The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 3 views of Jewish History

 

In discussing events of 2000 years ago, and asserting some kind of cause – and effect relationship, i.e. a Bilbical cause and effect of success for being Good and destruction for being bad, there are a few views on subject. Also, the view of Good vs. Bad is a relative and subjective one. Opposing factions, then as now, will call their opponents bad, whilst holding the title “Good” for themselves.

My previous article aroused some criticism, for my attacks on the Rabbis of the 2^nd Temple and Bar Kochba era.

First, I will mention what I mean by the Good vs. the bad, and then the Ugly.

The Good, are those who held by the Torah, and are recorded as having been victorious in their battles. The most prominent success was that of the Maccabees, who defeated the Seleucid-Greeks, and are the last undisputed Tzaddikim in Jewish history. Shortly afterwards, the Pharisees started accusing the Maccabees, and the Sadducees of being the “bad” ones, whilst claiming to be “good” themselves. Whilst there may be some legitimacy in criticising the Maccabee kings, they did not claim to be Davidic Kings or Messiahs. They also did not change the temple practice of the Torah.

The rabbis, however, brought impurity of the dead into the temple to defile the Priests and temple, as a plot to take over the Temple – as is stated explicitly in the Mishnah of Parah (red heifer). They also changed the law of the Torah regarding this impurity. Thus, throughout Numbers 19, the secondary impurity lasts until nightfall, eg

“22 And whatsoever the unclean person toucheth shall be unclean; and the soul that toucheth him shall be unclean until even.“

The man named Yochanan Ben Zakkai, devised a plot to overrun the Tempe, by bringing the impurity of the dead and touching the priests, thus rendering them impure. He then fictionalised a new law, which denies the Torah. His phoney law was that simply going to a mikveh in the daytime would purify a person, denying the Torah’s explicit statement that the impurity lasts until night time. This was a bad man, and he was leader of the rabbis.

Now according to my theory, the Good were the Tzaddukim, and the bad were the Perushim or rabbanim. And this also explains why the temple was lost. Having installed their phoney “priests” into the temple, the rabbis soon saw that their practices were ineffective. This is recorded in Mishnah Sotah 9:9. The non Kohen converts, Shemaya and Avtalyon administered phoney and counterfeit practices in the Temple, as was shown previously in  Another Brick in the Temple's Fall

The kohanim who opposed the Rabbis were murdered, or at least found dead 3 days after this encounter. This also explains why in the Sotah mishneh, the rabbis cancelled the Eglah Arufah ceremony (Deut 21:6). A) They themselves were unable to carry out as they were impure and not real Kohanim, and b) they might be caught out by the ceremony, since it was they who were murdering the Kohanim, and anyone else who stood in their way.

This brings us to the wars with Rome. The Priesthood had been decimated already by the rabbis. The use of the Silver trumpets may well have been abandoned. Thus the war efforts no longer held Divine promise of success, and this is why they were defeated. As for Bar Kochba, he was backed by Akiva, and hence was also not fighting according to Torah law. So the good and the bad we have uncovered. But what about the Ugly?

It was Prof Yeshayahu Leibovitz, who denied any meaning to Jewish history. He also famously denied any meaning to the TaNach, other than his absurd claim that it had been redacted by the

Rabbinic sages. So now the Ugly is also revealed.