l y. correct o ~ . The
suggestion was made that all of the new scriptures in Christian churches
should be destroyed, but these arguments were soon buried in the general
Christian desire to be a stand-alone religion with a differentiated
scripture.
But whilst the main Church took the easy option, the debate did not
end, and many Christian thinkers remained unconvinced, In the fourth
century Cyril of Jerusalem forbade the reading of these extraneous
books, even in private, and as late as the eighteenth century some leading
Christian thinkers, such as John Damascene, maintained that the Jewish
twenty-two were the only components of the true scripture,
The same cavalier people who had doctored the Old Testament
assembled the New Testament. To take a considered view of the events
that led to the creation of this relatively instant block of brand new
scripture. it is essential to understand something of the Jewish worldview
at this crucial point.
oda virtuall all Western 0 Ie appreciate lite line between
P.Qlitics and reUgio
but it is a mistake to assume t at other countries or
f other periods of history view things in the same way. Modem Iran, for '
I
instance,
does not recognise any difference whatsoever between the twO(
subjects, and the people of Judaea and Galilee, two thousand years ago,
would have thought you mad if you tried to imply that their relationship
with their god was in any way different to their national struggle.f.9litics
at the time of Jesus the ChrisLWas. a serious theolo ical JIlatter; t ~
sta6inty of the nation rested upon God's view of its worth, llihey proved
worthy the Jews would have their own J5..ing and would destroy their
£,nemies in battle. For hundreds of years they had been unworthy, so God
... ,-
had deserted them to the whims of their enenties, but as the devout Jews
started to live a more austere life, they started to expect the arrival of a
Messiah to begin the process of a return to self rule,
There is a very fundamental point here which cannot be ignored:
Jlowhere in the Old..I.estament does it ro he L.t1!.e coming . of a world
,saviour. The Jews expected a leader to emerge who was an earthly king
in the mould of David and, however much Christians would li ke it to be
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Jesus Christ: Man, God, Myth or Freemason ?
so, Jest! ttb essialto e lineofDa ~ the Cluist) .. because he
did not succeed in becoming the undisDutedlcing of Israel, For the Jewishpeople
of the time, including Jesus himsclf, there wns no other meaning
for the word; it is not a question of faith, it is a fact of history beyond
theological debate, The Church is now fully aware of this early
misunderstanding and may claim that its 'spiritual' interpretation of the
word is true and valid, despite the fact that the Jews used the word quite
differently. However, once the Church acknowledges that the Christinn
and Jewish use of the term 'messiah' have nothing in common, it follows
that the Church has no right to use the Old Testament as a source of
evidence regarding the conting of its Christ. To do so is bare-faced fraud.
We stress the point that the Jews were not expecting a god or a world
saviour; they were simply expecting a political leader with credentials
stretching back to their fi rst king - David.}
_AJ urther problem for mainline Christianity iLthe,heli;fJhat Jesus waJ
the offspnng- of-a magical mating of Yahweh and Mary, As we have
seen, thi s god-and-woman un ion is an ancient necessity for the parentage
of all wouJd~be man~gods in middle-eastern cultun;:;. The justification
for thi s claim amongst Christians is taken from the title that Jesus used
for himself - 'Son of God' - which was an ancient title for everyone who
was claiming kingship. A ll kings from the times before the p harao~ s
onwards have established their right to rule through their descent from -
the gods ...
As we were researching the whole complex area of the expected role
of the messiah we came across a very strange and startling point that no
one seems, to the best of our knowledge, to have considered before. It
concerns the name of the murderer who was released instead of Christ al
hi s trial. His name, you may recall, was Barabbas. Just another biblical
name, you may think, and one that feels to have an evil ring to it:
'Sarabbas the wicked murderer whom the equally wicked Jews chose to
release in preference to our Saviour.' The baying of the crowd to crucify
the Christ in preference to a common criminal is one of the New
Testament's pieces of evidence regarding th e allegedly despicable
natu re of Ihe Jews that has led to two thousand years of anti-Semitism,
However, one only needs a rudimentary knowledge of the language of
the time to understand that 'Barabbas' is not a name at all but a tit It?,
\ If lhere ever was a lrue Jewish messiah it can only have been David Ben Gurian, the Zionl"
lC!ivist who became the first 'klng' Of a selr·governing 1ewish sla'ieiiiim His modern line wI(
'prime minisler' ralher than 'king', OO! the effoc! was the SImC. Whelher or flOC he could claim
licscen! from the line of David we do not know.
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