ROMAN CHRISTENDOM: Destruction of the Temple

A harmless but misguided individual calling himself "Anders" has written to this site surreptitiously seeking to get me to advertise his fanatical anti-Christian website which claims that the "Nazarite" sect and its leader, Ribi Yehosuah (guess who that is folks!), were really only another Judaic sect and those who "pretend" that he started a new sect are going to Hell with their apostate errors.

Nice, try, Anders but - as per usual for your type of false and black propaganda - you advance no arguments or sources other than those that agree with you because they already belong to your peculiar school of thinking.

It is the good old "you are wrong because I say you are" school of pseudo-philosophy.

Let me ask you a question, my dear fanatical friend. If you are right then please tell me:

Where are your sacrifices?

Where are your priests?

Where is your Temple in which to carry out those sacrifices?

Why are you not following the Torah and causing your priests to make the sacrifices in the Temple that the Torah orders you to make?

The answer is this: since the destruction of the Temple by Titus in 70AD there have been no sacrifices in the Jewish religion, Rabbinic Judaism has taken over and the Jewish priesthood has ceased to function.

Destruction of the Temple in 70 AD during the invasion by pagan Roman general Titus Flavius Vespasianus, later Emperor Titus. In fact, it was the Jewish defenders who themselves set light to parts of the Temple Wall, thinking to assist its defence, but then they attacked the Roman soldiers who were putting the fires out on Titus's orders. The fires therefore caught and spread so that the irnoiuc reuslt was that the Temple was actually fired by Jewish hands [Josephus. De Bello Judaeico. vi. 4]

For Christianity, this is because we believe that the Moshiach (Messiah) had come to bring in the New Law.

For Christians it is blasphemy to deny it. For observant Jews it is blasphemy to assert it.

However, for Charedic Jews the destruction of the Temple was a punishment for sin and it is yet further sin to set up a Jewish State before the Moshiach comes.

However, Charedic Jews, unlike some Zionists, want to live in peace with their neighbours, whether Jew, Christian or Moslem and despite the obvious and mutually exclusive differences in faith. That is a most noble aim.

We of the New Law want to do the same. We do not hate Judaism - still less the Jews. Witness the charity of recent popes to Jews and the heroic saving of hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives by Catholics in the Second World War during the Shoah.

Pope John Paul II is greeted by Elio Toaff, Chief Rabbi of Rome, outside the Roman Synagogue

Which city in Europe never once expelled Jews, even when some fanatics amongst them attacked the Christian host community?

The answer is: the Rome of the popes.

True fact!

The popes never expelled Jews from Rome. Ever.

On the other hand, it is a characteristic of fanatics that they are fanatically intolerant of others even when those others wish them no harm but only good. But these tend not to be genuinely religious people but rather those who try to harness religion to serve an earthly political purpose like the IRA, the Arab Ba'athists and the secular Zionists. These people are almost entirely unbelievers, apostates or heterodox, who use religion as a cloak, and distort it, to achieve their revolutionary political aims.

Having said that, it must be honestly admitted that there have been Christian fanatics in the past who have behaved badly to their Jewish minorities, even when innocent of any crime. I would, however, question just how Christian such people really were. Persecuting the innocent is a grave sin and against Christian doctrine.

Falashas: the ancient Ethiopian Jews

But now, sadly, the State of Israel is doing the same to its minority Christians and Muslims.

But even more does it persecute those Jews who are not Zionist like the Charedim.

The Charedim believe that there can be no State of Israel until the Moshiach comes and so they consider the State of Israel to be a blasphemy.

Hear this testimony from Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of the anti-Zionist Jewish movement Neturei Karta International.

Charedic Jews praying

Listen as pro-Zionist Cavuto of Fox news tries to shout him down, telling him to "answer the question" whilst not giving him a chance to do so. Watch how the bully Cavuto claims to be protecting Jews whilst saying he is against diplomatic dialogue and insults Rabbi Weiss with talk of his relatives being turned into "bars of soap" and falsely accusing him of holocaust-denial and wanting the atomic bombing of Israel simply because he dared to go on a peace mission to President Ahmedinajad of Iran.

It's a pretty disgusting performance by Fox but not surprising given the large amounts of conservative Jewish and Christian Zionist money which goes to Fox. However, Cavuto's views are also representative of opinion in particular sectors of American and British society:

This Charedic rabbi is genuinely interested in peace and co-existence in Palestine but, as can be seen, bigotry will not allow him to speak. And the bully pretends that it is to do with "time constraints" in television.

Well, it's a point of view!

Jewish music from the time of Temple worship was the immediate basis of Christian worship and it is from that source that we get our chant, later codified by Pope St Gregory the Great and thus called Gregorian chant.

Here is a somewhat schmaltzy but nevertheless wonderful old recording of Leibele Waldman singing the great hymn Kol Nidrei sung on the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Judaism's most solemn annual day. Notice how orthodox Jews traditionally sway when they pray and the men cover their heads. Notice also, amidst the books, bells and candles, the horn that must be blown at the beginning of Yom Kippur.

Waldman was one of the great Jewish Cantors. Another was Yosselle Rosenblatt.

One of my favourite prayers is Sh'ma Yisroel but I could not find a Youtube version of it that wasn't ridiculously and excessively ultra-Zionist to the point of showing tanks, guns and artillery in virtually every scene.

Sh'ma Yisroel (שמע ישאל‎ר) - that is, "Hear, O Israel" - is central to the morning and evening prayers of Jews. It is taken from Deuteronomy 6:4 which reads thus:

"4 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. 5 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength".

The Sh'ma is the most important prayer in Judaism, and it is a mitzvah (religious commandment) to recite or sing it twice daily. It is also a pray said by the dying.

The prayer comprises Deuteronomy 6:4–9, 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37–41 contained in this Torah prayers said regularly: VaEtchannan, Eikev, and Shlach.

The whole of the passage from Deuteronomy ought to be read regularly by Catholics, too, to remind us of our sacred duty to uphold the traditions that God has given to us and not to go hankering after novelties such as now predominate in so many parts of the Church in flat disobedience of God's law.

"4 HEAR, O ISRAEL, THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD. 5 Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength.

6 And these words which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart: 7 And thou shalt tell them to thy children, and thou shalt meditate upon them sitting in thy house, and walking on thy journey, sleeping and rising. 8 And thou shalt bind them as a sign on thy hand, and they shall be and shall move between thy eyes. 9 And thou shalt write them in the entry, and on the doors of thy house. 10 And when the Lord thy God shall have brought thee into the land, for which he swore to thy fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: and shall have given thee great and goodly cities, which thou didst not build,

11 Houses full of riches, which thou didst not set up, cisterns which thou didst not dig, vineyards and oliveyards, which thou didst not plant, 12 And thou shalt have eaten and be full: 13 Take heed diligently lest thou forget the Lord, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and shalt serve him only, and thou shalt swear by his name. 14 You shall not go after the strange gods of all the nations, that are round about you: 15 Because the Lord thy God is a jealous God in the midst of thee: lest at any time the wrath of the Lord thy God be kindled against thee, and take thee away from the face of the earth.

16 Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, as thou temptedst him in the place of temptation. 17 Keep the precepts of the Lord thy God, and the testimonies and ceremonies which he hath commanded thee. 18 And do that which is pleasing and good in the sight of the Lord, that it may be well with thee: and going in thou mayst possess the goodly land, concerning which the Lord swore to thy fathers, 19 That he would destroy all thy enemies before thee, as he hath spoken. 20 And when thy son shall ask thee tomorrow, saying: What mean these testimonies, and ceremonies and judgments, which the Lord our God hath commanded us? "

The Jewish Queen, Mother and Virgin who is now our most Blessed Queen, Mother and Virgin

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I have been asked what is the value of the gifts of the 3 Kings.

Their monetary value is of little significance although we know that they were "costly".

Were they sold or used? We do not know for certain.

In those days, the Jews were allowed, by concession only due to their avarice according to Moses, to "fenerate" (i.e. lend at interest) to non-Jews since the prohibition was, they said, only against fenerating to one's brethren.

Christianity said that all men are brothers and so we may not fenerate to any man.

According to the visions of Blessed Anna Catherine Emmerich, recently beatified by Pope John Paul II in 2004, the gifts were costly and were taken from the cave at Bethlehem by the family of the Blessed Virgin under the supervision of St Anne, the mother of the Virgin.

They were taken back to Nazareth and kept there until the Holy Family returned from Egypt.

There is a tradition that the Myrrh was carefully preserved against the day of our Lord's entombment when the women disciples recovered it from the Blessed Virgin to anoint the body of Christ.

The real significance of the gifts is that they represent the 3 aspects of our Lord's ministry and the 3 roles of a Christian, in imitation, namely:

(1) Gold - for a king;

(2) Incense - for a priest;

(3) Myrrh - for a holy death, the symbol of the prophetic role.

These are our 3 roles, Kingly, Priestly and Prophetic of which the Prophetic is the greatest since Joseph, the son of Jacob/Israel, received the double portion that would normally go to the eldest son, Reuben, who was disinherited, even though Jacob was the youngest son. See Gen 49 and the blessing by Israel of his sons and the apportionment of their inheritance.

The next 2 sons, after Reuben and Simeon, were Levi and Judah and they fulfilled the priestly and kingly roles respectively.

The sons of Levi, despite being deprived by Jacob of their inheritance because of Levi's savagery against the Sichemites, were to be the clergy of Israel.

The sons of Judah were the royal princes of Israel.

They retained the royal sceptre until the coming of Christ, according to Jacob's prophecy written at Gen 49:10 thus:

"The sceptre shall not be taken from Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh, until He come that is to be sent, and He shall be the expectation of the nations."

This is yet another proof that the Messias has come since the sceptre was, indeed, taken from Judah and from the whole of Israel shortly before the birth of Christ when Pompey the Great took Jerusalem, subdued the Jews, profaned the Temple and Holy of Holies and abducted Aristobulus the High Priest.

Thereafter Cassius despoiled the Temple and further subdued the Jews.

At this time the Jews are the Church since the Messias is yet to come. After He comes, He teaches His people the fulfulment of the Law and the Prophets, namely Catholic Christianity which is, for all time, the true religion of God, of His prophets, priests and kings, as taught by His son, Yeshua, the Aramiac word for "Saviour" or "Salvation" which was rendered into Greek as Iesous, and in Latin as Jesus. It is the same name as Joshua.

The name Jesus Christ means "Anointed Saviour" and the word "Messias" or "Messiah" from the Hebrew/Aramaic Mashiach means "the Anointed of the Lord".

Thus the Messias or Messiah and Jesus Christ are one and the same person, namely God, Adonai, Elohim, the 2nd Person of the Holy Trinity and the Saviour of the Jews, of the Gentiles and of the world and all mankind.

To modern Jews, of course, this is blasphemy but to Christians it is the sacred truth. Nevertheless, although we strongly disagree with the modern Jews on this central point, we should continue to respect them and their traditions to the extent that they are a reminder to us of the ancient traditions upon which the true Church of God is built, that is, the Law and Prophets of the Old Testament and all the great prophecies of the coming of the Messias.

After the death and Resurrection of our Lord, Jerusalem was sacked and the Temple destroyed utterly by the Roman Emperor and Caesar Augustus, Titus Flavius Vespasianus, known to history as Titus, the son of the Emperor Vespasian.

Francesco Hayez. Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. 1867.

Israel blessed his youngest son with the double portion that is normally given only to the eldest son. Joseph was the specially chosen, the type of the Prophets and of the blessed, though he was the youngest.

God inspired Israel so to act in order to show that the Prophetic role is the greatest role, greater than the Kingly or the Priestly because it is the role of teacher by example which pleases God the best.

This should provide an antidote to the pride of kings and priests who, through history, constantly challenge each other's superiority when they should both bow low before the exemplars of the greatest of the roles, namely the Prophetic role.

The greatest exemplar of the Prophetic role is the Blessed Virgin Mary, the very greatest of the seed of Adam, of the daughters of Israel and Jerusalem and the Queen of all the Prophets, Priests and Kings.

The Blessed Virgin Mary, the greatest of all the daughters of Israel and the Queen of all Prophets

All Christians are called to all 3 roles but especially the Prophetic role.

As Kings (and Queens) we rule in our homes and in any position of authority, paternal or maternal especially, to which we are called.

As Priests we are called to pray and to sacrifice.

As Prophets we are called to witness to the Faith, to make ourselves and others holy by our example and good counsel.

The blessing of Israel upon Joseph is itself highly prophetic (Gen 49:26):

"The blessings of thy father are strengthened with the blessings of his fathers, until the desire of the everlasting hills should come; may they be upon the head of Joseph, and upon the crown of the Nazarite among his brethren"

It would take another whole post just to unpack this verse alone!

The successor of the last of the Kings of Judah was, in fact, St Joseph, the foster-father of our Lord. He, too, succeeds to the double blessing of his namesake, Joseph, the son of Israel, and it is his privilege and duty to guard and nurture that "Desire of the everlasting hills" of which Israel speaks, namely the Messias Himself, Jesus Christ. Thus our Lord is, in material historical fact, as well as spiritually, King of Israel, Judah and the Jews.

He is really and truly the "King of the Jews".

These are but some of the many meanings associated with the gifts of the Magi.

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