Introduction: Christian Phariseeism

Christian minhags and gezeirah are different in certain ways than their Jewish counterparts, in that Christian minhags and gezeirah do not necessarily govern actions or demonstrable behavior, they govern ideas and belief systems within the various denominations of Christianity. In this way they are more insidious than the usual minhag or gezeirah, although they are established along the same methodology; that is, they become established by custom and usage and therewith become a binding doctrine or mental outlook, or they are derived by a sifting of New Testament passages so that a law not given or commanded is extracted and given equal or near equal weight with any direct command. As such there is no reason not to call them minhags and gezeirah.

   Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, has become a doctrinal quagmire. For every law, or extrapolation thereof, in Judaism governing actions there is probably a doctrine in Christianity conditioning the mental or “spiritual outlook” of the believer. Over time, usage has led to the incarnation of a minhag into formal doctrinal assertion at one of the number of Councils that has taken place, at which canons and creeds are issued or agreed upon. This is frequently associated with Catholicism, the high ritual Christianity that developed as an almost christianizing of the pagan Roman universal religion, the name of which it even kept: Roman Catholicism (catholic means “universal”), but gezeirah and minhags are actually more omnipresent in Protestantism due its control by lay-preachers and frequent Bible talmud, that is, study.  

   Protestantism rebelled against the corruption of medieval and Renaissance Catholicism, in which the church had over centuries become a massive political monarchy trying to hold onto the power and lands of the Roman Empire. During the 780s AD, Pope Adrian was still hamstrung by the Eastern Roman emperor at Constantinople, to whom, by Roman law, he was still nominally subject. A forgery was concocted called the Donation of Constantine that essentially gave the pope all the power he wanted over a central Italian principality, which was Adrian’s aim. In essence, it amounted to ‘when the emperor is no longer around, the pope is in charge,’ and was signed by the first Christian emperor, Constantine, making it irrefutable. In order to legitimize this and cast off the strange iconoclastic Christianity of Constantinople, Pope Leo decided to insulate the West politically. Charlemagne’s rise to power in Europe, his driving-out of the Moorish infidels, and his reclamation and uniting of much of the land of the old Western Roman Empire, finally inspired Pope Leo to crown him Emperor of Rome in 800 AD. As such, Charlemagne would be the Eastern Roman emperor’s equal and be completely in control of the West, according to Roman law begun by Diocletian. The West would once again be independent of the East, in other words.  However, Constantinople refused to recognize Charlemagne as Emperor of Rome, since that would remove the Roman emperor at Constantinople from making any legal claim to universal recognition as THE sole emperor. Also, there was nothing in Roman law that allowed the pope any authority to crown any emperor. The pope was inferior to Caesar, who was “God’s regent of the Earth.”  

   Strapped by wars and incursions into its empire by Islam, there wasn’t much Constantinople could do. They braced themselves and prepared for a civil war, in which they imagined Charlemagne would attack them in order to become sole emperor of Rome again. However, in 812 AD the emperor Michael at Constantinople finally recognized Charlemagne as emperor (though not of Rome), and it appeared the civil war between East and West (the “usurper”), which Constantinople had feared, would never come to pass. When Charlemagne’s empire crumbled with his son, Louis of Aquitaine, the popes were in perfect position to slowly assert authority over the legacy of Charlemagne’s empire, the old Western Roman Empire. The political machine of the popes replacing the emperors was firmly in place, and the massive political power of the church, beginning with its anointing of Charlemagne (by which it could claim it was the king-maker), rose until any form of political dissidence was indistinguishable from spiritual heresy. The crescendo of Roman Imperial Spiritual power was shattered by the Reformation, which broke both its spiritual and political power over much of northern Europe’s peoples and monarchies.

   The Roman Catholic Church and its encompassing hierarchy was not an atmosphere that inspired gezeirah and minhags. Edicts were issued, and the common people were obliged to believe and agree, at least in action. It was with the Protestant Reformation that lay-preachers and teachers sprang up, and a definite Gentile or Christian Phariseeism developed based on adulating the word of God as the sole power instead of the Roman hierarchy. It was an adulation, however, that was many times more of what could be made out of the Bible rather than what it said. The approach of many of the Christian teachers of the developing Protestantism was decidedly talmudic, using the New Testament as compote and extracting and deriving laws by study, in the process forming a massive code of gezeirah and eventually instituting some of the customs that have been derived since the Reformation into minhags. But, once again, unlike the Jewish (and even Roman Catholic) use of scripture, the Protestant minhags and gezeirah— basic Christianity today— were used to govern and influence beliefs rather than actual behavior.

   The Calvinist denominations were by far the most doctrinal and, in many respects, can be considered a solid Christian counterpart to the actual Pharisaic Party. All denominations except Lutheranism were begun by lay teachers whose successors were very much in the mold of the Pharisees. Not only was Bible talmud the method of extracting the will of God, the Calvinists exerted the greatest influence in finally determining which books to regard as the New Testament— in other words, the actual “Word of God.” Like Hillel and the Babylonian contingent of Jews in the late 1st Century, the Calvinist set about to determine which books should be read and which versions by custom and usage should be considered inviolable.

   Bible Talmudism, not the Bible alone, therefore replaced the authoritative Roman church. Several gezeirah were put in place to protect not only the compilation of books of the New Testament but also for the texts most frequently being used. For instance, the Textus Receptus is still the basic New Testament. However, it is based on only 6 incomplete manuscripts which Stephanus had with him at Bale, Switzerland, when, during the Reformation, he began compiling it and translating it. There are some 4,000 Greek manuscripts in existence, and attempts in the last 40 years to correct ambiguous and inaccurate readings in the received text have been condemned as “last days’ apostasy.”

   “Last Days apostasy” is itself a questionable mental minhag that has become essentially binding for a Christian to believe in (See Apocryphal Apocalypticism), derived essentially from Christian talmudism extracting spiritual gezeirah from a few New Testament passages. It has come to be a part of a vast Christian Mishna, or oral law, of outlook.

   One interesting rule, though not a gezeirah since it applies only to seminary students and graduate preachers, is that the hardest and most difficult reading of any New Testament passage in Greek is most likely the original. This logic is hard to follow, essentially because of the illogic of it. It does, however, foster lay dependence on seminary educated teachers, and it does protect the most ambiguous readings and versions from update and clarification, thus making the interpretation of a professional clergy necessary.

   But of all gezeirah, there is none more encompassing than the gezeirah “Guidance of the Spirit.” It is perhaps the greatest common denominator from which all major Christian gezeirah and minhags, whether governing mental outlooks (usually) or behavior and eschatological views, is legitimized. This gezeirah is far encompassing, metaphysical and yet in its application allows Protestant authority or custom to tangibly effect Christianity. “Guidance of the Spirit” presumes that the Holy Spirit of God will guide authority and custom in regards mostly to the protection and compilation of the words of God— i.e. New Testament books. This is fundamental, since almost all Protestant denominations (and their teachers whether formal or lay), extract all minhag and gezeirah from it, and use these to guide the outlook of Christianity, to set doctrine, convict as heretics, and grade levels of apostasy.

     In essence, it is not a gezeirah that is employed to justify the status quo, but one used to justify the base or compote out of which all Christian doctrine can be derived in order to maintain a status quo, plus those customs and usages relating to the New Testament (such as versions ((Textus Receptus, for instance)) that have been long in place. Removing the authority of Rome, Protestantism quickly needed some form of anchor, some form of unassailable authority. The Bible became that, became the pope or king, and the “Guidance of the Spirit” became its “divine right.”

     The logical outcome of such a gezeirah is that the New Testament compilation of books became protected as an Article of Faith, a requirement which the believer in many churches must swear to in order to become a member and partake of the sacraments. He must agree that every word is the inerrant word of God, faithfully compiled and preserved by God’s Holy Spirit. The origin of this as from the Post-Reformation Phariseeism of Christianity is obvious in that this law does not even date as far back as the 15th century. This Article is further bolstered by the piggyback assertion that Phariseeism is teaching direct from the word of God as it was from the beginning of Christianity. (See Canon of the New Testament)

   Yet it is undeniable that the Bible began to be used in a totally different fashion than its use during the early church and the era of Roman dominance. No longer a well of inspiration, the Bible became a massive book of ulterior laws derived by lay-preachers, just like in the Jewish Pharisees’ case, from, in some instances, an expression or word. Even worse, the basic Christian assumed this was always its use, and that this was always the outlook according the Bible. The criticisms of certain books was lost, and even the scathing comments left for some of them by the Reformers themselves.

   It is undeniable that a heavy Phariseeism protects this article of faith. Since, like classical Jewish Phariseeism, Christian Phariseeism does not emanate from authority but is a widely held view amongst every stratum, like a political party, there is little chance of its reformation. It must simply decline as more and more Christians (or potential converts) abandon the “Guidance of the Spirit” approach to Christian talmudism. To a certain extent that is what the West has been seeing in the last 40 years of social and religious change.

   The effects of this change have been cut as from a two-edge sword, one side cutting out the authority of the heretical (though dominant) 17th century Phariseeism, and the other edge, wielded by the forehand slice, cutting out the actual laws of God so that entire churches can essentially institute their own “free-living” doctrines justifying fornication, adultery, easy divorce, etc. This could never have been done had the New Testament not been placed as independent and superior to the Scriptures or “Old Testament” as Christians call it. Herein is the lack of the original Jewish base in Christianity felt so seriously, since nothing in the Torah or Prophets was done away with by any Apostolic teaching, as Acts 21 testifies, not done away with for Jews or Gentiles. However, having separated them long ago, the fundamentalists are now watching a “liberal” element approaching the NT with the ambiguity of its own Pharisaic method, using new elastic interpretations to make NT passages endorse or allow homosexuality, Pentecostalism, Gnosticism, and scores of new outlooks that do break the laws of God.

   The cutting edge of this attack on the “inerrancy” of the Bible as the infallible word of God thus finds an unwitting ally in the anti-Biblical method by which Christian Phariseeism instituted the Canon of the New Testament in the first place, instituting books that were questionable and long held in dispute, and ignoring the Scriptural requirements set forth to determine the words of God in the first place.

   Challenges to the New Testament’s inerrancy have been squarely won at certain points, thus undermining many people’s faith, which, unfortunately, was in the Bible, as presently compiled, and in their firm belief, as proffered by Phariseeism, that this was always the Bible. For example, the Gospel of John chapter 7:53 -8:11, the story of a woman taken in adultery being brought before Jesus: the entire incident as it exists today has been squarely exposed as being completely impossible by Jewish law, and therefore there has been excessive crowing by those who seek to undermine Christianity that they have found error. However, the passage was well-known to have been apocryphal, and the issue was settled almost 500 years ago by the Council of Trent. Sixtus Senensis, when rending the majority opinion of the Council, reserved certain books and passages in a deutero-canonical status, including this passage.

   In its present form, the story of a woman taken in sin originated with Papias, who was Bishop of Hierapolis, around the turn of the 1st to 2nd centuries. It was found in his Expositions on the Sayings of the Lord, a five volume work containing the traditions and oral testimony that he had a fondness for collecting. Christian apologists for the first 400 years of Christianity make reference to the story and always attributed it to Papias. “From Papias comes the story of a woman taken in sin.” It was not until the 5th century that the story was placed into the Gospel of John where it now remains, possibly because of the legend that Papias was the principle student of John the Apostle at Ephesus. (A version of this story, probably the correct one, was said to exist in the Hebrew Gospel used by the Nazarenes.)

   The entire controversy was settled near 500 years ago when the Council and the Reformers clearly dog-eared the passage as contested. Deutero-canonical status was the status for books that were to be used for private study and inspiration; but no doctrine was to be based on them, and they were not to be read in the churches.

   This was clearly ignored within less than a century after the Reformation by the growing body of Phariseeism, with its base in the lay teachers that came up after the Reformation. Already by the late 17th century, there were yeshivas in place that had been teaching and conditioning new generations of preachers in the Textus Receptus of Stephanus. The deutero-canonical status of the passage was doubtless forgotten; and with the developing gezeirah of the “Guidance of the Spirit,” how could it possibly be challenged and removed? Even today when one Calvinist was confronted about the facts concerning that passage, and even confronted with citing the Reformation knowledge of its apocryphal origin, the reaction was “Well, God had a purpose that it should be there.”

   And such is the attitude that is required by the gezeirah “Guidance of the Spirit.”  The “Guidance of the Spirit” gezeirah is almost an exact carbon copy of the classical Jewish Pharisaical view of “the gift sanctifies the altar,” a view which Christ derided the Pharisees for endorsing. God’s Holy Spirit has been used to sanction the acts and extrapolations of a Christian Phariseeism after-the-fact. This, of course, is made possible by the impression that the Bible is a massive book of ulterior laws to be extracted by study, and that those who study and extrapolate therefrom are working with the inerrant word of God, because this is what has been compiled. Therefore in some Gnostic fashion, God is behind it all. “Guidance of the Spirit” is a ludicrous gezeirah, essentially heretical, that allows the mistake of a clerk 500 years ago, or the presumption of others 1000 years before that, to attain the status as the “word of God.” This is one major reason why Phariseeism has led to part of the falling away that it so denounces as a sign of the growing apostasy of the world: its entire teaching was based on making an idol out of the Bible rather than following its plain principles. God does not sanction what man does based on man’s usage or preference for it.

   That the “gift sanctifies the altar” was the method by which NT books were compiled (rather than the biblical method)  is underscored by the fact the entire Gospel of John was disputed for over its first hundred years of existence. Early-on, it was used almost exclusively by Gnostic heretics. The presbyter Gaius condemned the book as having been written by a Gnostic heretic named Cerinthus, and rejected it completely. The book’s origin as from Ephesus, where Cerinthus was based, made many wary. The church at Rome was even so reticent to use a book that was used by Gnostics that the presbyter Hippolytus has to argue for its inclusion in the books used at Rome. The Gospel of John did not become such a sacred writing except by usage and personal preference in later generations who knew not of its dubious origin. And it is this which eventually made it the “word of God”— usage and preference. The gift sanctifies the altar. No contemporaneous imputation of these presbyters’ characters, or the many Christians who agreed with them, was made because there was no article of faith declaring John’s sanctity— and it most certainly was not the standard to judge righteousness or salvation based upon what books you agreed with.

   But after the 17th century there is. Therefore does God now indeed look upon someone in such a light? Has God’s standard changed because man’s outlook and authority has a different attitude? In other words, was it all right for Gaius and others to question it because there was no article of faith, but now it is heresy to do so because usage has made the book divine? Obviously not. God is not given form by man. Was it the “guidance of the spirit” that for 400-500 years “the woman taken in sin” story was not canon, then became canon, was marked as deutero-canon, forgotten to be deutero-canon, became canon again, and now is revealed to have come from an Asia minor presbyter’s 2nd century book? That’s what’s happened. But who has asked about “What is true?” It has been found to not be accurate, and therefore is not true. Yet those who have actually sought truth and accuracy are being condemned because they have challenged the post Reformation idol: the Bible as it is currently compiled. The Reformers didn’t sin by noting it; nor did the Council of Trent when pointing out its dubious origin and cautioning people. 

   But “Guidance of the Spirit” has been used as a cloak for the attitudes of consensus.  If fads and fashion and majority impressions reflect divine influence,  no one adhering to the gezeirah in question could also ever explain how the Spirit of God did not guide all those centuries of Christianity when different texts of the New Testament were used and, indeed, the centuries and centuries in which the Greek Septuagint was the standard Christian old testament, a text which is vastly different than the Masoretic (and still the Bible of Greek Orthodox). Nor could they explain away the 1000 years the church sat on all the books and would not allow the laity to have them. The “guidance of the spirit” really has been employed in an heretical way to protect the base of a movement and religious party, one that for the Protestants dates to after the Reformation and no earlier.

   Christian Phariseeism simply cannot understand that God’s will is found expressed in his laws and by his prophets, not in  what simply becomes the dominant attitudes of a time. For hundreds of years Christian Phariseeism’s attitude has dominated until the 20th century began to see a dissolution of their practices and outlooks. Unfortunately, this was considered Christianity, and therefore a dissolution has not led to a reformation in Christianity but to a rejection of it, or to such a free thinking adaptable Christianity that even basic moral laws are no longer in effect. 

     Rejection of the “Guidance of the Spirit” as it is proffered today, however, would actually lead to a reestablishment of Biblical methods for determining the word of God. The loose living of today therefore has no excuse. People wanted to live this way, and they have used the errors of previous generations to their advantage, in that now they can claim that the Bible is not inerrant and we can live the way we want. Surely, there has been no guidance of the Spirit either way: both Phariseeism and liberalism approached the Bible and NT with their own agendas, and by the method of the “gift sanctifies the altar” had it justify what they wanted. Neither the traditions of men or the lusts of the time can hide behind an invocation of God’s spirit.    

   Unfortunately, for Phariseeism, it has been at the mercy of its own method of extrapolation of the New Testament, and the decrees and gezeirahs it has set forth to protect its base. Now that error is being found, liberals sweepingly denounce everything as questionable or as only interpretation.

     Phariseeism has had no other choice but to retrench and view these changes as signs of a last days apostasy that they are sure is soon to come before the Parousia (second coming) of Jesus Christ, an apocalypticism and falling away which is dubious at best, based on books they alone canonized without reservations. (See Apocryphal Apocalypticism, Irrelevant Revelation) Yet Christian Phariseeism has directly led to some of the “falling away” from the faith based on their illegitimate method of talmudism extracting unjustified gezeirah and minhags, all sanctioned by the “Guidance of the Spirit” heresy. Together, both have essentially undermined the words of God by preventing Christianity from exorcising from the Canon contested and objectionable material, material either known to have been non-apostolic by the early church, or seriously questioned and rejected by later generations of teachers and Reformers for very sound reasons. This alone has prevented the church from returning to its original base before the corruption of political Catholicism and post-Reformation Phariseeism.

   Both the liberal and conservative elements would be shocked to discover that the Apostles only held the Hebrew writings to be authoritative for doctrine, and no Reformer ever challenged the Scriptures. But the Canon of the New Testament was a largely contested subject even through the Reformation (no Reformer actually endorsed the same compilation of books in use today), and it was never an Article of Faith until the infamous Council of Trent issued its edicts in 1546. This was later repeated by the Calvinist confessions in the 17th century which therewith fostered the birth of Christian Phariseeism and the “Guidance of the Spirit” gezeirah.

     It seems the Spirit of God does indeed work separately from the traditions of man. The early church expanded neither having all the books nor accepting all that they had. The Reformers ushered in a new age and they too objected to several books. Indeed, God’s Holy Spirit does guide, but he is not given form by mankind’s consensus. The Scriptures condemn alternately many of the fundamentalist gezeirah, their method, and outright forbid much of liberalism’s free living. And, surprisingly, the NT upholds the Scriptures. . . .if you keep the Scriptures as the base and do not separate the NT from the “Old” and make it all subject to Phariseeism’s method.  

   Instead of attacking church hierarchy, as in the last reformation, the totem being assaulted today is the Bible, the pope of the post-Reformation Phariseeism, when the attack should be on the attitude behind its interpretation and compilation. As already stated, the largely Pharisaical Christian traditionalists have more or less invited the attack and upheavals in Christianity because they themselves compiled their books contrary to the requirements of Scripture, relying instead on recent historical usage from largely an ignorant lay-teacher presumption of the 17th century Christian Bible talmudists.

   This talmudism has led to worse than a miscompilation, for the specific fact that it is not the books which contain any dangerous outlooks per say, but it is the manner in which they are talmudicly interpreted so that basic statements and expressions can be made into doctrines. 

   An Example: In the early 1600s the Puritans, a Calvinist denomination, concocted the idea through Bible talmudism that Sunday was the Sabbath Day and that it should be kept like the “Old Testament” or Jewish Sabbath. This became so stifling in New England (since the first Americans were Calvinists) that by the time of the Revolution there were actually patrolmen in Boston peeping in windows to make sure nobody was violating the Sabbath. This was meaner than the Jewish Pharisees of Christ’s time ever hoped to be.

   Despite Christian Phariseeism’s elaborate gezeirahs and minhags, church sermons are still only based on the “Bible only.” As such they continue to labor under the formula of 2000 years ago, viewing themselves as representing grace and truth contrasted with the Jewish Pharisees of Christ’s time representing restrictive laws, including the terrible “gift sanctifies the altar,” which they actually practice to a much more odious degree than the Pharisees of the New Testament. To the fundamentalist Christian, Pharisee actually implies the close-minded, self-righteous, works oriented legalist; when, in reality, it was actually a religious political party that used the methodology of extracting laws by talmudism. As such, traditionalists or fundamentalists are virtually indistinguishable from the New Testament Pharisees they abhor.

   The sermons should continue to be based on scripture, but the Pharisees of today should be allowed to see themselves in context. That was the purpose of writing down Christ’s words against such attitudes that contingents of Judaism held. The traditionalists remain stuck in an old formula, not realizing they are the ones which Christ is now railing against.

     Escalating studies of early Christianity are revealing that some of the tenets and creeds embraced by the church as foundational are not. They reflect rather a reaction or christianizing of concepts that heretical movements made popular. Examples include Trinity and apocalypticism. 

   The best approach to settling the New Testament issue is through the Scripture. Approaching it carefully through God’s word will guide every believer to what is God’s word, and it will open up the books as God meant them to be used. See Reformation)

   The errors and the ludicrous elements of Christianity that are causing the assault today should actually be causing its reformation, not its destruction. But this reformation can only come from where Christianity itself came, a place where no gezeirah can lead it or minhag justify its departure. The un-likelihood  of a Gentile inspire reformation is obvious, one that would be prevented by the Phariseeism on one opposite (which believes it cannot possibly need reforming) and the extreme liberalism on the other that merely changes with the times, just like Jewry was incapable of completely reforming 2000 years ago. The self-assurance that one is righteous obviously always prevents change. 

   The only reform that can be made will remain centric to Judaism. This is being written here not to upset people’s faith, but to impress upon the Jew that Gentilizing is not Christianity, lest the Jews stumble and think that believing the Messiah has indeed come requires that he take up hundreds of years of corruption of the same kind of legal approach that brought the apocalypse upon Israel in 70 AD, and kept it in spiritual chains until now.

   The religion of Almighty God is not to be diddled with as if it were a secret lodge or the Elk’s Club, with members and leadership revising it at will. We are not the gypsy Jews here, some wandering ethnic group making up and believing in their own customs just in order to have an identity and standout. God is everything. He is our people, our heritage, our country, our family, our race, our religion. Man may not form him or adjust his ways. For too long Judaism has been treated as if it were just an ethnic group with lackeys, members, leaders, and adherents. And for 2000 years Jews have been persecuted, scattered, slaughtered and massacred. The “Culture Jews” continued to read the prophets and none of them figured it out. For our great sins were were destroyed by Babylon and left in desolation without the temple for 70 years. Now it has been 1935 years since the second destruction . . .but Israel has not considered what caused this. The “culture” Jews or “gypsy Jew” element proliferated and many Jews act as if God is just an ethnic identity to be cherished like any other custom. No sin and punishment involved. These are our stories and philosophies. Nothing more.

   Too many Jews are getting spiritual again. To confront Scripture and to believe in the God of those Hebrew utterances causes one to confront that God would indeed visit his people as “that prophet” and this is none other than Christ. A New Covenant would come. We were told to expect that the nations would hear the messenger of this covenant. Those who did not hear “that prophet” would be subject to God’s vengeance. To understand this reveals that too many idiots have been leading Judaism as if it were only a club, and that none can explain history for 2000 years. It is also time for Christianity to admit it has not been a beacon of the New Covenant but that it has corrupted it to the extent Jews can’t recognize it. It is, however, obvious, that both Christianity and Judaism have to reform to a central point from which each erred; and the Scriptures are plain about what that point is. The result is unavoidable: Reformation.