We also wish to thank everyone for all their support in reading, distributing and helping fund the blog at this most important time in our history. We have a balance of $240. Every penny helps. Please do what you can no matter how small or big, to help us continue this work. Bless you all for your support over these past 4 years. This has been a real learning experience for us as well.
Vatic Note: Oh, they are messing with the font and spacing. I fix it and it comes back again, so just read, please and get what you can from it. At least they are leaving the info in it and have not censored us like they just did Alex Jones. What a tremendous history this below is. It delves deeply into the lead up to the nicene Conference and beyond, matched against the rise and fall of gnosticism. This is information that I have seen only sparingly in the past, so its new for me at this level of disclosure. It certainly explains a lot.
This breaks down the different Jewish sects at the time period we are covering, since this is when it all happened. It covers the efforts of these different sects to undermine the emerging Christian faith, the first infiltrations into the new faith, Christianity, and the work Paul did to counter those efforts.
Please read, there is much more like this coming in other parts. What a gift this has been. Please read, enjoy and decide for yourselves. Now we are beginning to know who is Mystery Babylon, the Great.
MYSTERY BABYLON, THE GREAT: Jewish or Catholic? Part 2
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/cienciareal/babylon.htm#menu
by Barbara Aho
from WatchUntoPrayer Website
THE PHARISEES
The “Tanaim,” which meant “teacher of the law,” were the Scribes, the rabbis whom Blavatsky identified as the first Kabalists.
From the ranks of the Scribes evolved the sect of the Pharisees. According to Occult Theocrasy, by Edith Starr Miller, the creators of the Cabala were the Pharisees, who had formed their sect in Babylon during the captivity and functioned as a secret society after the Jews returned to Israel.
The ‘secret doctrine’ of Babylon remained the oral tradition of the Pharisees until they committed it to written form:
“In his book Nicholas II et les Juifs, Netchvolodow explains that ‘the Chaldean science acquired by many of the Jewish priests, during the captivity of Babylon, gave birth to the sect of the Pharisees whose name only appears in the Holy Scriptures and in the writings of the Jewish historians after the captivity (606 B.C.). The works of the celebrated scientist Munk leaves no doubt on the point that the sect appeared during the period of the captivity.
“‘From then dates the Cabala or Tradition of the Pharisees. For a long time their precepts were only transmitted orally but later they formed the Talmud and received their final form in the book called the Sepher ha Zohar.’
“The Pharisees were, as it were, a class whose tendency was to form a kind of intellectual aristocracy among the Jews. At first, they formed a sort of brotherhood, a haburah, the members being called haburim or brothers. They were a subversive element, aiming at the overthrow of the Sadducean High-priesthood, whose members prided themselves on their aristocracy of blood and birth, to which the Pharisees opposed an aristocracy of learning. The war raged by the latter extends over a long period of time, and the rivalry was bitter...
“The power of the Sadducees fell with the destruction of the Temple by Titus and thenceforth the Pharisaic element held supremacy among the Jews. Quoting an acknowledged authority on Judaism, Mr. Flavien Brenier, Lt. Gen. Netchvolodow further describes the policy of the sect as follows:
“‘Before appearing proudly as the expression of Jewish aspirations, The Tradition of the Pharisees had serious difficulties to surmount, the chief of which was the revival of the orthodox faith stimulated in the Jewish people by the Captivity. To the exiles, bemoaning the fall of the Temple of Jerusalem and begging Jehovah to end the misfortunes of their homeland, the revelation that Jehovah was only a phantom, entailed not only a certain defeat, but also their own exposure to perils the least of which would have been the loss of all authority over Israel.
“‘The Pharisees, then, judging it wiser to capture the confidence of their compatriots by taking the lead in the religious movement, affected a scrupulous observance of the slightest prescriptions of the law and instituted the practice of complicated rituals, simultaneously however cultivating the new doctrine [i.e. secret doctrine] in their secret sanctuaries. These were regular secret societies, composed during the captivity of a few hundred adepts. At the time of Flavius Josephus which was that of their greatest prosperity, they numbered only some 6,000 members.” (Occult Theocrasy, pp. 76-78)
To these hypocrites, Jesus reserved His most scathing condemnations:
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.” (Matt. 23:27-28)
“And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your own tradition... Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.” (Mark 7:9,13)
According to Occult Theocrasy, the Pharisees assumed the outward appearance of religious scrupulosity all the while they were conducting pagan rites in secret, as did their antecedents, the elders of Judah, in the Temple of Solomon, as the Lord revealed to the prophet Ezekiel.
“Then said he unto me, Son of man, lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north. So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry. He said furthermore unto me, Son of man, seest thou what they do? even the great abominations that the house of Israel committeth here, that I should go far off from my sanctuary? but turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations. And he brought me to the door of the court; and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall.
Then said he unto me, Son of man, dig now in the wall: and when I had digged in the wall, behold a door. And he said unto me, Go in, and behold the wicked abominations that they do here. So I went in and saw; and behold every form of creeping things, and abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, pourtrayed upon the wall round about. And there stood before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan, with every man his censer in his hand; and a thick cloud of incense went up.
Then said he unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen what the ancients of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the chambers of his imagery? for they say, The LORD seeth us not; the LORD hath forsaken the earth. He said also unto me, Turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations that they do. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of the LORD'S house which was toward the north; and, behold, there sat women weeping for Tammuz.” (Ezekiel 8: 5-14)
Netchvolodow likens the Pharisees to our modern Freemasons, whose Gnostic and dominionist agenda were subversive of society.
Compare Netchvolodow’s characterization of the Pharisees to our modern Zionists, i.e. the Judeo-Freemasons, who are secret practitioners of the Kabalah, while affecting to hold to the traditional beliefs of Judaism as set forth in the Old Testament.
“‘This group of intellectual pantheists was soon to acquire a directing influence over the Jewish nation. Nothing, moreover, likely to offend national sentiment ever appeared in their doctrines. However saturated with pantheistic Chaldeism they might have been, the Pharisees preserved their ethnic pride intact.
This religion of Man divinised, which they had absorbed at Babylon, they conceived solely as applying to the profit of the Jew, the superior and predestined being. The promises of universal dominion which the orthodox Jew found in the Law, the Pharisees did not interpret in the sense of the reign of the God of Moses over the nations, but in that of a material domination to be imposed on the universe by the Jews.
The awaited Messiah was no longer the Redeemer of original Sin, a spiritual victor who would lead the world, it was a temporal king, bloody with battle, who would make Israel master of the world and ‘drag all peoples under the wheels of his chariot’. The Pharisees did not ask this enslavement of the nations of a mystical Jehovah, which they continued worshipping in public, only as a concession to popular opinion, for they expected its eventual consummation to be achieved by the secular patience of Israel and the use of human means.
This religion of Man divinised, which they had absorbed at Babylon, they conceived solely as applying to the profit of the Jew, the superior and predestined being. The promises of universal dominion which the orthodox Jew found in the Law, the Pharisees did not interpret in the sense of the reign of the God of Moses over the nations, but in that of a material domination to be imposed on the universe by the Jews.
The awaited Messiah was no longer the Redeemer of original Sin, a spiritual victor who would lead the world, it was a temporal king, bloody with battle, who would make Israel master of the world and ‘drag all peoples under the wheels of his chariot’. The Pharisees did not ask this enslavement of the nations of a mystical Jehovah, which they continued worshipping in public, only as a concession to popular opinion, for they expected its eventual consummation to be achieved by the secular patience of Israel and the use of human means.
“‘Monstrously different from the ancient law were such principles as these, but they had nothing one could see, which might have rendered unpopular those who let them filter, drop by drop, among the Jews.
“The admirably conceived organization of the Pharisees did not fail soon to bear fruit.
“‘One cannot better define its action in the midst of Jewish society before Jesus Christ,’ said Mr. Flavien Brenier, ‘than in comparing it with that of the Freemasons in modern society.
“‘A carefully restricted membership tightly bound, imposing on their members the religion of ‘the secret’, the Pharisees pursued relentlessly their double aim which was: -
“‘1. The seizure of political power, by the possession of the great political offices (the influence of which was tremendous in the reconstituted Jewish nation) and the conquest of the Sanhedrin (Jewish parliament).
“‘2. To modify gradually the conceptions of the people in the direction of their secret doctrine...
“The second of these aims and its method of attainment is exposed in the so-called Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion so loudly denounced by the descendants of those who devised The Secret Doctrine in Israel, Israel here meaning the Jews as a religious community, most of whom remain quite ignorant of the intricate subversive schemes imputed to them.
“The attitude of Jesus Christ to this sect is definitely expressed in the New Testament (see Luke XI and John VIII’” (Ibid. pp.76-80)
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for ye are as graves which appear not, and the men that walk over them are not aware of them.” (Luke 11:44)
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him…” (John 8:44)
Here is confirmation of a long-standing division within Jewry that is in evidence today between the Zionist High Cabal and the non-Zionist, Torah Jews, as well as the common Jew who knows nothing of the Cabalists’ diabolical schemes perpetrated upon the Gentile world and even upon their own race. (VN: Vatic project has been saying this all along. Its not the Torah practicing Jews that are the problem, and we were certain of that early on.)
THE ESSENES
Another faction within Jewry associated with the Kabalah were the Essenes, a monastic community which lived in the desert of Qumran, the area near the Dead Sea which had formerly been Gomorrah.
The Jewish Encyclopedia describes the cabalistic practices of the Essenes, which were Judaized elements of Eastern mystical traditions:
“So, too, were the Essenes familiar with the idea of the journey to heaven…and they were also masters of angelology. The practise of magic and incantation, the angelology and demonology, were borrowed from Babylonia, Persia, and Egypt; but these foreign elements were Judaized in the process, and took the form of the mystical adoration of the name of God and of speculations regarding the mysterious power of the Hebrew alphabet …, ‘the name of God creates and destroys worlds’), to become, finally, foundations of the philosophy of the ‘Sefer Yetzirah.’”
According to the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, as cited in the Jewish Encyclopedia, the Essenes were guardians of the secret writings of the Cabala:
“In fact, the apocalyptic literature belonging to the second and first pre-Christian centuries contained the chief elements of the Cabala; and as, according to Josephus (l.c.), such writings were in the possession of the Essenes, and were jealously guarded by them against disclosure, for which they claimed a hoary antiquity (see Philo, ‘De Vita Contemplativa,’ iii., and Hippolytus, ‘Refutation of all Heresies,’ ix. 27)…” (Ibid.)
The Essenes claimed to be the legitimate ‘sons of Zadok’, or Temple priesthood. They are credited with writing the Dead Sea Scrolls which were discovered in 1945 and are now being promoted as the oldest known copies of Jewish scripture. According to a Coptic-Orthodox source, “Gnosis… is a key word in the scrolls of the Jewish Essene sect found at Qumran.”
H.P. Blavatsky noted that the Essenes were pagan priests of the Greek goddess, Diana of Ephesus, where the Tanaim had established a college for instruction in the Chaldean mystery religion:
“Essenes... They had many Buddhistic ideas and practices; and it is noteworthy that the priests of the Great Mother at Ephesus, Diana-Bhavani with many breasts, were also denominated... It was at Ephesus where was the great College of the Essenes and all the lore the Tanaim had brought from the Chaldees... Essenes, believed in reincarnation.” (Theosophical Glossary, pp. 113-14; The Secret Doctrine, Vol. II, p. 111n)
The Masonic writers, Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, are part of a great campaign to legitimize the Dead Sea Scrolls as the true scriptures and the Essenes as the rightful priesthood of Israel (based on personal sanctity rather than lineage).
They further misrepresent Jesus and John the Baptist as high-ranking Essenes and the Qumran Community as the original Jerusalem Church:
“That the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls, who we know call the Qumran Community, were Essenes is now beyond doubt; and that these people were the Nasoreans or the original Jerusalem Church…
“To us it seems inescapable that the man who was Jesus the Christ must have been a leading Qumranian figure during the crucial years of the third and fourth decades of the first century. The community’s numbers were tiny at that time, possibly no more than two hundred people, and perhaps there were little more than around four thousand Essenes in total.
They…saw imminent salvation from their problems through holiness and, although they were not hereditary priests, through living a monastic existence. This involved a society that was extremely hierarchical, from the Guardian or Grand Master downwards…
They…saw imminent salvation from their problems through holiness and, although they were not hereditary priests, through living a monastic existence. This involved a society that was extremely hierarchical, from the Guardian or Grand Master downwards…
“Initiation into the higher echelons required vows of secrecy that carried threat of horrible punishments should the secrets of the brotherhood be revealed to the outside world. This sounds like a highly Masonic practice… They wore white robes, took vows of poverty, swore to secrecy under threat of terrible punishment and claimed to possess secret knowledge…
“Finally the imagination of Ezekiel establishes the rules for the priesthood that would become the landmarks of the Essenes of Qumran. The legitimate priests of the sanctuary are to be the sons of Zadok, the erstwhile chief priest. Known to the people of Qumran as Zadokites, these sons of Zadok would wear white linen garments when they entered the inner court.” (The Hiram Key, pp. 54-58, 181)
Knight and Lomas also inadvertently reveal that an Essene monk will be the False Prophet who rises to power during the Tribulation period.
Acclaimed as a “Teacher of Righteousness” and an “Interpreter of the Law,’ this Cabalist will “re-institute the proper worship” in the Temple of Jerusalem:
“Whoever the Teacher of Righteousness was, he must have been a pious, holy man and apparently was a priestly descendant of Zadok, who revealed to his Community that they were living in a time that would be ‘the end of days’ as predicted by the old prophets. Soon, he told them, God would crush His enemies in a final cosmic battle and usher in the new age of righteousness, and as the Community was the last remnant of true Israel - the people of Yahweh's covenant - it would be they who would fight the battle and would return to Jerusalem to purify the Temple and re-institute proper worship.
“...God, however, will save His people by the hands of two messianic figures who will arise at the end of time; one from ‘the Branch of David’ and the other ‘the Interpreter of the Law’.”
(Ibid., p. 201-2)
In The White Goddess, Robert Graves associated the Essenes with the apostate tribe of Dan, the tribe of Samson, the Nazarite who judged Israel:
“I also suggest in King Jesus that the two mysterious Orders of the Essenes, Sampsonians and Helicaeans, were adepts in the calendar mysteries and were named after Samson...and the Helix, or cosmic circle.”(p. 150)
It is possible that Samson’s riddle was a prophecy that, at a future time, the tribe of Dan would try to usurp the messianic lineage of the tribe of Judah and inaugurate a pagan messianic kingdom. [See: The Lost Tribe of Dan] Graves states previously, “Though Jews... they believed in the Western Paradise” which is a reference to Atlantis’ Isles of the Blest (p.149).
The Essenes, which appeared in Judea during the Hasmonean dynasty (the Maccabean revolt against the Greeks) and continued through the Herodian dynasty, abruptly disappeared after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Robert Graves stated in The White Goddess that the “Alexandrian Gnostics...were the spiritual heirs of the Essenes after Hadrian had suppressed the Order in 132 A.D.” (p.150)
Alexandria, Egypt was a center of interchange of religious ideas as well as the intellectual meeting point between the Jews and the Greeks.
After the fall of Jerusalem, Alexandria would become the epicenter from which the Cabalist Jews, who had synthesized their Chaldean witchcraft with Neo-Platonic philosophy, would cloak the new Cabalism in Christian terminology and attempt to penetrate the fledgling Church with heresy.
As the origins of the Cabala were documented in the Chaldean mystery religion, the Jewish Encyclopedia locates the source of Gnosticism in Jewish Cabalism:
“But especially does Gnosticism testify to the antiquity of the Cabala. Of Chaldean origin... Gnosticism was Jewish in character long before it became Christian... Gnosticism - that is, the cabalistic ‘Hokmah’ (wisdom) - seems to have been the first attempt on the part of the Jewish sages to give the empirical mystic lore, with the help of Platonic and Pythagorean or Stoic ideas, a speculative turn; hence the danger of heresy…of which the systems of Philo, an adept in Cabala...show many pitfalls...
“Jewish gnosticism unquestionably antedates Christianity, for Biblical exegesis had already reached an age of five hundred years by the first century C.E. Judaism had been in close contact with Babylonian-Persian ideas for at least that length of time, and for nearly as long a period with Hellenistic ideas. Magic, also, which,...was a not unimportant part of the doctrines and manifestations of gnosticism, largely occupied Jewish thinkers. There is, in general, no circle of ideas to which elements of gnosticism have been traced, and with which the Jews were not acquainted.”
Since the “secret doctrine” of the Alexandrian Gnostics was simply a Christianized version of that found in the Cabala, we are not surprised to find many correspondences.
In a nutshell, the Gnostic gospel is based on the Cabalistic quest for liberation from the material world, with the assistance of angels, of course.
“Closely connected herewith is the doctrine that the pious are enabled to ascend toward God even in this life, if they know how to free themselves from the trammels that bind the soul to the body (see Ascension). Thus were the first mystics enabled to disclose the mysteries of the world beyond. According to Anz, l.c., and Bousset, …the central doctrine of Gnosticism - a movement closely connected with Jewish mysticism - was nothing else than the attempt to liberate the soul and unite it with God.
This conception explains the great prominence of angels and spirits in both the earlier and the later Jewish mysticism. Through the employment of mysteries, incantations, names of angels, etc., the mystic assures for himself the passage to God, and learns the holy words and formulas with which he overpowers the evil spirits that try to thwart and destroy him. Gaining thereby the mastery over them, he naturally wishes to exercise it even while still on earth, and tries to make the spirits serviceable to him.”
This conception explains the great prominence of angels and spirits in both the earlier and the later Jewish mysticism. Through the employment of mysteries, incantations, names of angels, etc., the mystic assures for himself the passage to God, and learns the holy words and formulas with which he overpowers the evil spirits that try to thwart and destroy him. Gaining thereby the mastery over them, he naturally wishes to exercise it even while still on earth, and tries to make the spirits serviceable to him.”
Contemporary with Jesus Christ was Philo Judaeus (c. 30 BC-45 AD), a Hellenized Jew of Alexandria who is credited with first allegorizing Scripture and applying the mystical method to the Mosaic writings.
Unrivaled in esoteric knowledge, according to Blavatsky, Philo was a member of the elitist Alexandrian society called the Therapeutae, also called “an esoteric circle of ‘illuminati’ of ‘wise men’.”
“Therapeutae. (Gr.) or Therapeutes. A school of Esotericists, which was an inner group within Alexandrian Judaism... They were ‘healers’ in the sense that some ‘Christian’ and ‘Mental’ Scientists, members of the [Theosophical Society], are healers, while they are at the same time good Theosophists and students of the esoteric sciences. Philo Judeaus calls them ‘servants of god’...‘an esoteric circle of illuminati,’ of ‘wise men’... They were contemplative Hellenistic Jews.’” (Theosophical Glossary, p.329)
The Jewish Encyclopedia states concerning the Therapeutae, “The members of the sect seem to have branched off from the Essene brotherhood.”
Both of these Gnostic orders were Jewish ascetics who practiced celibacy based on the Gnostic belief that, since the material world was created by an evil Demiurge, to reproduce is to merely to populate and perpetuate Satan’s evil world system.
Professor Constantine Scouteris of the University of Athens describes the differences between the strict celibacy of the Therapeutae and less rigid Essene community:
“In his De Vita Contemplativa the Alexandrian Philo makes an extremely remarkable description of an ascetic community with which he was familiar and which was settled not far from Alexandria, namely above Lake Mareotis. Philo's intention in this treatise is...to sketch the way of life of a specific monastic community of Egyptian Jewish ascetics.
At the very beginning of his treatise, Philo notes the substantial contrast between the Therapeutae and another Jewish ascetic sect, the Essenes. The Essenes led a more practical and active life, while the Therapeutae were dedicated to contemplative life. One could observe also other differences between the two ascetic traditions. The Essenes were exclusively male communities while women participated in the communal gatherings of the Therapeutae communities.
Although the Essene’s highly organized communal life involved great frugality, there is no conclusive evidence that it denied the lawfulness of marriage. The ascetic tradition of the Therapeutae, on the other hand, insisted on absolute sexual abstinence. The Therapeutae did not practice the Essene communistic way of life but lived separately as anchorites. They practiced renunciation of property, living a life of severe discipline, fasting and praying daily according to an established horarium.” (The Therapeutae of Philo)
After Philo’s death in 45 A.D., there arose in Alexandria the Society of Ormus, which meant “Sages of Light.”
The founder of this society was Ormesuis, a Seraphic monk / Egyptian magus who was reportedly converted by St. Mark (a likely story) and proceeded to blend the mystery teachings and rites of the Egyptian priests with Christianity. According to Albert Mackey’s Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, this society merged with the Cabalist school of the Essenes and other Jews, presumably the Therapeutae. The Essenes who belonged to the Society of Ormus were part of the Essene Brotherhood based in Alexandria.
The insignia of the Society of Ormus was a red cross.
“‘Their founder was a seraphic priest of Alexandria, a magus of Egypt named Ormesius, or ORMUS, who with six of his companions was converted in the year 96 by Saint Mark. He purified the doctrine of the Egyptians according to the precepts of Christianity, and founded the Society of ORMUS, that is to say, the Sages of Light, to the members of which he gave a red cross as a decoration.
ABOUT THE SAME TIME THE ESSENES and other Jews founded a school of SOLOMONIC WISDOM, to which the disciples of ORMUS attached themselves. Then the society was divided into various Orders known as the Conservators of Mosaic Secrets, of Hermetic Secrets, etc. (45)’ (46).”
ABOUT THE SAME TIME THE ESSENES and other Jews founded a school of SOLOMONIC WISDOM, to which the disciples of ORMUS attached themselves. Then the society was divided into various Orders known as the Conservators of Mosaic Secrets, of Hermetic Secrets, etc. (45)’ (46).”
(Antiquities of the Illuminati, quoting Mackey II, p. 636)
Two centuries later, Philo’s method of allegorical interpretation of Scripture was taught by Clement and Origen in their catechetical school of Alexandria where they synthesized Neo-Platonism with Christianity to produce a Christianized version of Gnosticism.
These misnamed “Church fathers” were ascetics, whose harsh treatment of the body is rejected by Scripture: “Which things have indeed a shew of wisdom in will worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body; not in any honour to the satisfying of the flesh.” (Col. 2:23)
In his History of the Christian Church, Philip Schaff described the basis of the false doctrine of asceticism as spiritual elitism akin to Gnosticism:
“The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life.
It was previously suggested by Hermas about the middle of the second century. Tertullian made a corresponding opposite distinction of mortal and venial sins. Here was a source of serious practical errors, and an encouragement both to moral laxity and ascetic extravagance. The ascetics, and afterwards the monks, formed or claimed to be a moral nobility, a spiritual aristocracy, above the common Christian people; as the clergy stood in a separate caste of inviolable dignity above the laity, who were content with a lower grade of virtue. Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter of the soul.
How little he understood the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, may be inferred from a passage in the Stromata, where be explains the word of Christ: ‘Thy faith hath saved thee,’ as referring, not to faith simply, but to the Jews only, who lived according to the law; as if faith was something to be added to the good works, instead of being the source and principle of the holy life. Origen goes still further, and propounds quite distinctly the catholic doctrine of two kinds of morality and piety, a lower for all Christians, and a higher for saints or the select few. He includes in the higher morality works of supererogation, i.e. works not enjoined indeed in the gospel, yet recommended as counsels of perfection, which were supposed to establish a peculiar merit and secure a higher degree of blessedness.
He who does only what is required of all is an unprofitable servant; but he who does more, who performs, for example, what Paul, in 1 Cor. 7:25, merely recommends, concerning the single state, or like him, resigns his just claim to temporal remuneration for spiritual service, is called a good and faithful servant. Among these works were reckoned martyrdom, voluntary poverty, and voluntary celibacy.”
Here we see that the false doctrine of the so-called “Christian” Gnostics resembled the “salvation by works” taught by the Gnostic Jews at the Platonic schools in Alexandria. It is worth noting here that the Gnostic heresiarchs were Jews, a fact well-known to the true Church Fathers who were their contemporaries.
This huge piece of the puzzle has been missing in the sanitized accounts of the Gnostics disseminated to the Gentile world, but is readily available in the Jewish Encyclopedia:
“It is a noteworthy fact that heads of gnostic schools and founders of gnostic systems are designated as Jews by the Church Fathers. Some derive all heresies, including those of gnosticism, from Judaism ... It must furthermore be noted that Hebrew words and names of God provide the skeleton for several gnostic systems... This fact proves at least that the principal elements of gnosticism were derived from Jewish speculation, while it does not preclude the possibility of new wine having been poured into old bottles.”
(“Gnosticism”)
Irenaeus, whose treatise, Against Heresies, was directed against the Gnostics, indicted apostate Jews as the inventors of this heresy:
“Arising among these men, Saturninus (who was of that Antioch which is near Daphne) and Basilides laid hold of some favourable opportunities, and promulgated different systems of doctrine - the one in Syria, the other at Alexandria… These men, moreover, practise magic; and use images, incantations, invocations, and every other kind of curious art… They declare that they are no longer Jews, and that they are not yet Christians; and that it is not at all fitting to speak openly of their mysteries, but right to keep them secret by preserving silence.”
(Against Heresies, Book I, Ch. XXIV)
The Plot Against the Church, a history of Jewish infiltration of the Catholic Church by Maurice Pinay (a pseudonym for a team of Catholic priests), documents from various sources the foundation of Gnosticism to be the Jewish Cabala, and the Alexandrian Gnostics to be Jewish Cabalists.
“Matter, the renowned historian of Gnosticism reports to us that the leading Jewish personages, the Alexandrian philosophers Filon and Aristobulus, who were completely and utterly true to the religion of their fathers, resolved to deck themselves out with the remains of other systems and make a way clear to Jewry for enormous conquests; both were also leaders of Gnosticism and Cabbalists…
“The said author explains: ‘that ‘The Cabbala’ existed before Gnosticism, is an opinion which the Christian writers little understand, but which the scholars of Judaism admit with true certainty’; they also assert, that Gnosticism was not exactly a falling away from Christianity but a compilation of systems, in which several Christian elements were taken up…
“In his confirmation that Cabbalists founded Gnosticism, the famous historian of Freemasonry, Ragon, reports that: ‘The Cabbala’ is the key of the secret sciences. The Gnostics emanated from the ‘Cabbalists’. The ‘Jewish Encyclopedia’ asserts that Gnosticism had a ‘Jewish character,’ before it was transformed into the Christian…
“…On the other hand, the ‘Encyclopedia Judaica Castellana’ alludes to the fact, that:
“The original Gnosticism, both the Christian as well as the Jewish, used Hebrew names in its system and that it even based its opposition upon Biblical ideas, points to Jewish origin. It says in addition that it influenced the later development of the ‘Cabala’…”
Perhaps the most influential of the arch heretics was Valentinus, whose Gnostic school endured for over 600 years and whose belief system exists even today.
Valentinus, a Jew born in Egypt around 100 A.D., was educated in Alexandria where he became a disciple of one Theudas who claimed to have been a disciple of the apostle Paul who privately taught the “hidden wisdom” to his inner circle. Typical of the early Gnostics, Valentinus also claimed to have had a vision of the risen Christ, after which he commenced his career as a teacher at Alexandria (c. 120 AD).
The truth about Valentinus’ conversion is more available in historical accounts of the Romans’ brutal suppression of Jewish sedition in Egypt in 118 A.D.
“Decimated by Roman troops deployed in the Jewish quarters, with their urban and religious organisation shattered, remnants of Egyptian Jewry metamorphosed into embryonic Christians (‘... in the eyes of the local Greeks, Christianity was just another brand of Judaism.’ – Irshai.)
Notable among them was a young man – he would have been about eighteen at the time of the insurrection – studying in the very city of Alexandria and witness to the carnage: Valentinus. Another was Basilides. Following in the tradition of synthesis and syncretism of long-standing in Alexandria (e.g. Philo a generation earlier), these ‘proto-Christian theorists’, Valentinus and Basilides competed against each other, had their own cult followings, and produced their own ‘gospels’.”
Notable among them was a young man – he would have been about eighteen at the time of the insurrection – studying in the very city of Alexandria and witness to the carnage: Valentinus. Another was Basilides. Following in the tradition of synthesis and syncretism of long-standing in Alexandria (e.g. Philo a generation earlier), these ‘proto-Christian theorists’, Valentinus and Basilides competed against each other, had their own cult followings, and produced their own ‘gospels’.”
Valentinian Gnosticism attracted a large number of adherents in Egypt and Syria.
In 136 AD, Valentinus relocated to Rome where he founded another school and rose to prominence throughout Europe. Maurice Pinay recounted the powerful refutation of this adversary of the Christian faith by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130-202):
“…The evidence of the Church Fathers completes the total picture of proofs…in order to show that Gnosticism was the work of Jewry; for they name several of the leaders of the Gnostic schools as Jews…
“…Saint Ireneus, described Valentinus, a Jew from Alexandria, as leader of the Gnostics…
“The most dangerous of all…secret sects for Christianity was directed by the crypto-Jew Valentinus, who was the type of classical member of the ‘Fifth Column.’ For he was outwardly active as true Christian and spread disintegration in Holy Church, by spreading out his disastrous sect. At first he had the city of Alexandria as chief bulwark, but towards the middle of the second century he went to Rome with the intention of undermining Christianity in the capital of the Empire itself. The Valentinians seriously threatened to disintegrate Holy Church from within, which finally in order to nullify the disastrous work of this false Christian, a true Jew of the ‘Fifth Column,’ cast him out of its bosom…
“The Gnostics had mystery plays and initiations. Tertullian assures us, that the sects of the Valentinians destroyed the Mystery plays in Eleusis and made a ‘sanctuary of prostitution’ out of them. And we must not forget, that Valentine, the false Christ and crypto-Jew from Alexandria was revealed by the Saint Irenaeus as leader of the Gnostics, whose sects according to several people were directed by one and the same power…
“That great leader, who appeared in the Church, in order to combat Gnosticism and to triumph over it, was in fact Saint Irenaeus, who thoroughly studied its disastrous sects and their dark teachings and mercilessly fought them in word and deed. Simultaneously he attacked the Jews, whom he described as leaders of this disintegrating underground movement, [28] whose strongest and most dangerous sect for Christianity was that of the Valentinians, which was led by Valentinius, behind whose false Christianity Saint Ireneus discovered the Jewish identity.
“Thanks to the manly and ceaseless labour of Saint Ireneus, Holy Church was successful in triumphing over the Gnosis, which for rising Christianity was a more threatening internal danger than the grave external intrigues which were then represented through the frontal attacks of the synagogue and its intrigues…
Naturally, the existence of a devout and very combative clergy, to whom indulgence was disguised with the cloak of peaceful coexistence or of diplomacy was not known, had the effect that Holy Church emerged victorious from this terrible struggle, in which it completely overcame its foes: Jewry, Jewish Gnosticism and Roman paganism…
Naturally, the existence of a devout and very combative clergy, to whom indulgence was disguised with the cloak of peaceful coexistence or of diplomacy was not known, had the effect that Holy Church emerged victorious from this terrible struggle, in which it completely overcame its foes: Jewry, Jewish Gnosticism and Roman paganism…
“[28] His work Adversus Haereses is especially important.” (The Plot Against the Church, pp. 262-8)
In 143 A.D. Valentinus was a candidate for the office of bishop of Rome, but upon being passed over for that position he left the Christian community. About the time of Valentinus, another arch heretic, Marcion, arrived in Rome. Irenaeus wrote of his official rejection by the Church at Rome, which was under the oversight of bishops (not “popes”):
“For Valentinus came to Rome in the time of Hyginus, flourished under Pius, and remained until Anicetus. Cerdon, too, Marcion's predecessor, himself arrived in the time of Hyginus, who was the ninth bishop.
Coming frequently into the Church, and making public confession, he thus remained, one time teaching in secret, and then again making public confession; but at last, having been denounced for corrupt teaching, he was excommunicated from the assembly of the brethren.”
Coming frequently into the Church, and making public confession, he thus remained, one time teaching in secret, and then again making public confession; but at last, having been denounced for corrupt teaching, he was excommunicated from the assembly of the brethren.”
After Valentinus’ death, his disciples developed his ideas into a system which they spread throughout the Roman Empire. In his work, “Valentinus: A Gnostic for All Seasons,” Stephan A. Hoeller theorizes as to the course of Christendom, had Valentinus become “Pope”:
“It is certainly a question of some interest what the course of Christian theology might have been had Valentinus been elected to the office of bishop of Rome. His hermeneutic vision combined with his superb sense of the mythical would have probably resulted in a general flowering of the Gnosis within the very fabric of the Church of Rome, and might have created an authoritative paradigm of Gnostic Christianity that could not have been easily exorcised for centuries, if at all.” (“The Almost Pope”)
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