……. Baptized Paganism (syncretism)
Before I go any further, let me be clear about My stance on
the Jewish Seder. For that matter, all attempts to wash pagan rituals clean
and incorporate them into the worship of Yahuah; which I call “baptized
paganism” known as syncretism.
Syncretism (definition): is the combining
of different (often contradictory) beliefs, often while melding practices of
various schools of thought. Syncretism may involve the merger and analogizing
of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and Mythology
of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive
approach to other faiths.
The man-made traditions and “baptized pagan” rituals (where
we take a pagan ritual and simply say it is clean because we apply it to our
religion) we religiously follow each year (that for thousands of years)
has led us nowhere! We still do not understand the spiritual meaning
behind Passover! These empty rituals are just that… “empty” of any spiritual
application in The Kingdom of Yahuah. Why would we follow Jewish traditions
that have left them blind to the true Messiah? Why would we follow Christian
traditions that have led them down the path of following the False Messiah and keeping
a Babylonian ritual Easter? Everything “established religion” does today is in
the context of Hellenism through syncretism or …
Baptized Paganism.
Hellenization - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The twentieth century witnessed a lively
debate over the extent of Hellenization in the Levant and
particularly among
the ancient Palestinian Jews that has continued until today.
The Judaism
of the diaspora was thought to have succumbed thoroughly to its influences.
Bultmann thus argued that Christianity arose almost completely within
those Hellenistic confines and should be read against that background as
opposed to a more traditional (Palestinian) Jewish background
What few people realize is exactly “what” that means.
Hellenization is the process by which a culture, people, nation, religion, etc.
adopts the religion of the Greek Gods known as Hellenism:
Hellenistic religion -
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hellenistic religion is any of the various
systems of beliefs and practices of the people who lived under the influence of
ancient Greek culture during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire (c.
300 BCE to 300 CE).
There was much continuity in
Hellenistic religion: the Greek gods continued to be worshipped, and the same
rites were practiced as before.
This book is
not going to be a “Christianized”
version of the Jewish Seder, which was taken from the Roman symposium in the
context of Hellenism. This book is not going to be a spiritual
explanation of the Jewish Seder. In fact, the Jewish Seder has absolutely
nothing to do with this book nor is it the appropriate way to celebrate the
Spring Festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread. Jews have been keeping
Passover using this “order” (which is what the word “Seder” means) for 2,000
years and are no closer to being “taught” the truth of the Messiah. The
reason is because The Seder is not anywhere to be found in Scripture, and does
not express the true meaning of Passover. The Seder does not express the role
of the Messiah in fulfilling it or our roles as the Bride in the rehearsal. It
is paganism.
The Seder was
not kept by Yahusha nor any of the
“Jews” in the second temple period, it came about
after the
destruction of the second temple in AD 70. The Jews needed a way to celebrate
Passover and since there was no longer a physical Temple (and they didn’t
understand the spiritual temple) they gave us “The Seder”. The Jewish Seder is
a human tradition. Like all human traditions, it simply clouds our
understanding of spiritual things and keeps us in the dark, putting out the “light”
of his word. Yahusha could not make his warning on this any clearer:
Matthew 15:6
Thus you nullify the word of Yahuah for the
sake of your tradition.
Mark 7:13
Thus you nullify the word of Yahuah by your tradition
that you have handed down. And you do many things like that.
In fact, the Jewish Seder is nothing more than a “baptized
pagan ritual” adopted from their Roman captors! Such is the inevitable result
of “human traditions”. The Hellenized Jewish sages over the years simply took
the Roman symposium and “changed the content” and made it “Jewish”.
In
other words, the Seder is syncretism at its finest. I am not going to
belabor this fact, I just want to establish this fact about the Jewish Seder,
so we can move forward in our understanding and leave this pagan ritual turned
Jewish ritual where it belongs… in the trash bend of history!
Taken from
Judaism.about.com by Rabbi Professor David
Golinkin:
“There is no question that the
Seder, which is celebrated on the first night of Pesah or on the first two
nights in the Diaspora – is the central ritual of the holiday of Passover. But
what is the origin of the Seder and the Haggadah?
The Torah instructs us to slaughter the Korban Pesah, the paschal lamb, to eat
it with matzot and marror, and to sprinkle some blood on the lintel and the two
doorposts (Exodus 12:22 ff.) It also instructs the father to teach his son
about the Exodus on Pesah (Exodus 12:26; 13:6, 14; Deut. 6:12 and cf. Exodus
10:2). (1) These mitzvoth (commands in The Torah), however, are a far cry from
the many rituals which we do at the Seder and from the literary forms which we
recite in the Haggadah.
Furthermore, the Seder and the Haggadah are also missing from the second temple
period descriptions of Pesah (so Yahusha did not keep The Jewish Seder),
including a papyrus from Elephantine (419 B.C.E.), the book of Jubilees (late
second century B.C.E.), Philo (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.), and Josephus. (2)
They (The Jewish Seder and the Haggadah) are first mentioned in the Mishnah and
Tosefta (Pesahim Chapter 10) which scholars date to either shortly before or
shortly after the destruction of the second temple in 70 C.E. (3) What is the
source of the elaborate rituals and literary forms of the Seder and Haggadah?
In the first half of the twentieth century, Lewy, Baneth, Krauss, and
Goldschmidt drew attention to the fact that the forms of the Seder are based on
Graeco-Roman table manners and dietary habits. But the most detailed evidence
of this borrowing (syncretism) was provided in 1957 when Siegfried Stein
published “The Influence of Symposia Literature on the Literary Form of the
Pesah Haggadah” in The Journal of Jewish Studies.(4) Since then, Stein’s basic
thesis has been adopted with variations by various scholars who have written
about the origins of the Seder. (5) Stein proved in a very convincing fashion
that many of the Seder rituals and literary forms found in Mishnah and Tosefta
Pesahim and in the Haggadah were borrowed from the Roman Hellenistic banquet or
symposium.”
http://judaism.about.com/od/passover/a/seder_golinkin.htm
So, we are going to move on from the pagan traditions of men
(The Jewish Seder), and press on to maturity… the spiritual truth of Passover
and how to truly keep its intent.
