Origins of Judeo-Christian Theology and Scripture
In today's world there are more schisms in Christianity than Jesus had loaves of bread. Yet these numerous schisms are easily categorized into four neat groups: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, and New Age - each of these have numerous branches and sub-branches. But this was not always the case.

Where did it all begin - with Jesus? Well that is a 'yes' or a 'no' answer depending how you want to look at it or how much attention you give to details. In any case Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew and he came into this world to fulfill the Jewish law. [Matthew 5: 17-19]

Jesus taught his twelve disciples who were also Jews. Then came Paul [CE 3-67], a Jew and a Roman citizen. Paul is where Christianity begins. Paul became the first Christian as distinguished from the twelve Jewish disciples of Jesus, by his rejection of the laws of Moses. For his heresy Paul is also considered by many to be the first anti-Christ.

Paul ignored the basic laws of Moses - the laws that Jesus came to uphold. For example Jesus taught that one should follow the laws for circumcision and dietary [kosher] regulations. But that was ignored in Paul's interpolations of the teachings of Jesus.

The Torah was the only Jewish scripture in the time of Jesus. Even the Kabala, an important book in Judaism, did not exist at that time. The Jewish people believe the Torah [the Hebrew word meaning teaching, instruction, or law] to be the literal word of God and apparently Jesus also considered it so. In the Torah, God is Yahweh, the 'God of Abraham,' and this too Jesus apparently accepted.

The Torah consists of five books; Bereishith [Genesis], Shemoth [Exodus], Vayigra [Leviticus], Bamidbar [Numbers] and Devarim [Deuteronomy]. These five books are also known as the Five Books of Moses or the Pentateuch. However, when the Old Testament for Christians was compiled after the First Council of Nicea [325 CE] in addition to the Five Books of Moses another thirty-four books were added. The Council of Nicea also gave Christiandom the New Testament containing twenty-seven books, written in Greek.

Although in today's world the Christian community places more importance on the New Testament, it is the Torah that forms the foundation of the religion of Jesus.

If Christianity could have separated itself from Judaism it would have done so long ago by rejecting the Torah/Old Testament. But Christianity cannot do that and still has a foundation to the claim that Jesus is the Messiah. The prophecies of the coming of the Messiah are found in the Torah. Thus the marriage of Christianity to Judaism is forever.

What actually is the Torah and where did it come from? Jewish tradition tells us that the Torah is the primary document of Judaism, and is the source of all Biblical commandments, in an ethical framework.

According to Jewish tradition God himself revealed the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai in 1280 BCE [this has been disputed by scholars]. Classical rabbinic writings offer various ideas on when the entire Torah was revealed. Some sources state that the entire Torah was given all at once on Mount Sinai. In the Jewish fundamentalist view, this dictation included not only the quotes which appear in the text, but every word of the text itself, including phrases such as "And God spoke to Moses..." and included God telling Moses about Moses' own death and what would happen afterward. Other classical sources hold that the Torah was revealed to Moses over many years, and finished only at his death. Another school of thought holds that although Moses wrote the vast majority of the Torah, a number of sentences throughout the Torah must have been written after his death by another prophet, presumably Joshua. All classical views, nonetheless, hold that the Torah was entirely or almost entirely Mosaic and having a divine origin [from God].

It is clearly understood that Moses is a very key figure in the Torah and in Judaism, but is there any evidence to support a historical Moses? The answer is no! There is no such evidence, nor is there any historical evidence to support the claim that the Jews were slaves in Egypt. Scholars have determined that there is no evidence whatsoever in Egyptian history to indicate that the Jews were ever enslaved in Egypt. There is also no evidence [such as independent literature, or archaeological findings] to prove that King Solomon, or the 'First Temple' in Jerusalem ever existed. [These subjects will be the topics for future articles on this Burning Cross website: http://www.burningcross.net ]

That the Jews were taken into captivity from Judea to Babylon, however, is a verifiable historical fact and the history of the Jews after that point in time is also verifiable.

When the Torah was actually written is indeed interesting. The Babylonians invaded Judea and took as many as 10,000 Jews back to Babylon. This is known as the Exile. Up to this time the Torah as a book had not yet been compiled. That parts of the Torah may have existed in any form other than oral tradition is questionable, for written evidence of such has not been found.

Approximately 100 years later the Persian King Cyrus conquered Babylon [537 BCE] and many Jews in Babylon returned to Judea. During this period the 'Temple' at Jerusalem was started by the order of King Cyrus and completed in 515 BCE during the reign of King Darius I [see Ezra 5:6-17 & 6:1-15]. There are various theories why Cyrus would want to build the temple for the Jews. One such theory of interest is as follows.

When Cyrus the Persian conquered Mesopotamia and the whole of the Middle East, he did so for religious reasons. Unlike any conqueror before him, Cyrus set out to conquer the entire world. Before Cyrus, conquest was largely a strategic affair; you guaranteed your territorial safety by conquering potential enemies. But Cyrus wanted the whole world and he wanted it for religious reasons. Barely a century before, the Persians were a group of tribes living north of Mesopotamia.

To the Mesopotamians, they went largely ignored. But in the middle of the seventh century BCE, a prophet, Zarathustra, appeared among them and preached a new religion. This religion would become Zoroastrianism (in Greek, Zarathustra is called "Zoroaster"). The Zoroastrians believed that the universe was dualistic, that it was made up of two distinct parts. One was good and light and the other evil and dark. Cosmic history was simply the epic battle between these two divine forces; at the end of time, a climactic battle would decide once and for all which of the two would dominate the universe. Human beings, in everything they do, participated in this struggle; all the gods and all the religions were part of this epic.

Cyrus believed that the final battle was approaching, and that Persia would bring about the triumph of good. To this end, he sought to conquer all peoples and create the stage for the final triumph of good. He was the greatest conqueror that had ever been seen; at his death, his empire was exponentially larger than any other empire that had ever existed. His son, Cambyses, conquered Egypt; the Persians, it seemed at the time, were on their way to world domination.

Cyrus believed the Jew's god Yahweh was one of the good gods as opposed to the Jew's god of human sacrifice, Moloch who was clearly evil. Cyrus claimed that Yahweh visited him one night. In that vision, Yahweh commanded him to re-establish Yahweh worship in Jerusalem. That Cyrus was inspired by God to build the temple in Jerusalem is collaborated in the Bible as follows:

"Now in the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, Thus saith Cyrus king of Persia, All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord God of heaven given me; and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up." [2 Chronicles 36: 22-23]

Cyrus ordered the temple to be built for the Jews to worship Yahweh, but Persians were appointed as the priests of the temple. These priests were called Pharisees. The Pharisees regulated the worship in the temple and over time they gave Judaism key elements of Zoroastrianism to form important parts of Jewish theology such as, the belief in an evil force that opposes God and the belief in an eternal afterlife.

Certain elements of Jewish tradition holds that King Solomon built the First Temple at Jerusalem for the worship of Yahweh, but no hard evidence [archaeological] exists to prove it. The Second Temple [built by Persians], in the opinion of some scholars, was actually the first temple constructed for the worship of Yahweh. The temple was destroyed in 70 CE by the Romans under Emperor Titus. A portion of that temple stands today in Jerusalem and is known as the 'Wailing Wall'.

Persian influence in Jewish life is obvious by the plain fact that Persian kings such as Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes and others are mentioned many times in the Torah. The Torah/Old Testament even goes so far as to call Cryus the Anointed of the Lord, the Messiah, or the Christ. Cyrus became their king, freed the Jews from exile and built the great temple for Yahweh - certainly a fulfillment of the prophecies for the coming of a Messiah. Only Cyrus was not a Jew, he was a Zoroastrian.

Prior to Zoroastrian influence the Jews believed that the soul, after death, went to a house of dust they called "Sheol," to abide for a brief time before fading completely from existence.

At the time of the Pharisees there existed a parallel group of Jews called Sadducees. The Sadducees [Pagan and Shaman in practice] were members of the older priesthood among Jews. The Sadducees among other things did not like or agree with the Zoroastrian influence, especially the Zoroastrian views of an afterlife.

How it all played out is left to conjecture, but in the end the Sadducees vanished from Jewish society. Under the Zoroastrian influence, however, Judaism received its first book of written law, Torah.

Jews themselves eventually took the position of the Pharisees, particularly after Alexander the Great defeated Persia, but the Torah had already been written by that time.

It is not a farfetched statement when we say that the Zoroastrians gave the Jews their first semblance of civilized [monotheistic] religion, Pharisaic Judaism. Before they exiled to Babylon the Jews were Pagan, worshiping many gods. An account of the temple of Solomon in Ezek 8:10 describes the temple as a place of abominations where all the idols of the house of Israel were on display. In fact the ancient Jews were even known to perform human child sacrifice to the god Moloch [Molech] up until their Babylonian captivity.

The following information is from the Catholic Encyclopedia: "A divinity [Molech] worshipped by the idolatrous Israelites...The passages of the original text [Old Testament] in which the name stands probably for that of a god are Lev., xviii, 21; xx, 2-5; III (A. V. I) Kings, xi, 7; IV (II) Kings, xxiii, 10; Is., xxx, 33; lvii, 9; Jer., xxxii, 35. The chief feature of Moloch's worship among the Jews seems to have been the sacrifice of children, and the usual expression for describing that sacrifice was "to pass through the fire", a rite carried out after the victims had been put to death. The special centre of such atrocities was just outside of Jerusalem, at a place called Tophet (probably "place of abomination"), in the valley of Geennom. According to III (I) Kings, xi, 7, Solomon erected "a temple" for Moloch "on the hill over against Jerusalem", and on this account he is at times considered as the monarch who introduced the impious cult into Israel. After the disruption, traces of Moloch worship appear in both Juda and Israel. The custom of causing one's children to pass through the fire seems to have been general in the Northern Kingdom [IV (II) Kings, xvii, 17; Ezech. xxiii, 37], and it gradually grew in the Southern, encouraged by the royal example of Achaz (2 Kings 16:3) and Manasses [IV (II) Kings, xvi, 6] till it became prevalent in the time of the prophet Jeremias (Jerem. xxxii, 35), when King Josias suppressed the worship of Moloch and defiled Tophet [IV (II) Kings, xxiii, 13 (10)]. It is not improbable that this worship was revived under Joakim and continued until the Babylonian captivity."

A confirmation of the child sacrifices which the ancient Jews performed to the god Moloch, is made by the 12th century rabbi Rashi, commenting on Jeremiah 8:31 [with reference to Jeremiah 32:35].

"Tophet is Moloch, which was made of brass; and they heated him from his lower parts; and his hands being stretched out, and made hot, they put the child between his hands, and it was burnt; when it vehemently cried out; but the priests beat a drum, that the father might not hear the voice of his son, and his heart might not be moved." [Crying or lamenting during the child sacrifices to Moloch was prohibited by law.]

Although the Jew's god Yahweh is mostly seen as a god of good, some scholars have strongly suggested that in early Jewish history Yahweh also demanded the sacrifice of children at his altars. This issue is still debated among scholars and awaits further evidence.

In forthcoming articles we shall look more closely at Paganism in the Bible and also at Zoroastrianism and the numerous theological concepts of Zoroastrianism found it both Christianity and Judaism after the Babylonian period.

But for now it will suffice to conclude that both Christianity and Judaism have incorporated important Zoroastrian elements of theology and monotheism into their scripture.

The Editors