Yeshu: the Lamb of Baal
and the essence of paganism
‘At the next day, Yochanan saw Yeshu coming to him, and he said: Behold the Lamb of g-d which takes away the sin of the world’.
-Gospel of John 1:29
1. Introduction.
Recently, I argued with a person of “messianic” faith (hebraized evangelical christianism) who told me that as a Jew I had to believe in Yeshu ben-Pandira because he was slain for our sins and because he was the Lamb of G-d, then referred to me that Yeshu was akin to the Matzah (unleavened bread) consumed during Passover, and that was my "salvation". Unfortunately this person does not know the Semitic background of the word Sheh (שה-lamb or goat) in the context of Avodat HaBa'al (עבודת בעל Ba'al-Worship), which illustrate the background of such pagan designation he was associated with a deity, as in the case of the “New Testament."
2. India: the bull god.
The ancient deities in India have one of these: Indra, compared constantly to a bull or lamb. [1]
3. Iran: the ram of god.
In Iran, they had a copy of Indra, called Verethragna, who used to appear to Zarathustra in the form of a bull, ram, lamb and even like wild boar (Yasht, XIV, P. 7-25), “others symbols of the male spirit and the elemental powers of the blood”.[2] Sometimes, Indra was called also “Lamb” (Mesha; cfr. R. V, i, 51,1). Those same animal epiphanies are found in Rudra, the pre-arian divinity that India assimilated; Rudra is the father of the mammoths and an ancient hymn remembers him (R.V., II, 34:2) like:
“Rudra the bull created them on the clear cloud of Prishni”
Under his taurine form, that divinity made an unity with the goddess cow under cosmic proportions. Prishni is one of his names.
4. The Bull, the Lamb and the Thunder.
The bull and the thunder were conjugated symbols since ancient times (2400 BCE) in union with weather deities [3]. The roar of the bull and the thunder were an epiphany of the fertilizing force. That is why we constantly find them in the iconography, rituals and myths of the weather gods of Africa, Asia and ancient Europe. In pre-arian India the bull was present in prehistoric sites of Mohenjo-Daro cults and Baluchistan. In paleo-oriental cultures, "power" was primarily symbolized by the bull, in Acadian, "break the horn" amounted to "break the power". The god was also represented as Harinna, a sacred animal in the form of a bull.
Later, Sumerians and Babylonians developed a type of trinity: Enlil, Bel and Ningala. The first one was the god of the water and he was who provoke the universal flood.[4] Bel was symbolized as a mighty warrior [5] and his wife, Ningala, “the huge cow”, ummun rebetum, “the great mother” was invoked by the name of Beltu or Belit, meaning “Madame”.[6]
5. Baal, the bull god.
Tel-Khafaje in one of the most known pagan sanctuaries because inside there was an image of a bull and the “mother goddess”[7]. The god Il, who occupied a high place in the paleo-phoenician pantheon, was called “Shor” (bull) and also “Compassionate Bull” [8]P, but this god was supplanted in ancient times by Baal (בעל) “Master or Lord”, according to Dussaund, Baal was the image of the idol Hadad[9]. Baal-Hadad make his voice listened in the thunders. The ancient phoenicians compared Hadad to a Bull; the newly discovered texts says: “the strength of Baal, with his horns, hurt Mot, like wild bulls” [10] and in the myth known as “The House os Baal”, the death of Baal is compared like the death of a bull: “That’s like Baal fell, like a Bull”.
There’s no surprise that Baal had a couple, Asherat (Anat, Ashtart, אשרה, אנט, אשטרת), and his son, Aliyan (עליען) was a divinity of the water, the fertility and vegetation [11]. The bulls were sacrificed to Baal (remember the scene of Eliahu hanavi and the prophets of baal in the Carmel mount). The Assyrian form of baal, Bel (בל), was worshiped like “divine bull” and sometimes he was called “the great Ram”[12].
6. The divine Lamb according the greeks, and the revelation of Yeshu.
The pagan doctrines of Baal evolved and made presence in Greece. For ancient greeks, there was a tradition, a ceremony of using some man like a scape-goat
"In ancient Greek, there was a tradition on wich one selected man served as carrier of the sins of the polis (city). He was called "pharmakos" (magic man) [13] who was dressed with special clothes and were crowned with a crown made of plants [14]. Dyonisius (the god the greek brought from india) was a Pharmakos that was killed for the "sin of the world" [15]. In that procession, he walked to get out of the city and on the road people gathered to insult and cry, to hit that man [16]. Also the participants received hits and were scared by masked men [17]. The annual ceremony in his memory was made in the road to Eleusis... that was the origin of the later christian Via Dolorosa (Way of Suffering). Just in the same way, Yeshu said about himself like a pharmakos: “They will mock him, spit on him, flog him with a whip, and kill him (Mark 10:34)
"In ancient Greek, there was a tradition on wich one selected man served as carrier of the sins of the polis (city). He was called "pharmakos" (magic man) [13] who was dressed with special clothes and were crowned with a crown made of plants [14]. Dyonisius (the god the greek brought from india) was a Pharmakos that was killed for the "sin of the world" [15]. In that procession, he walked to get out of the city and on the road people gathered to insult and cry, to hit that man [16]. Also the participants received hits and were scared by masked men [17]. The annual ceremony in his memory was made in the road to Eleusis... that was the origin of the later christian Via Dolorosa (Way of Suffering). Just in the same way, Yeshu said about himself like a pharmakos: “They will mock him, spit on him, flog him with a whip, and kill him (Mark 10:34)
In all those pagan ceremonies, there was a sacrifice of a Lamb (or a Bull), the animal was killed and then all pagan worshipers were covered by the blood of sacrifice, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, they were considered as "Born Again" because they had been "washed in the blood of the lamb."
Paul the gnostic wizard wrote: “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). It presents Yeshu like “the Lambd of G-d” whose destiny was the sacrifice. The notzrim (Christians, “messianics” and Nazarenes/natzratim) talk about “born again” by washing their clothes “in the blood of the lamb” (Revelations 7:14).
Those metaphors are an echo of the mysteries of Atis. They were bloody rituals. In modern world we don’t presence the killing of animals for eating, they’re done in closed locations,[18]. In the rite of Tauronolium (sacrifice of bull), the animal was killed in a platform with holes and the blood passed through them and fell over the worshipers. At the conclusion, the worshipers were considered as “born again”. The poor ones were satisfied with the sacrifice of a lamb and they “washed themselves in the blood of the lamb.”[19]
In the mysteries of Mithras, like in christianism, those rituals were celebrated in a symbolic way (bread and wine in a table).
“You have washed us through the shed of the eternal blood”
Those words were put on an inscription, but do not refer to Yeshu, but Mithras [20] and centuries after, the notzrim (Christians) expressed the same word but using them for Yeshu.
Those words were put on an inscription, but do not refer to Yeshu, but Mithras [20] and centuries after, the notzrim (Christians) expressed the same word but using them for Yeshu.
Also an egyptian poet worshiped to his dead and resurrected savior, Osiris, with words that can be used by christians for their Yeshu without any problem:
“Have you been sacrificed? Do they say you have dead for them? You’re nor dead, you live forever! You’re more alive than them, because you’re the mystic sacrifice. He’s their Lord, alive and young forever.”[21]
In the same way of natzrut (Christianity), the Pagan Mysteries had the teaching of “original sin”. For Plato, the soul was jailed inside of the body as a punishment for an ancient sin [22]. According Empedocles, the gentiles go from a place to other in order to purge the guilt contracted in the divine world [23]. Those “Mysteries” taught that the original sin consisted in setting apart from god [24]. The mortal sacrifice of a god-man, or a sacred animal, symbolized the death of the bad soul, the rebirth of the divine nature which resurrect and elevated to unite itself with the god in order to expiate the sin.
7. Conclusion.
We have seen how the bull, the ram, the lamb has been linked with pagan customs in the symbolism of the redemption of sins… “The lamb of god which take away the sin of the world”. But we are commanded:
“You shall not follow their customs” Vayikra 20:23.
And RaMBa”M said in Moreh Nebuchim:
“Which was very known and disseminated as a worship of idols, or which was destined for it, has been banned. Those pagan customs were forbidden because they led to idolatry…”
RaMBa”M, Moreh Nebuchim- Guide for the Perplex, Vol II, 37.
The new presentation of “messianics” and Nazarenes is nothing but worship to baal disguised and “hebraized” with the Greco-latin paganism.
Let’s remember the words of Eliahu hanabi:
‘Ad-matai atém posjim al-sh’te haseipim im-HaShem haElokim leju, ajarav ve’im-haBa’al leju ajarav’
(‘¿How long will you waver between two ways? If HaShem is G-d, follow him; but if Baal is G-d, follow him)…
1 Kings 18:21.
In Orach HaEmet, we repeat for our readers the words of Eliahu the prophet, and we would like to every single jew realize that:
“HaShem is G-d. HaShem is G-d.”
Aleph Melajim / 1 Kings 18: 39.
[1] Oldenberg, Religión des Veda, 2ª. Ed., p.74; Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie, 2ª. Ed. 1929, vol. II, p. 148.
[13] J. Harrison, 1992, p. 220. The word “pharmacy” comes from this word. A pharmakos was a formula and a banishing spell. In an ancient writing of the early christians/nazarenes, Ignatius of Antioch, describes the eucharist like “pharmakos tes Zoes”, the medicine of the immortal life”, read R. J. Hoffmann, 1987, p. 16.
[14] W.F. Otto, 1965, pp. 1965, pp. 38-39: “The Pharmakos is obligated to walk through the city to absorb all the sins.”
[15] The meaning of ritual sacrifices in the Torah are contrary to these kind of pagan rituals. The greek tragedy born in the Dyonisius’ rituals and the tragodoi were the cantors who took the lamb for the sacrifice, read W. Burkert, 1985, p. 102. An intriguing manifestation of those kind of rituals for “city purification” happened in the birthday of Socrates , the day remembered like the day “on which the Athenians purify the city”, read J. Harrison, 1922, p. 97. Also Lisias tell us that the Thirty Tyrants decreed the political asylum of Socrates and others as a form of purification: a purge in the medical sense and in the political sense of the word, read W. Bukert, 1985, p. 83. Those fragments suggest that come centuries after tje Socrates death, his disciples tried to link his destiny with the “Pharmakos”, the scape-goat of the city. The same theme appears in the life of Yeshu of Nazareth.
“the fulfillment of the mitzvah aseh (positive commandment) of eating the flesh of a wild or domestic animal, or a bird, it’s to make the shechita, after of which, they can be eaten, as it’s written: “you shall sacrifice your flocks.” (Devarim 12:21)
RaMBa”M,Ya”d Jazakah, Hilchot Shechita cap.1:1.”
[22] Plato, Kratilo, 4000c: “Because some say that body is the tomb of the souls, and it can be said that it’s buried in our actual life. The Orphic Poets had the impression that the soul suffers the punishment for the sin”.
[23] Kirk y Raven, 1957, p.352. According Empedocles, the fallen soul is banished from “the blessed ones.”
[24] W.K.C. Guthurie, 1952, pp. 72-73. After analyzing a lot of orphic material recently discovered, Guthurie writes:
“"Looking back so, draw our attention not only contrasts with the prevailing religious types of V century Greece, but also, not least, the similarities with Christianity. Among the features it has in common with the original Orphism, communion and parts of his eschatology.” 1952, p. 207.
