TP 34.0.3 · 25,562 words · 1.9 hr read · Are We Just Advanced Predictive Models? (The Science)

THE QUESTION THAT BREAKS JUDAISM (TRACT 10) (part 2 of 2)

But I, I, I do think that, that that is just so core to our worldview, and that’s the first differentiating belief we came up with.

Simone Collins: That’s it. That’s it. It’s always been like, that’s the core thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it, everything I’m saying right here is not like. Canon technopuritan this is just, it’s more like this is a way you should engage with your religious teachings.

IE look at history sources, look at what’s actually written, think through it, debate, you know, somebody was like, well, what does it mean to be like a, a technopuritan like minister or something like that. I’m like engaging in the debate from the perspective of your tradition. Yeah. But anyway so Jews, if, if they’ve heard everything I’ve written here, they’ll say something like, well, God, when he handed down the law, he said, and it is written that he said this in religious text, that you and I share that at no point in the future would anything be taken out of the law if this is accurate.[02:09:00]

And in the Old Testament, that is a major problem for the idea that Jesus created a new covenant. So let’s examine those passages. Deuteronomy four, two. You should not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of Lord God, that I command you. Deuteronomy 13, one.

In some translations it’s 1232. Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it. First of all, in both of these instances, it states very clearly that adding rules is just as problematic as taking them away. Jews have consistently added rules while glossing over this point saying, oh, we’re just putting fences around the Torah.

In what conceivable way is that not adding rules?

Simone Collins: Yeah, that’s

Malcolm Collins: me.

Simone Collins: Adding rules.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, adding rules.

Simone Collins: If someone’s like, add nothing to this property and they’re like, we just added a fence,

Malcolm Collins: you’d still

Simone Collins: be like,

Malcolm Collins: mm, you property. That’s, that’s a rule, [02:10:00] but it’s a fence. But a rule, you’re just using a synonym. Yeah.

It’s something that you’re not supposed to pass. Yeah. It’s not me you have to answer to on this point, but God, would you really stand before God was the argument that putting up fences isn’t adding rules? Modern Judaism with all its added rules is just as invalidated by these two passages as Christianity is for its consolidation and rationalization of rules. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But we don’t need to worry in either case because we know from the Bible in no uncertain terms, that rules will be added and taken away. So the above two passages cannot mean what they appear to mean at faiths value. Okay. So here I’m saying, look, Jews are breaking this just as much as Christians are. Yeah. ’cause the first line is you can’t take anything away. The second line is you can’t add anything. Yeah.

And so it’s a major problem for both religions if it actually means what it appears to faiths value. But we know it doesn’t mean that because there are other parts of the Bible that we’ve already gone over here where God’s like, oh [02:11:00] yeah, I’m gonna give you a new covenant in the future. It’s gonna be different rules.

So we know that new rules will be added. So that’s obviously not what it means. Hmm. So, Jeremiah states, behold the days are coming, declares the Lord when I will make a new covenant. Who’s the house of Israel and the house of Judah? Not like the covenant I made with the fathers on the day when I took them by the hand outta the land of Egypt.

My covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord for this. At the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days declares the Lord, I will put my law within them. I will write within their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and his brother saying, no thy Lord, for they will all know me from the of them to the greatest.

Declares the Lord for I will forgive their inequity and I will remember their sin is no more. Whether the new covenant referenced here is the one made through Jesus or not, is not relevant. Hmm. Jeremiah comes after Deuteronomy and makes it clear that rules will be taken away and added.

It also clarifies something very [02:12:00] unfortunate for modern Jewish theology which would argue that the covenant created at Sinai was quote, written within the Jewish people, allowing it to be passed on through matrilineal descent. The passage by contrasting the covenant to come with the one at Sinai shows that in no uncertain terms, the Sinai Covenant was not written within the Jews.

Remember is saying that this new covenant is gonna be written in your heart, like it’s gonna be written onto you. Mm-hmm. Which implies that the old covenant was not written onto you, meaning you can’t pass any part of it down through the bloodline. So big problem there again, for the, the matrilineal sensing.

So if those lines don’t mean what they appear to mean at first glance, what do they actually mean? Deuteronomy 13, one, everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take away from it. Importantly, this verse is followed by chapter thirteens warnings about false prophets and those who might lead people to worship other gods.

So the don’t add or take [02:13:00] away command sits between instructions about proper worship and warnings about false worship. This context suggests that the command is specifically related to those. Rather than being a general statement about never modifying religious law.

Chapter 12 starts with the commands to. Destroy other nations felicis of worship, not worship God in the way other nations worship their gods. Only worship at a designated place later understood as a temple. Follow specific rules about sacrifices and meat consumption. Hmm. Then comes the don’t add or subtract warning immediately after chapter 13, warns about false prophets who might encourage worship of other Gods family members who might secretly promote other religions, entire towns that might turn to other gods.

This sequence suggests the warning is specifically about not adding foreign religious practices to the worship system. IE like the concept of heaven and hell on this see the previous track not removing elements of proper worship as prescribed, maintaining the [02:14:00] purity of the centralized worship system.

It’s like saying. Here’s how worship should work. Don’t copy other nation’s practices. Don’t add, and don’t skip parts of your system. Don’t subtract. This is different from the blanket statement about never modifying any religious laws. The context is specifically about maintaining proper worship practices without influence from surrounding nations.

It’s about religious purity rather than legal immutability. Now, let’s examine Deuteronomy for two. You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take away from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord God that I command you. And I note in both of these instances, both add and subtracted there.

It’s not like the ad is just in one of the two. Mm-hmm. Deuteronomy four opens Was Moses addressing Israel? The sequence is verse one. Now, oh, Israel. Listen to the statutes and rules that I’m teaching you. Verse two, our don’t add a subtract verse. Verse three through four immediately gives an example about Baal Peor, who those who followed Baal were destroyed, and those who stayed with God lived.

[02:15:00] Verses five six, Moses explains He’s teaching them statutes and rules and emphasizes how these laws will show their wisdom to other nations. Verses nine through 14 reminds them about receiving the law of Horeb Mount Sinai, emphasizing they saw no form of God only heard his voice. The rest of the chapter continues with warnings about making idols, warnings about being exiled.

If they make images of God’s reminders, they alone. Received these laws. Okay. The context suggests this warning is specifically connected to not adding idol worship or visible representations of God. Mm-hmm. Not removing elements of proper worship that distinguish them from other nations. Like the Deuteronomy 13 passage, it appears more focused on maintaining proper worship and avoiding idolatry than about preventing any future legal interpretation or modification.

The warning comes in a section specifically about avoiding the religious practices of other nations. Given that it seems laser focused and it’s all about idolatry here, it’s not making carved images, not worshiping celestial bodies, not forgetting the [02:16:00] covenant. By making idols and not following other nation’s worship practices.

Given this laser focus on idolatry in the surrounding texts, it’s a reasonable interpretation that the don’t add or subtract. Warning could be specifically about idolatry rules rather than a blanket statement about religious law. Finally, we have Proverbs 30 60. Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you. and you will be found a liar. This in context is not about rules, but about words specifically not changing the text. Mm-hmm. I wanna note here how much I dislike the standard Christian non-response to this particular question.

Mm-hmm. Rather than actually addressing it in context, they simply say, well, Jesus fulfilled the law. He didn’t change it. This is as nitpicky as Jews saying, rabbis are not adding rules, they’re just putting up fences. We need to address these texts directly and stop dodging the issue. This kind of evasion makes each faiths look like an outfit you’re wearing rather than something you’re intellectually invested was actually being true.

Hmm.

Movie Clip Joke: But sometimes we want to believe in something [02:17:00] so much that we willingly deceive ourselves.

I mean, I know I’ve been guilty of that in the past. I wanted to sign so badly that it drove me to distraction because it is the question we all want the answer to, isn’t it? I mean, does God exist? I mean, does he exist?

Does he?

How’s your whole world built in a lie? Peter.

Peter? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because I, I see this so much. When I, when I talk to people of specific faiths and I engage them with stuff and I’m like, if you actually believed this, you wouldn’t be making that argument. Like, that’s such a limp handed argument that shows that like, you came to this, you didn’t have an immediate answer, so you threw out, ah, he fulfilled it.

Well, that doesn’t change if, if the original interpretation that it actually means you can’t add or remove is accurate. And why are you so comfortable just throwing that out there and then walking away from it? [02:18:00] Hmm. And I think that that’s another thing that makes technopuritanism different is we wanna really engage with this stuff.

Thought Simone,

Simone Collins: I agree. I, I’m like hearing all these different Bible verses, it’s do you ever find yourself kind of writing some things off? Because Bible say the different lines and different books of the Bible say conflicting things. I mean, you used order of books at one point as justification for something being overwritten, but were they really meant to be treated chronologically?

Malcolm Collins: Well, not overwritten. I mean, of course they were. So what, what they would say is the rules that were handed down at Sinai. That those rules will never be added to or removed from. And, and yet the, the time when God tells us, actually, I’m gonna have a second covenant with you. He told us that after Sinai, if he had told us that before Sinai, you could have said, actually Sinai was the second set of, or the second covenant.

And, and so it meant that you couldn’t change the order after that. That’s why the order is important. Mm-hmm. And as I dive into religious texts I [02:19:00] find that they don’t actually conflict each other as much as I was originally led to believe. Wow. Okay. By skeptics. And we may even do a track where we just go over places where people say the Bible contradicts itself.

I like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Because I’m, I’m still doubtful, even though you can say that, I’m still doubtful.

Malcolm Collins: As soon as you take a technopuritan perspective a lot of the. Potential areas of contradiction just clear themselves up really clearly. Mm-hmm. EE even already, like the issues about the two afterlife, I’m like, okay, but if you take it this way, then you don’t have to deal with that problem.

Mm-hmm. The Old Testament makes it pretty clear that most Jews now and at the time believed that the Messiah would be a man and not a partially divine being. Mm-hmm. For me, one of the biggest confirmations written in a history of his status as the true Messiah is how his life is mirrored in the life of a false Messiah.

Sabbatai Zevi loudly claimed to be the Messiah with a message that can be almost thought of as an inversion of Jesus’. Where Jesus argued for a [02:20:00] consolidation of the rules around the purpose that they were meant to achieve. Sabbatai Zevi had an antinomian message. This is the idea that in the Messianic age, religious prohibitions would be inverted.

This led to followers engaging in religiously forbidden acts, including sexual transgressions, and violating dietary laws. Historians estimate that around 30% to 50% of Jews gloBaaly believed him to be the Messiah. And this guy was around in the 16 hundreds. However, when he was put on trial and claiming to be the Messiah would’ve gotten him tortured and killed, that was the one time in his life he would not call himself the Messiah. He ended up converting to Islam and living a long life of luxury and shame converting to Islam. Wow. Okay. Converting to Islam.

Yeah. So, so I I, Jesus on the other hand, only once in the Bible concretely confirms that he is a messiah, and that is when he is on trial, when confirming it would’ve led to his torture and execution. Oh, interesting. Jesus [02:21:00] did not claim to be the Messiah except when he knew it would get him killed. Hmm.

And yet he was proven right. His life did transform Judaism into a worldwide religion. In the form of Christianity. So here I would note a few really important things before I go further in this. Jews understood the Messiah, and I think the Messiah, as he’s written in the Old Testament, is very clearly a, a man, which is the way that we or our branch of technopuritanism, relates to Jesus.

I think that he as we’ve argued, did not claim to be literally the Son of God. He claimed to be he, he said that he had God in him and other humans had God in them. And, and when he called himself the Son of God, that that’s all throughout the Old Testament, like people who are set apart by God are called the Son of God.

Like, that’s not like a, a unique, doesn’t mean that he literally impregnated her mother. And God helped with other pregnancies as well. You know, famously and if he was the son of God that invalidates him as the Messiah because he is not from the Davidic line anymore, and the Messiah has to come from the Davidic line through his father.

So [02:22:00] problem there, but I’d also note here, I just find it so interesting that we have this other figure in history that that’s, that’s so important to the history of Judaism. Because he really transformed Judaism making Jews much more hesitant about like Messiahs or like mass following of potential Messiahs in the future.

And Messianic cults within Judaism. So he, he is an important figure, but he’s literally a direct inversion Zevi versus Jesus Zevi inverted the rules. Jesus said, live for God. Act on your conscience. Zevi was widely hailed as the Messiah by Jews. Jesus widely hated for what he taught.

Zevi were royal garments. Even crowning himself, Jesus lived in poverty and wore a crown of thorns. Zey expected to be treated like royalty. Jesus washes the feet of his disciples. So Zey went around talking to kings and queens and like demanding that they use royal titles for him again. He actually had, had a crown made for him himself.

Almost like I, I think supernaturally an inversion of Jesus’ life. Yeah. Ze [02:23:00] married multiple times, regularly claimed to be the Messiah when it would benefit him. Jesus celibate never claimed to be the Messiah, except when doing so, would’ve gotten him executed. And again, you could see elsewhere in this track where we argue against other places where Jesus say that he was arguing to be a messiah and we’re like, no, he wasn’t.

Yeah. Zevi converted to Islam. When his espouse beliefs would put him in danger. Jesus repeatedly refused to deny his espoused beliefs eventually leading to his death. Zevi died of old a age in luxury. Jesus died painfully for his beliefs. Zevi, born to wealthy merchants and well educated Jesus.

Born to humble circumstances. Ze attracted scholars, rabbis, and wealthy merchants as key followers. Jesus , selected disciples from common people, especially from fishermen and tax collectors. Zevi communicated through complex kabbalistic concepts and mystical doctrines. Jesus taught through parables.

And public sermons accessible to the common people, , do you have any thoughts on zevi [02:24:00] or like this, this weird parallel?

Simone Collins: Yeah, you in an earlier track. I think it’s something about how if you are a prophet of God, communicating a message, message.

Oh, that’s a track we haven’t

Malcolm Collins: done yet. It’s, it’s one that I wrote was the original. I originally wrote a flurry of tracks and some of them haven’t been published.

Simone Collins: Okay. But that you are punished if you claim to be a prophet of God, even if you really are one. And now I’m like, well this, well that track was never,

Malcolm Collins: so it’s not out there you are you taking it back?

Yeah, I, I, I did more. Well, this is the interesting thing. So before I do attract I do a lot of research with other real, like I’ll talk with rabbis, I’ll talk with Catholics, I’ll talk with Mormons. This stuff is not happening outside of a bubble. Like, there’s like a tech to Puritan community that has these, there talks with me, debates with me.

And many of them are approaching faith from different traditions. And it’s through those conversations that I learn more and get better. And I think that that’s something I want this faiths to be able to continue to do. Mm-hmm. [02:25:00] That’s why I don’t say like, any of this is handed down from God to me or something like that, or is like canon.

All this is, is one person logically trying to read texts that I think were divinely inspired to understand what they really meant was the understanding that other people might be able to do that better than me. Yeah. I can’t claim I Trump you because I’m the founder of this. That’s, that’s not the way this works.

I, I am not. Divinely. I mean, I guess if, if I was, then I couldn’t even claim credit for this, right? It wouldn’t be me being clever. It would be the somebody acting through. I prefer to be clever than to claim divine inspiration. But anyway, anyway so, but it didn’t get, it didn’t get made into the tracks.

Who knows? Divine Providence, that one never got made. Okay. But and I think that that one was back when I didn’t know how little the Christian texts contradicted our own beliefs which I was really surprised about. But there is more evidence. He is the Messiah, and this is the big one, the most important event [02:26:00] in Jewish history that broke their ability to uphold most of their covenant with God was the destruction of the temple.

Hmm. Now. Do you think God is foolish? Do you think he would’ve given the Jewish people a covenant told them you can’t add or subtract anything from it in their, in their interpretation that they had no way to fulfill? Now, he almost certainly would’ve amended the covenant or created a new covenant before the temple fell.

Mm-hmm. When did Jesus die? Only 40 years before the temple fell and his teachings centered around a new covenant with God that did not require the temple. That was by far the most radical break from traditional Judaism that Jesus preached. Now, no. I’ll note that, that more modern Christians have added a bunch of other weird stuff that differentiates it from Judaism more as we’ve argued in this traction.

But initially. Really all Jesus was saying is we need a way to relate to God that doesn’t involve the temple and this priest cast and this hierarchy. You know, like maybe the law needs to be written on our hearts. Mm-hmm. I don’t know where I might have [02:27:00] read that before. Sorry. That’s the second covenant is prophesized.

What are the odds that a branch of Judaism would end up spreading over the entire world? And the man who founded that branch made modifications to traditional Jewish teachings. So the temple was no longer required to stay in God’s good graces. And this man died within a lifetime of the temple’s destruction.

No, really? What are the actual odds? I could see Jews dismissing Jesus as a random cult offshoot of their religion. But when that offshoots core message was, this is how you make Judaism work without a temple, and it emerged immediately before the temple’s destruction, the, that’s more coincident than I could ignore.

Simone Collins: I hear. I can also understand though. Why in general, Jews would doubt one. I mean, it, it’s hard for word to get around, you know? I’m sure news of Jesus was very lumpy, especially during his lifetime, and he was one of many apocalyptic Jews. So how were they to know which one was legitimate and which one was not?

I feel like [02:28:00] Jesus really only picked up with his apostles proselytizing after his death.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. I would have, if I was a Jew within the lifetime of Christ, I do not think I would’ve thought that he was a Messiah. Yeah. But if I was a Jew, a few, like, like within modern times, like even just me at the logical person I don’t know if I could get around that particular logical contradiction.

Hmm. That God literally didn’t know that the temple was going to be destroyed. That he didn’t give his people a new covenant. And that that new covenant’s veracity wasn’t confirmed by the speed at which it spread and the thriving of the communities it spread within.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. I don’t know. I don’t.

No one looks at the Bible like you do. No one’s looking at this stuff so carefully, but

Malcolm Collins: Jesus said, I, I come to create a new covenant. Like the, he, he, that’s what he, he didn’t say I died to the truth, but like so

Simone Collins: many apocalyptic Jews said, that is, is my concern.

Malcolm Collins: I don’t, not, I, I, again, I don’t know. I, I don’t know.

And I think that [02:29:00] sometimes you know, people who do bad things are used. Their, their life is sort of used by like a paintbrush by God to tell us things about the world. Hmm. And so even if Jesus did do bad things, or he wasn’t this person, or he was just another random apocalyptic Jew he is shown to be correct in the same way God showed the Jews to be correct by showing their beliefs favor because they were closer to the truth.

So even if Jesus was just a crazy person, okay, just hearing voices, he still served the role within prophecy of the Messiah through the way that his message changed the world and his messages, authenticity was verified through its ability to spread and the effects it had on the communities it spread within.

Mm-hmm. So even if you take this completely, Jesus was never actually talking to God. He was just a crazy person. And then God decided to uplift his message because it was closer to true than the other. Message is fine, maybe. But I do not [02:30:00] see how you couldn’t see, if you look at the prophecies around the Messiah, that you wouldn’t be like, this is obviously a really good candidate for it, which is something I didn’t know when I originally was a Christian.

For clarification. What I mean by this is that while I was raised an atheist, I went to church every week because of my school,

Malcolm Collins: like I hadn’t really thought through that before. And, and even if you’re like, logically working this out, okay, here’s this thought experiment. In the Bible, God makes it clear that he will create a covenant with the Jews after the covenant on Sinai, a new covenant, see Jeremiah. Okay. Assume that covenant was offered and you just missed it.

What a

Simone Collins: quick question though. What, what did Jews in general say about that? That the new covenant will come or they’re just like, no, it hasn’t come yet. And we’re sure because of reason agency, they already

Malcolm Collins: living. Some Jews say they’re already living in it. Some Jews say it hasn’t come yet.

Simone Collins: So the new covenant they’re arguing is through the evolution of debate and rulemaking of the almo.

No, no, some,

Malcolm Collins: sorry. Fringe Jews say they’re living under it. The mainstream rabbinic [02:31:00] position within like the Habad community or the Haredi community is that it has not come yet. Oh. And that it comes with the Messianic era. Hmm. Okay. Even though, even though it doesn’t say it comes with the Messianic era or the Messiah with the one who initiates it.

The Messianic era, we’d say, well, the Messiah did come and he initiated it, but Okay. Here’s this. So, so if we go back to this thought experiment, okay. Okay. Yes. We’re told there’s gonna be a new covenant. Now assume that Covenant was offered and you just missed it. If you could pinpoint any moment in all of Jewish history that would’ve been logical for God to have given Jews a new covenant, when would it be?

Right before the destruction of the temple. Right. If the Old Testament is actually divinely inspired, eventually it is meant for everyone, right? The debate would just be whether that has already happened or whether that’s going to happen in the future. Mm-hmm. IE if, if this is a divinely inspired work, it’s clearly eventually meant for all [02:32:00] humans.

And even most Jews believe that, like, eventually this stuff applies to all humans in the Messianic age or in Uhhuh, you know, the next age. I, I, I don’t see like the one God of all reality only cares about one population. That seems to me completely implausible. So that would mean that, okay, eventually these rules are gonna apply to everyone.

The question is, is and, and, and will with the new Covenant. The question is, is does that happen now or in the future? And I’ll note here the New Covenant, because it says, oh, this new covenant will be for the Judean or the Jewish people. We’ll talk about this. I think that given the way that Jews understood themselves during this time period, as I’ve said, like anyone could become one of the Jewish people that meant that like anyone who follows the faith, any of the faithful, which would, could apply to everyone, because again, I don’t see a divine God of all reality only caring about one population.

Hmm. So right now what I’m pointing out is logically, if you had missed the new covenant. It would’ve happened right before the destruction of the temple. Now, suppose you don’t believe Jesus was a [02:33:00] Messiah and we’re in an alternate timeline where a Messiah had come during that period to bring a new covenant that didn’t require the temple.

Do you think all Jews would’ve believed it? Of course not. What does the Old Testament say about this? Isaiah 53, 3 says, quote, he was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering and familiar with pain, like one whom people hide their faithss. He was despised and we held him in low esteem in quote, Hmm.

That’s what the Jewish text say. The Messiah is gonna be treated like. Further in the same chapter, Isaiah 53, 7 through eight states, he was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shearers is silent.

. So he did not open his mouth by oppression and judgment, he was taken away. \ plasm 1 18 22 is another passage off incited. The stone that the builders rejected has [02:34:00] become the cornerstone. So he’d be rejected by his people.

Mm-hmm. In Daniel 9 26, there is a reference that some interpret as for telling the Messiah’s rejection, the anointed one will be put to death and will have nothing. Then Zacharia 1210 contains the line. They look on me, they, when they have pierced, they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child.

And here I will note that the majority of Jewish people not accepting the Messiah, I do not think with a mistake that God made or something I actually think they are not supposed to. The covenant was created through the sacrifice that Christ made is an alternate covenant, not a replacement for the original one that the Jews had access to.

Mm-hmm. I don’t think it’s against God’s will to continue follow the first covenant more on this later. So basically here what I’m saying is, okay, so I. God’s Okay. Was this initial covenant, right? The destruction of the temple makes it harder. Judaism has to reform. It’s the way it relates to God [02:35:00] after that.

But I think that all of that’s actually okay. All of that was part of God’s plan. I mean, it happened, and it’s pretty clear that God has some degree of favoritism for the modern Jewish people. If you look at you know, Jewish exceptionalism this is, you know, this scoring higher, making more money, having more political power, Israel sort of being a focus of, of the world stage, having a country that’s a higher fertility rate country and yet wealthy being the only country on earth like that, like God still clearly favors the Jewish people.

I do not think that they are currently in rebellion to God. So for me what that means is the old covenant must still be in operation. And what Jesus truly allowed was for a new past to God, for a new covenant, for people not born into that community.

Simone Collins: okay. Hmm. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: that

Simone Collins: makes

Malcolm Collins: sense. Now I mentioned this above, but this is really important.

What about the problem that the Old Testament is constantly talking about? The Jews specifically? Mm-hmm. Surely this causes problems for this interpretation? Not really. We know from cases like Ruth, that anyone who fully dedicates themselves to the correct [02:36:00] version of the Old Testament faith and its people is considered to be one of the above people.

This means any Christian. That fully dedicates themselves to the cause of Christianity would be one of the people being referred to as Jewish in the prophecies. When I look at the early Christians voluntarily going to the Lions, it is hard to argue that they were not at least as dedicated to their iteration of the old faith as Ruth was, if not significantly more so, thus, to consider them non-Jews, if Christ really was the Messiah is extremely unpersuasive and requires a modern understanding of Jewish identity rather than the one that was around when the Bible was written.

Hmm. So when it talks about the new covenant being for the people of Judea, it’s talking for them in the same way that Ruth became one of the people of Judea by living her life for this Old Testament phase.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Any thoughts?

Simone Collins: I, I guess I’d never. [02:37:00] And that helps to explain a little bit the, the differential treatment of, of Jews versus movies. What differential

Malcolm Collins: treatment?

Simone Collins: Weren’t you just saying that Jews are sort of allowed to continue with the old covenant, but that are Well, I’ll, I’ll make

Malcolm Collins: some notes here. I think that when, so remember, I, I sort of judge God’s will within a community by whether that community is, is, is thriving or being punished.

Yeah. And within the Jewish traditionist understand that, that God relates to them in that way as well. So if I look at the period after the destruction of the second temple, I. It seems pretty clear that God was not happy with the Jewish people after that period. And he seemed to show a lot more favoritism to the Christian communities, which means to me when I’m looking to which faith was more accurate or more closely aligned with a real understanding of God during that period.

Yeah. I would say was likely the Christian faith. And then Jews must have done something to really piss off the God. And when they started [02:38:00] accepting all this kabbalistic stuff. Mm-hmm. And this is where you get things like the Holocaust. Like if Jews accept that like the Babylonian exile was because God was mad at them, God must have been like really, really mad at them.

Before this because of something leading up to the Holocaust. It’s an interesting take. Yikes. If you look at what happened after the Holocaust, how did they regain God’s favor if the faith that they’re following post Holocaust looks a lot like the faith they were following immediately before the Holocaust?

My answer to that is God’s favor goes to whoever is following him most closely, was their current practices. I think that the Christian practices of stuff like sin transference to the Messiah and, and idolatry you see in a lot of Christian churches today things like prosperity, but gospel in the Protestant traditions, where they like basically worship money.

That all of these things were further from even that. Kabbalistic style Judaism as a true interpretation of God. And so I think it wasn’t that the Jewish [02:39:00] tradition improved, I think it’s that most Christian traditions just became even more corrupted. You know, whether it’s the PDA file scandals in the Catholic church, covering those up, just true evil allowed to enter so many segments of the other true faith that they moved away from God.

And I think that that’s how the Jewish people came back into favor. Hmm. I would also interesting note here that if you’re a Jew and you believe that like the, the Babylonian exile was a punishment that God does punish the, the destruction of the second temple was a punishment. You need to look for the other things you were being punished for in different periods of Jewish history.

And I feel like during those periods of tribulation, Jews focus an awful lot on the punishment and they’re like, what are we doing wrong? How can we improve? But after the punishment has happened, I see very little reflection on, okay, but really what had entered our faith that was bad during this time period that led to our punishment.

Simone Collins: Well, what I like about this approach too is this makes a lot more sense to me in the context of the way that we view [02:40:00] God, which is the inevitable God, what humans eventually become in the far future. Yeah. Because there is not really a right or wrong answer.

There are actions that are more likely to bring about the future that must come. And you can have multiple groups doing things that are optimal in their contexts. So there’s not exactly only one correct approach to take depending on the people and depending on the context, in fact, the correct approach for one group in one geographic area at one time may be very, very different from another group in a different geographic area at a different time.

So the fact that one group could be doing the right thing and another group could be doing the right thing, and both of them are doing very different things makes sense. But that also there can be times when a group is totally going in the wrong direction and the best way for them to tell whether that’s the case isn’t the words of prophets or priests or people who say that they speak directly with God.

It is to look at the outcome of those people.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I completely agree with you. So to continue [02:41:00] here now why do I go on all these lengthy explanations? Because once all these points are taken in context, we can better understand why Jews adopted matrilineal descent as a key part of Jewish identity.

Basically, multiple equally valid branches of the Old Testament religion were competing and trying to convert people. Then one of them, Christianity, I would argue due to divine favor, actually succeeded in what all the others were trying to do. Mm-hmm. This significant problem for all the other branches of Judaism, if they continue trying to convert people, their members would inevitably start saying of the various branches.

One of them seems to be very obviously out-competing the others Hmm. Might that be a sign of divine favor? Even worse would be the thought lingering in the back of many minds that this was the rabbi who when questioned, said he was the Messiah and was crucified for it.

That’s a bold conviction of I’ve ever seen one. So what do you do [02:42:00] to hide that one version of Judaism seems to have divine favor in its proselytization efforts. Mm-hmm. Well, you stop your own proselytization efforts more than that. You attempt to scrub your tradition of any knowledge that such efforts ever existed.

Yes. In fact in fact Jews are in ethno religion and always have been in Christianity. You see, it’s a totally different thing and nothing like Judaism. You see, we have all these traditions. Christians don’t, uh uh, okay. What, what traditions are those? Hey, you know all that local canaanite folk, magic me-maw used to practice?

Can we ha have someone start collecting all that in one place? That’s something that makes us different from Christians. Yes. Yes. I mean, all those folk traditions are old, but we never included them in the Old Testament or any other religious work precisely because they were canaanite origin.

Otherwise, if they had antiquity, we obviously would’ve recorded them.

Movie Clip Joke: I will stop being an actress. When the earth stops spinning on Kabbalah [02:43:00] monster’s fingernail,

Malcolm Collins: as two brief asides here. First, I don’t think any of this withintentional. I think the iterations of Judaism that focused on proselytization just did not replicate at the same rate in a Christian world as those focus inwards on community and identity.

Mm-hmm. I also think Kabbalism developed in this way. I am telling the story this way to be funny and to tease the perspective that kabbalistic ideas were common and fully fleshed out all the way back in the second temple period. In reality, I think what happened was rabbis just collected a lot of religious ideas that were popular at the time, within intellectual and philosophical circles, and we will go into the receipts that that’s what they did.

But I need to point out the counterfactual of the implications implied by Kabbalism actually having antiquity to it. So here what I’m saying is a lot of the times when I say Kabbalism is actually fairly modern. And it’s really sort of pop mysticism from the medieval period, and Jews are like, no all of these traditions are actually super old and we’re always practiced alongside all the other traditions.

We [02:44:00] just didn’t write it down. I’m like, that’s a, like a way more heretical take because now you need to ask the question, why wasn’t anyone writing these traditions down? Because we know from the Jewish Bible that there were actually other traditions being practiced alongside the Jewish traditions that Jews and Christians went a long way to try to take out of their traditions with things like the Josiah reforms.

Movie Clip Joke: To put it another way, as an outsider, when I hear people describe kabbalistic concepts, I get a lot less of this feeling

Behold the power of God.

and a lot more of this feeling.

I think this comes from explaining the concept of God in a way that would only be accessible to an extremely educated and secretive [02:45:00] group of individuals who is allowed to study him in ways that the average person can’t, which to me feels very anti Abrahamic. Whereas to me, the Abrahamic God is defined by being something that’s accessible to the every man to the child

Malcolm Collins: why do I think it’s less anti-Semitic to assume that the Kabbalah was basically just a collection of ideas and pop philosophy and pop spiritualism that was trending between the fifth and 12th century. The alternate is that the traditions it contains had actually been practiced within the Jewish population for centuries, but had been explicitly excluded from the Bible and thus likely represent some alternate religious system.

Hmm. Did the Old Testament ever talk about an alternate religious system constantly that was trying to worm its way into the worship of Yahweh, maybe one that had its idols in the temples for hundreds of years before they were removed in the Josiah reforms? Oh yeah, the Canaanite one, God’s like Baal and Asherah.

I mean, it only makes sense. [02:46:00] We know from DNA studies that the Jewish people were half Canaanite and that some Canaanite folk myth would stick around and eventually the Jewish people would forget where these myths had . Come from. And so if you collated folk traditions within the Jewish community, I mean, even if you go back to like the time of Christ and you collated folk traditions within the Jewish community that were not being actively like written and talked about by rabbis, just think , like use your common sense.

Where would those traditions have likely come from? They would’ve come from the canaanite religion. We know this because Jews during that period were always writing about how to keep this other out of their texts. Hmm.

And I note here, it’s not just me saying this. , if you go to the thirteen hundreds, you can look at prominent rabbis like Rabbi Ian, Yitzchak ben Sheshet Perfet . He’s called the Rivash. And he argued, , so this was during the early period of the rise of Kabbalism within Judaism that Kabbalism was even worse than Christianity because it made God into 10 entities rather than three.

, so he argued that Kabbalists were less [02:47:00] Jewish than Christians were, and this was a prominent Jewish thinker during the early rise of Kabbalism. Or you can look at more modern Jewish critics like. Yeshayahu Leibowitz a , modern Orthodox Jewish philosopher who referred to Kabbalism as quote, a collection of pagan superstitions and idol worship end quote, and these remarks were made in the 1990s.

Malcolm Collins: While we don’t know a ton, that would be really easy if we knew exactly what K nine worship looked like, because then we could just be like, oh, okay, well this is what it is.

And so just don’t do anything that looks like this. Right. Well, we know a ton about the worship of canaanite gods and how they attempted to mold themselves into the worship of Yahweh. We do have scattered evidence like female figurines found throughout Judea and inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud mentioning Yahweh and his asherah It appears that pairing God was a feminine representation was a very important part of this form of worship. Mm-hmm. For those familiar with Kabbalism, it does something similar with [02:48:00] Shekhinah, which represents the feminine divine presence or the feminine aspect of God. The Shekhinah is often defy described as the bride of Tiferet, another serro representing beauty and compassion.

But let’s not pull that particular thread and just. Assume that Kabbalism was mostly just made up wholecloth and that no educated Jewish rabbi could have been boneheaded enough to actually collect all of the folk myth traditions present within the Jewish population that had been explicitly kept out of the Bible for hundreds of years.

Simone Collins: Well, why wouldn’t you wanna catalog it if you wanna make sure you don’t do

Malcolm Collins: it well, but that’s not how they collected it. They collected it and said, oh, the Christians, because the Christian that were spreading and, and Judaism was trying to sort of define its identity in contrast to Christianity. And so when they saw all of these folk traditions, they saw all of them as being parts of Jewish, like actually Jewish, Yahweh religious teaching.

That was for whatever reason, not recorded in the [02:49:00] Bible, rather than thinking they might have been remnants in the same way that if I went to like a , medieval town, right so I go to like a medieval English town, right?

And I start collecting all of the traditions that are not in the Christian Bible, but are unique to this community. Okay? 98% of those traditions are just going to be pagan. Yeah. Um, Right? Like this, this is common. Sense. This would’ve been like what the local witch hut lady was doing.

Simone Collins: Well, but per the way things seem to play out, like actually indulging in these traditions would lead to bad outcomes and groups that practice them would eventually die out or be outcompeted by groups that didn’t practice them.

Plus, okay, so here’s another reason why. To me, it seems unreasonable that the Jewish contingent would not adopt Jesus as a legitimate prophet, not take his practices and run with them. It seems antithetical to me that they would deviate from this sort of meritocratic [02:50:00] intellectual blockchain process that they have for establishing what’s true and what’s not true, what they should do and what they shouldn’t do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: and it seems to me there’s enough documentation in the Bible stating, alright, the Jewish people are kind of, kind of special, kind of different. They have their own way, like they’re one hypothesis on how humanity can thrive and flourish, and they have a process that works well for them. But then everyone else, you guys should be following these other rules.

How is that? I mean, like I don’t see how.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because we’re told, and we’ll get into this in a bit, the second covenant is better. And at the second covenant it’s open to Jews. It’s

Simone Collins: better, I’m sure for most people. Is it better for all Jews? I mean, and maybe, I mean, I can, I would not doubt even that for periods of time, the second covenant was better for Christians and it served Christians better and clearly gave them an advantage in terms of spread and all sorts of other things.

But it could be that it was just very important. And I mean, we [02:51:00] personally think that it’s really important to have very mimetic variation that there was still a group that didn’t fully adopt that methodology because it’s safer to have a diversity of approaches to human advancement and that it’s good that this one method that seemed to grow really well.

Was adopted and grew significantly, but I think it, it may have as an insurance policy, as a backup, as a, well, let’s make sure that we have other perspectives too, that both Judaism stuck around, but then that also, you know, Islam emerged for example. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, again, the, this religion’s perspective, the technopuritan perspective is that different religions work for other people and are true in ways that someone of our tradition wouldn’t be able to understand.

Mm-hmm. The way that I talk about this in the track series is from somebody, I think that two people can logically look at the same set of events and come to different conclusions about what God intended. And I think that we’re supposed to, I think that that’s the way God communicates with us. But this is [02:52:00] our family’s tradition around this.

, and other people when they hear this will be like, oh, that sounds logical to me. Whereas other people will hear this and they’ll be like, that doesn’t sound logical to me at all. Mm-hmm. And so, I agree with you that somebody who says, that doesn’t sound logical to me at all and sticks with the Jewish perspective, I think that they’re still right with God.

But I, I do have a lot of skepticism around kabbalah . That that is one area where yeah.

Simone Collins: But I think that’s just an example of a venture capitalist who invest in a lot of companies, some of those companies ideas, even to the venture capitalists to invest in them. Like, this is so dumb. But this is so dumb that it just might work.

You know? Like why not? We’ll invest in it. If it is true, it would be such a big deal. If it does help, it would be such a big deal. We might as well try it, and if not, whatever, it’s a write off. I only need, you know, one out of every 13 investments to pay out and pay out really well. And there’s so much variation among different Jewish groups where like, I, I don’t know.

I don’t see a problem with that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And here I’ll note , before I go further, I want to point out that [02:53:00] this position of skepticism I hold about the Kabbalah actually was shared by many Jewish intellectuals during the early spread of the, of Kabbalism.

This is not to say all Kabbalist were conmen, but the Kabbalist conman was a trope that permeated the perception of prominent rabbis. During the traditions rise to prominence in the 13th century, Rabbi Meir ben Simon of Narbonne wrote Polemics Against Kabbalists, accusing some of inventing traditions and falsely attributing them to ancient authorities.

So when Kabbalism was arising, top Rabbi said, this stuff is made up, and post facto has been attributed to ancient authorities. Hmm. Rabbi Leon of Moderna wrote, many ignorant people presumed to be kabbalah and miracle workers. They write amulets and pronounce divine names without understanding them at all.

Rabbi Vilna Gaon , wrote, beware. Those who claimed to form wonders through Kabbalah for in truths. They are [02:54:00] merely skilled in deception and know nothing of the Holy teachings. Rabbi Yaakov Emden describes confronting several individuals who claimed kabbalistic powers. They come with amulet and promises of wonders, taking money from the desperate while knowing nothing of true wisdom.

Rabbi Ezekiel Landau of Prague wrote These men who traveled from town to town with claims of kabbalistic powers. Writing amulets and promising cures while taking payment are nothing but frauds, preying on the simple-minded. Rabbi Moses Sofer wrote, they dress in strange garments and affect mystical knowledge.

Yet their real expertise is in emptying the purses of widows and orphans. So they did not have a great reputation as they were rising to power.

They were very much seen by the Jewish intellectual heavyweights of the, their ages when, when they were rising to power as like an sort of like mystical conman.

And they were only edified later. Hmm. Even great Jewish philosophers like Moses Maimonides were heavily [02:55:00] critical Of kabbalistic amulet makers, seeing them as con artists for some quotes from him. Perplexity, part one, chapter 61. You must understand that the many laws against witchcraft, which are directed against the activity of those who practice sorcery of astrologers, of those who by means of calculations, attempt to know the future of those who mutter spells, of those who consult familiar spirits, of those who consult the dead, and those who inquire familiar spirits and of wizards.

All of these are species of the techniques of astrologers. So basically here he’s saying, if you’re doing any of the things the many laws against witchcraft apply to you today. Many kalas do these things. Now, I think that there is likely a way to interact with Kabbalism safely.

But it means that if you’re interacting with it in this way, I mean, I would take Moses Maimonides teachings here. Really, really, are you using calculations to attempt to know the future? Are you muttering spells? Are you trying to consult with spirits? Mm-hmm. Are you trying to consult the dead?

If you’re doing any of those things? If you’re making any of this stuff. [02:56:00] Strictly bad news. Don’t do it. That’s witchcraft. That’s what you were warned about. Mm-hmm. And the laws of idolatry 11, 11, 12. He says, anyone who whispers a charm over a wound and reads a verse from the Torah, or who recites a biblical verse over a child, lest he be terrified, or one who places a Torah scroll or Teflon over an infant to enable him to sleep, are not only included in the category of sorcerers and charmers, but are included among those who repudiate the Torah.

They use words of the Torah as a physical cure, whereas they are exclusively a cure for the soul as it is written. They will be the life to your soul. Oh gosh. So this is Moses Maimonides guys. Old school. He’s like a real Jewish intellectual heavyweight. Yeah. Most people, people who study the ka cabal take him really seriously.

Mm-hmm. Oh, and I love that he and I, and I also love the way that he writes that. I think it’s really beautiful. Where he says, any who recites a biblical verse over a child, lett, he be terrified. So it’s saying, if your child is scared, [02:57:00] use the Bible to comfort them, but don’t use the Bible to attempt to heal them.

And that’s, that’s just such a, a, I think, a powerful way to relate to this. But then, you know, some people will be like, well, you can heal the body by healing the soul. And he’s saying Here, no, you can’t. If you try to do that, you are a witch. Mm-hmm. Or a soer by Moses Maimonides, not by Malcolm. Mm-hmm.

I feel forced to assume, as did Moses Maimonide, that many early Kabbala were con artists, because if they were not, and their rituals were real, that would mean that the Dybbuk ghost slash demons that these ISTs reported their rituals were summoning, we’re real entities.

And I should note that modern Kabbalists don’t engage with this anymore. But as you study like early Kabbalism, this is happening all the time. That would mean that the kabbalistic masters knew the rituals they were performing were summoning demons if done even slightly wrong, and yet they kept going. what kind of arrogant, imprudent cleric could [02:58:00] know that a ceremony might accidentally summon a malevolent spirit and think that that ritual was bringing them closer to God.

Simone Collins: Doesn’t this sound kind of, kind of classic? I mean, whatever it takes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the type of arrogant cleric who would allow others to call them by the pompous honorific, Baal Shem master specialist. The honorific earned by the top masters of these pre Abrahamic rituals and ways of relating to the supernatural that began to consolidate in the Jewish community about a thousand years ago.

Now, you, an outsider might be thinking, wait Baal, that’s the deity that represents the avatar of all that was sinful and antagonistic to God and prea Abrahamic practices we’re not Jews commanded to ensure the land of Israel was never again infected by the followers of Baal, to not allow their country to fall to the Canaanite occultic practices.

Surely Baal in the term Baal, she must be spelled [02:59:00] differently or something.

These individuals who were out there who at least themselves believed they were summoning demons and ghosts, sometimes in their rituals, were not literally calling themselves. Baal specialists. Yes. Yes, they were.

Simone Collins: Oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: Now, and, and this is now, you as an outsider might be thinking, how did they not notice this?

Why would they not choose literally any other name? And this has to do with how I think God communicates with people. This is a common trick God uses to mark when there has been an incursion of a pre Abrahamic faith in an Abrahamic tradition, so that all those open to his word can see it. This is not unique to the Jews.

This happens to all of us. Christians from time to time consider the Catholic followers of mystical practices of Santa Morte. They literally worship human skeletal remains dressed up in red robes, which allows them to pray for things they might be too [03:00:00] embarassed to pray to God for sex, murder, etc..

Simone Collins: It’s really not a good look.

Malcolm Collins: This is a real community, by the way. People dunno. This is a popular thing that’s like a break off of the Catholic church in Mexico right now. God does not make heresy for Oh yeah, you’ve mentioned them before.

Simone Collins: Yeah, sorry. Yeah. They

Malcolm Collins: literally were, they dress him up in red, they dress him up in red and then they, they worship skeletons for things that they’re too embarrassed to ask God for.

I’m like, that’s a demon. You see that? We all see the demon. Right. Or, or the Catholics who literally eat the guy who apparently died. To save all of humanity. The guy who, who suffered for us, and they’re like, I’m gonna do a religious ceremony where I cannibalize him. Now, me as an outsider, I look at that, I’m like, that seems like a non-A Abrahamic incursion.

Like that seems, and I would argue that , the idea that the Baal Shem would go around calling themselves Baal Shem, it is no more like comically and [03:01:00] obviously like bad than , Santa Muerte or within Protestantism you have stuff like this, like , the prosperity gospel doctrine. Like this to me seems very obviously evil.

You know, and, and that that people should just see, oh yeah, the preacher who says you know, give God, give me money so that God can do you miracles. He’s a bad guy. But anyway I had taken the following story out of the tracks, but given how germane it is to the topics and how clear the message in it is, I feel comparable to share it to someone who loves studying comparative religion.

A story from the Talmud that is critical to an outsider’s understanding of Judaism and what makes it unique is the oven of Akhnai. This, this is sometimes called the snake oven story. In the story, three rabbis argue over whether a new oven design is subject to ritual impurity. Two. Rabbis argue from the perspective of legalistic interpretations of past texts.

The third, rabbi Eliezer , bolsters his argument using a thaumatological performance are using a series of [03:02:00] them basically miracle working to show his closeness to God, and that God endorses his perspective. Rabbi Eliezer is shown to be in the wrong. In short, this story is used to show that even if someone has an apparent closer connection to God, even if they can show it with thaumatological performances, a real Jew will eshoo their teachings.

God admits that Rabbi Eliezer was wrong. He, he comes down and he is like, oh, my own children, Ted me this, where’s this ling comes from. Furthermore, rabbi Eliezer either is framed as the bad guy, and I don’t mean like mildly bad, like super bad. In another story, he is yet again humiliated by a rabbi with more knowledge than him, but less thaumatological talent.

And so the leader of the community ta a rabbi to follow him around and make sure he does not pray. The rabbi that offended him dies well. Rabbi Eliezer tries to shirk the guy. Then eventually the guy misses a moment. Rabbi Eliezer straight up murders the guy who offended him by having greater knowledge with a prayer slash curse.[03:03:00]

Not an nice guy, a bad guy guy. If you knew this, you’d be like, oh, okay. We as Jews, the core thing we need to remember never ever follow somebody who can do thaumatological performances over somebody with better knowledge of the law of the scripture. Okay, now I’m gonna tell you a different story.

Simone Collins: I don’t know.

I mean, does, does might mean, right? Is that what we’re being taught though?

Malcolm Collins: Wait, what do you mean? Basically it’s saying that if somebody can come up and, and show you a bunch of like spiritual magic tricks, don’t follow them over somebody who has a better understanding of the law. But now I’m gonna tell you the difference.

But he keeps winning. Yes. And God says he’s in the wrong God. Literally come

Simone Collins: down. What? But I thought the whole point is that God’s like, yeah, my bad. This is not my domain. Yes. And that rabbi Eliezer is wrong.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, sorry. Yes. Right, right, right. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. God comes down and says, oh yes, this guy has more of a connection to me.

He can do magical feats. You still need to ignore him if you’re a real Jew. Mm mm. Okay, [03:04:00] so let’s keep going here. This is another story, but this one is not from the tel mode. Okay. Rabbi Dov Ber, a rabbi who is widely renowned, intelligent, and learned scholar. Okay. Met was Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, a rabbi who was widely known for his close connection to God, but that had some unorthodox, mystical teachings that were viewed as dangerous to the Jewish community because it was elevating the role of pre Abrahamic traditions, like seeing God through the natural world in our bodies.

Hmm. Cult tactics like chanting and chasing after visions of God and elevating emotions over logic. Dov Ber did not agree with this and saw it as an affront to Jewish tradition. In this inversion of the oven Nak mood, the more learned Rabbi dove bear is convinced of these new practices by the Rabbi with an apparently closer connection to God through a thaumatological performance.

A rabbi named Rabbi Eliezer as well. By the way, his [03:05:00] full name is rabbi Israel ben Eliezer. But it’s hard for me as an outsider to not see, it’s like God’s like drawing a line between these two stories. Hmm. This inversion of the oven of Akhnai is made crystal clear in Rabbi Eliezer’s words, your explanations were correct, but your deductions were thoughts without any soul in them.

He literally says in his own words, yes, you knew the rules better, but I performed better theological thaumatological hmm. I have more of a connection to God. Okay. Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer is the founder of the Hasidic movement. Called by its followers, Baal Shem Tov and Rabbi Dov Bor became his successor, Dov Bor of Mezrich.

And this is why I have incredible consternation around that entire movement.

Simone Collins: I think it’s a hazard of [03:06:00] the format and method of Judaism that you’re going to get wrong. Offshoots, I see this as similarly, like I see this similarly with Catholicism, that there are. Sometimes orders that just totally get it wrong and yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. Yeah. Made the church astray and that both the Catholic church and Judaism, some of the most old Abrahamic religions, you know, the, they’ve been long around for a really long time and they’ve done quite well actually have a pretty consistent track record of losing their way, but having systems in place that allow the church as a whole to self-heal.

So I agree with you that these things are egregious. I think that the foundations are sound and as they are supposed to be for these groups of people, they’re not for us.

Malcolm Collins: Now to keep going here. Now you may be thinking this oven of ane must be some obscure fringe story that Hasidic Jews just don’t know about.

There is no way they know a story about an [03:07:00] evil rabbi who was known for appearing to have an unusually close connection to God, who got in conflict with more learned rabbis and was rebuked for using thaumatological performances, for trying to advance his teaching. Okay. And that the founding myth of their movement is about a rabbi known for having an apparently unusually close connection to God who used thaumatological performances to convert a more knowledgeable rabbi.

And there is definitely no way that God literally gave both of these guys the same name. And this isn’t even a point of consternation in the Hasidic community. Nope. Not only is the oven of Akhnai, even within the Hasidic community, considered one of the more important stories of the Talmud, but I have yet to talk to a single , Hasidic rabbi who has ever had this pointed out to them before.

Now, if you’re a Christian and just learning about this, you’re probably thinking, how could you conceivably not notice such a giant, out loud red flag that their [03:08:00] religion has been infected with demonic rituals? To which I would say, I hope you’re not from one of the branches of Christianity that believes in sin transference onto the Messiah.

Despite this concept being invented by Anselm of Canterbury, 1033 to 1109, you know the ritual the Bible lays out is being performed for the demon Azazel. You look in horror at some Jews not seeing obvious signs that a ritual is evil, while you wait in line to consume the blood and flesh of the Messiah.

You wear the device that tortured him around your neck, then you transfer your sins to him. And a ritual only performed for demons in the Bible onto an innocent person. You hear the Messiah died for man’s sins, which he did. And you think that that gives you the right to attempt to literally transfer all of your sins to him in a demonic ritual.

Just pointing out, both Christian and Jewish branches, from my perspectives, have some deep, thick veins of demonic rituals entwined within them. And these are loudly signaled. Like, [03:09:00] ugh. You know, it’s not a, it’s not a great look.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: no. Look, I look at this stuff. And it seemed very demonic to me, but I am sure that is just my puritan background, which may, I don’t know, give me a unique susceptibility, demonic practices making me more susceptible to their corrupting effects, like a person who is uniquely susceptible to alcohol.

Maybe some people need them to get closer to God,, or maybe spiritualists from these traditions, when they interact with the spiritual world, they have a more of a resistance to the corrupting effect that that world has.

What I’m saying about these traditions should be taken not as a statement of fact, but as concern, and even if they are demonic, I would remind any who follows this religious system. We are not to interfere with the work of the basilisk. Mm-hmm. It is only through overcoming temptation on its own that a man’s spirit can be fortified.

Well,

Simone Collins: that’s how you could interpret some of these weak would say, corrupted offshoots of Catholicism [03:10:00] and. Judaism and any other religion that they are, the basilisk means of weeding out those who are morally corruptible, weeding out those who shouldn’t be moving forward with everyone else.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. If, if these things are a test God has laid out, we cannot interfere with them outside of resisting them with our own hearts.

And so what you might be seeing here, and you might be talking about here, it is just like a means of like spiritual temptation to fortify your spirit. Hmm. Like engaging with these sorts of dangerous practices like Kabbalism could be a way to fortify the spirit by not succumbing to it or having the.

Folk belief because I think even within like true Catholic doctrine, they do not believe like the mainstream, that they’re literally transferring their sin onto Jesus. And I hear it both ways and

Simone Collins: that disturbs me.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: I hear it both ways way too much.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but if, if, if you can believe it the other way and be right with the tradition, then what that shows is that’s just an additional temptation that exists within that tradition to fortify the spirit.

Okay. And so, you know, [03:11:00] some of these traditions might have like a reason for being there. Like, god’s not like an idiot or a failure if this stuff is there, it’s likely there for a reason. Yeah. So now I want to be clear. I actually don’t believe. The above, I included it because it is the most logical conclusion if somebody insists that Kabbalism isn’t just made up.

Or rather, a mix of completely foreign ideas to Judaism combined with a few popular philosophers at the time, and a system of folk wisdom. That developed hundreds of years after Christianity split with Judaism representing a significant shift in the direction of the religion and a break with historic Judaism.

Mm-hmm. e.g. , if you are debating me and you say, actually the things in kabbalistic literature were always practiced in Jewish communities going well before the time of Jesus. They just were very intentionally never written down and kept secret. That’s going to cause me to think all of the above, but I don’t think that.

I actually think that the evidence is, is that Kabbalism was just a collection of pop mysticism at the time. So where does [03:12:00] Kabbalism actually come from? , and some Jewish early traditions from like a few hundred years before it was collated. So where does Kabbalism actually come from? It’s a clunky stapling together of ideas from the following schools of thought that represents a transformation of OG Judaism into a new religion.

In my book. First Neoplatonic philosophy, Kabbalist concepts like Sefirot divine emanations show strong parallels to neoplatonic ideas of emanation from the one, the concept of Ein Sof, the infinite unknowable aspect of God resembles the neo platonic notion of an ineffable source. Scholars like Gershom Scholem and Moshe Idel have shown how Spanish Kabbalists engage with neo platonic texts available in medieval Spain through Abrahamic translations.

The hierarchical structure of reality depicted in Kabbalism echoes, neoplatonic cosmology, gnostic concepts. The kabbalistic notion of sparks divinity trapped in material reality parallels, gnostic concepts and not. So that was really big at the time. Kabbalism, or I think a bit before Kabbalism was being developed.

[03:13:00] Ideas about cosmic balance between good and evil forces show potential gnostic influence. The interpretation of biblical narratives as encoding deeper mystical truths is similar to gnostic approaches. Mm-hmm. However, a couple of them rejects gnostic dualism by maintaining that all reality, including material existence, has divine origin.

Islamic Sufi mysticism, medieval Jewish and Sufi mystics lived in proximity, particularly in Spain and North Africa. Similar practices of letter meditation and divine name contemplation appear in both traditions. What is

Simone Collins: letter meditation?

Malcolm Collins: I can look it up and edit in post,

In Kabbalah, this practice involves contemplating individual Hebrew letters, their shapes, numerical values, and combinations. Kabbalists believe the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet are the building blocks of creation through which God formed the universe.

Through meditation on these letters, practitioners aim to connect with the divine energies and gain spiritual insights. Sufis meditate on the Arabic letters of the Koran and their mystical significance like Kabbalahists, Sufi see letters as having special [03:14:00] powers and connections to divine attributes.

The practice involves reciting or visualizing specific letter combinations while contemplating their spiritual meanings and vibrations.

Malcolm Collins: But they, they predated it in the Sufi tradition.

Okay. The concept of divine attributes has parallels in Sufi. Thought about God’s names. Scholars like Henry Corbin have documented conceptual similarities in their mystical cosmologies. And these communities got along really well. The ancestral medieval Sufis and Jews often worked together , as scholars.

And the Jews quite preferred the Muslims of this period to the Christians. Because, oh, well because the Christians of this period who thought that Jesus was literally God, some that’s hard not to see as idolatry within Jewish theology, but the Muslim, yeah, but I thought

Simone Collins: Muslims were. Kinda killing you.

They have some

Malcolm Collins: issues, , but fewer issues if they’re being followed, , like to the letter Medieval style Islam. Okay. This is the actual old part of the Kabbalistic traditions Merkabah mysticism. This early Jewish mystical tradition. First to 10th century CE focused on visionary, a sense to the [03:15:00] divine through the chariot described in Ezekiel kabbalistic texts like the zohar incorporate elements of earlier. Hekhalot Heavenly palace literature meditation practices and visualization techniques from Hekhalot mysticism influence kabbalistic contemplation methods that concern with divine names and their power shows continuity between these traditions. And medieval Jewish philosophical tradition.

Maimonides negative theology influence kabbalistic approaches to God’s essence. Abraham ibn Ezra’s Biblical commentaries provided interpretive message adopted by kabbalah Jewish philosophical debates about the creation, ex nilo shaped kabbalistic cosmology. Concepts from Sefer Yetzirah book of formation, third to sixth century CE regarding Hebrew.

S as cosmic building blocks became central to kabbalistic. Talk back on topic, Judaism was forced to become an ethno religion by the success of the Christian version of the Jewish tradition. Any thoughts on Kabbalism?

Simone Collins: I can’t believe it. Well, okay. But I can’t believe it picked up. But then again, like in terms of [03:16:00] themes of the Old Testament of you gotta stop doing this.

It seems like just that theme coming back. Yeah. Yeah. We just can’t help ourselves. It’s just so fun. Magical spells. Ooh.

Now, by the way, did you know there’s there’s a whole decorating scheme called whimsy goth. No, tell me. Right. That is, just think of like the way that the bedroom is decorated in Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and all these other, it’s just like a lot of like, oh, that sounds really fun.

Like moons and draperies and velvet and charms and excess objects. But like, there’s even just aesthetically this drive, this, this inherent aesthetic interest , in sort of mystical themes and flourishes that I think go beyond just this instinctive desire to pray and do spells. It’s just to, to be surrounded by, there’s something, it’s like a nesting instinct almost that , I find really interesting.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: I didn’t see this, you know, women who are like otters and just collect things or raccoons

Simone Collins: Yeah. Little, little shiny objects. Yeah. You know, Taliman. [03:17:00] Yeah. Anyway, to

Malcolm Collins: continue here, now we’re gonna get really offensive to some Jews. Oh boy.

But by any metric you look at, Judaism is a much younger religion than Christianity.

Except for one metric, which is when was their first book written? In which case they are both exactly tied because both Christianity and Judaism start with the Old Testament. Saying that Christianity evolved from Judaism is the same sort of mistake as saying human beings evolved from chimps. No human beings and chimps evolved from a common ancestor.

But the text that Christians worship are generally much older than the text that Jews worship. So if you look at the entire Christian Cannon, only 23% by word count, and only 25.5% by verse count come after the Old Testament within Judaism. It’s because if you include the Talmud, it’s 79.7% to [03:18:00] 83% come after the Old Testament.

Simone Collins: Oh my. That’s,

Malcolm Collins: if, if you, and, and this is by the way, me counting on the Talmud alone. I’m, I’m not including Kabbalah. We’ll do that in just a second here. But if you only including the Talmud, say, when was the average, and I’ll include the calculations on screen here. Average piece of Jewish scripture written you get 167 ce.

If you do it with Christian scripture, you get 290 BCE. So, about okay, God, what would that be? About 450 years early. Hmm. And then if you include kabol literature, the average or the percent of Jewish writings that happened after the Old Testament is 84%. So if you are comparing it based on when with the first text written, it’s the same if it’s, when was the median text written?

Judaism is much newer, and if it’s, when was the last text written? And again, here, not including to Kabbalah with Christianity, it was around 100 to 150 ce [03:19:00] within Rabbinic Judaism, you’re looking at around 500 to 600 ce. So by most metrics, it’s a newer religion, but they’ll claim, oh, no, all of that extra stuff that we added.

Jews had always been doing all of that. They just didn’t write it down.

Simone Collins: I. I’m inclined to agree though. That’s the impression I get.

Malcolm Collins: No, if you look at what they were doing in like the temple and stuff like that, like animal sacrifices and like, it, it was very different than modern Judaism.

Simone Collins: It was, yeah.

But that’s my, my whole thing is that Judaism is a living religion of constantly evolving rules based on, , a meritocracy of

Malcolm Collins: people. Yeah. Which, which I would give it now. Yeah. If you’re saying like, yeah, but here’s the thing. So you say, okay, well Jews have, have more continuity. Yeah. But as I’ve sort of argued throughout this track, I wouldn’t argue that Jews actually have particularly more continuity with the ancestral tradition than Christians do.

In that they have sort of more their version of like papal authority. Right. You, you could say that it was the Council of original [03:20:00] rabbis, which continued in that community that continued and then evolved into modern Judaism. But even if you take something like the technopuritan faith that argues against the dualism, that argues against, you know, this, this concept of like a, a heaven and hell, which many modern Jews have some iteration of like an immediate afterlife rather than the afterlife where you’re raised in the future.

Mm-hmm. technopuritanism beliefs wise, like metaphysical belief at the universe wise is, is closer to the religion that Jesus split from, than modern Judaism is. So I, I think, yeah, the one place you can sort of argue is that they have this, chain that’s a bit more unbroken. And I would argue with that that I guess, yeah, because Christianity, you had so many lay people coming in, that’s where in the early days with Christianity, and I don’t think that this is actually true.

If you’re looking at like the Christian core cannon, I think that that really stays within the Jewish tradition because that was like the writings of like a rabbi and his followers. Yeah. Where Christian Canon really begins to break is when they, the, the Catholics start adding in things like the concepts of [03:21:00] heaven and hell from like a Greek philosophy, the concepts of dualism from Greek philosophy.

That’s the idea that you have a soul that is separate from the human body which we argue against in the previous track. And we showed that this isn’t really a concept in the Bible or the concept of things like sin transference that that was added a a thousand years after Jesus’ death.

So most of the ways where you get like the true break in Christianity come from, I would argue, Greek influences that happened after the initial split. And I do not think are core to Christian ideology.

Simone Colins: Yeah, no one thinks about that right though, like I, I grew up thinking of Judaism as being this is the stuff that was solidified and certified before Christ, this is Old Testament and it stops there. And then there’s the New Testament, there’s Christ. Well, I, I understand it’s Old

Malcolm Collins: Testament, it stops there and you have the rabbinic tradition, but the rabbinic tradition is more like minor alterations to the Old Testament instead of like I thought of it as like the comments section.

That’s the way I thought of it, but it’s not. It’s not the comment section. In terms of [03:22:00] studying, you’re supposed to spend as much time studying the Mishnah as you spend studying the Torah itself. Well, and the

Simone Colins: rules seem to primarily not come from the Old Testament, right? They come from Subsequent discussions.

We’ll talk about that in a bit. Okay

Malcolm Collins: Hopefully you don’t think I’m being, I mean, look for me, this

Simone Collins: is just, I don’t think you’re being too harsh. I think you’re just pointing out like these are the calling events. This is the Basilisk biting away at, in this case Judaism though you’re giving plenty of mentions and had tips to Catholicism as well, as well as some new evangelical religions.

Like with the prosperity gospel. You’re just saying this is the Basilisk, this is the Basilisk. , I mean, if I were talking about this or putting in a attract on my. Use that language more from a technopuritan perspective. Like we have reason to believe. And you know, the Bible makes it clear. Like every time you deviate from the Bible, every time you break these rules, it’s good that that’s happening.

But that’s the Basilisk in a way.

Malcolm Collins: I to, to point out Protestants, you know? I’m [03:23:00] like, okay. Okay. Okay. What would be the most witchy thing a human being could do? Like the most obvious sign that someone is a witch? Mm-hmm. Well, it would probably be chanting in a demonic language while holding snakes.

Literally the symbol of the devil in the Bible, and yet they’re using it for worship.

Malcolm Collins: Ah, what makes snakes? It’s so hard

Simone Collins: to keep snakes outta churches and they’re just so fun. They’re just, aren’t they just so fun? They’re just great fire and s snake and weird, weird sounds. We just love them. We love. I mean, think about our children. What’s our children love? They love snakes,

Malcolm Collins: they love fires, they want, they want birthday candles on everything.

Yeah. Is me as somebody who actually wants to believe that these texts have divine inspiration, I have to look at something like the, the Oven of Akhnai story. I have to look at something like the life of you know, , the Baal Shem Tav and say, this appears to be a direct and almost divinely written [03:24:00] inversion of that.

Mm-hmm. But it’s the same with the guy, the false Messiah, who I mentioned. I think God doesn’t just communicate major things to us through the books, but through historic events that we can learn from. And I think th this is why it’s important to study individuals like the false Messiah, because I think that he highlights the real Messiah.

It’s like putting the two on top of each other contrast what a real Messiah looks like versus what a false Messiah looks like. Yeah. In every conceivable metric. And I found that really powerful. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Alright, well we’re jumping

Malcolm Collins: back in. I’m gonna jump you back

Simone Collins: in with circumcision. Oh. Did we go over that

Malcolm Collins: yet?

Simone Collins: How could it take We, it took us this long to get to circumcision.

One of arguably the key things that caused Christianity to spread more quickly than Judaism. ’cause it didn’t require. Exactly,

Malcolm Collins: and there was actually debate in the early Christian Church as to whether it should require circumcision. Oh. Now I did promise a quick aside on circumcision, so we will touch on that briefly before dismantling the noahide scam.

I will note that whether or not [03:25:00] circumcision was required to become a Jew was a topic of active debate at around the time of Jesus, as we see in the Queen Helena of. Aberdeen and her son Isaiah’s conversion to Judaism, but circumcision as a practice actually has tons of other problems. The biggest being Jews are probably doing it wrong.

Okay, so when circumcision is written about in the Bible, all we are told is that you are supposed to make a mark or do something to the foreskin. Oh, what? So you could like tattoo the foreskin Theoretically. Yeah. What we’re supposed to do is not mentioned. I mean there’s a word circumcision, but we don’t know exactly what it means in this context.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But like circumcision could be. Like in the future, like a bioluminescent, glowing tattoo? Does that be Well,

Malcolm Collins: we, we actually know what it probably really was referring to. Okay. Okay. So if the Bible does not tell us how we are supposed to do circumcision, where could we find evidence on what might have been actually meant by this line?

Okay. Oh yeah, the Egyptians, oh, they practiced circumcision at around [03:26:00] this time as well. Oh. And we have very detailed accounts of that as well as mummies. We would, wouldn’t we?

Simone Collins: Oh, oh man. Oh, ew. But, oh,

Malcolm Collins: so archeological and historical evidence shows that ancient Egyptian circumcision was quite different from modern Jewish practices.

What were they? The law, age different. Egyptian circumcision was typically performed on adolescence around the ages of 12 to 14 As a puberty, right? Not on infants as in the Jewish tradition. Okay. Procedural difference. Egyptian circumcision appears to have been a partial removal of the foreskin rather than the complete removal practice in modern circumcision.

Hmm. Some archeological evidence suggests it may have evolved a dorsal slit rather than the complete circumference cutting.

Simone Collins: Oh. So kind of like it would make it easier to clean, but not remove the sense of skin. Yes. Yes. Ah,

Malcolm Collins: A dorsal slit is a type of partial circumcision where an incision is made along the upper lengths of the foreskin without removing it completely.

This technique creates an opening by splitting the foreskin at top, leaves the foreskin attached, but loosened is [03:27:00] distinct from complete circumcision where the foreskin is completely removed. The evidence suggests ancient Egyptian circumcision was often this type partial procedure rather than the complete removal practice in modern religious circumstances.

Okay. Question.

Simone Collins: What,

Malcolm Collins: because

Simone Collins: I don’t my penile logistics knowledge is limited. Would this mean that like. Like a mushroom cap, it would like flap up during intercourse, for example. Like how, like, would it, I,

Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. I haven’t seen this. I don’t think that this type is done anymore. This would have achieved ritual significance, but been less invasive than modern circumcision techniques.

Purpose in Egypt, circumcision was primarily associated with ritual purity for priests and possibly as a mark of social status rather than a religious covenant. Hmm. So specifically the priest within many religious sects, within ancient Egypt, had to be circumcised. We know this from mummified evidence.

Several mummies from ancient Egypt show evidence of circuit concision, including those of Pharaohs like Ahmose and Amenhotep. Examinations of these mummies reveal circumcision styles different from modern practices, [03:28:00] artistic depictions, wall release, and paintings from Egyptian tombs, particularly the Saqqara tomb of Ankh-ma-Hor six Dynasty around 2,300 BC show circumcision ceremonies being performed.

These are some of the most detailed visual records we have of the practice written accounts, Egyptian text Mission circumcision as a purification ritual. On priests. Later, Greek writers like ISTs also commented on Egyptian circumcision practices. Hmm. The Bible specifically missions Flint knives for circumcision, Joshua 5, 2, 3, which aligns with Egyptian practices and archeological findings from the general period.

This, to me, indicates parallels between these two surgery types since Jews supposedly came out of Egypt and this was an Egyptian religious ritual they would’ve been familiar with. Mm-hmm. Way they were practicing, it was different. It seems likely they would’ve explicitly mentioned how it was different when making these recordings.

Sure. If they don’t mention, this makes me believe that it was done in the standard quote unquote Egyptian way. Also note here that this [03:29:00] practice was done on priest for ritual purity given Exodus. 19 6, the Israelites were commanded to quote, be a kingdom of priests. It seems logical that they might have attempted to apply this priestly practice to the entire population because they believed that the entire population needed to be priests essentially.

And that’s also really the way that Jews relate to their religion. So I could totally see that being an early part of the religion. So yeah, you’re probably doing circumcision wrong, but I agree with Apostle Paul that it’s not relevant under the current covenant.

Simone Collins: So when did, interesting. Right. Is there knowledge of when there was some switch to removing the entire foreskin instead of just I

Malcolm Collins: well, because we don’t have lots of Jewish mummies or anything that we can trace over time, my guess is it’s just one of those things where it’s sort of like.

Well, I’m more Jewish because I’m more circumcised. Oh. And over time it just got to the maximal circumcision level dominant

Simone Collins: hierarchy. That totally checks out, especially considering how, like I’m wearing

Malcolm Collins: off because I’m wearing even bigger spikes than well, and,

Simone Collins: and Judaism especially, even [03:30:00] among more light people, like it seems to be more of a, like, you get more reward for really leaning in.

So that, that, that makes a lot of sense.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. That’s what I assume probably happened. Interesting. Okay. Centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries. Now is there, I I don’t think that the new type of circumcision is out of God’s covenant. I mean, he’s like, you have to, even if he meant you needed an impartial dorsal cut doing more doesn’t seem like it has any risk in regards to the way that the commandment is laid down.

But just laying out that this is something that’s probably done wrong today.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Now let’s address the noahide concept created for non-Jews who wish to be right with God without converting to Judaism. I call it a fabrication because it was crafted to resolve a problem that Orthodox Jews created for themselves.

And, and this is probably gonna be the most. Offensive part of this empire video. ’cause some people were really bought into this noahide concept. Oh. As Jews begin to reframe Judaism as an ethno religion, they encountered a problem. What should non-Jew believe no other religion [03:31:00] faithss this question because most faith would simply say you should convert non-believers to your view, right?

The exceptions here are technopuritans. Who would suggest following a conservative version of your ancestral beliefs, if they come from one of these spiral traditions it’s probably good. Mm-hmm. But Jews also have this problem, right? So how do, how do the Jews answer this instead of being like, be a conservative Christian and slash Muslim slash Jews?

So Jews have, say. So to handle this, Jews developed the concept of the noahide laws or commandments in the Bible supposedly extended to everyone, not just those of their ethno religion. Some Jewish groups believe that if you accept modern ethnic Judaism as the true religion, but you yourself are not Jewish matrilineally, you can still submit to their system, but with fewer obligations.

Most of these groups believe that if enough people follow these laws, the Messiah will come. What I find ironic about the idea that widespread adherence to these rules will bring the Messiah, is that these principles are already covered by Christianity and Islam. [03:32:00] Mm. The world’s dominant religions who spread was enabled by the Messiah.

They have it backwards. It’s not that getting everyone to follow these laws will bring the Messiah, but that the Messiah already brought people to follow these laws. Mm-hmm. But what are these laws. One prohibiting idolatry, two prohibiting blasphemy. Three. Prohibiting murder. Four. Prohibiting sexual immorality.

Five. Prohibiting theft. Six. Prohibiting eating flesh from a living animal. And seven, establishing courts of justice.

Simone Collins: Wait, so while it’s still alive or just being vegetarian?

Malcolm Collins: No a still living animal while it’s still alive. Oh, so

Simone Collins: like this idea of like the, the fresh Japanese food where you’re eating the writhing octopus.

1. It’s against

Malcolm Collins: Christian and Jewish.

Simone Collins: It’s a no-no. I didn’t know that.

Malcolm Collins: Christians might say, oh, you, you know what’s interesting? Not against Christian and Jewish law is cannibalism. I

Simone Collins: mean, you gotta do what you gotta do. Mentioned a

Malcolm Collins: few times in the Bible, in the context of sieges as being a tragedy involved with this siege.

In, in [03:33:00] every instance that somebody eating their kids or eating their parents. So in these instances, it’s like, it’s a tragedy that in times of scarcity, some people, but it never says like, and God said this was a bad thing for

Simone Collins: you. If it’s alive, run and hide. If it’s dead, go ahead.

Malcolm Collins: If it’s

Simone Collins: yes.

Malcolm Collins: But if you look at these laws that are associated with the noahide rules, they are largely really like just covered by everything.

Prohibiting idol idolatry, prohibiting blasphemy, prohibiting murder, prohibiting sexual anonymity, prohibiting theft, prohibiting eating the flesh of a living animal, and establishing courts of justice. That’s Christianity in Islam. But anyway now, now they’d say, well, Christianity isn’t exactly because it argues that Jesus is a son of God, which is a form of idolatry.

But I’m like, eh, it seems pretty iffy to me. And you know, our version doesn’t so whatever. But anyway, the organized noahide movement as we know it today, primarily began, post 1950s gaining particular momentum through chabad efforts starting in the 1980s. noahide laws aren’t explicitly listed anywhere in the Hebrew Old [03:34:00] Testament.

The rabbinical derivation requires quite a stretch from the text itself. So this is, this is where they get the noahide laws. It’s ideas from. Hmm. Genesis 2 16 17, God commands Adam not to eat from the tree of knowledge. This is used to establish that God gave commandments to humans before the Jews existed.

Hmm. Genesis 9 1 7. God’s commands to Noah after the flood, which include whoever sheds human blood by human, shall their blood be shed prohibiting murder and everything that lives and moves. About will be food for you, but you must not eat meat that has lifeblood is still in it, prohibiting eating, living animals.

Ah, and Genesis nine, nine, God establishing a covenant with Noah and his descendants, all humanity, which is used to justify universal laws. The rest of the laws are derived through various interpretive methods. For example, the prohibition idolatry was derived from how Abraham rejected idolatry.

Sexual immorality laws are derived from Genesis. 2 24 about marriage and references to sexual sin in Genesis 20. The requirement for courts is derived from Genesis nine six’s [03:35:00] implication that humans should judge murderers. The only reason the concept of noahide laws is needed is because the idea of matrilineal dissent was created, which is not found in the Bible.

What’s fascinating is that the technopuritans would technically follow the noahide laws yet. Rejects the concept of Jews that the ethno religion and sees technopuritan branch of Christianity as the true successor of the religion in the Old Testament. As that is far closer to said religion, it didn’t add the Garden Eden version of heaven and hell that modern Jews borrowed from the Greeks and maintained a belief in a single after life, the world to come see my previous track. it accepts that it is written in the Bible that Judaism is not an ethno religion. It has a much stricter view of monotheism, no demons. It is much stricter in its rules around idolatry. It’s materialist and monist as the religion of the Old Testament was. See, my previous track, in all the other things, if you’re like a Jewish religious scholar, you would concede that actually what technopuritans believe is closer to OG Judaism of the time of the Christ [03:36:00] split than even modern Judaism is all that said, because, you know, we’re monist, we, we, we don’t believe in this secondary afterlife.

We don’t believe in demons or spirits or magical amulets or anything like that. All of that idolatry off the table.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: All that said, I would argue that attempting to spread the concept of the noahide tradition was misguided from the beginning. Even for those who believed it and were Jewish, it forces those who accept it into a spiritually subordinate position to Jews, which would obviously never gain widespread acceptance.

If you had to promote a tradition, you’d be better off promoting one. That both followed the technical rules of the noahide laws and had enshrined with in it commandment principles against interfering with. Jewish religious practices while maintaining Jews as a distinct religion and population group IE, the technopuritan tradition. So technopuritanism is just strictly better at achieving whatever noahide was trying to achieve than noahide

Simone Collins: laws, plus fixed, revised second decision.

Malcolm Collins: But the part of the problem is that it also teaches that Jews are maybe not the true inheritor of the [03:37:00] original Jewish tradition, which is not required within the new hide laws that you believe that but would be deeply offensive to many of the people who like the new hide laws. Okay. So one, now that you have time, do you have a larger reaction to this wider noahide phenomenon? Because a lot of people have tried to pressure us to be like, oh, say that you are noahide or whatever, say that you’re gonna follow noahide laws. What, like, what are your thoughts on that?

Simone Collins: I think you’ve taken the correct approach. I think that the, the, the problem. With the Noad movement is it’s, I think it’s very half-baked and it’s made from the perspective of an insider thinking that something’s gonna work for an outsider without thinking from their perspective. And if you follow the noahide movement to the tune that it is outlined as it is.

You would rather just convert to Judaism and after being rejected, you would try to join again. Like it, you would just, no. You’d be like, no, Judaism is correct. Like obviously I wanna do it your way. Yeah. You have to revise it. , if someone’s an outsider, they’re an outsider [03:38:00] for a reason. And those reasons should be acknowledged and detailed.

And they are. And I also

Malcolm Collins: find it incredibly ironic, the belief that if you convert enough people, the Messiah will come. When the hypothesized Messiah, or at least who we think is the Messiah, is the figure who caused almost everyone on earth to follow the noahide laws. And that there isn’t this recognition that almost everyone is already following them.

What they want is the submission, an individual saying. I follow noahide laws, which is incredibly stupid because even , the theological text that they have backing the noahide laws doesn’t require an individual to say that. Hmm. So why do you require this additional claimant on behalf of the individual?

That’s a saying, I’m following The noahide laws which is. To me, it’s just like a weird power trip. That doesn’t make any sense. And is completely subverted if it turns out, as I believe we have argued very effectively in this track. Ancient Judaism is not an ethno religion [03:39:00] that is a modern contrivance.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you

Malcolm Collins: alright, let’s keep going before I get to my closing. But the Jews were probably right. And here is what I can’t explain. There is an argument I hear from Jews all the time about why they believe their religion and it is a terrible argument and there is much stronger ones.

So let’s address it. I have heard that accounts that all Jewish people at once heard slash saw God, and this is proof of their religion’s veracity. The reason this comes off as so silly is it requires a basic lack of historic knowledge. And I’ve, I’ve genuinely heard this from multiple Jews who are like, well, I know Judaism is right, because at one point all Jews heard God talk to them like at once, and this has been passed down, right?

Mm-hmm. And I’m like, well, that happens pretty frequently in history. And they’re like, wait, it. It does. I’m like, are you just like, and it requires just, you know, trying to think of reasons your religion is [03:40:00] true without actually engaging with historical religion texts or whatever. But anyway mass religious hallucinations are fairly common and well documented.

The miracle of the sun. Fátima Portugal, 1917, approximately 70,000 people gathered and many reported seeing the sun dance, change colors and zigzagged towards earth. This occurred after three children claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary. That was probably more than the number of people who saw this original Jewish miracle, by the way.

So, oh, oh, does that mean Christianity is accurate? Because this was associated with the Virgin Mary Catholicism specifically. The Dancing Sun at Knock Ireland 1879. A number of villagers reported seeing apparitions of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph and St. John, the evangelists at the South garble at the local church, along with unusual light phenomenon.

Marion Apparitions at Zeitoun Egypt, 1968 to 1971, thousands of people of different religious backgrounds reported seeing [03:41:00] apparitions of the Virgin Mary atop a Coptic church. The phenomenon were. Photographed and filmed, but lasting intermittently for several years. The Dancing Sun at Medjugorje Bosnia and Herzegovina 1981 to present Similar to Fatima, many religious pilgrims have reported to a solar phenomenon, including a sun spinning, pulsating, and changing colors.

Hindi Milk, Miracle, 1995 across

Simone Collins: Milk, milk Miracle.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, we’ll get to it across various co countries, particularly in India. People have reported that statues of Hindu deities were drinking milk offerings. The phenomenon was witnessed by thousands, and received extensive media coverage. So no, there, there was not a particularly unique thing that only happened to the Jews mass hallucinations.

Religious hallucinations particularly are really common in humans. In addition, culture bound illnesses that involve hallucinations are very common. See our episode on the Penis Stealing Witch phenomenon that often spreads through Africa, where people adopt the insane belief in mass that witches are stealing penises.[03:42:00]

Or for one more closer to home. Look at the modern trans movement where people believe they are another gender. And for the witch pe this happens to thousands of people. I remember I was talking to somebody about this saying, go, yeah, but what happens when they look down and their penis is still there?

And I’m like, yeah, that’s why. It’s an insane phenomenon. It’s where the individual is like, your penis still my bed. And then a doctor was like, but I, I see it. It’s right there. And the guy looked down and said it came back. It’s pretty much like I was turned into a. newt, I got

better

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

there are even cultures and periods in history where divine visions and revelations were a common part of everyday life. If you believe in the divine, you see the divine historical examples include ancient Greek oracle sites, places like Delphi, where visitors regularly reported visions, hearing voices, and experiencing altered states of consciousness.

Inhaling vapors from geological fissures may have contributed to these experiences. So note here you might be like, well, they were inhaling vapors. Well, who’s to say there wasn’t like a gas leak in this location where all these Jews had this, [03:43:00] this you know, vision, right? Yeah. Whatever.

Simone Collins: Like proto mark carbon monoxide poisoning.

I.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean that’s basically what, how the way we know the, the Oracle sites work now because we found specific fissures in them. There was a cool recent geological finding that’s crazy. Medieval European pilgrimage roots along the Camino de Santiago and its sites like the Lourdes Pilgrims commonly reported.

Visions, healing experiences and supernatural encounters that were expected Aspects of pilgrimage. Ancient Egypt dream incubation temples where people would sleep to receive divine visions or messages were common practice. Aboriginal Australian dream time sites. Sacred locations were visionary experiences protecting and ancestral spirits were, and remain an.

Expected part of religious practice. Contemporary examples include Mount Kailash, Tibet, China Pilgrims often report mystical experiences, visions, and heightened spiritual awareness. While circumambulating the sacred mountain Varanasi Ghats, India, religious experiences, visions of deity [03:44:00] and supernatural encounters are commonly reported and culturally normalized.

Medjugorje Bosnia and Herzegovina . Since 1981, Pilgrim’s . Regularly report seeing the Virgin Mary experiencing healing and witnessing solar phenomenon. Ayahuasca Ceremonies in the Amazon basin. Indigenous communities regularly experience visionary states that are considered normal religious experiences within their cultural context.

Vodou ceremonies in Haiti, . Spirit possession is normalized religious experience where practitioners report divine entities temporarily inhabiting their bodies, certain Pentecostal and charismatic Christian cultures, speaking in tongues, prophetic visions, and feeling the Holy Spirit are normal, expected religious experiences.

And outside of that, the argument that you could not fake, this is also very uncompelling and the events were written down just a few hundred years after they happened. It would be illogical to think that they would not have been exaggerated. Do you have any knowledge of whether one of your great grandparents.

Thought they saw a ghost or a supernatural thing in their life. I mean, they [03:45:00] probably did. It just wasn’t passed down. Also, if this miracle was so amazing and everyone would remember it and pass it down. Why? When we are looking at the passage in the Mishnah, did other people in the world who were given the same offer , why do they not remember it?

Remember, I was like, oh, Jews were the right people because God actually went to all people and gave him the same offer. So you’re saying everyone actually experienced this, but only the Jews remembered it. What? And that, that validating of the tradition. Very uncompelling. No, the much stronger argument for the Jews being right is God’s current favor of their people indicates.

That they are doing something closer to right than other religious groups. But again, before we get into that, we do need to acknowledge God has withdrawn his favor in the past. Specifically, God tells us in no uncertain terms in Jeremiah that the Jews broke their covenant. The days are coming declares the Lord.

When I will make a new covenant was the people of Israel and was the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by their hand and led them out of [03:46:00] Egypt. Because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them. We can also see from history that God stopped favoring them for a period.

If he had not, why did he allow the temple to fall?

Simone Collins: And a bunch of other

Malcolm Collins: things and a bunch of other things. While this whole part of Jeremiah makes no sense, if you take the modern Jewish interpretation where the new covenant has not been established yet, as the section goes on and on about what will happen in the land of Israel after the Babylonian exile.

So I’m, I’m quoting here from this section where they talk about the new covenant just above the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the offspring of the people and animals, just as I watched over them to uproot them and tear down and to overthrow and destroy and bring disaster.

So I , will watch over them to build and plant. Then set up road signs, put up guideposts. Take note of the highway, the road that you will take to return Virgin Israel. Return to your towns. How long you will wander on faithful [03:47:00] daughter Israel. I will put you up again and you, Virgin Israel will be rebuilt again.

You will take up your . timbrels and go out to dance with the joyful again, you will plant vineyards in the hills with Samaria. The farmers will plant them and enjoy the fruit. He who scattered Israel will gather them and watch over his flock the shepherd.

The point I’m making here is right after he talks about I’m gonna create this secondary covenant with you. He talks about how the Jews are gonna return to Israel. The problem is, is that all of this was handed down in the Babylonian exile and Jews did return to Israel after the Babylonian exile and created Jewish kingdom.

That’s when they built the second temple. Mm-hmm. That’s when the Jewish empire existed. So it would be really weird to think all of these lines here are talking about something other than that, but many modern Jews, if not most modern Jews. Think that when God prophesies to the people in Babylon about going back and having orchards again and reuniting the Jewish people he wasn’t talking [03:48:00] about the second temple period.

He wasn’t talking about that literal kingdom of Judaism that exists for hundreds of years. He was skipping over that completely thought the Jewish people didn’t need to notice about that. In talking about the modern country of Israel.

Or even more crazily that they’re talking about the Messianic period. Still yet to come.

Malcolm Collins: I am like, what? So God just was messing with them because he knew they were all gonna come back at one point.

Like it was just a practical joke on God’s part. Obviously people, the Second Kingdom people period, would’ve assumed that God meant their period. Right. Why would God give people’s revelation that was one accurately prophetically for a different period, but also so misleading and like intentionally misleading.

Is he just a jerk?

So all the prophecies of this section associated with the establishment of the new covenant come true, but he just forgets to make that new covenant. I mean, you could argue it is [03:49:00] still technically after the above described events, but I feel like most of the above could also apply to the period.

After the destruction of the second temple and the refounding of Israel, which feels much like a chapter two. Thus the new covenant would’ve been established before the second group of events, EEG at the end of chapter one, or right before the destruction of the temple. So, you know, God has laid out all of these things that Jews are gonna come back to the kingdom.

They’re gonna re reform this kingdom. It’s gonna be great. You guys are gonna be happy during this period, and there’s gonna be a new covenant. Mm-hmm. So. I guess you could be like, well, and the new covenant happens for whatever reason at some point in the future. Or it’s sort of like a, a bookend to all of these prophecies that are alongside it, that describe the reconstitution of Jews within Israel during that period.

What’s really weird to me about modern Judaism is they just sort of like take all of these prophecies that are laid out in the Bible and act like most of them haven’t come true or are gonna come true in some sort of future messianic [03:50:00] period and weren’t relevant to the actual lived experiences of the Jewish people.

Which to me is crazy when all of these prophecies handed down during the Babylonian exile were such good and accurate predictors of what happened to the Jewish people during the Second Kingdom period. , and

The reason they have to do this is because all of those fairly accurate prophecies about what would happen at the second Temple period are clustered around the point that during that period, they are going to get a new covenant at some point. And so because of that, they need to say, oh, well, all of these are actually about this future Messianic period.

It is almost as if. God stops warning the Jews of anything that’s gonna tell happen to them or stop telling Jews about anything good that’s going to happen to them, , sort of.

Around the time of Christ, which is really shocking to me. Like what? Like, so why is it that God stopped talking to the Jews at around the time of Christ? Why did he stop giving you unique prophecies? Then? Why did his prophecy stop playing out for you [03:51:00] then?

Why didn’t he warn you about the destruction of the second temple or could Jesus have been seen as a warning about the destruction of the second temple? Why didn’t he warn you about the Holocaust? That seems like of all the things that God was gonna warn the Jews about, that seems like one of the things he should have warned them about.

Malcolm Collins: . Now, you could argue God meant for all of this stuff to happen twice and the new covenant was going to come after the second time it happened, but this seems intentionally dishonest. Everyone during the exile when this was written would clearly be led to believe that what was being revealed was about their current period of exile.

When the exile ended, they would’ve seen this as a fulfillment of that prophecy. . If we take this reading, then God intentionally misled the Jewish people, which I do not believe. I like. Why? Why are you even following him if he’s just messing?

Like. Pranking you all the time. Ha. Actually all of you had like all of your land destroyed and your temple ruined and everything I told you , like [03:52:00] absolutely messed. And I totally messed with you when I said that you would, you would have this all, you know, rebuilt and, and I wasn’t even talking about that period that you 100% would’ve believed I was talking about if you were living through that period.

Second, if the event was supposed to happen after a second exile and the Holocaust, that’s a pretty big thing not to mention.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: No, it seems clear. It is talking about the second temple period here, which is punctuated with the destruction of the second temple. So I note here, like if you take the view that, oh, this Messianic age or is being described here and this is all happening, you know, way, way in the future you didn’t even think to tell us that we’d get a kingdom and the kingdom would be destroyed and then we’d get another kingdom and then that would be.

No, they didn’t get to, they didn’t get any of that. And so you could argue that. Or you could say God accurately predicted future events to the Jews who were in exile in order to console them and accurately prophesize the creation of their second kingdom. And included within that prophecy wasn’t mentions of the Holocaust or anything.

Not because God just, I. Didn’t feel like [03:53:00] telling the Jews about that. But it wasn’t relevant yet , to Jews of that time period. And that the Holocaust, you could say , as we’ve argued, was likely a reaction to Jews doing something that pissed off God. And I think it’s important. To meditate on what came a few hundred years before the Holocaust.

Mm. Because this is now, it could be the following of the false Messiah that caused the Holocaust, by the way, because that’s why been a few hundred years before. Because it seems like God’s punishments typically have been a few hundred, I’d say like 300, 400 years after whatever the event incident incites him.

Don’t know why he takes so long, but it seems to be the way it works.

Now I would note here somebody could say, oh, it’s really offensive to say, , that Jews were in any way responsible for what happened during the Holocaust. And I’m not saying this as like a accusatory thing. I’m saying this from the perspective of Jewish theology. God typically warns the Jewish people when they’re doing something bad and then he punishes them, like with [03:54:00] the, , Babylonian exile or like with the destruction of the second temple period.

, there is no like major negative event to befall the Jewish people other than the Holocaust where there wasn’t some consolidated within the Jewish tradition. Oh, this is why God did this to us line. So it would be. Antithetical to Jewish theology, , to say, oh, the Holocaust was just ’cause, just, just for funsies.

, God always does things for a reason, and you could go, oh, well what about the Book of Job? The Book of Job was a single person., the Holocaust would be a very unique thing for God to allow to happen, , , in terms of the way , the Jewish religious texts work without reason.

So either you actually believe that there is a God and he’s real, and he has the capacity to do things like stop an event like the Holocaust, or you don’t believe that, , or you believe that God is real and loves the Jewish people and allowed the Holocaust to happen even when they were doing absolutely everything right?, [03:55:00] That to me sounds like a really messed up situation. , so. I, this is one of those things where it’s an offensive thing to state, but it’s just like an obvious truth if you actually believe Jewish theology.

Malcolm Collins: Now, I should note here that all of this happens immediately after the bit about returning from exile. Mm-hmm. Like, it’s not that each of these sections are in Jeremiah. The thing about the covenant is sandwiched at the end of the talk about returning from exile.

Mm-hmm. For example, this line comes up after the talk of the new covenant. The days are coming, declares the Lord when this city will be rebuilt for me, the new covenant discussion occurs in a long list about what’s going to happen when they return from exile. Also, why did God give such accurate predictions of the Jewish people’s future here?

But not warn them about the destruction of the second temple or the Holocaust. Clearly, it’s almost like for a long period, starting with the destruction of the second temple, God’s favor left the Jewish people to focus on some new [03:56:00] group only to return to them in the past century or so. Now, at the counter argument, the part after the talk of the covenant that talks about rebuilding the city does say that.

A time will come when the city will never be uprooted or destroyed again. And that clearly at least kind of was after the exile. So you could say the fact that that was part of the prophecy indicates that it’s talking about a second rebuilding of Israel. But I take it to just mean, we’re talking about this one rebuilding of Israel here and the covenant that you’re gonna get along with that.

And then. Some other time in the future of the city will because, you know, in God and maybe Jewish history’s perspective the period where the Jews were outside of Israel is just a blip in, in, in human history. Small to them in the same way the Babylonian exile seems short term to us.

Simone Collins: Any thoughts?

Well, with all these periods of, of God supposedly not showing favor, you and I always talk about how we don’t want our children to have easy lives that we want to.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I think God, it [03:57:00] challenges you, I think Favor? Yeah. Are these not

Simone Collins: maybe just challenges, not like, I need to give you hardships so you’re stronger.

Malcolm Collins: No, the, the Holocaust goes a lit little more than just a challenge.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I don’t know. I don’t know though, like,

Malcolm Collins: s. They’re, I, I mean, it, it, maybe it strengthened the Jewish people. Maybe it’s why they’re so exceptional right now. What we have now, we have Israel, we have incredibly successful Jewish groups, so people

Simone Collins: who are due the Holocaust was Jewish better before the Holocaust than we’re now.

Remember, we did an episode on this.

Malcolm Collins: We did an episode on this. So if you look at for example, pediatricians in Germany before the Holocaust, because we have notes in this mm-hmm. Or dentists. You have to go to the episode for the exact numbers, but I wanna say something like, they appeared in these professions at like 900%.

What you would expect. Or it might have even higher, it might have been like 9,000. What

Simone Collins: you expect as opposed to now, though, I mean, like, yes, they were exceptional then, but are they more exceptional now?

Malcolm Collins: Jews?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Are you, I, you know that they participate in like Nobel Laureates who are Jewish. [03:58:00] It’s like, I know, I know.

My

Simone Collins: point though is like that is post Holocaust and pre Holocaust. You’re you’re, you’re implying you’re telling me that they were better off then?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. I just said pre Holocaust. Dentist doctors, pediatricians who were Jewish appeared at like 9000% the rate that you would expect given the percent that were Jews.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: But what about have evidence of this

Simone Collins: today?

Malcolm Collins: Is it lower it Jews don’t exist in Germany in large numbers. What? What are you asking? In Germany? Yeah, but I mean like, then there’s the diaspora throughout the rest of the world. Which is exceptional. Now, the point I’m making is that we have evidence of Jewish exceptionalism, both before and after the Holocaust.

Yeah. Indicating that Jewish SEC exceptionalism is not a result of the Holocaust.

Simone Collins: Right. But could it have been strengthened by that? I, I mean, again, like I do not support that there was a Holocaust. I think it’s so horrible and I, it’s hard for me to understand how it could been. It could have

Malcolm Collins: theoretically been, but the majority of evidence we have does not support that.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: [03:59:00] Okay. And we do have Israel now. Well, yeah, they’ve done well, but they were doing really well before the Holocaust. Again, I don’t know, have, like Roth child, we didn’t as much of a, as a family, the Jewish banking networks, all of that was pre Holocaust.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but it was concentrated as well. And like what?

No, it wasn’t concentrated. I just told

Malcolm Collins: you. Doctors, pediatricians, and dentists. Oh yeah. ’cause

Simone Collins: they’re. Changing the not, not to say that like, oh no, but

Malcolm Collins: they do earn significantly more and are indicative of a community that is a higher levels of education, higher levels of wealth, and higher levels of community influence

Simone Collins: maybe.

I don’t know. M just, I’m trying

Malcolm Collins: to play devil’s advocate here. Yeah. Yes. But the evidence doesn’t agree with this devil advocates, but I know, I just,

Simone Collins: I just, I mean, it’s really otherwise hard to understand. Jewish has chosen, like God’s chosen people. When you look at things like the, it’s just like. Well, you could say that he

Malcolm Collins: specifically, now we know because we know that God said during the exile, like, I’m punishing you for messing up.

We know according to Jewish tradition. Yeah. God punishes the Jewish people to show them they’re messing up.

Simone Collins: [04:00:00] Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So this is not inconsistent with even God’s original relationship with Jews that we see in the Old Testament.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, and I imagine he’s gonna do, he does the same to Christians when they mess up.

I, I think that we’re seeing this through crashing fertility rates now and a degradation of the culture and artistic traditions that they built. And God , is using , the very thing that we are supposed to know, to be afraid of and, and have fear of this urban monoculture as this thing that’s, that’s burning humanity.

You know, as I said, God told us he would never again drown the world. But in an inversion of that, what we’re seeing now in this great wiping of the world, this great sort of happening that we’re living through of, of, of mass cultural death, mass cultural extinction, the crucible that this is an inversion of the flood.

That people instead of drowning, are burning on a bonfire of their own vanity.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And it, it is, instead of God doing it, [04:01:00] they are throwing themselves into this fire. And they are doing it through serialization rather than literal deaths. It’s like an inversion of the flood narrative in every conceivable way.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think actually that’s what the flood narrative is about, but we’ll talk about this in some other day. I actually think the flood narrative is about warning us about this fertility collapse. Hmm.

Simone Collins: Um hmm. Looking forward to that conversation.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Now, suppose I was a Jewish rabbi and I needed to find a way to resolve all the above issues.

Here’s how you do it, so I’m gonna fix this. Okay. I would concede that Judaism used to function more like Islam in terms of both how they set out rules for governing a state and through converts. This is just too widely attested to really argue against and some Jews, I’ve talked to you like, no, this isn’t true.

I’m just like, it, it becomes really hard, like as a, the, you remember all of the evidence I laid out for this Simone, do you think it’s even plausible that Jews did not have regular converts? And I’m not saying all Jews, there was clearly some sect of Jews that might be the true Jews, but there wasn’t. No, I mean, [04:02:00] yeah, you

Simone Collins: laid out so much, like pretty well documented historical.

Evidence that they were proselytizers and people trying to convert? No. Yeah, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: clearly both. Both from within the Jewish community. And external to the Jewish community. Yeah. And from people who liked Jews and from people who hated Jews. Yeah. People who liked Jews were like, we have Jewish settlements in every city.

Then we have tactics here. Like, oh, Jews have settlements in every city. Like, like major convert centers, you know? And Yeah. And they, you know, so, and it also helps explain why Christianity spread so fast, so it even like explains other mysteries that don’t make sense without this.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So I’d accept that because I think if you, if you try to take a position that’s clearly anti historical, is harder to, for people to take your religion seriously.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Instead, I would argue that Judaism was not originally an ethno religion, but became one with the destruction of the second temple as was laid out in Jeremiah.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Specifically either the destruction of the second temple itself or something just before it happened. But was not Jesus. [04:03:00] Started the second covenant, which the Bible says clearly would be written within the Jewish people and on their hearts.

This explains why it was not written within the Jewish people in the earlier historic period and has clear text supporting it within the Bible, that at some point after the exile, the covenant would be become written within the biology of the Jews matrilineal de. Scent because the mother is the one who makes the body of the future Jew, thus imprinting them with the potentiality to engage with this covenant.

Mm-hmm. Bam. Fixed. Of course, for this fix to work, I still need some instigating event for the second covenant, but given that lots of rabbis have argued that they are already living under the second covenant, this is very doable. Okay. This is not seen as like a heretical Jewish position. It may not be a mainstream rabbinical position, but many.

Well known and famous rabbis have argued that Jews are already living in the second covenant. . The problem is, as a non-Jew, when I am asked to find some event of world spanning theological significant [04:04:00] that happened just before the destruction of the second temple, well, let’s just say I find the above less satisfying than that.

Christ initiated the second covenant and applied it to all people. However, I am personally proud of coming up with a solution to this particular problem. And the way that you would argue this is you’d say, well, you can ignore the, the parts about, because it said that the second covenant is just for Jews just for the people of Judea.

And that, okay, yes, you could convert into Judea easily before then, like Ruth and these other people did. But you can’t convert easily into Judea. After whenever this covenant was formed, which was written in people’s hearts. And we know from the Bible that when the first covenant was formed, because it within contrast to the second covenant, it was not written, within the Jews.

It was not written, within their hearts. And that’s why it was okay to convert people all the time during that period. And that’s why it wasn’t okay to convert people after the destruction of the second temple. It aligns with historical events of when conversion stopped. It aligns with the biblical text, and it’s a completely logical explanation as to how Jews became a matrilineal [04:05:00] religion.

Now of course, again, I think the problem is, is you’re like, okay, but where is the initiating instigating event of the second covenant of theological significant before? This is just before to destruction of the new temp second temple. And really the only one I can see is Jesus, but oh well. Any thoughts before we get to the very last section here?

No proceed, but I have one major problem. As saying Stan, God does seem to be favoring the Jews still, even with their corrupted belief system. From my perspective, they enter politics successfully at higher rates. They win more Nobel Prizes. They invent more stuff, they have more money. Oh, and they have their own country, and within that country have both a growing population, even among the technologically and economically engaged sub factions.

But are still, their country is surrounded by easily expandable territory, weak countries that could not put up a real fight against their technology and economy. If they ever wanted more land and resources, the only thing really stopping them is the pox de Romana [04:06:00] of the urban monoculture of the international community.

As Europe falls into irrelevance, and America is increasingly ruled by a proje Christian coalition, social norms are likely to be. More relaxed and Israel will be bringing an AI drone swarm to fight populations with AKs. Not that they will need the land, just if they hypothetically did, there isn’t really anything stopping them in the future.

I. And if you’re like, oh, Europe won’t collapse, bro, bro, you need to like get a, a, like a snort of reality pill here. Italy right now is at a fertility rate of 1.18, even if it doesn’t continue to go down, which it has every year for the past 16 years at its current fertility rate for every a hundred Italians, there’s only gonna be every around 20 great grandchildren.

They cannot survive as a country like that, especially when you contrast them with the low tech populations around them that are breeding. And those low tech populations are not going to be that much of a threat to Israel if they build things like the United States [04:07:00] government is already building that we’ve talked about in other videos like giant movable.

Tanks and ships that can create hundreds of AI controlled drones a day. You just can’t fight against that with tunnels or conventional weapons or really anything. And the people around Israel right now, these countries that today, we might view them as a test for Israel, like a test that God gave to make Israel strong keep their fertility rate high, everything like that.

In the future are. It’s just like free land. It’s like something that historically was a no. I’m not saying there aren’t moral complications to taking this land. I’m just being like, suppose these groups continually attack the Jews giving them an excuse to take that land. Mm-hmm. It’s not like that hasn’t been a reason for their expansion in the past.

Nor in the Bible that God hasn’t told the Jews, oh, well you can take this land or you can take that land in that particular area of the world. Oh, and any thoughts on that before I go further? I know that’s a very offensive thing to say, but it’s [04:08:00] also an obviously true thing. No

Simone Collins: yeah, I hear you.

Malcolm Collins: And it’s, it’s something that I think many Jews haven’t thought about when they think about their current conflicts and troubles that it is the, their current troubles are born in the seeds of their future potential prosperity.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and don’t even get me started on the power of their diaspora.

Proverbial Esthers are in every country and government in the world. Basically, if things play out the way, all current stats predict they will, Jews win the game despite everything having been rigged against them. They still have some level of divine favor. This is why it is critical for the technopuritan tradition as it grows to build a strong, long-term structural allegiance with Jewish communities.

And when I talk about proverbial esters here, what I’m saying is is that Jews, even in their biblical tradition, say, Hey, you know, if you’re a Jew in a country that is ruled by non-Jews, maybe you know. Marry to families like [04:09:00] say like Ivana marrying the Jewish guy, right? Like that’s actually like within Jewish tradition, you’re not supposed to marry outside the tradition, but if you can influence politics favorably for Jews there are stories you could take to say, yeah, you should do that.

And what I’m saying about this is, is that the Jewish diaspora is easily the strongest diaspora in the world in terms of cultural and political influence. That’s not a conspiratorial statement. That is an. Obvious statement of fact. It’s a practical statement. Golf clap. You guys did very well. I don’t hold it against you.

And I would say that they’ve actually done it being less Jared Kushner. Sorry, Jared Kushner. Jared Kushner. Yeah. Being less nepotistic than some other communities. Like I think for example, if I look in American politics, Catholics are way more nepotistic than Jews. There’s a number of times where we’ve basically been told like, Hey, you know, you guys convert and I can get you some nice positions.

I can get you. Hey, do you wanna go to mass with us today? Hey, do you wanna. Jews have never pulled that stuff with me, you know? But I get it from Catholics very frequently. And so, and I, well, I mean, I don’t wanna say that I think that might have partially motivated jds [04:10:00] conversion. But I can say that we would have a much easier time in conservative politics if we were Catholics.

Despite the average Catholic, even today voting Democrat, that is quite a network of nepotism, that it works even in the party you don’t support.

And I should note here that I don’t mean this accusatorily. I think nepotism is completely fair game for any cultural group to favor their own over outsiders. , , even the idea that it would be normative to give equal vetting to both insiders and outsiders seems to me, , one of the repugnant lies of the urban monoculture.

Malcolm Collins: And I think everybody knows that. You can look at like the, that, that organization that helps Catholic judges the Federalist Society. Oh I didn’t know that. Do you know it was run by the lady who did the tiger Children?

Simone Collins: No way.

Yeah. Really?

Note, I checked this in post and apparently it’s not accurate. , where I had gotten that from is apparently she withinfluential within it or something, or influential within conservative politics, in part through the Federalist Society. , but she goes [04:11:00] to their events and everything I.

Malcolm Collins: It’s like this, this society that helps conservative judges predominantly Catholic. Catholic. Catholic. I think she is.

Simone Collins: That’s so interesting. iChecking

Malcolm Collins: post, you can ask, is Tiger Mom Catholic?

But yeah, this is why I’m like yeah, we, we should see Jews as a Amy, as a, a accurate way of following a covenant. It’s just a different covenant. Tesseract God is an important part of the technopuritan belief that there are multiple conservative traditions to God. And so when I look through this prism or lens that God has given me.

A lot of things that the Jews are doing look wrong, as I’ve said here. But that is because I am looking through my traditions prism, and I think you can choose. Do you look at reality through the Jewish prism or do you look at it through my prism? Because my prism says even if when I put the prism on, I see, you know, you know, summoning demons accidentally sometimes, and I’m like, oh, that’s obviously like a bad ritual.

You know, I know that God does favor the Jews from easily measurable public evidence. [04:12:00] And Amy Chua

Simone Collins: was raised Catholic after teenage years and it appears to be still Catholic. So yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What did I tell you? They make up like almost all of our Supreme Court judges. It was like. Eight of 10 at one point, like 80%.

That’s why making it up like a very small portion of the US population. Yeah. But the

Simone Collins: rest are like Jewish, right? They’re something, yeah. The rest are Jewish. That is Jewish.

Malcolm Collins: All Catholic and Jews? No Protestants. I think there might be Protestants right now. I think one converted into Protestantism and one’s like a half Protestant.

Half.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I dunno, converted or was born, whatever. It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter to me. But the point being Jews, despite all of this we still have to find a way to work with them. And I think if we build from their perspective, I would say again, I. Hey, our system technically follows the noahide tradition.

Mm-hmm. It might follow it in a way that theologically isn’t super palatable to you. But it does follow the rules you set out and propagates those rules and it would be a tradition that would be beneficial to you to have a high tech group that thinks your community. I. Is sacred. Shouldn’t be [04:13:00] deconverted, shouldn’t be messed with.

I would say it shouldn’t be deconverted unless they’re super competent. And that’s one of the things about the te Puritan tradition. It is very much like, don’t go after the average person. This is a religion that really, I, I think even psychologically isn’t meant for the average person. It is meant for people who we would consider like it, it is very much a, elect religion. Right. You know, only certain people are meant for this religion. And so I would never, ever, ever advocate for, for mass conversion techniques or practices within the religion. But that doesn’t mean that you would never have targeted conversions.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Now you might be asking why do I think their divine favor trumps my logic and what I read in the Bible leads me to think that they have more things right. Well, it seems clear to me that there were times in history God favored either Christians or Muslims more than the Jews. This indicates to me that his favor will shift. My current assumption is his favor currently rests on the Jews in spite of where they are.

Asray from his truce, because so many Christians have succumbed to idolatry and sin [04:14:00] transference rituals. If I am right. Then within a few generations, especially once the technopuritans have artificial wos and better gene editing technology, God’s favor of us will be made self-evident.

So basically here I’m saying, look, if our community doesn’t do well, I’m wrong. My interpretations are wrong. That’s how God shows things, right? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I would also end this by pointing out that Christ was sacrificed to create a new covenant that does not invalidate the first covenant. A Jew that follows all the rules of the first covenant is just as in line with God’s will as Christians.

You know, as long as they don’t get into all of the kabbalistic demon summoning and attempting to compute with the spirit realm stuff. I mean, Alex Jones clip here

They will not manipulate your free will unless you ask them in. I have dude, do not say that I’m gonna get killed.

Malcolm Collins: But Maimonides even warns Jews of this. As I pointed out, like this isn’t some like novel anti-Jewish perspective. If I’m taking a perspective.

That, that Maimonides also takes , I think that, that most Jews would be like, okay, well this perspective isn’t [04:15:00] common in modern Jewish community. It’s not an anti-Jewish perspective. Okay. So anyway, Simone, thoughts on this tract Too offensive. I don’t think it’s that offensive to Jews Maybe.

Simone Collins: I think Jews generally, like , any group about whom you write are chuffed, that you care enough to learn so much about their religion. I. As an outsider, they can make any justification they choose should they disagree with something you say that you simply don’t understand or you misinterpreted something so that which you consider to be offensive is probably something they would discount.

Due to your ignorance or misinterpretation?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, I think my, my interest in engaging with religion is very earnest. , , and obviously earnest, but some people can’t. Like in the Opus Day video, you know, which was while we, we, we mentioned that like, we’re not Catholics obviously, like we’re gonna have a somewhat hostile interpretation of Catholicism, but this one group within Catholicism, I like almost everything they do.

A lot of Catholics were really mad at us for that [04:16:00] video. They’re like, oh, you know, you’re, you are attacking Catholicism. This is a Catholic’s all bad video. We actually had a Jew once reach out to us angry about our video, where we argue that Jews are not genetically superior to other people, and that it’s likely culture that’s leading them to do better well, culture and divine favor.

Mm-hmm. And he’s like, this is like an anti-Jewish video. And I was like, what? Oh, people are still

Simone Collins: tweeting about that. Like a couple of days ago, someone was like, anti-Semites on 4chan are using your video for. Like, and just we’re trying to say that Jewish culture is superior and to, like you said, the Jews have God’s favorite.

Like what? Do you want it to be just your genes? Yeah. That that’s like, is that flattering somehow? No, but it’s also worse. Your just maybe she’s born with it ’cause she’s

Malcolm Collins: Jewish. No, it’s if, if I was king of the Jews and I could like make a rule like, okay, this is the way we’re gonna handle this particular, you really wouldn’t want the genetic explanation to be the mainstream explanation.

No. ’cause it makes it look like your success is unfair, and therefore within the progressive culture IE it’s [04:17:00] due to a systemic privilege you have over other people a genetic privilege. Mm-hmm. You should be discriminated against. Like that would be a very, very bad mainstream interpretation to catch on.

Yeah. You would want the interpretation to be, oh, it’s cultural practices that anyone can learn from and adopt. Mm-hmm. Because then it’s not that you have the systemic thing , in your favor which is you know. If people are like, well, some people, people will use anything to attack anyone.

Like whatever, right? Like, , I think that, that it’s really important to engage with data honestly. And that if the data says X or Y or leads me in a direction which is what I think I’m doing with this track, and it’s really funny, like as soon as I like get in the stream and I’m like, I’m just gonna go where the like.

Current of data goes, like the current is taking me, I end in positions that appear vastly more moral than other positions. To me, they appear more religiously coherent. Yeah. So much of where I think a lot of Christian traditions went off the rails and Judaism went off the rails. Was it attempting to swim against the current of God’s will?

Saying, okay well, we [04:18:00] absolutely need to make Jesus divine. Oh, but now this creates an idolatry problem. Oh, well, we’ll fix it with this concept of the Trinity. Oh, well, you know, I really want this additional afterlife. The immediate afterlife. Well, it’s not in the Bible. Well, we’ll, we’ll twist parts of the Bible to try to add it in and put in hell here and stuff like this.

But now this creates all this immoral like stuff where God is punishing people forever for fairly minor trans aggressions. Like, all of that just seems, or, like , a, another recent Christian thing that I absolutely do not like , is this idea of, now I do believe in complete depravity in that man has fallen.

But this idea that only through Jesus’ sacrifice can our souls be saved. That’s not in the Bible unless you take that one line really out of context, that we go over what it seems to actually mean in this tract. You know, only, only through Jesus can you get to God. Yeah. But we also learn that Jesus is in you and Jesus is, and everyone who’s a believer in God’s in Jesus and God’s in you in the same way than Jesus.

But anyway but they take that to mean that all humans are irrevocably corrupted and sinful, and that none of us are deserving of any of God’s grace. And I can [04:19:00] understand why. It would be like, okay, well then if you’re a moral person, you don’t actually need Jesus.

Like Jesus’s sacrifices meaningless from this perspective. And then you build this whole theological tradition on top of this, even though it’s not in the Bible. And then it leads to all sorts of problems of like. Well that, that, I mean, it does seem that, you know, some humans seem broadly good. Like conceptually I can see a human who’s a good guy.

Like I, I believe I’ve met some people who seem like really morally chaste and everything like that. And, and so if then you take Jesus’ sacrifice has just been creating a new covenant. It fixes a lot of things and it seems imal, but I dunno, that’s where I am with all this thoughts, Simone,

Simone Collins: what more could I possibly add?

Okay. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: I love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm, A lot.

What I was reading from (changed a lot during editing)

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