I ardently
hope my last two letters convinced you that belief in a Messianic kingdom, or era, minus a
personal Messiah, has no warrant in the Judaism of the Old Testament, or the traditions of
ancient Israel.
I purpose today to fulfill my promise to prove the impossibility of ever
reinstituting an Aaronic priesthood, or of a future Messiah being born in the House of
David. In so doing, I am addressing your Orthodox friends rather than you. That is because
your Reform Judaism must be dropped out of consideration at present, as it expresses no
desire for an Aaronic priesthood; and its concept of a Messianic age, minus a personal
Messiah, is like looking forward to a wedding minus a bridegroom.
The Orthodox Jews, true to historic Judaism, believe the Messiah to be a
person. Though the Messiah prayed for "tarries," as they say, they pray daily
for Him to come from the house of David, for their Talmud tells them, that "all the
prophets prophesied only until the days of the Messiah" (Berachdoth, 34 b).
These Orthodox Jews also pray for the "Lord our God to restore the priests (of Aaron)
to their service and the Levites to their song and psalmody."
Your Orthodox friends believe, and I assume you also, that if there are no
houses of Aaron and David existent, there is no possibility of reinstituting the
priesthood of ancient Israel; nor of a Messiah being born of the family of David, as the
"prophets prophesied."
To begin with, it may be positively declared, that there are no known Jews in
the world today who can begin the story of their lives, as Flavius Josephus began his life
story, by saying-
"I will set down my progenitors in order," I have
descended all along from priests of "the first of the twenty four courses."
"I have set down the genealogy of my family, as I have found it described in the
public records."
Here Josephus gives us an eminent historic example of the care with
which Jews, especially the priests, kept their pedigrees, safeguarding them in
"public records." This was necessary to protect the purity of descent of the
Aaronic priests; and the Davidic ancestral hope of being the mother of the Messiah.
"The Jewish Encyclopedia" says -
"The very division of Israel into 'houses' presupposes the
existence among them of well-authenticated genealogies" (Vol. v, p. 597).
"The Jewish Encyclopedia" proceeds,
"The genealogies (of priests) were scrupulously kept and, when
necessary, they were minutely investigated. - A special officer seems to have been
entrusted with these records, and a court of inquiry is mentioned as having been
instituted in Jerusalem."
"A priest was bound to demonstrate the (Aaronic) purity of the
priestly maiden he desired to marry, even as far back as her great-great-grandfather and
great-great-grandmother" (Vol. v, p. 587).
These genealogical records seem to have been kept in
the Temple in Jerusalem. The destruction of these records began when Herod desired to hide
his origin; and those that remained entirely disappeared with the destruction of the
Temple in the year 70 A.D. The Jewish Encyclopedia says, that "the loss of official
genealogies was deeply deplored as a calamity - " for many reasons (Vol. v,
p. 597). The dispersion of the Jews, after the rebellion of the spurious Messiah, Bar
Cochba, the end having come to the priesthood and sacrifices, entirely obliterated the
distinctive connection of Jews with the priestly and kingly houses of the tribes of Levi
and Judah.
There are Cohens (Hebrew Kahan, which literally means, one dedicated to the
altar, priest) who are given special honors in synagogues today, as claimants of male
descent from Aaron. There are so many of them, that a stock joke in Jewry, which you no
doubt have heard, is that if you want to know how many Jews there are in the city, find
out how many Cohens are listed in the directory, and figure accordingly.
These Cohens have a sentimental, but not any known genealogical connection
with the family of Aaron. The Jewish Encyclopedia says that the claim of this large
contingent of Cohens "is a matter of dispute" (Vol. 4, p. 144).
Again, under the headline "Pedigree," this statement is made -
"Jews have always carefully recorded their genealogies, but
owing to their wide and frequent dispersions, very few can trace their descent further
back than a couple of hundred years. All persons by the name of Cohen claim descent from
Aaron the high priest, but no attempt has even been made by any Cohen actually to trace
his descent through wellauthenticated sources" (Vol. 9, p. 577)-
While these Jews, whose family names are Cohen, Kahn,
Cahanowitsch, and a dozen other derivatives of the Hebrew priestly name Kahan, bear
witness of the once existing priesthood in Jewry, their lack of genealogical evidence
enables none of them to meet the requirements of purity of descent that the Torah calls
for. This being so, the 1941 Hebraic authority, the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, takes a
sort of a "I should worry" attitude towards the ending of the Aaronic blood
line, as the "aristocracy of the intellect" has taken its place. Let's quote -
"After the Second Temple was destroyed and the priesthood lost
its paramount position, however, there was a complete decline of interest in genealogy.
The aristocracy of the blood was replaced by the aristocracy of the intellect" (Vol.
4, p. 526, N.Y.C.).
Indeed, it was quite natural that Jewish interest in
genealogy should decline when the Aaronic priesthood was no more; for the priesthood ended
with Samuel B. Phineas (A.D. 68) holding the office of High Priest, who was not of
"Aaronic lineage," having obtained office by "political intrigue, being in
no way worthy of the office," as the "Encyclopedia of Jewish Knowledge"
informs us (p. 426). It is a far stretch of wishful imagination that
prompts the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia to assume that God's priesthood in Jewry can be
"replaced" by an "aristocracy of the intellect," for instance,
America's popular Rabbis. If such an "aristocracy" were to be of a
Maimonides-Spinoza-Einsteinian intellectual order, it could never take the place of an
Aaronic blood aristocracy of God's selection, which was divinely authorized to render
religious sacrificial service such as all the Rabbis in the world today, individually or
collectively, cannot render.
The non-existence of genealogical records, etc., not on eliminates the claim
of the Cohens that they are of Aaronic priestly stock; but it also throws out of court any
claim of Jews that they are of Davidic kingly stock. Jewish claims of blood relationship
with David have been very few, save among the false Messiahs, when compared with the
Cohens who claim to have priestly blood coursing through their arteries. That may be
partly due to the name David (beloved) not signifying Messiah, whereas the name Cohen
signifies priest. Yet the same evidence and arguments I have presented, regarding the
missing genealogical records, apply to Jews who may claim to be of the house of David. All
that I have said goes to show that Israel was divided into houses, descendants of
distinctive families, those of Aaron and David being foremost; that the Judaic worship
centered in sacrifices offered to God through priests, and that its hope centered in the
coming of a personal Messiah.
Looked at negatively, one must conclude from the nonexistence of these
families, that if no priesthood has displaced the Aaronic priests, then has God left man
without any priestly guidance; and if Jesus is not the Messiah, then is there no hope
whatsoever of a Messiah coming from the house of David in the future. Then are the Reform
Jews logical in eliminating from their books the Orthodox Jewish prayers for the coming of
the Messiah, and the reinstitution of a priesthood, sacrifices and Temple. If Jesus be not
the Messiah, why expect the unrealizable? Then may the Reform synagogues, the Unitarian,
Adventist, Holy Roller, and every other religious group claim to speak with equal
authority, as no church would be able to claim to be God-instituted, as did the Church of
our fathers of old in Israel. The logic of such an unsound premise would warrant
substituting the "Origin of Species" for the Bible as man's authority as to his
origin and destiny. An absurd result of an absurd notion.
I submit, it were well for Jews to ponder the question whether the
disappearance of the priestly and kingly houses, of the tribes of Levi and Judah, is
merely accidental or providential. Again, was it merely accidental that the priestly and
Messianic houses of Aaron and David were preserved, that they were not among the houses
that disappeared, until after Jesus was born and the Temple destroyed? If so, then must
you be prone to disbelieve that there is a Divinity that shapes things of spiritual import
to His designs, things that God told man of through the prophets in Israel. Longfellow
knew better. He said that "It is a thing fundamental, that with God nothing is
accidental."
Catholics believe, and with good reason, that the end of the Aaronic
priesthood meant that the priesthood foretold, "according to the order of
Melchisedec" (Ps. 109), had taken its place; partly in order to fulfill God's
promise made through the Jewish prophet Malachi, that a "clean oblation" would
take the place of the bloody oblation offered in the Temple; that it would be offered to
God in all parts of the world, instead of a central place; and that the Gentiles would
share in it, instead of being a sacrifice for Jews only.
Catholics hold the genealogy of the house of David to be of great spiritual
import, as Jesus, the Messiah, came from that house, seventy years before the records were
destroyed. Therefore, when the Catholic Church made the Christian Bible, she gave the Book
of St. Matthew first place in her New Testament. That Gospel was written by a convert from
Judaism for Jews, in the language of Jews, primarily to prove that Jesus is the Messiah.
The Book begins with a prelude, announcing that this "is the Book of the origin of
Jesus Christ, the son of David." Then comes the rise of God's chosen children in
Abraham, through forty generations, including "David the king," ending with
"Joseph, the husband of Mary, and of her was born Jesus who is called Messiah."
This letter is further evidence that converts from the Synagogue to the
Church do not deny the faith of their fathers of old in Israel, a faith that exists no
more. What they do is to pass, as would the prophets of Israel were they in the world
today, from the seed of Judaism, planted in Old Testament inspired writings, to the faith
of Israel full-grown in the inspired writings of the New Testament. |