Secret_History

350 The Secret History of the World
because he also wrote about problems in the text of the Torah. He alluded to
several passages that appeared not to be from Moses’ own hand because they
referred to Moses in the third person, used terms Moses would not have known,
described places that Moses had never been, and used language that belonged to
an altogether different time and place than the milieu of Moses. He wrote, very
mysteriously, “And if you understand, then you will recognize the truth. And he
who understands will keep silent”.
So, why did he call Ibn Yashush a “Blunderer”? Obviously because the guy had
to open his big mouth and give away the secret that the Torah was not what it was
cracked up to be, and if the truth got out, lots of folks who were totally “into” the
Jewish mysticism business would lose interest. And keeping the interest of the
students and seekers after power was a pretty big business in that day and time.
More than that, however, we would like to note that the entire Christian mythos
was predicated upon the validity of Judaism, being its “New Covenant”, and even
if there was apparent conflict between Jews and Christians, the Christians most
desperately needed to validate Judaism and its claim to be the revelation to the
“chosen people” of the One True God. It was on that basis that Jesus was the Son
of God, after all. In short, it could even be said that Christianity created Judaism in
the sense that it would have faded to obscurity long ago if there had not been the
infusion of validating energy during the Dark Ages.
In 14th century Damascus, a scholar by the name of Bonfils wrote a work in
which he said, “And this is evidence that this verse was written in the Torah later,
and Moses did not write it”. He wasn’t even denying the “revealed” character of
the Torah, just making a reasonable comment. Three hundred years later, his work
was reprinted with this comment edited out!
In the 15th century, Tostatus, Bishop of Avila, also pointed out that Moses
couldn’t have written the passages about the death of Moses. In an effort to soften
the blow, he added that there was an “old tradition” that Joshua, Moses successor,
wrote this part of the account. A hundred years later, Luther Carlstadt commented
that this was difficult to believe because the account of Moses’ death is written in
the same style as the text that precedes it.
Well, of course, things were beginning to be examined more critically with the
arrival of Protestantism on the world stage and the demand for wider availability
of the text itself. The Inquisition and assorted “Catholic Majesties” tried, but
failed, to keep a complete grip on the matter. But, it’s funny what belief will do. In
this case, with the increase in literacy and new and better translations of the text,
“critical examination” led to the decision that the problem was solvable by
claiming that, yes, Moses wrote the Torah, but editors went over them later and
added an occasional word or phrase of their own!
Wow. Glad we solved that one!
A really funny thing is that the Catholic Index blacklisted one of the proponents
of this idea of editorial insertions, who was only trying to preserve the textus
receptus status of the Bible. His work was put on the list of “prohibited books”!
Those guys just kept shooting themselves in the foot.
Well, finally, after hundreds of years of tiptoeing around this issue, some
scholars came right out and said that Moses didn’t write the majority of the
Pentateuch. The first to say it was Thomas Hobbes. He pointed out that the text