No, it cannot be true. There must be a way out! Maybe, there is a time gap hypothesis?
You will claim there had to be – simply had to be – a nice, convenient, invisible hole in our history when a scam got going. There absolutely, definitely had to be a period of exile, persecution, chaos causing a complete break in the chain of tradition and teaching. The hypothetical ‘gap’ – that allowed those Rabbis to sneak in the whole scam or at least that supernatural part. Welcome, to the time gap hypothesis!
Obviously, a fragmented and disorientated mass of refugees with families torn asunder and no education for a couple of generations could easily be persuaded of a glorious and unique history, especially if it gave power to the Rabbis and kosher food merchants.
So, can we presume a gap long enough to have had a useful bit of coalescence of local Canaanite, Hittite, Jesubite, Moabite and Soundbite monotheistic ideas? Could we have a time in which we invented weird ceremonies and customs – like holding lemons, waving palm branches around, murdering innocent little Passover lambs and molesting eight day old boys? Are we correct to assume a time gap hypothesis?
Put simply, no. There just is no such period. Period.
From Ancient Egypt to yesterday afternoon, there is no unrecorded disruption to our social cohesion. We have always known of and carefully recorded the destruction of communities. Obviously, there may have been occasions where all Jews in an area were annihilated and no one recorded this. However, there have always been thousands of communities scattered across the world who have continued our traditions. So, you need to find a complete world-wide communal turmoil and disorientation for us all. That is a gargantuan challenge for the time gap hypothesis to overcome.
A Very Brief Jewish History
Since King Solomon there had been innumerable communities of Jews living around the Mediterranean and Arabia, trading up the Rhine and further afield with their copies of the Torah and many other texts. We must, of course, also bow before the 2700 year unbroken royal lineage of the Yemenite Jews. In these circumstances, you could not make up even one extra word.
When the Ten Tribes were annihilated in 555 BCE, the Southern Kingdom survived with a devout general populous and some religious kings who preserved every detail. There were serious lapses but not across the entire land and not amongst the entire nation. And the Kings and Prophets viciously reprimand the sinners – copiously quoting all the laws they had broken. They could not have just made them up.
The Samaritans whom we have briefly met, date from this particular time with their mirror image of the Torah in the proto-Hebrew characters that we originally used at that period. So when the Assyrian descended on the fold, a good many sheep were already safe in other folds. All the Later Books – Judges, Kings, Prophets – are entirely predicated on the existence of the Five Books of Moses – our history until entering the Holy Land. These Later Books themselves are impossible to have been compiled – except as they happened – as we prove. We also deal with the Babylonian Exile which over-lapped the Later Prophets.
The United States of Antiquity
Babylon was the main center of learning for over 1500 years and this preserved Judaism through the Roman holocaust and the blood bath of the Dark Middle Ages. But we need to discount this magic time gap absolutely as a possibility. We must thoroughly eradicate this lazy and comfortable notion of an historical Time Warp which gives modern secular Jews an escape hatch to oblivion. To do this, in the midst of this discussion of all the possible scams that I can concoct, we must conduct the time-traveler’s guide through your personal history.
Let us first collect the historical facts proven by non-Jews and find the ‘gap’ for a scam. Journey back with me in time – tracing your own family’s proud footsteps, unpicking the evidence and disproving the usual misconceptions that you hold. Because I’m guiding you, obviously we are to go backwards!
You – Back Through Time
Remember, the following is not only the history of the Torah, it is your history. Where else do you come from if not an ancient Jewish family? It is Jewish only because it traces itself back in an unbroken lineage. Very few Jews have ever not known who their great grandparents were. Even if most of the post-Holocaust generations had no grandparents to ask, the millions of Jews of the Sephardi (Middle Eastern) communities and Holocaust survivors still hold all our treasured memories, traditions and knowledge. Look at the explosion of Jewish learning and practice around the world – in the observant communities. All based on the survivors’ teachings.
The line of your family goes back into pre-history – and members of your family, heads held high, were carrying scrolls of the Torah throughout the journey. That lineage did not suddenly happen by magic one Wednesday afternoon. Try starting a family history with details of relatives and friends and addresses now – this very day. Claim to have come from an unbroken line of Basques, Australian aborigines, English churchmen, popes. Go around convincing your family, who are meant to have experienced and shared that heritage, that it is true.
Then, when they let you out of the asylum, try to convince them they come from an unbroken chain of Jews. They will simply shrug and say, ‘Obviously’. Why? Because it is true! Things that are not true, are not believed except on faith. Things that are not true are never believed by those to whom they were meant to have happened to. They are denied.
Is There a Convenient, Murky Past?
If true then there is never an issue. Everyone has accepted that we are Jews and followed our religion from the start. This does not touch the authenticity of that religion, only its antiquity.
We asked before – consider a Passover Seder meal and you sitting there, bored-sick, chomping, of all things, horseradish; or contemplate an enervating Day of Atonement service or any other Jewish religious custom. You probably have already concluded that our survival of three millennia of such torture is indeed a miracle. Ask yourself when did this weird set of behaviors start. Obviously, not in your lifetime. Nor a generation ago. Your parents testify to that. Nor three, four, five … generations ago. So when? Just some time in the conveniently murky past? Like all mythologies and religious practices, they must have been gradually imposed on the gullible, then their origins forgotten and elaborated?
Sorry, again – we are different. Your problem is that all the Jewish religious baggage – from circumcision to cemetery and everything in between – was written down and explained 2000 years ago. Much worse, as we have seen, the Yemenite Jews and Samaritans prove it was all far, far older. Our authenticity before that, the previous 1300 years – back to Sinai, is worryingly rearing its head from archaeological evidence. It all exactly supports your forebears’ ‘ridiculous myths’. Unless you are Yemeni, precisely the path your personal DNA took from today back to Sinai is obviously impossible for me to discover, but you exist and therefore your forebears were Jewish and not murdered, at least before passing on that DNA.
Your Brief Family History
Your proud and courageous family is definitely from those who stood around Sinai. They were later in Canaan and King Solomon’s kingdom. There they saw the Temples. Then they were exiled to Babylon. It is likely they may have been from those Jews in numerous communities around the Roman Empire. As they were already scattered by the 1st century. Or perhaps, they were survivors of the 70 CE Destruction itself. They may have been sent as slaves to some distant, hostile and soul-destroying location. They may have been of the very few who stayed in Palestine, or fled to, well, anywhere they could.
By the time that the Romans had declined and fallen all over the place, there were hundreds of Jewish communities scattered throughout Europe and the Middle East. Those in Yemen and Iran were already a millennium old and Babylon (Iraq) had been the Jewish world academic center for centuries. Your DNA lived in one of these places. Yet, it remains the thousand years preceding this that we need to scrutinize. Can we genuinely trace the Torah and the Oral Law – right back to the dates we claim for Sinai – some 1300 years before the Romans? With a few stops on the way, let us first examine the proven secular historical facts we know and apply some simple logic. I shall keep a note of the years as we travel back.
Remember, this is your DNA we are tracing. Please put your seat upright, stow away all preconceptions and fasten your seat belt. There is no life-jacket; it is indeed a life-line which we are tracing back.
Sorry, There is No Running Away From Your Jewish Nose
Here we have just dealt with the basic concept. Obviously, we know your modern heritage; from the information available from the written Historic period of today back to the early centuries of this millennium. It is agreed that the evidence and non-Jewish testimony proves that throughout the historical period there have always been, in some insalubrious enclave or other, Orthodox Jews following their unchanged, distinct and established customs and beliefs – just like today. Universally agreed non-Jewish texts and artifacts, over-lapping the centuries, absolutely prove that we had behaviors and usages precisely like those my family follow today. Obviously there were many minor differences across the globe because local Rabbis always had the power to make adjustments – provided these strengthened the basic laws. Such variations are always fully-explained, accepted and recorded as local differences. All Jews today – including you – descend from a family which followed these.
The blog, however, which forces you to walk back through your own undeniable history – as a practicing Jew – should surely make you at least wonder. “Practicing Jew! Me? I never ate kosher.” – well, not willingly. OK not you but thousands of your family who had your nose – and gave it to you.
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