Archive for March 20th, 2009
Origins of Jesus Christ. Part 2
Posted on: March 20, 2009
Who are the Israelites? Origins of Jesus Christ; Chapter two, (March 20, 2009)
Joachim (Youwakeem) Omram and Hanna, the parents of the Virgin Mary, were from the village of Qana (10 kilometers south of the city of Tyr and at an altitude of 85 meters; this Qana was called Qana of Upper Galilee and was within the district of Phoenicia during the Seleucid and early Roman Empires in the Near East (Levant). The administrative district of Upper Galilee extended from Tyr to Acre).
Joachim was one of the eminent personalities in the town of Qana and the neighboring region and was an Essenes high priest. He had been frustrated because he could not secure any descendents. Joachim took his sheep to a remote area and fasted and prayed for 40 days. Hanna was also frustrated with this extended absence and decided to take off her black cloth and washed her hair and went out in the garden. Hanna received an apparition that she will soon get pregnant and that Joachim is on his way home.
Mary was born in Qana and her parents dedicated her to the Great Temple on Mount Carmel (Mount Carmel was also in the district of Phoenicia). When Mary was 3 years of age she was interned in the monastery of the Great Temple of the Carmel. Mary was one of the 12 virgins of the elite families in the region to be dedicated to serve in the temple and she was named “The Pigeon of God Eil“. (The Hebrews in Judea never allowed girls to serve in temples).
Joseph was also from Qana and one of Mary’s relatives; he was one of the superintendents at the temple and he cleaned, painted and did the various tasks of maintenance. Mary received the “Good Tiding” from the Archangel while serving in Mount Carmel.
Mary and Joseph got married and Jesus was born in the village of Bethlehem Tifone by the Carmel, close to the famous city of Dora by the seaside and north of current Haifa within the district of Phoenicia (not in the Bethlehem of Judea). Mary visited her aunt Elizabeth in Galilee who was 6 months pregnant. Jesus was presented to the Great Temple of Mount Carmel for sanctification; Jesus was lost in the same temple discussing with the priests when he was 12 of years. Jesus studied in the schools of Mount Carmel.
Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem by the Carmel. The town of Nazareth did not exist yet and the area was called Nazareth. When Joseph died, Mary returned to her hometown of Qana where her father and grandparents were buried; Jesus spent his youth in Qana.
Jesus was called “Jesus of Mary” after the death of Joseph to distinguish him from the other people named Jesus. (The Hebrews of Judea never referred a son to his mother). Mary was also called “the sister of Jacob”. Hanna had remarried after the death of Joachim and gave birth to many offspring; the eldest son of Hanna was apparently named Jacob.
Jesus was also called Emanuel (Amanoueel) which means (The God El is among us), thus, God was made human. All the names that start with El or finish with El refer to the God El, the all-encompassing God of the Land.
In the wedding of Qana, where Jesus showed his miraculous power of transforming water into wine, Mary was in her own town and it is Jesus who was invited. Jesus came up from Lake Tiberias to join the wedding. After the wedding, Mary and the brothers of Jesus (Jacob, Joseph, Simon, and Judah) followed him down to Capernaum by the Lake and stayed there for a few days and then were part of Jesus’ party from then on.
Jesus was highly educated. He could speak Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. The folk tales and early manuscripts demonstrate that Jesus studied Law and taught Law at the university in Sidon (Lebanon). Jesus was born in the year 7 BC and Caesar’s census started in the year 10 BC. Jesus was also called Rabbi (Rabuny) which means teacher in Aramaic. Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let anyone call you Rabbi since you have only one teacher in Christ and you are all brethren”
Jesus dressed in the same long white robe that the Essenes sect of Mount Carmel wore; the consecrated members were called “The White Brethren” and they were famous as healers. The Essenes had many branches in Galilee and a prosperous one in Alexandria (Egypt) and had places for welcoming travelers and the sick.
John the Baptist, close relative of Jesus and just 6 months older, never left the region of Galilee, baptized with water as of the Essenes traditions and baptized Jesus.
Note 1: Jesus was elevated to Heaven on Mount Carmel. The first church was built on Mount Carmel and dedicated to the Virgin Mary while still alive. A church was built within the town of Qana by the disciples and excavations showed a church from the first century. The Moslems had veneration for the tomb of Joachim called “The tomb of the prophet Omran”. When Israel bombarded south Lebanon in 1996 for 15 days one of the missiles made a large crater, 4 meters off the tomb of the prophet Omran. The excavations uncovered a buried church and the tombs of the family of Omran.
Note 2: Qana is famous today because Israel massacred over 100 civilians and gravely injured 120 when her bombs targeted a UN compound in Qana in 1996 and then hit that same town in 2006 and killed 50 more civilians. Qana was an important town for many centuries before Christ and the main resting place of the disciples before venturing any further. Qana of Upper Galilee (The Galilee of Nations or the Gentiles for the Hebrews) was the location where the disciples gathered for a while after the lapidation of the first martyr Etienne (Estefanos).
Note 3: I may conjecture that Mary retained the title of Virgin because she earned it serving as one of the virgins in the Great Temple. There is this tradition in the Levant to bestow the title of nun and priest for even those who later relinquished their sacerdotal duties.
Note 4: The astrophysicist Reznicoff confirms that the Comet Halley that showed the way to the mages crossed Galilee and not Judea.
Note 5: There are indications that Jesus entered Jerusalem for the first time when he was to be crucified. No wonder that Jesus experienced a cultural chock when he witnessed business and usury transactions within the temple. Jesus got hold of a whip and chased out the merchants and turned their tables over and declared: “It is said that the temple is the house of God and not a cavern for thieves”.
Who are the Israelites? From Abraham to the Macabe Kingdom (Chapter one); (March 19, 2009)
Note: It might turn out to be a lengthy essay: I will split it in a series of small chapters.
There is huge confusion and out of matter relations between the abstract belief concepts among the Christians and the context of their religion. No wonder that Christianity generates as many splits as abstraction can sustain. Without firm comprehension of the customs and traditions in the Levant and the geographical, historical, and religious context the Christians, in the entire spectrum of sects, will stay disoriented and out of touch with their identity. It is beneficial to set the geographical and historical background of the Levant (mainly, current Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria).
I will have, reluctantly, to skip thousands of years of major civilizations in the Near East and Mesopotamia in order to focus on the subject. Thus, I start from the period that Abraham and his successive clans settled in the Land of Canaan, then the period that the Hebrews of Moses sneaked in Palestine, then the Kingdom of David and Salomon that lasted less than a century, then the split of Salomon’s Kingdom into 12 districts or tribes, then the schism between the Samaritans and the Hebrews of Judea, then the deportations of the Samaritans and then the Hebrews of Jerusalem to Babylon, then the contribution of Cyrus of Persia to the reconstruction of the temple of Jerusalem in the 6th century BC, then the Seleucid Dynasty that lasted two centuries, then the revolt of the Macabeans and their Kingdom that lasted less than a century, then the conquest of Pompeii, the Roman General, to the Levant, then the advent of Jesus Christ, the first Christian communities, the conclave of Nicee (Turkey) in 425 during Emperor Constantine, then the establishment of the Ashkenazi Hebraic Kingdom in the Caucasus till its destruction in 950, then the schism between Papal Rome and Constantinople around the year 1000, then the Crusaders’ campaigns that lasted a century, then the schism between Papal Rome and Martin Luther and Calvin in late 15th century, then the emergence of the various sects in England and then in the USA such as the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, the Baptists, and the New Conservative sects in the south of the USA, and finally, the re-colonization of Palestine by the Central Europe Ashkenazi Zionists in the 20th century.
Period one: Abraham was very familiar with the customs, traditions, and culture of the Land when he decided to settle in Canaan. Abraham was a genuine leader of the Land. He paid the tribute, the tithe, to the highest priest of the Land Melki Sadek and recognized the high sacerdotal rank of Melki Sadek who worshiped El (pronounce Eel) as the all unifying God of the Land. Issac and Jacob also paid the tithe to the highest priest of the Land.
For example, Abraham had no piece of land in Canaan; his clan let their goats and sheep graze in unclaimed lands. As there was a death in the family Abraham resolved to prepare for his burial; he sent a third party to ask Afroun son of Sohar of the tribe of Hath for a small piece of land to bury the dead. Abraham said: “I am a guest in your land. Could you give me a swath so that I may bury what is in front of me?” Every village had a burying ground facing east and guests, by the custom of hospitality, could be enjoying the same facilities. Afroun replied: “Abraham you are a reverend and I shall bury the deceased in the best of our graves” Abraham had set his mind to settle in Canaan and wanted his own burial ground, thus he asked to buy a piece of land. Afroun replied: “A land of no more than 400 silver shekels should not be an obstacle” Abraham got the hint and sent the amount. This polite and diplomatic negotiation is part of the Levant customs thousand of years before Abraham came to Canaan.
Period two: Moses led all the strangers in Egypt who were ordered to leave because they supported the previous monarch Akhenaton. The tribes of Moses were swelled by other foreigners who left in a hurry with “unleavened bread”, meaning at night. Those Egyptian Hebrew tribes were not familiar with the culture and traditions of the Land. They occupied land by the sword and committed genocide in every town they entered. For example, “Joshua (Yashou) son of Noun entered the town of Makid, and exterminated its inhabitants as he did with the king of Hebron (Ariha), then progressed to Lebna, then Lakish, then Horam, the Ajloun, then Habroun, then to Dabeer and killed the kings, destroyed the towns, slaughtered the handicapped, the babies and even the animals; any breathing inhabitant was massacred in these towns and villages”
The God of the Hebrew was called Jehovah, sort of a totem to discriminate themselves from the tribes of the Land. The God of the Land was El and all the other minor Gods were sorts of patron saints to syndicates and towns that felt the need for an identity. The Hebrew wanted Jehovah to establish a Kingdom on earth in any way available because their culture was different from the culture of the Levant.
Solomon got to appreciate the culture and civilization of the Land. He cooperated and negotiated with the King of Tyr Ahiram to build the temple in Jerusalem and also to build a sea fleet. The fleet was wrecked at its first attempt to take to the sea; they say “Les Hebraiques n’avaient pas the pied marin” (they had not the mariners’ feet). In fact, no Kingdom in Judea ever controlled the sea coast.
The Hebrews in Judea sank into abject materialism and developed 640 Laws to regulate their daily life. Thus, the Hebrews of Moses viewed the inhabitants of the Land as their enemies to be subjugated and cowed into submission for the loot. The detailed gory tales in the Bible are mostly from that bloody period.
Period three: The original Jews of the Land and the indigents before the settlement of the Hebrews of Moses where chased out of Judea. They regrouped in Samaria and Galilee “of Nations” and formed their own fiefdoms which were called Israel or the “Tribes of El” in Aramaic. The “tribes” of Asher, Zebulon, and Naphtali settled in Galilee and merged with the culture of the land.
The Hebrews of Judea considered the districts of upper and lower Galilee as “Goyim” or gentile of many “Nations” but they viewed the Samaritans as Jews hostile to the strict Hebraic Laws and worshiping El instead of Jehovah. For a palpable political appreciation you may consider the split between the Sephardim and the Ashkenazi in current Israel. The Ashkenazi of Central Europe dominate the economic and policy making; a fresh immigrant from Europe can contemplate to rise quickly in the political and economic landscape while the Jews of the Arab and Moslem World have to fight the good fight for the crumbs. It is of no wonder that the Ashkenazi decided for Hebrew to be the national language that in no way compared to the versatile and rich Yiddish German/Slavic language they used to write and communicate with. Hebrew was simply selected for its political connotation. Galilee generated four prophets though the Pharisee caste mocked Jesus saying that “no prophets can come from Galilee”.
Period four: In 167 BC, the Seleucid King Antiochus IV Epifanus banned the worshiping of Jehovah, forbid circumcision, and ordered burning the Bible; those decrees were executed efficiently and occasionally by harsh measures. Only the Hebrews of Judea revolted against these decrees; they were led by the priest Matatia of the Hashmonid tribe. Matatia’s son Judah, nicknamed Macabe (the handler of ax), resumed the revolt until he vanquished the Seleucid King. From 166 to 63 BC the zealot Macabe Kingdom ruled the Land. In 103 BC, Aristopoulos, son of Simon Macabe, ordered every citizen to be circumcised and to abide by Moses’ Law. Consequently, the non-Jews of Galilee were subjected to these rules, including the ancestors of Jesus Christ who lived in upper Galilee (current south Lebanon). It is worth mentioning that much later, in 132 AC, Emperor Adrian banned circumcision and the Hebrews in Judea revolted; the revolt of Barcoba (son of the star) was squashed and the remaining Jews experienced the greatest dispersion.
During the Hellenistic period, God El was called Helios (the Greek added an H before an E at the beginning of a word; for example Heliopolis means the city of El)
Adonis Diaries 