Why Orthodox Judaism is a Cult - Part 4

Again, here are 8 criteria that groups use to identify a group or organization as a cult:

1.  Love Bombing - Instant friendship, extreme helpfulness, generosity and acceptance...Group recruiters "lovingly" will not take "no" for an answer-invitations impossible to refuse without feeling guilty and/or ungrateful. "Love", "generosity", "encouragement" are used to lower defenses and create an ever increasing sense of obligation, debt and guilt.

2.  Schedule Control & Fatigue - Study and service become mandatory. New member becomes too busy to question. Family, friends, jobs and hobbies are squeezed out, further isolating the new member.

3. Submission - Increased submission to the leadership is rewarded with additional responsibilities and/or roles, and/or praises, increasing the importance of the person within the group.

4. Intense Study - Focus is on group doctrine and writings. Bible, if used at all, is referred to one verse at time to "prove" group teachings

5. Totalism - "Us against them" thinking. Strengthens group identity. Everyone outside of group lumped under one label.

6. Isolation, Separation & Alienation - Group becomes substitute family. Members encouraged to drop worldly (non-members) friends. May be told to change jobs, quit school, give up sports, hobbies, etc.

7. Secrecy - Group hides inner workings and teachings from outsiders. Sophisticated cults may curry media interest or even employ public relations consultants and ad agencies to manage their image.

8. Information Control - Group controls what convert may read or hear. They discourage (forbid) contact with ex-members or anything critical of the group. May say it is the same as pornography making it not only sinful and dangerous but shameful as well. Ex-members become feared and avoidance of them becomes a "survival issue." 

When I went undercover with the black hat Jews, I received warnings from Jewish believers in Jesus that living as an Orthodox Jew can be a dangerous proposition. Criterion 3 explains why. People are encouraged to become more and more dependent upon the group, and Orthodox Judaism is very good at this. This increasing observance is a bit like approaching the event horizon of a black hole. The closer you get, the harder it is to escape. Once you hit the event horizon, it's game over for you.

For many the event horizon is marriage. Once you are married to an Orthodox Jew, and especially once that marriage produces children, you and your family are now totally hooked on the community, and dependent upon them for everything. It's nearly impossible to get out without losing your entire family.

When I was in the Orthodox community, they wanted to push shidduch on me. Shidduch is the term for the Jewish arranged marriage, which also doubles as the arrangement for dating. In the Orthodox community, a matchmaker sets up a man and a woman for dating, and then follows up with each to see how well they got along. If the relationship goes well, a number of dates later, they become engaged and set a date to get married.

I had steadfastly refused any attempts to get hooked up this way, since I knew the consequences of going along. Still, the Orthodox community may be a cult, but it is a very clever one. An Orthodox Jewish father, who had a daughter named Rachel who was a little bit younger than me, invited me over for dinner on Shabbat. As he kept inviting me over and inviting me to his family events, he put me in situations where I got to talk with Rachel, and help her out with certain things.

Our relationship grew, and I started to fall in love with her. We spent more time together, and I was personally torn. My uncle described it as the undercover FBI agent who becomes so ingrained in Mafia culture, that he leaves the FBI and joins the Mafia for real.

The TV Tropes site has a label for this: Becoming the Mask. A character goes undercover and assumes a persona so long that he becomes his persona. An example is the show Breaking Bad. In that show, the mild-mannered schoolteacher Walter White assumes the persona of the vicious, cutthroat drug lord Heisenberg. By the end of the series, White has become Heisenberg for real, and ruins the lives of all the people he cared about.

In my case, I conveniently had to move away from the community to live in another state for work purposes. If not for this convenient set of circumstances, there might not be any Messianic Drew. I might have been sucked in beyond the point of no return.

Let this be a warning to others who might attempt my stunt. You may think you have an invincible set of apologetic arguments to keep you from getting sucked into believing as a cult believes. As the Messianic Rabbis warned me, there are times when all the apologetic arguments in the world are no match for a strong enough emotional ploy. I spoke with others who nearly joined Orthodox groups, and their story is nearly the same as mine. You think you are safe, but realize too late that you are much more vulnerable to joining the cult than you had ever previously thought.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 62

Acts 7:7, "And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God, and afterwards shall they come forth and serve me in this place." From this quotation it appears, that the disciples of Jesus were but superficially versed in biblical knowledge. For in Genesis (chap. 15) no such words as "in this place," are to be found; and in Exodus 3:12, the expression is, "When thou shalt bring out this people from Egypt, ye shall serve God on this mountain." 

 Again, this is from Stephen's speech. Again, Luke is recording the words of Stephen, and the accuracy of Acts depends only on whether these words are recorded accurately, not on whether Stephen's speech was accurate.

Let's look at the passage in Acts:

And God spoke to this effect—that his offspring would be sojourners in a land belonging to others, who would enslave them and afflict them four hundred years. ‘But I will judge the nation that they serve,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place.’ (Acts 7:6-7) 

Let's look at Exodus:

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:10-12) 

 And the passage from Genesis:

As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him. Then the LORD said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. (Genesis 15:12-14) 

Direct quotation is a modern invention, and quotation marks are an artifact of the printing press. This makes it difficult to decide in ancient literature whether someone is quoting someone else, or if that person is paraphrasing the other. Stephen gets the main theme right: Israel was foreordained to be captured, sent into slavery, and then to come out and worship God in a designated location.

As Stephen Farade states about the Talmud:

Most often, however, scriptural verses are paraphrased; that is, they are not explicitly cited at all, but are rather "retold," with varying degrees of expansion, reduction, reordering, and combination with other retold scriptural verses. (The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature p. 106)

Citing pieces of two passages is quite common in rabbinic literature, and the rabbis have no justification for faulting New Testament writers or speakers for doing so.

Again, let me quote Williams:

No Jewish scholar is likely to find fault with him for shortening a quotation, for it is in full accordance with the principle laid down in Pesachim, 3b: "Rab Huna said that R. Jehudah said in the name of R. Meir: A man should always teach his pupil the shortest way."

Further, it is doubtful if a single Jewish writer of ancient times can be found who is punctilious about the exact accuracy of his quotations from Scripture. What does R. Joshua haLevi say (after 1467 A.D.) in his Halikoth 'Olam, II. 2? "The method of traditional teaching is to shorten the passages of Scripture, and it does not bring them forward as they are." Thus, for example, a Mishna-teacher of the school of R. Ishmael quotes: "and the priest shall come again, and the priest shall come in," as though one sentence followed the other, whereas in reality they are separated by four verses (Lev 14:39, 44). Makkoth, 13b. In fact, R. Isaac's objection to this part of Nepheri's speech is frivolous and ignorant.*

* The curious reader will find several other examples of the same kind in Surenhusius, Biblos Katallages, 1713, pp. 45 sq. Let him consult also Strack, Prolegomena Critica, 1873, pp. 65 sq., from which the reference to R. Joshua haLevi is taken.

Kosher Jesus is Crank History

I have recently picked up Shmuley Boteach's book Kosher Jesus. In this book, Shmuley re-invents Jesus in a way that is more like the Jesus of Islam than the Jesus of history.

Historical Method
History is not simply the practice of figuring out what happened in the past. It would be nice to do that, but the past events of which history talks are not directly observable. So we have to treat history more like a crime scene. We see pieces of data currently available to us, and the challenge is to come up with the best possible explanation for our current data.

The discipline for how history is done is called historiography, and one of the most important books in that field is Justifying Historical Descriptions by C. Behan Mccullagh. In this book, McCullagh explains what criteria historians use to determine what counts as the "best" explanation for historical data. The explanation must have great explanatory power and scope, must cohere with already accepted beliefs, should preferably have the power to predict new pieces of evidence, and should not be ad hoc.

Ad hoc-ness to a historian, is what happens when you posit something that has little or no independent support. If I say that the airplanes that hit the World Trade Center did not cause it to collapse, but that thermite bombs planted inside the building did, I am now positing that there were thermite bombs inside the building. Without strong independent evidence that there were such bombs, the explanation is an ad hoc move.

Often, one has to posit unknowns in order to explain something. If I read about a patient who comes to his doctor complaining about a fever and stomach pains, I have to come up with an explanation for what seems to be the most plausible cause. If I suggest that the patient came down with a cold, and that the patient was also a martial artist who took a kick to the stomach, such an explanation is more ad hoc than saying that the patient has appendicitis. I am positing two unknowns rather than one to explain the symptoms.

Conspiracy theories generally suffer terribly from ad hoc stipulations. 9/11 truthers have to posit thermite bombs to take down the buildings, special advanced thermite that no one has seen to explain how thermite bombs could cut that much steel, a cruise missile to explain the damage to the Pentagon, communication between United States personnel and groups like Al-Qaeda. Moon landing hoaxers have to posit advanced video technology to explain how we got a live feed of slowed-down video, cranked at much too high a frame rate for cameras at that time. They also have to posit additional probes sent to the moon in order to explain the moon rocks. Black helicopter theorists have to posit all sorts of advanced technology, such as magic helicopter fuel to explain their theory. In short, these theories can explain the historical data as well as the official story, but they require positing additional entities for which we do not have independent evidence.

The Data to be Explained
In Kosher Jesus, Shmuley has a daunting task ahead of him. He wants to argue that Jesus was an observant practitioner of Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism, who hated the Roman Empire, and was caught and killed by the Romans for it. On Shmuley's view, Jesus never claimed to be God, never accepted worship, never thought of himself as more than a wise teacher, whose death was not instigated by Jewish authorities, and who never was raised from the dead.

Shmuley has a lot of hard data to explain. The 4 Gospels and the writings of Paul are accepted almost unanimously among historians as having been written in the first century. We have ample manuscript evidence that the copies we have have less than 1% variance from what the original document said. There is also strong archaeological corroboration that the people and places described in the New Testament are described rather accurately.

Shmuley appears to accept most of this, and now has to explain the passages by either accepting them as historical and interpreting them in a certain way, or coming up with explanations as to why they were fabricated. On a side note, Shmuley does claim that the New Testament documents were altered in an effort to placate Rome, even though all manuscript evidence points to the contrary.

Shmuley also gives explanations for the following data:

• Why the Gospels say that Jesus accepted worship
• Why Paul keeps calling Jesus "God"
• Why Paul and the Gospels have stories of the resurrection of Jesus
• Why Judas is mentioned
• Why Paul converted
• Why Peter and James went along with Paul in proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus

Shmuley's Explanation
Shmuley explains this pretty concisely in the introduction.

He states that the residents of Galilee had yearned to overthrow Roman rule. Jesus emerges on the scene and says that the Jews can overthrow Rome if they just keep all of God's commandments. Jesus then becomes convinced that he is to lead the people of Israel to overthrow Rome through force, and gathers his disciples to storm and overtake the Jerusalem Temple. The Romans catch Jesus and execute him.

With Jesus now dead, the movement disappears, and only a few disciples remain, meeting in secret, and longing for freedom from Rome. Paul then arrives, sent as an agent of Rome, but turns and claims to be on the side of Jesus. Paul then completely twists the teachings of Jesus to the shocked disciples, making up the doctrines we think of as Christian. Paul invents the deity of Jesus, the resurrection and the purpose of Jesus' mission as one of spiritual redemption. He also invents that the death of Jesus led to nullification of the law.

The disciples then banish Paul, but Paul disseminates his view of Jesus among the gentile Romans, and sells the idea that you can have the benefits of the God of the Jews without having to follow the stipulations of Torah. As Paul brings more followrs to the church in Jerusalem, the original disciples of Jesus protest, but Paul slowly wins them over. They do this because Paul has brought new life to the movement, and most importantly, Roman gold.

Shmuley also says that Paul was a Sadducee and a convert to Judaism. Peter abandoned the kosher laws based on a dream, which was a type of wish fulfillment.

A Quick Look
A few of the ad hoc stipulations required for Shmuley's theory:

• Paul's conversion to Judaism
• Paul as a Sadducee
• Paul as mentally unstable, and prone to manic extremes
• Paul's intentions to deliver the Jews from obedience to the Jewish Law
• Paul as a pathological liar
• That Peter and James were initially opposed to (and not just afraid of) Paul
• That there was a separate set of Noahide laws for Gentiles during the Second Temple era
• Jesus' secret meeting with his disciples, planning an attack on the Jerusalem Temple
• Paul changing the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday
• Paul's claim that he was sent by Gamaliel to hunt down the church
• That the apostles' treasury was nearly empty before Paul arrived and then overflowing with Roman gold after Paul joined
• That the disciples were impressed by increased wealth, and impressed enough to let all the other apostles be bullied by Paul into accepting his radically changed theology

 In order to support this view of Paul as a convert, Shmuley says that the Ebionite documents record this. Unfortunately, there are no Ebionite manuscripts available to us. The only clue we have that such a manuscript existed is that Epiphanus wrote a short passage about it in the Panarion.

Nor are they ashamed to accuse Paul here with certain fabrications of their false apostles' villainy and imposture. They say that he was Tarsean—which he admits himself and does not deny. And they suppose that he was of Greek parentage, taking the occasion for this from the (same) passage because of his frank statement, 'I am a man of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city.' They then claim that he was Greek and the son of a Greek mother and Greek father, but that he had gone up to Jerusalem, stayed there for a while, desired to marry a daughter of the high priest, and had therefore became a proselyte and been circumcised. But since he still could not marry that sort of girl he became angry and wrote against circumcision, and against the Sabbath and the legislation.

 The Panarion was written in 375, and therefore long after the events described in the New Testament. It contains legendary material, such as a passage that Peter abstained from eating meat, and that he underwent daily baptism. According to Epiphanus, the Ebionites also rejected the Pentateuch, and embraced some sort of Gnosticism. Legendary writings about Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles were quite plentiful by the late 4th century, and involved all sorts of wild legend and inventions. In short, this document comes far too late to provide any historical support for Paul being a convert to Judaism.

And this is the problem with Shmuley's other stipulations, he either asserts them without evidence, or what he claims as evidence is far too weak to substantiate any of these claims.

There are also plenty of other questions. For one, if Paul was so fiercely opposed by Jesus' original apostles, why do the church fathers only say good things about him? Paul was not the last apostle to die, nor was he the only apostle to be executed. Why did the other apostles go to their executions for such a blatant falsehood, when they could have saved their skins by denouncing it? Why did Paul travel so frequently from Jerusalem, enduring hardship and poverty, and repeatedly receiving lashes, beatings, stonings, being shipwrecked, undergoing starvation when he could have been like most cult leaders and enriched himself in Jerusalem? How did the story in Mark arise with women followers as the discoverers of the empty tomb? If Paul was a Sadducee, why pretend to be a Pharisee and risk getting called out?

Silver Bullets
The conspiracy theorist's approach to arguing is what I call the "silver bullet" approach. In this kind of argumentation, you argue that if some fact is observed, then it is impossible for the official explanation to be true. For example, young earth creationists will point to soft dinosaur tissue and say that such evidence makes it impossible for these dinosaurs to live millions of years ago. After making that argument, they will claim that the official explanation can now be taken off the table while we look for the real explanation.

That is not how history or forensic science is done. Any explanation for the current data will have problems in it. It will require us to posit one or more things for which we don't have independent evidence. It will fail to explain some features. There will be questions it cannot answer. Neither of these is a disproof of the official theory, but simply a reminder that our knowledge of any past event is limited, and that we have to search for the best explanation, since we might not have access to a perfect explanation. So it's better to go with a cumulative case approach rather than letting one argument serve to completely dismiss a theory.

We need to subject conspiracy theories to the same scrutiny that we give the official explanation. When we do this, the official explanation tends to look a whole lot better than the alternatives. The degree of ad hoc-ness in Shmuley's theory shows why it never gained traction among historical Paul scholars (even atheists), either now or back when Maccoby advanced the same theory back in 1986.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 61

Acts 7:4, "Then came he out of the land of the Chaldeans and dwelt in Charran, and from thence, when his father was dead, they brought him into this land wherein ye now dwell." We have already pointed out that this statement of Abraham's departure from Charran, after the death of his father, is erroneous. It is true that the death of Therah, though happening after the departure of Abraham, is mentioned before it; but that is the frequent mode of Scripture narrative. In the same way we find the death of Isaac recorded before the selling of Joseph, although a brief calculation would show that he survived thirteen years after the selling of his grandson. 

Here, Troki is quoting Stephen's speech in Acts. Remember that the accuracy of the New Testament only requires that Luke recorded Stephen's speech correctly. Critics will point out that the Holy Spirit came upon Stephen, but this is also not quite accurate. Acts states that "Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people." After doing these signs and wonders, Stephen was caught and arrested. When Stephen was brought before the council, "all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel."

None of this guarantees the accuracy of Stephen's speech. Stephen was a spiritual man, but having a face like an angel is not the same as saying that the Holy Spirit spoke through him. Any inaccuracies in Stephen's speech are no blight on the New Testament, just as inaccurate statements by Job's friends are not evidence of error in Tanakh. There is no need, then, to defend Stephen for accuracy. Still, an educated Jew like Stephen was not the kind of person to make blatant errors.

Philo also ignores this same calculation in his Migration of Abraham, Chapter 33:

And "Abraham," says Moses, "was seventy-five years of age, when he departed out of Charren." Now concerning the number of seventy-five years (for this contains a calculation corresponding to what has been previously advanced,) we will enter into an accurate examination hereafter. But first of all we will examine what Charran is, and what is meant by the departure from this country to go and live in another.  Now it is not probable that any one of those persons who are acquainted with the law are ignorant that Abraham had previously migrated from Chaldaea when he came to live in Charran. But after his father died he then departed from this land of Chaldaea, so that he has now migrated from two different places.

Philo also rejects the notion that Abraham took Terah with him. According to Philo, Terah died and then Abraham left Haran. Regardless of whether Philo was right, his rejection of this calculation was a deliberate decision. We should not make the mistake that Shmuley Boteach makes and try to read the Mishnah and Talmud into Second Temple Judaism. To do so is just to commit a fallacy of anachronism.

Chizuk Emunah (Pt 2) Under the Microscope: Chapter 60

Acts 5:34, 35, 38, 39, "Then stood there up one in the council, a pharisee, named Gamaliel, a doctor of the law, and said onto the Jews, Ye men of Israel, take heed to yourselves what ye intend to do as touching these men; for if this council, or this work, be of men, it will come to nought, but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest, haply (perhaps) ye be found even to fight against God." The subject is cited here for the purpose of following the order of the passages which claim a refutation. We have already noticed that the duration of a sect does not constitute a proof of the veracity of their tenets, otherwise, the Mahommedan faith would be entitled to nearly the same belief as that of the Christians. 

Gamaliel I is one of the most important figures in Pharisaic Judaism. Outside of the New Testament, the earliest records we have of Gamaliel are in the Mishnah, which only mentions him a few short times. The Babylonian Talmud, written almost 500 years after the New Testament, gives the oral traditions and legends surrounding this fascinating teacher.

This leads to another important point: mainstream historians consider the New Testament a much more reliable source for information about Second Temple Judaism than they consider the Talmud. This is because the New Testament was written at the end of the Second Temple era, while the Mishnah, and even more the Talmud were written long afterward.

Troki is also misunderstanding the argument of Gamaliel. he is not suggesting that every movement which is not from God will fail. Let's look at the passage.

When they heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. But a Pharisee in the council named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law held in honor by all the people, stood up and gave orders to put the men outside for a little while. And he said to them, “Men of Israel, take care what you are about to do with these men. For before these days Theudas rose up, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. He was killed, and all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing. After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in the present case I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone, for if this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God!” (Acts 5:33-39) 

 In the Second Temple era, there were many leaders who wanted to stir up the Jewish people, free Israel from the bonds of Roman law, and establish the nation of Israel as a glorious kingdom as in the days of Solomon. These movements inevitably generated fervor, and then burned out.

Gamaliel was requesting of his people the same patience. The Sanhedrin was not technically allowed to execute anybody, and Peter (unlike Stephen) was a bit too popular for the Sanhedrin to kill illegally and get away with it. Eventually, they did start acting in a way that conflicts with Roman law, and this eventually led to the revolts in the 60s which led to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70, and the complete expulsion of the Jewish people after the failed Bar Kochba revolt of 135.

The rise of Islam is irrelevant to Gamaliel's argument, since Islam did not arise in this fashion. Instead, Islam arose in much the same way that Communism arose in the 20th century. A charismatic leader sells his people on a utopian state whereby he is the supreme commander. He rallies an army of fanatics, which he uses to take over his government, and then suppress not only opposition, but all thought that leads to opposition. If Orthodox Judaism is a cult, Islam is an Orwellian fascist police state. There is a reason that the novel 1984 is banned in Islamic countries.