HOME   october 18, 2020  RAV SHAUL


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Chapter 15

The Jewish Seder – Baptized Paganism

The Jewish Seder

……. 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.

 

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