The following “Torah Teaching” is specifically related to the Passover, and is an excellent exposé on how the modern Church ev

The following “Torah Teaching” is specifically related to the Passover, and is an excellent exposé on how the modern Church evolved from an original “faith of the Apostles” (Yeshua like, early disciple like assembly of believers) to a mixed conglomerate of beliefs (“fragmented and distortions” of Bible portions mixed with Pagan practices) that essentially discarded the Torah (Yahweh’s forever settled Word and Commandments, and its historical Prophetic teachings) and established an institutional system that has a long and disastrous bloody trail of anti-Semitism and Un-Scriptural tradition of men’s teachings and disregard for Biblical instruction. The very subject of Passover is at core of the issue and this article will summarize the events that most people do not learn in school or church… in the majority of peoples experiences… mine included, as I was 61-years old before I took time to do my own research to determine if these things were so… as I believe the Encyclopedia, Bible, and records of Antiquity solidly support that they are a part of our past… we need to understand these things and how they impact our religious practice and relationship with Yahweh… so we can walk with HIM in the RIGHT WAY… as the “Original” New Testament disciples and our Messiah all walked… May the Holy Spirit fill you with understanding and conviction as you read on.

"If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to Myself"
(Yochanan/John 12:32).

By Carl & Julie Parker

Passover / Unleavened Bread Day VII

Nissan 21, 5765 / April 30, 2005

Exodus 13:17 to 15:26
Numbers 28:19-25
2 Samuel 22:1-51
John 19:38 to 20:23
Acts 1

Have you ever wondered how YHVH’s feast days became separated from man’s celebrations of God? Taking a historical look into the background reveals how this happened and why the Church has not fully embraced the feast of Passover or all YHVH’s feast days.

Early church fathers Origen, Eusebius and Constantine

Eusebius wrote The Ecclesiastical History, the acknowledged history of the Church from the end of the Book of Acts to the Council of Nicea and it was he who convened the Council of Nicea. He was a student of Origen and inherited his outlook. Constantine adopted Eusebius’ work as it fit his ideals. Constantine was the Emperor of Rome and thought of himself as the image of God and representative of the Almighty. The Emperor acted as the interpreter of Logos, the Word.

For Eusebius, there was no longer a precise and definite distinction between the Church and the Empire or State. They appeared to merge into each other. If the kingdom was to be fulfilled through a personal earthly reign of Yeshua the Messiah from Jerusalem, then the Jews were inescapably part of that kingdom, which would follow the repentance of Israel. In that case, God’s faithfulness to the Jews had not expired. The kingdom was still future.

On the other hand, if Constantine, the emerging Holy Roman Empire, and the State-exalted Church were the kingdom, then there was no need for the Jews. The fullness of the kingdom was in the present.

Moreover, if the Jews had no special significance for the fulfilled kingdom of God, then God had no need or plan for them. In that case, the rejection and replacement of the Jews was the means of fulfilling the kingdom. Instead of being natural citizens of the kingdom, whether loyal or disloyal, the Jews became the enemies of the kingdom. If that were the case, then the Church needed to recognize and proclaim it.

Eusebius firmly believed, in the fourth century, that the Church was the "new Israel," replacing the Jews. Following Origen, Eusebius either rejected the normal meaning of the Scriptures that promised restoration of the Jewish people and the twelve tribes of Israel, or he ignored these Scriptures altogether. Eusebius was intentionally inaccurate. He had his own agenda. Eusebius was the product of the Alexandrine school of theology (that of Origen), "the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity." The Church that he wanted to help create was more important to him than the historical reality. Beginning in the third century he is credited with being the father of the allegorical method of interpretation and made allegory the only way to truly understand the Scriptures. He often denied the ordinary sense of the text, and replaced it with allegories, which he made up. These allegories then became the real meaning of the text. When the text said, "Israel," it meant "the Church" and not the Jews, so long as the promise or comment was good. If the promise or comment was not good, then "Israel" still meant "the Jews," and not "the Church."

Origen was considered by many to be a heretic. During his lifetime, two church councils held in Alexandria in 231 and 232 CE excommunicated him. After his death as well, his views were officially condemned. Nevertheless, most of the Greek fathers of the third and fourth centuries stood more or less under the influence of the spirit and works of Origen. It is Origen’s system of interpretation that produces the anti-Judaic "New Israel" theology where the Church replaces the Jews in the plan and purpose of God.

In his youthful zeal for ascetic holiness, Origen committed the act of self-emasculation (castration) which he repented for in his later years. Nevertheless in 228, he was ordained presbyter by two friendly bishops.

Almost all the Jews in Judea and Samaria had either died in the Bar Kokhba Rebellion of 132-135 CE, or had been carried off into slavery by the victorious Romans. Before the gospel was preached to Gentiles, there were Jewish churches "throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria." (Acts 9:31).

From the end of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion on, all Jews were forbidden to even enter the precincts of Jerusalem. The city itself had been destroyed and renamed Aelia, in honor of the divine nature of Aelia Hadrianus, ie the Emperor Hadrian (who destroyed Jerusalem) as the Roman god Jupiter. Up until that time, the bishops of Jerusalem had all been Jewish.

The Roman Empire had destroyed or removed the Jewish bishops and churches. Gentile ones replaced them. The Gentile bishops and churches naturally began to think of themselves as having replaced the Jews thus the start of Replacement theology began.

For Origen the whole debate between the Church and the Synagogue can be reduced to the one question of the interpretation of scripture…The difference between Judaism and Christianity is that Christians perceive the mysteries which are only hinted at in the Bible, whereas Jews are only capable of a strictly literal reading of the text. Unfortunately, Origen chose to ignore or alter reality to make it fit with his beliefs. Origen decided to portray them as disgraceful "Jews" who were rejecting YHVH. Anyone who did not accept his allegorical system of interpretation was nothing more than "a Jew," and really did not belong in the Church. Origen distorted the reality rather than change his beliefs.

Pamphilus, a great admirer of Origen, a presbyter and theological teacher at Caesarea in Palestine, was not an author himself but one of the most liberal and efficient promoters of Christian learning. He founded a theological school and collected a large library, from which his pupil and friend Eusebius, Jerome and many others, drew or increased their useful information. Without that library the church history of Eusebius would be far less instructive than it is now. Pamphilus transcribed with his own hand useful books, among others the Septuagint from the Hexapla of Origen.

The views of Origen had been declared to be heretical, but, led by Pamphilus, the churches in "Palestine" established a theological school and library dedicated to establishing Origen’s views as the true orthodoxy throughout the entire Church. Pamphilus taught Eusebius, and Eusebius wholeheartedly gave himself to the task of publishing six volumes in defending the views of Origen. Origen’s heresy was to triumph in the fourth century at the Council of Nicea through Eusebius, Constantine, and those who followed them.

The Council of Nicea settled two main issues. The first concerned the heretical writings of Arius a Presbyter in Alexandria and the second was in respect for the proper day of keeping Easter, some celebrating that festival in the manner of the Jews, and others following the custom of Christians. Emperor Constantine assembled a general council of 318 bishops to meet at Nice, in Bithynia. When they assembled Constantine admonished them against disunity. Constantine had united the Empire. Now he intended to deliver the Church as well from "internal sedition."

How did the Passover controversy arise? Throughout Yeshua’s life he and his family had celebrated Passover on the fourteenth of Nissan because that is its Biblical date. Yeshua observed all the Levitical holy days on the days when YHVH had decreed and designed them to be observed. On the fourteenth of Nissan, Yeshua was crucified at the same time the lambs were being slaughtered for the Passover. He became our Passover lamb, the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world. The Apostles and the first-century Church celebrated Passover and all YHVH’s feast days. Paul continued to celebrate them thirty years after the death of Yeshua. At first the two groups celebrated the feasts together on the same day, Nissan fourteen as required by YHVH.

Sometime in the second century, some churches in the west among the Gentiles, began to celebrate Passover / Easter so that their commemoration of YHVH’s resurrection would always take place on a Sunday regardless of the Biblical calendar. Toward the end of the second century western churches, led by the Gentile bishops of Rome, Caesarea, and Jerusalem (where there were no longer Jewish bishops), began to campaign for all the churches to keep the Passover on their fixed Sunday, rather than on the fourteenth of Nissan. They also were accustomed to using the Roman calendar (like the one we have today), rather than God’s Biblical calendar. Churches who wanted to follow God’s word and keep the Biblical celebration of Passover on Nissan fourteenth were threatened with excommunication.

The Council of Nicea in 325 CE finally settled the issue. There it was decided that all the churches should celebrate the Passover, or actually Easter, on the ecclesiastically chosen Sunday rather than the Biblical date. All the churches were thus informed. Constantine did so under the threat of death if anyone should not unify with his decision.

A break away from the word of YHVH called Torah and an institution of man’s word became the new law. Constantine said that the most holy feast of Easter should be celebrated on one and the same day. This was the new divine will of Constantine. The letter sent to the churches officially established an anti-Biblical foundation for the doctrine and practice of the Church, and declared contempt for the Jews, and separation from them, was the only proper Christian attitude.

Excerpt from the Council of Nicea said, "…it seemed to everyone a most unworthy thing that we should follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this most holy solemnity, who, polluted wretches! Having stained their hands with a nefarious crime, are justly blinded in their minds. It is fit, therefore, that rejecting the practice of this people, we should perpetuate to all future ages the celebration of this rite, Easter in a more legitimate order…Let us then have nothing in common with the most hostile rabble of the Jews…In pursuing this course with a unanimous consent, let us withdraw ourselves…from that most odious fellowship."

It was Eusebius who provided the new calendar for determining the day to be celebrated so that no believer could celebrate Passover on the Biblically ordained day of Nissan fourteenth. Thus Rome axed God’s feast of Passover regardless of God’s word in the Scriptures. God’s remaining feast days would soon follow, as it was heresy to practice celebrating them upon threat of death.

The Church made their own religion to suit their political purposes. This was mainly due to the lack of the public’s ability to obtain the word of God and read about the truth for themselves. Due to lack of knowledge the people plunged into this Roman system. Today there are more Bibles in the world than ever before. Some families have more than one but even with this evidence in their homes few realize they are missing God’s appointed feasts the gift of redemption for all Israel (Romans 11:26). With the beginning of this new alliance to Constantine and his belief system came great compromises, which has distorted the nature of the Church to this day.

Constantine saw himself as the incarnate sun god. Following the example of his father and earlier 3rd-century emperors. Constantine in his early life was a solar henotheist, believing that the Roman sun god, Sol, was the visible manifestation of an invisible Highest God, who was the principle behind the universe. This god was thought to be the companion of the Roman emperor. They saw the rebirth of life in the spring after the death of winter as a spiritual and holy phenomenon, and invariably connected the rebirth of life with the resurrection of a deity, the archetypal symbolism once again readily apparent.

The name Easter is derived from the mythological pagan fertility goddess (either Eastre or Eostre) that the Saxons of Northern Europe held a festival to her at the vernal equinox in order to celebrate the "resurrection" of life in the spring. Other names for her were Assyria: Semiramis and Ninus. Babylon: Ishtar and Tammuz. Egypt: Isis and Osiris Syria: Astarte and Bel or Baal (Marduk) (later Venus Urania and Adonis). Greece: Aphrodite and Adonis. Rome: Kybele and Attis (or Venus and Adonis). In time, to the Sumerian civilization, Ishtar, whose name can be pronounced "Easter," was honored on a day commemorating the resurrection of a dying and reborn god named Tammuz. He was believed to be the only begotten son of the moon goddess and the sun god (Pagan Origin of Easter).

Of pre-Christian origin, the Teutonic Dawn- goddess, Ishtar is called "the queen of heaven." Sun-rise service was the worship of the sun as it came up to celebrate this "cross" of the heavenly bodies; it was and still is a pagan holiday. On this day the temple prostitutes would hold wild orgies and get pregnant. Then the next year the three month old babies would be sacrificed and eggs; symbols of fertility, from the supposed egg laying rabbits, would be dipped in the blood of the temple prostitute’s infants, who were sacrificed up to the goddess, and then hidden.

Later on during the day, the children of the Canaanite parents would often go and hunt for eggs, which were symbolic of sex, fertility and new life. It was believed that these eggs came from rabbits, which in the pagan world were symbolic of lust, sexual prowess and reproduction. The modern Easter egg hunt, decorating eggs and eating candy eggs has become an accepted tradition for Easter celebration today yet many who celebrate this, even Christians are not aware of its origin.

The underlying scientific explanation, is that at the vernal equinox the sun is directly over the equator apparently moving northward from an earth based vantage point, and will soon be "born again" into the northern hemisphere as the light increasingly floods the earth with longer days, more warmth, and the return of vegetation from its dormant or "dead" state, a clear connection of journeys to, and return from, the underworld. Again, the dominant idea is the link to the sun as the giver and protector of life, the "savior" of the world.

Passover is always celebrated Biblically on Nissan fourteenth which fell on different days of the week on the Roman calendar. Passover was celebrated on this date until 325 CE. Constantine wanted unity (under threat of the sword) among the Churches and when he called the Council of Nicea in 325, the date of Easter was finally firmly established. This was called the "Easter rule," and the festival is always celebrated on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25 (Tian et. al. 8).

Rome also intervened with the birth of Yeshua who Biblically was born during the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall. Constantine again arranged continuity among the Churches to coincide with his Roman calendar. December 25th had long been recognized in antiquity, over 300 years before the birth of Yeshua, as the return of the sun. In ancient times, before the establishment of the Gregorian calendar, it was the date of the winter solstice, the point when the sun has reached its southern most trek below the equator, where it appears to stand still for three days. After that time it begins to move back toward the Northern Hemisphere, gaining strength with each passing day the "sun is born," or the "light comes into the world," or "the light of the world" is at hand.

Pope Julius I, in the fourth century commanded a committee of bishops to establish the date of the nativity of Jesus. December 25 (the day of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun) was decided upon. Not coincidentally, that is the day when the "pagan world celebrated the birth of their Sun Gods-Egyptian Osiris, Greek Apollo and Bacchus, Chaldean Adonis, Persian Mithra-when the Zodiacal sign of Virgo (the sun is born of a virgin) rose on the horizon. Thus the ancient festival of the Winter Solstice, the pagan festival of the birth of the Sun, came to be adopted by the Christian Church as the nativity of Jesus, and was called Christmas."

In convening the council, Constantine had already declared that whoever would disturb the unity of the Church was a "malignant foe" motivated by a "malevolent demon," exposing God’s law to "slander and detraction." Constantine had achieved political victory, in the name of YHVH, by the sword. From that point on, Church doctrine was to be enforced by the sword of the State. The books of heretics were to be burned and exterminated from the earth. The Church ceased to be the Church of Jesus, and became the Church of Constantine. It was no longer the bride of Messiah. It had become the bride of Caesar. The light within turned to darkness. The Church changed from a means of salvation into a means of destruction. Through the centuries, the Constantinian Church has sought and brought the death of millions of people throughout the world. Many of them have been Jewish.

Under Constantine, Eusebius wrote a history of the Church that pointedly eliminated any positive reference to the restoration of Israel and the earthly reign of Yeshua. The Church was now officially Contra Judaeos and Adversus Judaeos – set against and set in opposition to the Jews. Thus was established the anti-Judaic foundation on which both doctrine and practice were then built. The historical and theological eradication of the Jews prepared the way for the "lawful" attempts to physically eradicate them. The Church itself replaced the power of God with the might of the Roman Empire. The Church became its own kingdom. God’s Truth was to be determined by Church councils, and not by the Word of God. Consequently the teaching, which was a blasphemous heresy to Justin Martyr, became the new, unchallengeable orthodoxy.

It is remarkable that this change was made over such a clear, but seemingly insignificant issue as when the Church should celebrate the Passover. The Bibles sets the date for Passover as the fourteenth of Nissan. That is when Yeshua celebrated the Passover. The apostles did the same. The apostle Paul, whose ministry was to the Gentles, observed the Biblical dates (Acts 20:7, Acts 20:16; Acts 27:9). The Church built by the Apostles knew when Passover was, but from the Council of Nicea on, the Church over which Constantine decreed the people would no longer observe the Biblical dates, because they were too Jewish and the Bible itself was too Jewish. The doctrines of men on the other hand could be whatever men wanted them to be.

Jerusalem had her name taken away, and she was placed in subjection to the church that had embraced Origen. Constantine and Eusebius institutionalized many serious errors. They made changes that were to plunge the Church and the world into a literal thousand years of darkness. They laid a different foundation that Yeshua and His apostles had laid. A new era in the history of the Church had begun. In actuality, a new Church began.

Did Constantine’s plan succeed? Did he override God and His plan for His people Israel and their redemption? God’s feast days are prophetic for all Nations and will unfold at their appointed times as stated in His Word. What Constantine did (and others like him) with the cross by turning it upside down to became a sword against God’s people will not prevail.

Hebrews 4:12 "For the word of God (Yeshua) is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account."

Shabbat Shalom,
Carl and Julie Parker

Reference:
The Church and the Jews by Dan Gruber
Various web sites and the Catholic web site:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05228a.htm
_______________________________________

Torah Portions:
Traditional Judaism follows a yearly Torah and Haftarah reading cycle in which the Torah (the First Five Books of Scripture) is divided into weekly Parashot, or Sidrot, portions of the Torah that have an accompanying excerpt from one of the Prophetic books that relates to the theme being presented.

In addition to these portions, as Believers in Messiah Yeshua, we also include portions from the Brit Chadashah, the New Covenant, so that we will be reading form the whole counsel of our Father's Holy Word.

In present Jewish tradition, the Torah is divided into weekly portions that are read over the period of one year, and so each portion contains several chapters. Each parashah contains untold numbers of nuggets of truth, so it is impossible for any one person to present all of the truths in one volume. So it is that each time we go through the cycle, we find new, encouraging, and inspiring bits of truth.