The Book of Errors

In many of my posts, whether the disproofs or specific cases where I have shown Rabbinic practice (halacha) to deviate from the Torah, I have argued that it was a deliberate policy of undermining the righteous Kohanim, and creating a new religion to differentiate from the Old Testament.

There is an alternative explanation, which although implausible, will give some perspective on the scale of mendacity in the Phariseeic enterprise. The following is a fictional account, which I will call The Book of Errors.

“In the 1^st and 2^nd Temple periods, there were priests who rendered decisions on the various issues raised by various local magistrates. There was also a school system to educate Priests and scholars, and they had various educational tools. The training schools for the Priests and Judiciaries had exams and used the first Multiple Choice system of exams in history. Thus, for each question, there would be 1 correct answer and 3 wrong answers. Designing an exam is a challenge, even on how to choose the wrong answers, so as not to bias the exam, e.g. they cannot be totally outrageous, but have to at least show some possibility of being correct. So the list of wrong answers was kept for generations in a book known as “The Book of Errors”. For example, it said that the Omer was counted from the day after the first Hag Hamatzot; that the anointing oil used a measure of 500 shekels of Cinnamon; that impurity from contact with the red cow ashes was cleaned after immersion in daytime, etc.

After a while this Book of Errors fell into disuse, and was stored in a special basement, and the title on the book faded.

At the time of the early Pharisees, when the group was encouraging Hellenist converts, one such convert found The Book of Errors, without knowledge of what it was and in what historical context it was written. He was totally immersed in this book, and because of his Greek heritage, he considered this to be a secret tradition which he had uncovered, and in his zeal he started teaching it to the other Pharisees, who also accepted it and thought it was a tradition from their forefathers (although many of their forefathers were indeed pagans).

They wrote various copies of this, and because the word for “copy” in Hebrew is Mishneh, they called it the Mishnah. This gradually expanded until it became a larger volume encompassing various areas of law. The claim that the book was from their forefathers evolved into a claim that it was actually from Sinai, i.e. they made the ultimate error in imputing divinity to the The Book of Errors. Thus the outtakes from an educational tool, were discovered and became the precise opposite of what they were designed for.”

Although the above is a fictional account of events, it has implications about the origins of Rabbanism. It does not suggest that the deviations from the Torah were deliberate, as I have suggested throughout this blog. But it is an allegory, e.g. for those who have been raised in Orthodox rabbanism, or have converted to it, sincerely believing in the the truth of the Oral Law. For these, who form the majority of orthodox Rabbanites, the lesson of The Book of Errors still applies.