The Shapira Scroll

by chriswhitby | Apr 20, 2025 | Deception, Lost Truth, Torah, Translation

The Shapira Scroll

The Shapira Scroll, also known as the Shapira Strips or Shapira Manuscript, was a set of leather strips inscribed in Paleo-Hebrew script. It was presented by Moses Wilhelm Shapira in 1883 as an ancient Bible-related artifact and almost immediately denounced by scholars as a forgery.

The scroll consisted of fifteen leather strips, which Shapira claimed had been found in Wadi Mujib (biblical Arnon) near the Dead Sea. The Hebrew text hinted at a different version of Deuteronomy, including the addition of a new line to the Ten Commandments: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart: I am God, your god.” The text also lacks all laws except for the ten commandments, which it renders consistently in the first-person, from the standpoint of the deity. Scholars took little time to reject it as a fake, and the shame brought about by the accusation of forgery drove Shapira to suicide in 1884.

Shapira’s widow had at least part of the scroll in 1884, which she sent to Konstantin Schlottmann. The scroll reappeared a couple of years later in a Sotheby’s auction, where it was sold for £10 5s to Bernard Quaritch, who later listed it for £25. Contemporary reports show Dr. Philip Brookes Mason displayed the “whole of” the scroll at a public lecture in Burton-on-Trent on March 8, 1889. The current whereabouts of the scroll, if it survives, are unknown.

Source :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapira_Scroll

Moses Wilhelm Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments – long believed to be forgeries – are authentic ancient manuscripts, and they are of far greater significance than ever imagined. The literary work that these manuscripts preserve – which Idan Dershowitz calls “The Valediction of Moses” or “V” – is not based on the book of Deuteronomy. On the contrary, V is a much earlier version of Deuteronomy. In other words, V is a proto-biblical book, the likes of which has never before been seen. This conclusion is supported by a series of philological analyses, as well as previously unknown archival documents, which undermine the consensus on these manuscripts. An excursus co-authored with Na’ama Pat-El assesses V’s linguistic profile, finding it to be consistent with Iron Age epigraphic Hebrew. V contains early versions of passages whose biblical counterparts reflect substantial post-Priestly updating. Moreover, unlike the canonical narratives of Deuteronomy, this ancient work shows no signs of influence from the Deuteronomic law code. Indeed, V preserves an earlier, and dramatically different, literary structure for the entire work – one that lacks the Deuteronomic law code altogether. These findings have significant consequences for the composition history of the Bible, historical linguistics, the history of religion, paleography, archaeology, and more.

There has been much debate regarding the authenticity of the Shapira scrolls and this debate continues to this day.

The problem is that the original rejection of the scrolls was based on an investigation using insight and methodologies of the late 19th century and coupled with this, the tarnished reputation of Moses Shapira at the time, influenced the decision.

In this present time the methods/technology used to analyse ancient texts, as well as the insight gleaned over centuries, has led to a different view of these scrolls. Clearly there is still much debate regarding the authenticity of the scrolls but there are some very well respected academics who have come around to suggesting that the scrolls could very well be authentic.

From my own analysis of the more recent findings and conclusions I believe that these scrolls are part of the original message given to Moses.

I say this because of my understanding and acceptance of theories such as ‘The Documentart Hypothesis‘ and ‘Interpolations‘, which are clear and obvious in the Bible when one has been schooled in the methtod of identification.

When one considers this and the statements in Scripture relating to the unwanted (by the Almighty) Temple, sacrifices and monarchy (i.e. kings), then it becomes clearer to the reader that the Torah as we know it today has been tampered with – refer to Jeremiah:

How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain. 8 “How can you say, ‘We are wise, and the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes has made it into a lie.

Jeremiah 8:8

One must also consider the words of our Messiah Yahushua when he time and time again rebuked the priesthood for their ‘leaven’ and being of the devil:

Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

John 8:44

I could go on but my purpose is not to convince you here but rather to provide you with a starting point for your own research and conclusion on the matter.

The Shapira Scrolls — Authentic or Forged?

Scholars debate the scrolls’ authenticity in Biblical Archaeology Review

Do the Shapira Scrolls contain an authentic biblical manuscript or forged text?

These scroll fragments surfaced at the end of the 19th century to much fanfare. In 1883, antiquities dealer Moses Shapira presented to the watching world several scroll fragments that he claimed were an ancient biblical manuscript, an early version of the Book of Deuteronomy. If authentic, this would be a proto-biblical text.

The discovery seemed too good to be true, and many leading scholars of the day said just that: They cried forgery and said that the scrolls did not contain an ancient text. Disgraced and discredited, Shapira and his scrolls went down in infamy.

Does this 19th-century verdict still stand today, or should it be overturned?

Earlier this year, biblical scholar Idan Dershowitz of the University of Potsdam gained international attention as he argued that the Shapira Scrolls do, in fact, preserve a genuine proto-biblical text, which he calls The Valediction of Moses. In his book The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book, he reassessed the Shapira Scrolls with the tools of modern biblical scholarship. Although he made a strong case, many scholars remained unconvinced. Two vocal dissenters were biblical scholars Ronald Hendel of the University of California, Berkeley, and Matthieu Richelle of the Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium. They believe the verdict of forgery still stands.

Watch this debate unfold in the Winter 2021 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review. On one side, Dershowitz and archaeologist James Tabor of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte defend the scrolls’ authenticity in their article “The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Authenticity.” On the other side, Hendel and Richelle contend that the scrolls are 19th-century forgeries in “The Shapira Scrolls: The Case for Forgery.”

Both articles analyze the scrolls’ discovery, script, and content.

The Scrolls’ Discovery

The Shapira Scrolls were not found in an archaeological excavation—but rather appeared on the antiquities market in the late 1870s. Reportedly, Bedouin had discovered the 16 scroll fragments in a cave east of the Dead Sea, in biblical Moab in what is today Jordan. The fragments looked like dark lumps of leather with Paleo-Hebrew writing. Moses Shapira bought the fragments from the Bedouin. After analyzing them, he presented his findings and initial translation to the public in 1883.

This origin story of the scrolls caused many scholars—both in the 19th century and today—to approach the scrolls with skepticism. Artifacts that don’t come from controlled excavations (often called unprovenanced artifacts) are divorced from their greater context. Much information that could have been gathered about these artifacts is lost. Further, there is always the possibility that such artifacts are not genuine but, rather, fabricated for monetary or personal gain.

In their analysis, Hendel and Richelle point out that Shapira had peddled forgeries before. Whether intentionally or not, Shapira had sold artifacts, which later had been exposed as fakes, to collectors and institutions. Thus, the scrolls and their origin story deserve careful scrutiny.

Archaeologist James Tabor also digs into the scrolls’ origin story. He notes the strong similarities with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Heralded by many as the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century, the Dead Sea Scrolls were initially found by Bedouin in caves west of the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 1950s, about a century after the Shapira Scrolls had surfaced. Subsequent excavation exposed more scrolls in these caves, and decades of analysis have proven the Dead Sea Scrolls to be authentic. Thus, Tabor posits that the origin story of the Shapira Scrolls should not immediately discredit their validity.

The Scrolls’ Script

Scholars should also assess the scrolls’ script and content. Unfortunately, the Shapira Scrolls themselves have vanished, so they cannot undergo scientific tests, which might provide a conclusive answer on validity. For their analysis, then, scholars must rely on 19th-century photographs, script charts, notes, and drawings of the scrolls.

If authentic, the script of the Shapira Scrolls should resemble that of ancient Hebrew inscriptions. There are indeed many similarities between the scrolls’ script and inscriptions from the ninth and eighth centuries B.C.E. Dershowitz believes these similarities point to authenticity. Hendel and Richelle, however, note key “differences of letterforms, stance, and cursive combinations,” as well as spelling and grammar. They believe these differences are sufficient grounds to dismiss the Shapira Scrolls as forgeries.

The Scrolls’ Content

The scholars also disagree about the scrolls’ content, which supposedly records Moses’s last words, an early version of the biblical Book of Deuteronomy. Dershowitz contends that the content lines up nicely—but, admittedly, not perfectly—with 21st-century theories about Deuteronomy’s composition. The content of The Valediction of Moses is what many scholars would expect an early version of Deuteronomy to look like. Dershowitz believes that this is the strongest line of argument in favor of authenticity.

Hendel and Richelle are convinced that the scrolls’ author was aware of the Book of Deuteronomy in its final form. They view the text not as an early version of Deuteronomy but a rewritten and abridged version with elements of the canonical book’s various compositional stages.

After analyzing the scrolls’ discovery, script, and content, the two sets of scholars come to dramatically different conclusions. Dershowitz and Tabor contend that the scrolls must be viewed as authentic biblical artifacts, whereas Hendel and Richelle maintain that the scrolls cannot. Since the scrolls themselves have disappeared, the debate likely will never be settled definitively.

source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v7DvE5Bdkr29XPax-ZLJsyPhnNtm_lj4Jkqqof2nANE/edit?tab=t.

Did Shapira’s Manuscript Contain Ten or Eleven Commandments?

Ross K. Nichols

Some of the more unique features of the manuscript that Shapira presented to the world in 1883 are contained in its version of the Ten Commandments. From the very beginning of the Shapira saga, these unique features created a sense of interest as well as objections.

As it turns out, the sense of interest was deserved and the objections unwarranted. Nearly everyone has heard of the famed Ten Commandments. According to the biblical record, these words were spoken from the midst of fire by God Himself at Horeb/Sinai to an assembly of people and then written on two stone tablets. These words represent the covenant.

We have two primary records of these words in the Bible (Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5). While they are popularly known as the Ten Commandments, they are never called by that designation in the Hebrew Bible. The three references (Exodus 34:28, Deuteronomy 4:13, and Deuteronomy 10:4) all record the name of these words of the covenant as ע ש ר ת ה ד ב ר י ם, literally, The Ten Words.

Anyone who carefully compares the two versions of the Ten Words contained within our Bible will notice differences between them. These differences are evident in English as well as Hebrew. 2 There are, for example, 172 Hebrew words in Exodus’s version of The Ten Words and 189 Hebrew words in Deuteronomy’s version. The two accounts are, of course, similar in many ways, but they also contain variants.

Both reports claim to present the words that God spoke (Exodus 20:1, Deuteronomy 5:19), and so the question is, what words did He say? Which version best represents the words spoken from the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. Both accounts employ the third person when referring to God, suggesting that neither version is the original record of the Ten Words. And how are we to number the ten since the text provides little help in this regard?

In 1878, after nearly a month of careful study, Shapira produced a transcription of the sixteen leather strips. On 24 September 1883, he sent his transcription and a detailed commentary noting variations between the manuscript and the traditional texts of the Bible to Professor Konstantine Schlottmann at the University of Halle. There were notable variations in the order, arrangement, wording, and presentation of the Ten Words.

After consultation with Franz Delitzsch, Professor Schlottmann sent back a scolding reply to Shapira dated 7 October 1883. Shapira later wrote to Hermann Strack about this rebuke, reporting that among other criticisms, Schlottmann had said, “How I dare to call this forgery the Old Testament? Could I suppose for one minute that it is older than our unquestionable [sic] genuine ten commandments?”

3 Eduard Meyer, who examined and transcribed the manuscript in July of 1883 with Hermann Guthe wrote to his mentor Georg Ebers on 8 July 1883 informing him that when “Schlottmann … declared it forged, old Delitzsch made the indignant remark: ‘Don’t touch our Decalogue!’”

4 In an article titled, “A New Version of Deuteronomy,” which appeared in the 3 August 1883 edition of The Jewish Chronicle, it was reported, “It need scarcely be stated that if this turns out to be correct, these pieces of leather will possess a high value, not only in money, but also in a literary sense, for they contain some curious variations in the reading, among which we have an extra commandment, which is, ‘Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart.’”

The claim that this manuscript contained an extra commandment has been repeated in modern times. Examples include Aviva and Shmuel Bar Am’s article of 2 November 2013, which appeared in The Times of Israel with the title, “In the Footsteps of a Master Forger.”

The report begins, “In 1883, respected antiques dealer Moses Wilhelm Shapira claimed to possess ancient scrolls of Deuteronomy. The text differed slightly from the accepted version: It has an 11 th commandment.”

Later in the article, we read, “In 1883, while dwelling here in luxury, Shapira was involved in a highly publicized scandal. He claimed to have in his possession scrolls of Deuteronomy dating back thousands of years, whose text differed slightly from the accepted version and added an 11 th Commandment to the Decalogue.

The 11th Commandment, according to the Shapira scroll, was ‘Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart: I am GOD, thy GOD.’ The report caused a sensation, since the earliest biblical manuscripts at that time were only a few hundred years old.”

5 Even more recently, Ryan Morrison, in his 10 March 2021 article titled, “Shapira Scroll: Ancient Manuscript May Be Oldest Known Biblical Script,” said, “There is also an 11 th commandment that reads: ‘Thou shalt not hate they brother in thy heart: I am God, they God.’”

6 The confusion over whether the manuscript had ten or eleven “commandments” seems to originate with the wording of that 3 August 1883 article in The Jewish Press.

While the article mentioned “an extra commandment,” the writer never said that the manuscript contained eleven commandments, but instead said, “by joining the first and second commandments into one, this becomes the tenth in the Phenician [sic] version.”

There are only Ten Words in the manuscript. Each of The Ten Words in this Decalogue began on a new line and ended with the exact phrase in Hebrew, namely, א נ כ א ל ה ם א ל ה ך[I am Elohim your Elohim].

This feature clearly shows how the words were to be counted. I would kindly ask readers of this paper to help me set the record straight; – the manuscript that I call The Moses Scroll, 7 and that Idan Dershowitz calls The Valediction of Moses, 8 contained only ten words in its version of The Ten Words and not eleven.

1 This paper was originally published on my Author’s Blog – https://themosesscroll.com/did-shapiras-manuscript- contain-ten-or-eleven-commandments/.

2 See for example Ross K. Nichols, A Comparison of the Ten Words in English with Explanatory Notes, https://www.academia.edu/43772655/A_ Comparison_of_the_Ten_Words_in_English_ with_Explanatory_Notes.

3 Moses Shapira, letter to Hermann Strack, Jerusalem, 9 May 1883, “Papers Relative to M.W. Shapira’s Forged MS. of Deuteronomy (A.D. 1883–1884).” Add. MS. 41294 (London: British Library).

4 Letter from Eduard Meyer to Georg Ebers, 8 July 1883, “Der Briefwechsel zwischen Georg Ebers und Eduard Meyer (1874–1898),” Vorbemerkung von G. Audring. https://www.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/de/bereiche-und- lehrstuehle/alte-geschichte/forschung/briefe-meyer/ebers

5 https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-the-footsteps-of-a-master-forger/

6 https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/shapira-scroll-ancient-manuscript-may-be-oldest-known-biblical- script/ar-BB1eswXJ

7 Ross K. Nichols, The Moses Scroll, (Saint Francisville: Horeb Press, 2021). For more information, visit https://themosesscroll.com. 8 Idan Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021).

https://www.academia.edu/67707696/Did_Shapiras_Manuscript_Contain_Ten_or_Eleven_Commandments

Below are a number of interesting articles providing further insight into the authenticity of the Shapira Scroll

The Case for Authenticity

BEFORE TAKING A CLOSER LOOK at the Shapira manuscripts and why we believe they are an authentic, pre-canonical version of Deuteronomy, I (Idan) will first present new evidence that undermines the consensus theory that Shapira forged his Deuteronomy fragments. I will also rebut some recent scholarly claims made against their authenticity.

The Authentic Dead Sea Scroll

Wilhelm Shapira astonished the European academic world in 1883 by offering for sale fifteen or sixteen leather fragments of an ancient Hebrew scroll containing parts of Deuteronomy, but in a version that deviated from the Masorah. The script of the scroll, known to us today as paleo-Hebrew, is an archaism of the pre-exilic Hebrew script. The sale offer was made to the British Museum and the asking price was one million British pounds. The British museum was willing to consider the offer and appointed Christian David Ginsburg to ascertain the authenticity of the scroll.

Ginsburg analyzed the fragments of the Shapira scroll for almost three weeks but it was Charles Clermont-Ganneau, the renowned French scholar, who publicly announced on 21 August 1883 that the scroll is a forgery. On the following day, Ginsburg wrote to Bond, the director of the British Museum, that the manuscript is in fact a forgery.

This article attempts to demonstrate that the Shapira scroll was an authentic manuscript by presenting circumstantial evidence in favour of the scroll. The evidence focuses upon physical characteristics of the scroll as well as upon paleographic aspects.

The Valediction of Moses

Wilhelm Moses Shapira’s infamous Deuteronomy fragments have long been deemed forgeries, with Shapira himself serving as the obvious suspect. I provide new evidence that Shapira did not forge the fragments and was himself convinced of their authenticity. Indeed, the evidence for forgery is illusory. In a companion monograph, I show that the Shapira fragments are not only authen- tic ancient artifacts but are unprecedented in their significance: They preserve a pre-canonical antecedent of the Book of Deuteronomy.

Idan Dershowitz

link to the complete book click HERE

for condensed summary:

Israel Palestine Genocide

by chriswhitby | Apr 13, 2025 | Deception, Judgement, Warning

Israel Palestine Genocide

Clarification:

Judaism is not the same as political Zionism

The conflict in Palestine is not a matter of religion but of power and territorial domination.

Therefore the issue is not about Judaism but rather the Zionist political agenda.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer remained true to his words above by fighting the Nazis in WWII,

and he died for them when he was executed by the Nazis (by hanging) on the 9th of April, 1945.

Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza

5 December 2024

Background

On 7 October 2023 Hamas and other armed groups indiscriminately fired rockets into southern Israel and carried out deliberate mass killings and hostage-taking there, killing 1,200 people, including over 800 civilians, and abducted 223 civilians and captured 27 soldiers. The crimes perpetrated by Hamas and other armed groups during this attack will be the focus of a forthcoming Amnesty International report.

Since October 2023, Amnesty International has conducted in-depth investigations into the multiple violations and crimes under international law committed by Israeli forces, including direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects and deliberately indiscriminate attacks killing hundreds of civilians, as well as other unlawful attacks on and collective punishment of the civilian population. The organization has called on the Office of the ICC Prosecutor to expedite its investigation into the situation in the State of Palestine and is campaigning for an immediate ceasefire.

source:

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12/amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/

Amnesty International’s research has found sufficient basis to conclude that Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, the organization said in a landmark new report published today.

The report, ‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza, documents how, during its military offensive launched in the wake of the deadly Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on 7 October 2023, Israel has unleashed hell and destruction on Palestinians in Gaza brazenly, continuously and with total impunity.

“Amnesty International’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out acts prohibited under the Genocide Convention, with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians in Gaza. These acts include killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm and deliberately inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. Month after month, Israel has treated Palestinians in Gaza as a subhuman group unworthy of human rights and dignity, demonstrating its intent to physically destroy them,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International. 

“Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now.

“States that continue to transfer arms to Israel at this time must know they are violating their obligation to prevent genocide and are at risk of becoming complicit in genocide. All states with influence over Israel, particularly key arms suppliers like the USA and Germany, but also other EU member states, the UK and others, must act now to bring Israel’s atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza to an immediate end.”

Over the past two months the crisis has grown particularly acute in the North Gaza governorate, where a besieged population is facing starvation, displacement and annihilation amid relentless bombardment and suffocating restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.

“Our research reveals that, for months, Israel has persisted in committing genocidal acts, fully aware of the irreparable harm it was inflicting on Palestinians in Gaza. It continued to do so in defiance of countless warnings about the catastrophic humanitarian situation and of legally binding decisions from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordering Israel to take immediate measures to enable the provision of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza,” said Agnès Callamard. 

“Israel has repeatedly argued that its actions in Gaza are lawful and can be justified by its military goal to eradicate Hamas. But genocidal intent can co-exist alongside military goals and does not need to be Israel’s sole intent.”

Unprecedented scale and magnitude

Israel’s actions following Hamas’s deadly attacks on 7 October 2023 have brought Gaza’s population to the brink of collapse. Its brutal military offensive had killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including over 13,300 children, and injured over 97,000 more, by 7 October 2024, many of them in direct or deliberately indiscriminate attacks, often wiping out entire multigenerational families. It has caused unprecedented destruction, which experts say occurred at a level and speed not seen in any other conflict in the 21st century, levelling entire cities and destroying critical infrastructure, agricultural land and cultural and religious sites. It thereby rendered large swathes of Gaza uninhabitable.

Mohammed, who fled with his family from Gaza City to Rafah in March 2024 and was displaced again in May 2024, described their struggle to survive in horrifying conditions:

“Here in Deir al-Balah, it’s like an apocalypse… You have to protect your children from insects, from the heat, and there is no clean water, no toilets, all while the bombing never stops. You feel like you are subhuman here.”

Israel imposed conditions of life in Gaza that created a deadly mixture of malnutrition, hunger and diseases, and exposed Palestinians to a slow, calculated death. Israel also subjected hundreds of Palestinians from Gaza to incommunicado detention, torture and other ill-treatment.

Viewed in isolation, some of the acts investigated by Amnesty International constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law. But in looking at the broader picture of Israel’s military campaign and the cumulative impact of its policies and acts, genocidal intent is the only reasonable conclusion.

Intent to destroy

To establish Israel’s specific intent to physically destroy Palestinians in Gaza, as such, Amnesty International analysed the overall pattern of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, reviewed dehumanizing and genocidal statements by Israeli government and military officials, particularly those at the highest levels, and considered the context of Israel’s system of apartheid, its inhumane blockade of Gaza and the unlawful 57-year-old military occupation of the Palestinian territory.

Before reaching its conclusion, Amnesty International examined Israel’s claims that its military lawfully targeted Hamas and other armed groups throughout Gaza, and that the resulting unprecedented destruction and denial of aid were the outcome of unlawful conduct by Hamas and other armed groups, such as locating fighters among the civilian population or the diversion of aid. The organization concluded these claims are not credible. The presence of Hamas fighters near or within a densely populated area does not absolve Israel from its obligations to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and avoid indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks. Its research found Israel repeatedly failed to do so, committing multiple crimes under international law for which there can be no justification based on Hamas’s actions. Amnesty International also found no evidence that the diversion of aid could explain Israel’s extreme and deliberate restrictions on life-saving humanitarian aid.

In its analysis, the organization also considered alternative arguments such as ones that Israel was acting recklessly or that it simply wanted to destroy Hamas and did not care if it needed to destroy Palestinians in the process, demonstrating a callous disregard for their lives rather than genocidal intent.

‘Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community:

this is genocide. It must stop now’.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International

However, regardless of whether Israel sees the destruction of Palestinians as instrumental to destroying Hamas or as an acceptable by-product of this goal, this view of Palestinians as disposable and not worthy of consideration is in itself evidence of genocidal intent.

Many of the unlawful acts documented by Amnesty International were preceded by officials urging their implementation. The organization reviewed 102 statements that were issued by Israeli government and military officials and others between 7 October 2023 and 30 June 2024 and dehumanized Palestinians, called for or justified genocidal acts or other crimes against them.

Of these, Amnesty International identified 22 statements made by senior officials in charge of managing the offensive that appeared to call for, or justify, genocidal acts, providing direct evidence of genocidal intent. This language was frequently replicated, including by Israeli soldiers on the ground, as evidenced by audiovisual content verified by Amnesty International showing soldiers making calls to “erase” Gaza or to make it uninhabitable, and celebrating the destruction of Palestinian homes, mosques, schools and universities.

Killing and causing serious bodily or mental harm

Amnesty International documented the genocidal acts of killing and causing serious mental and bodily harm to Palestinians in Gaza by reviewing the results of investigations it conducted into 15 air strikes between 7 October 2023 and 20 April 2024 that killed at least 334 civilians, including 141 children, and wounded hundreds of others. Amnesty International found no evidence that any of these strikes were directed at a military objective.

In one illustrative case, on 20 April 2024, an Israeli air strike destroyed the Abdelal family house in the Al-Jneinah neighbourhood in eastern Rafah, killing three generations of Palestinians, including 16 children, while they were sleeping.

While these represent just a fraction of Israel’s aerial attacks, they are indicative of a broader pattern of repeated direct attacks on civilians and civilian objects or deliberately indiscriminate attacks. The attacks were also conducted in ways designed to cause a very high number of fatalities and injuries among the civilian population.

Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction

The report documents how Israel deliberately inflicted conditions of life on Palestinians in Gaza intended to lead, over time, to their destruction. These conditions were imposed through three simultaneous patterns that repeatedly compounded the effect of each other’s devastating impacts: damage to and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure and other objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population; the repeated use of sweeping, arbitrary and confusing mass “evacuation” orders to forcibly displace almost all of Gaza’s population; and the denial and obstruction of the delivery of essential services, humanitarian assistance and other life-saving supplies into and within Gaza.

After 7 October 2023, Israel imposed a total siege on Gaza cutting off electricity, water and fuel. In the nine months reviewed for this report, Israel maintained a suffocating, unlawful blockade, tightly controlled access to energy sources, failed to facilitate meaningful humanitarian access within Gaza, and obstructed the import and delivery of life-saving goods and humanitarian aid, particularly to areas north of Wadi Gaza. They thereby exacerbated an already existing humanitarian crisis. This, combined with the extensive damage to Gaza’s homes, hospitals, water and sanitation facilities and agricultural land, and mass forced displacement, caused catastrophic levels of hunger and led to the spread of diseases at alarming rates. The impact was especially harsh on young children and pregnant or breastfeeding women, with anticipated long-term consequences for their health.

‘The international community’s seismic,

shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza,

by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers,

is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience’.

Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International

Time and again, Israel had the chance to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, yet for over a year it has repeatedly refused to take steps blatantly within its power to do so, such as opening sufficient access points to Gaza or lifting tight restrictions on what could enter the Strip or their obstruction of aid deliveries within Gaza while the situation has grown progressively worse.

Through its repeated “evacuation” orders Israel displaced nearly 1.9 million Palestinians – 90% of Gaza’s population – into ever-shrinking, unsafe pockets of land under inhumane conditions, some of them up to 10 times. These multiple waves of forced displacement left many jobless and deeply traumatized, especially since some 70% of Gaza’s residents are refugees or descendants of refugees whose towns and villages were ethnically cleansed by Israel during the 1948 Nakba.

Despite conditions quickly becoming unfit for human life, Israeli authorities refused to consider measures that would have protected displaced civilians and ensured their basic needs were met, showing that their actions were deliberate.

They refused to allow those displaced to return to their homes in northern Gaza or relocate temporarily to other parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory or Israel, continuing to deny many Palestinians their right to return under international law to areas they were displaced from in 1948. They did so knowing that there was nowhere safe for Palestinians in Gaza to flee to.

Accountability for genocide

“The international community’s seismic, shameful failure for over a year to press Israel to end its atrocities in Gaza, by first delaying calls for a ceasefire and then continuing arms transfers, is and will remain a stain on our collective conscience,” said Agnès Callamard.

“Governments must stop pretending they are powerless to end this genocide, which was enabled by decades of impunity for Israel’s violations of international law. States need to move beyond mere expressions of regret or dismay and take strong and sustained international action, however uncomfortable a finding of genocide may be for some of Israel’s allies.

“The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity issued last month offer real hope of long-overdue justice for victims. States must demonstrate their respect for the court’s decision and for universal international law principles by arresting and handing over those wanted by the ICC.

“We are calling on the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to urgently consider adding genocide to the list of crimes it is investigating and for all states to use every legal avenue to bring perpetrators to justice. No one should be allowed to commit genocide and remain unpunished.”

Amnesty International is also calling for all civilian hostages to be released unconditionally and for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups responsible for the crimes committed on 7 October to be held to account.

The organization is also calling for the UN Security Council to impose targeted sanctions against Israeli and Hamas officials most implicated in crimes under international law.

Israel’s refusal to grant Palestinian refugees right to return has fuelled seven decades of suffering

15 May 2019

– Nakba Day on 15 May marks the displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians following the creation of the State of Israel in 1948
– More than 70 years later, Israel still denies Palestinian refugees their right to return to their land
– Amnesty International’s dedicated Nakba website describes the heartbreaking struggles of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories

Israel’s failure to respect the right to return for Palestinians who were forced to flee their homes in 1948 is a flagrant violation of international law that has fuelled decades of suffering on a mass scale for Palestinian refugees across the region, said Amnesty International, marking 71 years since the Nakba (catastrophe), as it is known to Palestinians.

Amnesty International’s dedicated Nakba website 70+ Years of Suffocation showcases powerful images and testimonies that tell the heartbreaking stories of Palestinian refugees living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), Jordan and Lebanon. To mark Nakba Day, Amnesty International is asking people from around the world to show solidarity with Palestinian refugees and demand that Israel respect their right to return.

“More than 70 years after the conflict that followed Israel’s creation, the Palestinian refugees who were forced out of their homes and dispossessed of their land as a result continue to face the devastating consequences,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“This weekend almost 200 million people will tune in to watch the Eurovision song contest in Israel, but, behind the glitz and glamour, few will be thinking of Israel’s role in fuelling seven decades of misery for Palestinian refugees.

“There can be no lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis until Israel respects Palestinian refugees’ right to return. In the meantime, Lebanese and Jordanian authorities must do everything in their power to minimize the suffering of Palestinian refugees by repealing discriminatory laws and removing obstacles blocking refugees’ access to employment and essential services.”

There can be no lasting solution to the Palestinian refugee crisis until Israel respects Palestinian refugees’ right to return

Philip Luther, Middle East and North Africa Research and Advocacy Director

There are currently more than 5.2 million registered Palestinian refugees. The vast majority live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). Israel has failed to recognize their right under international law to return to homes where they or their families once lived in Israel or the OPT. At the same, they have never received compensation for the loss of their land and property.

Many have been forced to live their entire lives in overcrowded camps in dire conditions and are denied access to essential services.

“Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories are trapped in a cycle of deprivation and systematic discrimination with no end in sight. For many of them life is full of suffocating restrictions and has become a living hell,” said Philip Luther.

Challenges for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan

To mark Nakba Day, Amnesty International has gathered new testimony from Palestinian refugees describing the restrictions they face in Lebanon and Jordan.

Although the majority of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon were born in the country and have lived there all their lives, they cannot acquire Lebanese nationality, and many remain stateless and deprived of access to public services including medical care and education.

Several Palestinian refugees in Lebanon told Amnesty International how their hopes of pursuing professional careers and building a better future have been shattered as a result of discriminatory laws that bar Palestinians from practising over 30 professions including medicine, dentistry, law, architecture and engineering. Such restrictions have trapped many Palestinian refugees in deprivation and poverty.

Mohammad, a 21-year-old Palestinian refugee, described how his hopes of becoming a dentist were crushed when he discovered he cannot work as a professional dentist in Lebanon simply because he is Palestinian. He told Amnesty International he hated life in the camp: “I am surrounded by poverty… I want to create a better life for myself, away from all of this misery.”

Sara Abu Shaker, 14, has chosen to pursue her dream of studying medicine even though as a Palestinian she can never practise as a doctor in Lebanon.

“Even if I can’t be a doctor here, I could go to Palestine and help those in need, particularly the underprivileged children. I want to save lives…,” she said.

Around 2.1 million Palestinian refugees live in Jordan, some 370,000 of them in camps where conditions are generally sub-standard. Around three quarters of Palestinian refugees in Jordan have been granted Jordanian citizenship, giving them access to health care and education. However, over 600,000, including some 150,000 who fled to Jordan from the Gaza Strip following the 1967 Israeli-Arab conflict, were not naturalized and do not have sufficient access to public services.

Jundia Awwad, 48, whose family is from what is now southern Israel, was born in Jordan and has lived her entire life in Jerash refugee camp. She described the anguish of living as a refugee in Jordan.

“I grew up in the hope that tomorrow we will return to Palestine but instead we stayed in houses made of asbestos sheets…. I want to live like other human beings. I want health care, proper education and infrastructure. I want equality,” she said.

A decision by the US authorities in 2018 to cut funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which provides essential services, including health care, education, emergency assistance and jobs, to millions of Palestinian refugees has put further strain on their lives.

“The situation for Palestinian refugees is untenable and grows closer to breaking point with every year that passes. How much longer can Palestinian refugees be expected to be condemned to a life of suffering, deprivation and discrimination simply because of their origin?” said Philip Luther.

To produce its dedicated Nakba website Amnesty International teamed up with Tanya Habjouqa, an award-winning photographer, to document the personal stories of a select number of Palestinian refugees in different camps in Jordan, Lebanon and the OPT.

Gaza is a ‘killing field’ where people are being starved. How long will the world tolerate this?
Arwa Mahdawi

Gaza is a ‘killing field’, says UN chief, as agencies urge world to act on Israel’s blockade

Below are a number of videos pertaining to the genocide in Palestine

The Documentary Hypothesis

by chriswhitby | Apr 9, 2025 | Deception, Lost Truth, Translation, Warning

The Documentary Hypothesis

The Documentary Hypothesis

Most believers today will argue that the Scriptures are the infallible Word of the Almighty – completely error free and totally trustworthy. I used to accept this thought but my journey has taught me to ‘test all things’ Believers, including myself, have accepted many strange teachings from the pulpit simply because they appear to align with Scripture. I have found that many translations often have to be tested and checked for accuracy and I have often come to the conclusion that the translations followed the bias and beliefs of the translators. It is therefore my conclusion that Bible translations are not reliable and one needs to cross-check as much as possible – mainly back to the Hebrew when possible.

If that was not enough of a concern I have discovered what are called ‘interpolations’ and ‘inclusions’ that conflict with the broader message of Scripture or at least pollute the Word. It is my belief that what is referred to as ‘JEDP or‘ ‘The Documentary Hypothesis‘ also has merit and triggers a red flag i.e. the need for caution.

What is ‘The Documentary Hypothesis’?

JEDP refers to ‘The Documentary Hypothesis’, a theory proposing that the Pentateuch (the first five books of Scripture was not written by Moses but compiled from four distinct sources: Jahwist (J), Elohist (E), Deuteronomist (D), and Priestly (P).

This theory suggests that the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) was not written by Moses as tradition holds, but rather compiled from four different sources or traditions.

The Four Sources:

J (Jahwist): Characterized by the use of the name “Yahweh” (or “YHWH”) for God, and often portrays God with human-like emotions and actions.

E (Elohist): Uses the name “Elohim” (or “El”) for God, and emphasizes prophets and dreams.

D (Deuteronomist): Primarily responsible for the Book of Deuteronomy and some historical books, emphasizing morals and the importance of Jerusalem.

P (Priestly): Focuses on laws, covenants, and the priesthood, and is often considered to be the most widely recognized of the sources.

Wellhausen Hypothesis:
The JEDP theory is also known as the Wellhausen hypothesis, named after Julius Wellhausen, a German scholar who pioneered the theory.

Critiques of the Theory:
The JEDP theory has been criticized for being based on speculation and for contradicting the claims of the Bible writers themselves, who assert that the Torah was given by Moses.

There is a vast amount of information on this subject on the web for those who are interested. I believe that that there were different interest groups who amended and added to Scripture over time. Even translations sometimes reflect the theological bias and beliefs of the authors.

I have included both written and video content below for your review and consideration.

Interpolation

to insert (words) into a text or into a conversation

Cambridge dictionary.

‘the addition of something different in the middle of a text, piece of music, etc. or the thing that is added’:

Merriam Webster

to alter or corrupt (something, such as a text) by inserting new or foreign matter

to insert (words) into a text or into a conversation

An interpolation, in relation to literature and especially ancient manuscripts, is an entry or passage in a text that was not written by the original author. As there are often several generations of copies between an extant copy of an ancient text and the original, each handwritten by different scribes, there is a natural tendency for extraneous material to be inserted into such documents over time.

The known and suspected Biblical interpolations are too numerous to list, although it is possible to give examples and explain clues that have helped identify them. It seems that whenever the Bible needed updating, someone was always ready to make the required changes and present these as original to the text. Sometimes an interpolation is suspected because the text is not present in the earliest manuscripts now available, in other cases there is a clear change of style and in other cases the text seems inconsistent with the context.

The matter of interpolations requires a large amount of time to study. I have included a video from James Tabor at the end of this post which delves into the subject of interpolations and provides methods used to identify them and some examples.

You can review some listed interpolations here and decide for yourself:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Bible_interpolation

The Death Of The Documentary Hypothesis

BY DAVID BOKOVOY

I’m surprised how often I read online someone making the assertion that the Documentary Hypothesis is dead. “The JEPD theory is no longer dominant,” remarked one recent commentator, “now biblical scholars look towards community authorship or single authorship of the Pentateuch with supplementation.”

I’m not sure where precisely this idea stems from, but it’s certainly not correct. My concern is that it seems to be expressed most frequently by religious commentators seeking to defend a type of inspired unity to the work that can be traced back to Mosaic authorship, or if not that far, the death of the DH at least supports a more traditional religious reading of the work.

The DH traces its intellectual roots to the rise of 17th century European rationalism. European rationalism transformed the traditional approach of interpreting the Bible as privileged text. During this era, several European philosophers who considered reason to be the ultimate source for human knowledge began questioning many long-held assumptions regarding the Bible, including the concept of biblical inerrancy.

Rather than reading the Bible as a scriptural text that requires its own special rules to explain or cover-up inconsistencies, philosophers such as Baruch Spinoza, Thomas Hobbes, and Thomas Paine interpreted the text according to the standard rules of logic. For example, a slave law in Exodus 21:6 states that some slaves should serve their masters “forever.” This statement, however, directly contradicts the slave law in Leviticus 24:40, which states that all slaves must be released every fiftieth year (the year of Jubilee).

Not wanting to see these laws as contradictions, later Jewish rabbis attempted to reconcile the two passages by stating that the word “forever” really means “practically, but not literally forever”—in other words, simply until the year of Jubilee.[1] In contrast to this approach, which had been adopted by Jewish and Christian interpreters alike, European rationalists began arguing that if a text like Exodus 21 said “forever,” it should be read as “forever,” and that the two laws were simply at odds with one another. In other words, they began to treat the Bible like a real book that could contain historical anachronisms and inconsistencies.[2] The Bible was not simply inerrant scripture that needed to be harmonized.

This new “enlightened” approach to reading the Bible produced a German school of interpretation in the theology departments of Protestant universities. The most influential member of this intellectual school was the German scholar Julius Wellhausen. In 1878, Wellhausen synthesized previous scholarly discoveries in Higher Criticism through the publication of his highly influential book Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel.[3] Ultimately, Wellhausen’s work did for biblical scholarship what Darwin’s Origin of the Species accomplished for natural science. As Darwin’s concept of evolutionary adaptation through natural selection has become central to modern evolutionary theory, so Wellhausen’s work on historical criticism provides the foundation for modern scholarly assessments of the Bible.

In order to take seriously the inconsistencies found throughout the Bible’s first five books, Prolegomena broke up the Pentateuch into separate sources that Wellhausen dated to specific times in Israelite history. He then put those sources back together again according to his own theory regarding the evolution of Israelite religion. Though in the years that followed, not all of Wellhausen’s interpretations of the development of biblical sources have been accepted, as of today almost all contemporary biblical scholars recognize that the first five books of the Bible were not written by a single author and that they are in fact a compilation of separate sources composed by different schools of thought.

When commentators speak of the “death of the DH,” they often draw this conclusion from criticism raised in recent years by European scholars. This new school of continental scholarship in part traces its origins to the work of Rolf Rendtorff, who raised important questions regarding the combination of tradition history and source criticism in the manner commonly assumed in critical Pentateuchal scholarship.[4] Rendtorff rejected the traditionally accepted premise of a Yahwistic author writing during the Israelite monarchal period. Similar arguments were then raised in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s by scholars such as Albert de Pury and Thomas Römer who likewise maintained that the original literary basis of the Pentateuch did not result from a Yahwistic source produced during the monarchy. Instead, de Pury and Römer suggested that the Pentateuch derived primarily from the writings of a Priestly author working in the post-exilic era.[5] In terms of European studies, these ideas have played a significant role in the development of various theories regarding the historical development of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.[6]

In recent years, many continental scholars have abandoned the traditional theory of documentary sources in the Pentateuch as a relevant model for explaining its development, and in its place adopted a “Fragmentary” or “Supplementary” Hypothesis.[7] These theories have called into question many previously held assumptions by source critics, including the nature and even existence of sources such as J and E. Continental scholars have differed lately in their views of documentary sources and fragmentary supplements within the Pentateuch, especially in relationship to Genesis 1-11.[8] They have mostly done away with J, E, and to some extent, even P.[9]

This does not mean, however, that continental studies have entirely rejected the basic premise of separate sources within the Pentateuch. “The newer contributions to Pentateuchal research from Europe do not aim at overthrowing the Documentary Hypothesis,” writes Konrad Schmid, “rather, they strive to understand the composition of the Pentateuch in the most appropriate terms, which… includes ‘documentary’ elements as well.”[10] Moreover, the documentary approach still has a strong following in North American and Israeli scholarship and new arguments have been put forward recently reaffirming its validity (Baden, Schwartz, Stackert, Hendel, and Friedman, among others).[11]

The truth is that the DH is far from dead. While there have been some important criticisms of the traditional DH presented in recent years, even European critics have not entirely abandoned the idea that the Pentateuch is a compilation of “documents.” P, for example, is now almost universally recognized as an independent source as is D. Hence, what we call these sources (for example, P, J, E, and D) really doesn’t matter. There will always be some differences in the way scholars divide them up (documents versus fragments, etc.).

To share my own feelings, rather than supplementary fragments, I’m convinced that J and E were also independent narratives. My view is based upon the fact that when these narratives are extracted from P, there is a readability factor that consistently ties the sources thematically and linguistically together as a unified whole. And, as biblical scholar William Propp has explained, the repetition of duplicative stories throughout the Pentateuch points towards separate, stand alone documents rather than supplemental insertions:

“Why must we be told twice of the corruption of the antediluvian earth (Gen. 6:5; 11-12)? Why should Noah be twice commanded to enter the ark (Gen. 6:18, 7:1), and why must he do so twice (Gen. 7:7,13)? Why must we be told twice that all life perished (Gen. 7:21, 22-23)? Why should Jacob twice receive the name Israel (Gen. 32:29, 35:10)? Why must Yahweh tell Moses twice that he has heard Israel’s cry (Ex. 3:7, 6:5)? Do we need a new plague of kinnîm [‘nats’] (Ex. 7:12-15) before ‘ārōb [‘swarm’] (Ex. 7:15-28), given the apparent synonymity (see Ps. 105:31)? Why should the spies twice describe the giants of Canaan (Num. 13:28, 32-33)? Why are the Israelites twice condemned to die in the desert (Num. 14:23, 28-35)? A few redundancies might be attributed to different sensibilities on the part of the supplementer, a few inconsistencies to absence of mind. A wholesale pattern of redundancy and contradiction is another matter.”[12]

The DH is not dead. And it’s not going anywhere.

For those interested in a recent academic defense of the Documentary Hypothesis, I would highly recommend Joel S. Baden’s work The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012).

……………………………………………………….

For well over two centuries the question of the composition of the Pentateuch has been among the most central and hotly debated issues in the field of biblical studies. In this book, Joel Baden presents a fresh and comprehensive argument for the Documentary Hypothesis. Critically engaging both older and more recent scholarship, he fundamentally revises and reorients the classical model of the formation of the Pentateuch. Interweaving historical and methodological chapters with detailed textual case studies, Baden provides a critical introduction to the history of Pentateuchal scholarship, discussions on the most pressing issues in the current debate, and a practical model for the study of the biblical text.

Source: Publisher

……………………………………………………….

[1] See Marc Zvi Brettler, How to Read the Bible (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2005), 2.

[2] New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman expresses this notion of the Bible as “real book” rather than inerrant scripture with these words: “Since the Bible is a book, it makes better sense to approach it the way one approaches books. There are certainly books in the world that don’t have any mistakes in them. But no one would insist that a particular phone book, chemistry textbook, or car instruction manual has absolutely no mistakes in it before reading it to see whether it does or not. Rather than thinking that the Bible cannot have mistakes, before looking to see if it does, why not see if it does, and only then decide whether it could. . . . If God created an error free book then it should be without errors. If what we have is not an error-free book, then it is not a book that God has delivered to us without errors.” Bart D. Ehrman, Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 117.

[3] Historically, the identification of textual duplicates led to the view of the Pentateuch as an amalgamation of separate sources. An early advocate of this position was Richard Simon (1638-1712). Simon maintained that the Pentateuch consisted of various documents, some of which derived from Moses, but most he attributed to Ezra in the post-exilic period. Following Simon, Jean Astruc (1684-1766) expressed the view that two separate sources appear in the book of Genesis, one that used Elohim (God) and the other the divine name Yahweh (Lord). In his articulation of source criticism, Astruc argued against the traditional view that Moses complied the Pentateuch. Astruc’s analysis prepared the way for further discussion concerning whether these sources were documents or simply fragments combined from other sources. These studies prepared the way for Wellhausen’s ground-breaking synthesis of the Documentary Hypothesis. For a basic history, see Anthony F. Cambell and Mark A. O’Brien, Sources of the Pentateuch: Texts, Introductions, Annotations (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 1-9.

[4] Rolf Rendtorff, Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch (BZAW 147; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1977).

[5] Albert de Pury, “Le Cylce de Jacob comme légende autonome des origines d’Israël,” in Congress Volume: Leuven, 1989 (ed. J.A. Emerton; VTSup 43; Leiden: Brill, 1991), 78-96; idem, “Osée 12 et ses implications pour le débat actuel sur le Pentateuque,” in Le Pentateuque: Débats et recherches (ed. P. Haudebert; LD 151; Paris: Cerf, 1992), 175-207; Albert de Pury, “Yahwist (“J”) Source,” ABD 6:1012-1020; Thomas Römer, Israels Väter: Untersuchungen zur Väterthematik im Deuteronomium und in der deuteronomistischen Tradition (OBO 99; Fribourg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990).

[6] See the collection of essays provided in Thomas B. Dozeman and Konrad Schmid, eds., Farewell to the Yahwist?: Composition of the Pentateuch in Recent European Interpretation (SSS 34; Atlanta: SBL, 2006).

[7] The so-called Fragmentary Hypothesis was inaugurated by Johann Severin Vater in his work Commentar über den Pentateuch: Mit Einleitungen zu den einzelnen Abschnitten, der eingeschalteten Übersetzung von Dr. Alexander Geddes’s merkwurdigeren critischen und exegetischen Anmerkungen, und einer Abhandlung über Moses und Verfasser des Pentateuchs (Halle: Waisenhaus-Buchhandlung, 1802-1805), see especially 393-394.

[8] Blenkinsopp, for example, maintains that Genesis 1-11 was originally conceived as a distinct composition with its own structure and that J is an addition to P; see Blenkinsopp, Creation Uncreation Recreation. For another continental critique of the Documentary Hypothesis arguing that pre-Priestly material was added by a subsequent redactor, see Konrad Schmid, Genesis and the Moses Story: Israel’s Dual Origins in the Hebrew Bible (trans. James Nogalski; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2010).

[9] In the current European discussion, most scholars consider P a source document; see for example, Norbert Lohfink, “Die Priesterschrift und die Geschichte,” in Studien zum Pentateuch (SBAB 4; Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1988), 213-253; Walter Gross, “Bundeszeichen und Bundesschluß in der Priesterschrift,” TTZ 87 (1987): 98-115; Walter Gross, “Die Wolksule und die Feuersäule in Ex 13 + 14: Literarkritisäche, redaktionsgeschichtliche und quellenkritische Erwägungen,” in Biblische Theologie und gesellschaftlicher Wandel (eds. Georg Braulik et al.; Freiburg: Herder, 1993), 142-165; Peter Weimar, “Struktur und Komposition der priesterschriftlichen Geschichtsdarstellung,” BN 23 (1984): 81-134; Bernd Janowski, Sühne als Heilsgeschehen: Studien zur Sühnetheologie der Priesterschrift und zur Wurzel KPR im Alten Orient und im Alten Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1982), 8-9, n. 51; Koch, “P-Kein Redaktor! Erinnerung an Zwei Eckdaten Der Quellenscheidung”: 446-467; John Adney Emerton, “The Priestly Writer in Genesis,” JTS 39 (1988): 381-400; Christian Streibert, Schöpfung bei Deuterojesaja und in der Priesterschrift: Eine vergleichende Untersuchung zu Inhalt und Funktion schöpfungstheologischer Aussagen in exilisch-nachexilischer Zeit (Frankfurt A. M.: Peter Lang, 1993), 46-47; Ludwig Schmidt, Studien zur Priesterschrift (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993), 4-10, 34; Eckart Otto, “Die nachpriesterschriftliche Pentateuchredaktion im Buch Exodus,” in Studies in the Book of Exodus: Redaction-Reception-Interpretation (ed. Marc Vervenne; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1996), 61-111. A major exception to this trend is Erhard Blum, Studien zur Komposition des Pentateuch (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). For additional bibliography, see Konrad Schmid, “Has European Scholarship Abandoned the Documentary Hypothesis? Some Reminders on Its History and Remarks on Its Current Status,” in The Pentateuch: International Perspectives on Current Research (eds. Thomas Dozeman et al.; FAT 78; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 17-18, n. 6.

[10] Schmid, “Has European Scholarship Abandoned the Documentary Hypothesis?,” 17-18.

[11] See, for example, Joel S. Baden, J, E, and the Redaction of the Pentateuch (FAT 68; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009); Baruch J. Schwartz, “The Priestly Account of the Theophany and Lawgiving at Sinai,” in Texts, Temples, and Traditions: A Tribute to Menachem haran (ed. Michael Fox; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1996), 103-134; Jeffrey Stackert, Rewriting the Torah: Literary Revision in Deuteornomy and the Holiness Legislation (FAT 52; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007); Richard Elliot Friedman, The Bible with Sources Revealed: A New View into the Five Books of Moses (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 160-161; Ronald S. Hendel, “Leitwort Style and Literary Structure in the J Primeval Narrative,” in Sacred History, Sacred Literature: Essays on Ancient Israel, the Bible, and Religion in Honor of R.E. Friedman on His Sixtieth Birthday (ed. Shawna Dolansky; Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 93-109.

[12] William H. Propp, “The Priestly Source Recovered Intact?,” VT 46 (1996): 460; emphasis added.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidbokovoy/2014/01/the-death-of-the-documentary-hypothesi

Regardless of how serious one takes the findings of researchers and academics with regard to JEPD and interpolation, let it simply serve as a warning to ‘test all things’ as stated in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 and ‘hold fast what is good.’ This is a call for critical thinking and discernment.

The KJV states ‘prove all things’ which means to ‘examine, scrutinise to see whether a thing is genuine or not. To recognise as genuine after examination, to approve, deem worthy’ (Outline of Biblical usage). The same Greek word is elsewhere translated as ‘discern’.

The Bereans were considered more ‘noble’ because they tested what they heard:

Act 17:11 KJV

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

Act 17:11 NKJV

These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.

In Matthew 16:6 Yahushua warns his disciples ’Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.’ Yahushua clarifies that he is not talking about bread, but about the teachings and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Leaven, or yeast, is used metaphorically to represent a corrupting influence, in this case, the Pharisaic and Sadducean teachings and hypocrisy, which could spread and contaminate their faith. See also Luke 12:1, Mark 8:15.

The Word is the bread of life. Yahushua was the bread that came down from heaven – John 6:51. He stated that in John 6:35 that he is the ‘bread of life’. Yahushua is the ‘unleavened bread of sincerity and truth’.

Paul states in 1 Corinthians 5:6 that ‘a little leaven leavens the whole lump’. See also Galatians 5:9

In Luke, Yahushua teaches that the Kingdom is like a leavened lump. Some teach that this somehow refers to the growth of the church. That teaching is false. One must be consistent with the meaning of leaven which represents wickedness and sin. What Yahushua is actually referring to is his warnings in Matthew 16:6 etc., to be aware of the corrupt doctrines of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. He was proclaiming that the religious practices under the leadership of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees were corrupt.

Luke 13:20-21

And again he said, Whereunto shall I liken the kingdom of God?

21 It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

We must be aware then that a small amount of JEPD/interpolation in the Word, can corrupt the entire message. We should pay special attention to Yahushua’s words as he exposes some of this corruption.

Further evidence of corruption in the Word by scribes etc. is raised by the Prophet Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 8:8

“How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? Look, the false pen of the scribe certainly works falsehood.

There are many critics of the The Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP) with some suggesting that the conclusions are false and some saying that the methods used to identify JEPD are obsolete. I question the motives of these critics though. What is their agenda?

I embrace the idea that there are many contributors and sources put together to form the Bibles that we have today. It is also pretty clear to me, bearing in mind the warnings in the verses above, that there has been some tampering with the Word over the ages which has corrupted some of the message and meaning in certain places.

Many of our Bible translations have also contributed to the distorted message. This is a matter to be taken very seriously, as Christianity today teaches inaccurate theology and doctrines because of this.

Do not be deceived, if Yahushua was talking to us today he would be saying ’Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pastors and Priests.’

Let’s be clear, our Bibles warn us again and again that we risk being deceived. Read Matthew 24:24, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10, Matthew 7:15, 2 Peter 2:1,1 Timothy 4:1

I awould also like to draw your attention to the fact that our Heavenly Father tests us to see if we love Him with all of our heart and soul:

Deuteronomy 13:2

1 If a prophet or dreamer of dreams arises among you and proclaims a sign or wonder to you,

2 and if the sign or wonder he has spoken to you comes about, but he says,“Let us follow other gods (which you have not known) and let us worship them,”

3 you must not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer. For the LORD your God is testing you to find out whether you love Him with all your heart and with all your soul.

I am motivated and encouraged to search for truth by the following wisdom from Proverbs:

Proverbs 25:2

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.

This verse suggests that our Father’s nature is to hold certain things hidden, perhaps to encourage deeper reflection and seeking.

Also, the words of Yahushua in John. We must worship the Father in spirit and truth:

John 4:23

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him.

24 “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

And the Spirit will teach us all things:

John 14:26

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

1John 2:26-27

These things I have written to you concerning those who try to deceive you.

27 But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will[fn] abide in Him.

The Fine Art of Identifying Bible Interpolations: The False Pen for the Scribes!
James Tabor

2ND TEMPLE JUDAISM JUNE 20, 2024

In this new series on my Youtube channel, to run concurrently with the present series, “Lost in Translation,” we work on learning how to spot and identify texts of the Bible, whether Hebrew Bible/O.T. or New Testament, that have been overlaid with what appear to be disjunctive interpolations inserted for polemical reasons.

The Four Sources of the Pentateuch

It was Julius Wellhausen in 1878 who broke down the narrative sources for the first five books.

A brief sketch of his work will show the proposed development in which the early and mostly oral traditions of Israel were gradually written down, preserved in four written documents, and then combined to make one Pentateuch.

JEPD and The Documentary Hypothesis

The theory that has struck fear into the hearts of Christian Theologians for almost 300 years, despite the fact that Yeshua taught it to Simon Peter almost 2,000 years ago. What has the Church hidden from you? Do you know the Truth or just what you have been told? Do you want the rest of the story? Can you handle it? Was Yeshua (Jesus) a Christian? Was He a Pharisaical Jew who died for our sins? Or was He teaching something radical and different than mainstream Judaism of his day taught, something different than Mainstream Christianity today? Something that got Him killed and His message hidden after His ascension? Is the Truth still out there, buried in long-forgotten books and vague historical references by the very men that wiped out the original faith and message once delivered to the saints? I invite you to join me as I search out the original Faith of the Yeshua and the 12 Apostles.

The Documentary Hypothesis

This video introduces students to the Documentary Hypothesis in the context of a course on Old Testament. It was produced for use in courses at Doane University in Crete, NE.

The Documentary Hypothesis explained:

Wellhausen and the formation of the Pentateuch

Old Testament Hermeneutics with Andy Judd

Since the 19th century scholars have been pretty confident in the Documentary Hypothesis: the idea is that the Pentateuch was a group work project, with four main sources dating from the 10th to the 5th centuries BC. Here’s a run down on the theory, and why scholarly consensus is breaking down.

Who Wrote the Old Testament?

Understanding the Documentary Hypothesis

Who wrote the Old Testament? Was it Moses? Perhaps the Documentary Hypothesis gives us better insight into the author(s) of the first five books of the Bible? Either way, this video seeks to educate by looking at the basics of the Documentary Hypothesis and a brief history of its transmission.

The Zadok Way

by chriswhitby | Apr 8, 2025 | Deception, Lost Truth, Warning

The Zadok Way

The Zadok Priesthood and the Zadok Priestly Calendar

‘Introduction

We have been determining the new months/years using the new moon sighting for almost twenty years but, as of the 2024 new year, the confusion and differing opinions of when to start the new year really got to me. I was left to determine the start date based on the information which I had recieved regarding the barley investigations and made my own determination of when to start the new year. As you know, this then affects when one would observe all of the feast days for that year.

This uncertainty left me very disturbed and upset.

Anyway we completed the 2024 year cycle according to my decision and understanding of Scripture. We did find however that we were out of sync with many other groups.

Approaching the 2025 new year I felt the anxiety start again as we anticipated the signs for the 2025 new year. Again I could sense all of the confusion and conflicting messages. Then one day I entered Youtube on my laptop and right before my eyes was a video form Lion and Lamb Ministries (Monte Judah) regarding a Zadok calendar.

Well that video triggered my whole investigation and research into the Zadok priesthood and the Zadok calendar. Needless to say we now embrace the Zadok calendar with total belief that this is an endtime revelation for those with eyes to see. Reviewing the information about the Zadok priesthood also answered so may questions for me regarding some of the strange events in the time of Yahushua’s ministry.

For those interested I have listed some of the material that got me started on this journey of discovery.

John 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:

Ordinances for the Levites

Ezekiel 44:15-16

But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord GOD:

16 They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge.

Caution:

I have come across many groups and individuals who are rejecting this Zadok calenedar outright as they percieve it to be just another confusing contribution to the calendar debacle. This, I believe, through my research and findings, to be a huge mistake. It seems to me is that these people are not investigating the availabe material diligently.

What is most important to understand is the forgotten Zadok priesthood who were essentially forced out of the temple and Jerusalem before the arrival of Yahushua. The evidence provided in this blog will reveal to you that our Messiah was closely associated with this Zadok priestly line and with the Essenes. Please therefore take the time to review all of the material, including the videos provided.

There is so much more material on offer but what I have provided here should be sufficient to convince you of this endtime revelation of Truth.

If you are already sceptical then you should possibly start by watching the video below entitled:

‘Assembly of Called-Out Believers – the SECRET of the ZADOK Priesthood’

Shalom

The calendar being used in the temple by the Pharisees and the Sadducees was based on the Greek Seleucid calendar (probably adopted around 167 BC), which was a lunar calendar. This along with months and days being named after pagan gods, it is no wonder that there were no calendars consistent with the ancient or modern Pharisee tradition within the Dead Sea scrolls community. This makes perfect sense, if, when the Zadok priests were forced from the temple, those calendars were not present within all the other temple scrolls. The calendar observed by Israel during the time of Ezra and before, was in fact the Zadok calendar. The rise of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, along with their willingness to adopt foreign culture and practices, would bring a new calendar causing the sons of Jacob to stray from their appointed days.

Calendar (Zadok Priestly Calendar)

source: natzarimyahshua.org

We understand that there are many calendars out there, the Zadok Priestly Calendar, represents what we currently believe and follow as a fellowship in South Central Missouri. We are earnestly seeking His Truth, His appointed time, His ways; and we encourage and support each and every person seeking HIM to seek this matter our for themselves, regardless of what calendar they follow. Here is the information that we have compiled to support our current position. If you follow a calendar contrary to this one, that is OK. We will not judge you, condemn you, tell you that you are wrong or anything of the sort. We know that each person is walking out their own salvation with great fear and trembling. We hope that the information provided below will be helpful and informative.

This calendar does not rely upon the traditional lunar based (sighted moon, dark moon, new moon, full moon) system, known as the Hillel II calendar, which by the way, only dates back to the 4th century. Many in the Torah community use and follow the Hillel II calendar and many of them have not done the research into how this calendar came about. The Zadok Priestly Calendar takes into consideration the findings discovered within the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS), Scriptural support as well extra Biblical writings support. For our research, we use primarily the Scriptures to formulate the basis for the calendar. The information found in the DSS, only further supports our position and current understanding. At the time of our research, and even now, people such as myself, Michael Walker, still have never read the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical writings such as Enoch, Jasher and Jubilees; which all seem to support the Zadok/Enoch calendar, according to those that have read these writings. Again, for our research, we relied primarily on the 66 books contained in the current Bible.

Some of the criteria used to base in making these decisions are as follows: Genesis 1:14, the 2 lights are made to rule over the day and the night; they are also made for 4 specific things; signs, seasons, days and years. Months is precariously missing in this description given at the beginning. Genesis (7-8) the flood; started on the 17th day of the 2nd month and concluded the 17th day of the 7th month (exactly 5 months) and at the end of the 150 days the waters diminished (making each of the 5 month’s 30 days a piece when using simple math to divide them). In the books of Daniel and Revelation the 1260 days listed are both equally divisible by 30, giving us 42 months which is perfectly equal to 3 1/2 years (time (1 year), times (2 years) and half a time (1/2 year) easily reconciling and connecting the beginning (Genesis) and the end (Revelation) The Book. We do find Biblical support for 12 months in each year, as each of the 12 months are listed within the 66 books of the Bible. Contrarily, there is not a single mention of a 13th month in all of Scripture, let alone Scripture that supports adding 13th month because of a luminary. The practice of adding a 13th month every 2 to 3 years is required using the lunar calendars, which is widely and blindly accepted within the Torah community; this is a custom of mankind. If this was an ancient method, there would be at least 2 or 3 witnesses of a thirteenth month within the framework of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings. The absence of such support is what initially raised our concerns back in the fall of 2021, when we switched to the Zadok Priestly Calendar.

Leviticus 23:14 identifies that none of the children of Yisrael shall NOT eat any bread, roasted or fresh grain until the first fruit offerings have been given to Yah. Most calendar’s have this occurring during the week of Unleavened bread, where we are commanded TO eat unleavened bread, which appears to create a contradiction and error. In the calendar we present, first fruits starts the morrow after the Sabbath, after the conclusion of the feast. This removes the potential for the Scriptures’ to contradict themselves. In the sequential order of the Appointed times, first fruits (barley) is between Unleavened Bread and Pentecost. Pentecost is also when the first fruits of the wheat harvest are presented, giving us the 2nd of 3 first fruits listed in the Scripture. Food for thought

Other parts of Scripture to consider: Ezekiel 43 and 44 mention the sons of Zadok as the priests, with chapter 44 identifying them as being in charge of the temple, likely in the millenial reign of Messiah. We know that Ezekiel was written after the books of Kings and Samuel. This is important as the sons of Zadok are identified as being the priestly line serving from King David until the Maccabean revolt, when the Zadok’s were unceremoniously kicked out and overthrown in their temple duties.

We also find in Scripture that there were 12 captains/chiefs assigned, which came and went month by month throughout ALL the months, to serve the King – 1 Chronicles 27. 1 Kings 4 identifies that there were 12 offices, each man his month in a year, that provided victuals for the King and his house. In Revelation 22 verses 1 and 2 show that there was a tree that produced 12 manners of fruit, one for EVERY month.

Other 12’s in Scripture: 12 sons of Jacob, 12 sons of Ishamel, 12 hours in the day, 12 hours in the night, 12 disciples, 12 thousand from each of the 12 tribes and the list goes on and on.

We must always remember, not to add to or take away from the Word of Yah (Deuteronomy 4:2). We must walk out our own salvation with great fear and trembling (Philippians’ 4:2). We do not judge other’s who follow another calendar. The fact of the matter is, there is not a perfect calendar out there at this time. We could be wrong, as we have been wrong before, and we are in the process of walking out our salvation with great fear and trembling. We look forward to Messiah returning and straightening it all out for us, until then, we will continue to follow the Zadok Priestly calendar unless Biblical evidence can be provided to encourage us to change our position.

As of January 2024, there is more growing support of using this calendar. Monte Judah of Lion and the Lamb ministries, who also produces a monthly magazine (Yavoh), is quoted as saying “I believe there is sufficient evidence that the Zadok priestly calendar, credited to Enoch before the Flood, used by Moses, is the calendar that believers of Yeshua should adhere to in contrast to the present Hebrew calendar. God’s appointed times should be scheduled and observed according to the Zadok calendar.” This is profound, considering that Monte has been in this walk for nearly 40 years and for the majority of that time, if we are not mistaken, he was a sighted moon (Hillel II) calendar follower. Eddie Chumney is also of the strong opinion that this is the calendar that should be followed, here is a link to a presentation he gave at sukkot this past year, 2023-08-26 Eddie Chumney Conf. pt 1 – “Restoring the Zadok Priesthood’ – Life of Worship (youtube.com). Both of these men have very large followings of believer’s and a massive outreach that is sure to spread like wild fire, for them to be coming to this understanding and sharing this information now, just increases the vindication and support that this truly is the most appropriate and accurate calendar known.

One does not have search far and wide to find other articles that support this ever growing trend. With the Dead Seas Scrolls being publicized, translated and more information made public, we are seeing more and more historical evidence that pre-dates Messiah’s first coming, as the calendar that was actually followed from the beginning, starting in Genesis with Enoch. Malachai states that YHWH/YHVH/YHUH changes not. His Word is eternal, it was at the beginning as it will be at the end. If we truly hang on the to Scriptural fact that HE DOES NOT CHANGE, then His calendar and timing are of the utmost importance. Shalom and ahavah b’shem Yahshua.

https://natzarimyahshua.org/calendar/

Calendar Considerations

Genesis 1:14; the lights in the firmament were made for signs (oth), seasons (moedim), days (yom), years (shanah); months is not identified Genesis 7:11, 7:24; 8:4, each month was 30 days (5 months was 150 days) Daniel and Revelation, 1260 days is equally divided by 30, resulting in 42 months (3 ½ years) No 13th month mentioned in Scripture; using Rabbinic calendars this is needed 7 times every 19 years Not a single mention of concrete Scriptural evidence on how to sight the “new moon”; crescent, dark, full Evidence of the Zadok calendar found in the Dead Sea Scrolls Yahushua was observing and ate the Passover the day before the “religious leaders” (Pharisees and Sadducees); thus observing the Feast on the day His Father (YHWH) intended it The wave offering, occurs the morrow after the Sabbath, after the reaping of the harvest, which could not be done before Passover, otherwise the timing would be completely off. Yahushua the High Priest, would follow the prescribed method of consecration of 1 week, the week of Unleavened Bread, He had not yet presented to His Father, until after 7 days, the morrow after the Sabbath (completely physical, has nothing to do with the Spiritual)

Why the Zadok Priestly Calendar?

Source: messianicsabbath.com

If you are keeping the Lunisolar Hebrew calendar in which each month starts with a new moon and a 13th month is sometimes added, I applaud your desire and commitment. I have kept and promoted this calendar for nearly 20 years.

In 2024, I faced confusion with the calendar. Some believers and congregations added a 13th month to accommodate the ripening of the barley in Israel, some did not.

That put Messianic congregations a month apart in their feast observances. Also, the actual sighting of the first sliver of the new moon (which determines when a new month starts) did not line up with what was calculated on the calendar I was using, which further threw off the dates of the feasts and rosh chodesh (head of the month) observances.

So, I redoubled my efforts. I researched all of my new moon dates with a third party. I looked into the ripening of the barley. I re-read the Torah’s instructions. But this additional information only served to raise more questions for me. Did Yehovah, the creator of the universe, whose ways are perfect, really intend for us to “correct” his calendar with an extra month every 2-3 years? Which barley field in Israel are we to be watching? What if it’s a dark night and we cannot see the sliver of the moon?

If Yehovah has commanded his people from all time to observe his holy days on their very specific dates, would he not provide a way for everyone to know when those dates are – whether inside or outside of Israel, with a righteous or wicked high priest, with a clear or cloudy sky, and with or without Google? This brought me back to the most basic question:

Why keep a Biblical calendar?

Why does Yehovah instruct us to blow the trumpet over our offerings at the beginning of our months (Num. 10:10)? The answer is simple: So that we know when the first and seventh months are. All of Yehovah’s commanded feast dates are in the first and seventh months. These are paramount on his timeline – past, present and future. I believe the primary reason to track the months is to be able to calculate when the feast dates are going to occur and put them on our calendar, in our plans and in our hearts, as they are in Yehovah’s. Even creation was designed with them in mind:

Genesis 1:14, “And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years,’”

The word translated “seasons” here is actually the Hebrew word Mo-edim (Strong’s #H4150), appointed times – feasts, festivals, gatherings.

But the benefits of keeping a Biblical calendar go beyond that, to include revelation into the rhythm and themes of Yehovah through the year and in our lives. I believe these themes continue for us today. As well, man has added other dates to the Biblical calendar to commemorate notable events and alert us to things to come (Hanukkah, Purim, The Three Weeks of Sorrow, etc.)

But how am I to reconcile these questions and issues I’m finding, so that I can make sure I’m aligning as closely to Yehovah’s appointed times as possible?

The Zadok Priestly Calendar

I sought the Lord during the year to determine how to move forward in the coming year. That’s when he brought to my awareness the Zadok Priestly Calendar. My Pastors brought it up to me and we embarked on a fact finding mission. Other Torah teachers we respect, such as Monte Judah (Lion & Lamb Ministries), Eddie Chumney (Hebraic Heritage Ministries) and others, were endorsing the Zadok calendar, but there were many questions to be answered.

We looked at the basic differences between the two calendars:

Main Differences	Lunisolar Hebrew Calendar	Zadok Priestly Calendar
Start of the Year	The day after the new moon can be seen after the barley is ripe in Israel (usually March or April)	The first Wednesday after the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, usually March 20-21
Start of a Month	The day after the first sliver of each new moon can be seen.	Every 30 or 31 days (except the 12th month, which may have more)
Months Per Year	12 or 13 depending on the barley	12
Days Per Year	353 – 385 depending on the barley	364
Seasonal Markers	Not referenced	Used to track months and feasts
Dates Determined	By observing the ripening of the barley and the new moon	By calculating from the Vernal (Spring) Equinox, no observance required
Feast Dates	Occur on different days based on the Barley and the moon (i.e. Passover on the 14th day of the 1st month could occur on any day of the week.)	Occur on the same dates every year (i.e. Passover on the 14th day of the 1st month always occurs on a Tuesday)
Names of the Months	Based on Babylonian words and gods	Use the month number (Month 1, Month 2)

While jarring at first, some of these differences started to clear up my frustrations with the Lunisolar Calendar. As we searched it out and sought the Lord, there were fascinating, revelatory and even miraculous findings that convinced us to make the switch to the Zadok Priestly Calendar.

Compelling Points to Consider

By no means understanding all of the aspects of it yet, the most convincing reasons I’ve found to change calendars were the following:

This calendar has come to light due to the discovering and deciphering of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among the scrolls, calendars were unearthed that were likely kept by the Zadok priests.
(The scrolls were confirmed by a leading Hebrew University archaeologist the very same day the UN voted to create a Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine – https://www.icej.org/blog/israels-national-rebirth-and-the-dead-sea-scrolls/.
What is Yehovah up to?

The Zadok priests were a priestly line from the time of David. It is believed that the Essenes of Qumran, where the scrolls were discovered, were the remnant of the Zadok priestly line after the Babylonian exile. Zadok priests are also chosen by Yehovah out of all the other Levitical priests to serve in his temple (Ezekiel 44-45, see 44:15).

The calendars found are documented in many books about the Dead Sea Scrolls and much of it matches with Enoch’s writings from the pre-flood era about his understanding of the sun, moon and seasons.

The Torah does not explain all there is to know about how to calculate the Biblical calendar. This is why there is confusion and various iterations. The First Book of Enoch provides additional instruction (Chapters 72-82). However, it is still not reconcilable as a definitive guide. But, when you combine the Torah, The First Book of Enoch and the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is now evidence and guidance for calculating everything in this Zadok calendar.

For the Lunisolar Hebrew Calendar, I learned that there was no evidence or instruction for:

Starting each month on a new moon
Starting the new year when the barley is ripe
Adding a 13th month every 2-3 years

These are all foundations of the Hebrew calendar and yet there is no place in the Torah or any of the writings that supports them.

There is no mention of a new moon in the Hebrew Bible. The term “Rosh Codesh” is often translated to “new moon” in English Bibles. “Rosh” (H7218) means beginning or head, but “Codesh” (H2320) means month, not the actual moon. The word for moon is “yereach” (H3394). It is used 27 times in the Bible, but never in connection with the appointed times of Yehovah.

When I saw the simplicity of the concept, yet how all-encompassing it is of the elements of time, I recognized Yehovah’s handiwork. Only He could come up with something anyone could calculate and understand, and also have it continue to reveal more the more you learn about it. It perfectly aligns with the sun, moon, stars and seasons – just as is stated in Genesis 1:14-19, pointing us easily to his appointed times, which is stated as the reason for creating them.

Some examples of this include:

Exact Sabbath dates repeat every three months, which can only happen on a 364-day year.
New months always start on Wednesday, then Friday, then Sunday and repeat that pattern all year, every year, forever.
Month one, the head of the year, always starts on a Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. This is because the sun, moon and stars were created on the fourth day of creation. This was the beginning of earthly time and nothing has changed, because Yehovah does not change.
The calendar is broken into the four seasons, and a new month begins on the Wednesday within a week of each of the four seasonal markers: Vernal Equinox, Autumnal Equinox, Summer Solstice, Winter Solstice.
Each new season has exactly 91 days, 13 weeks.
View a sample calendar of Hebrew months to see the simplicity.

These repeating patterns make it possible for anyone to create their own calendar. If you know when the Spring (Vernal) Equinox is, you can figure out the rest. This is how we are all responsible to keep Yehovah’s appointed dates, because anyone can calculate them. You don’t need a priest, you don’t need to observe anything, and you don’t need Google to find the moon’s cycle or check on Israel’s barley crop. Yehovah would not hold us responsible for specific dates if we had no way of knowing when that date was.

Always Aligning with Yehovah’s Revelation

I had to grapple with the fact that I have not known this until now. Was everything else that I learned and that I was teaching wrong? When I was a Christian, I was doing the best I could do with the information I had. And using that path, Yehovah led me to a Messianic understanding, so I could align closer with his heart and his ways. Following the Lunisolar Hebrew Calendar increased my desire to keep the Biblical calendar and is what Yehovah used to lead me to the Zadok Priestly Calendar.

This is our evolution as children of the living God and in our journey of coming out of Babylon to align closer and closer with the revelation he gives us for his ways. As we are malleable wineskins that will not burst with new wine, our understanding will continue to evolve. We will continue to seek Yehovah for more revelation of him and his ways and re-align with what he reveals.

Links for More Study

I hope you will look into this for yourself and seek the Lord for his instruction, as we wait for the restoration of all things and the law going forth from Zion.

Remnant House Ministries “The Holy Zadok Calendar In The Dead Sea Scrolls – Part 1”
Remnant House Ministries “The Holy Zadok Calendar In The Dead Sea Scrolls – Part 2”
An Overview from Lion & Lamb Ministries
An Overview from Natzarim Yahshua Family Fellowship
Rachel Elior’s Guest Lecture at the University of Chicago School of Divinity
Rachel Elior’s “Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls”
Returningtothegarden.com books, studies and dates
“Signs of the Times” Video Series (6) discussion between Avi ben Mordechai and Eddie Chumney

Links to Purchase, View, Download or Print a Zadok Priestly Calendar

2024-2025

For purchase from Lion & Lamb Ministries, March 2024 – March 2025
For viewing or free download from Remnant House
For viewing or free download from Natzarim Yahshua Family Fellowship

2025-2026

For purchase from Returningtothegarden.com

Why the Zadok Priestly Calendar?

Video Teachings

The following are some very inetresting, revealing and convincing videos outlining the justification of the Zadok Priesthood and the Zadon callendar.

The image below reflects a comprehensive twenty-two (22) chapter video series with Avi ben Mordechai and Eddie Chumney on the subject of the Zadok Priesthood and calendar.

There was an intense biblical controversy during the Second Temple period regarding the authority of second-temple period Judaism and who had the authority to proclaim the correct biblical calendar of the national festivals. It was a sharp Zadokite priesthood rejection of the second temple period Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees. The Zadokite priesthood of the Qumran believed they had the biblical authority to set the dates for all national biblical festivals of Israel and Judah.

Here is a link to part one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDW9omNyFSg

James Tabor – Counting Time: The Dead Sea Scroll Essene Calendar Explained

Monte Judah – The Zadok Calendar and the Last Generation

Dr. Jackson Snyder – The “Perfect” Zadokite 364-day Festival Calendar – WWYD? The Latest Secret Scroll.

Assembly of Called-Out Believers – the SECRET of the ZADOK Priesthood

Shane Vaughn – Biblical Proof that Jesus/Yahshua kept the Zadokite Calendar. Solving the Passover Conundrum

Remnant House Ministries – The Holy Zadok Calendar In The Dead Sea Scrolls – Part 1 and 2

Is Grace From God

by chriswhitby | Mar 17, 2025 | Deception, Translation, Warning

Is Grace From God

In the Bible, the concept of grace is a fundamental and significant theological concept that is central to Christian belief. Grace is often defined as the unmerited favor, kindness, and mercy of God. But what does grace really mean and what is the historical origin of this English word. Would it matter if you knew the origin and found that it was in conflict with your faith relationship. What if I told you that there is a much deeper meaning to ‘grace’ hidden in plain sight in the original Hebrew language that reveals a beautiful love story. A story which the English language has hidden from you. What will you do when you know the truth? Will you simply dismiss the revelation as trivial and ignore the message or will you take heed and ‘hear’ the messenger.

Anti-Globalist Alliance

by chriswhitby | Dec 6, 2021 | Deception, Health, Judgement, Warning

Anti-Globalist Alliance

I offer the following post for your information and interest only with regards to Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò who is calling for the creation of an Anti-Globalist Alliance.

My religious beliefs are mostly in conflict with those of the Catholic church but when truth is spoken I believe we should support it.

The content in this post includes:

– A call from Archbishop Viganò to establish and join what he terms an ‘Anti-globalist Alliance’,

– A more detailed documented interview with Viganò

– An indepth interview (video) conducted by Planet Lockdown.

– An article reporting Pope Francis receiving the Pfizer vaccine and his call to all to follow his example.

NB: Notice the blasphemous slogan on the Pope’s facemask which reads ‘In Pfizer we trust’. We read in the Psalms that David put his trust in the Almighty, and so do I:

Psalms 56:11 ‘In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.’

Psalm 91:2 ‘I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust.’

Trust in the Father with all your heart:

Proverbs 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

Again we read in the New Testament:

2 Corinthians 1:10 ‘Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us;’

How can the Pope endorse such a compromise on Biblical teaching?

Before you scroll down any further to the video I would like to caution you with ragards to reacting with emotion to the call from Viganò to join his or any resistance movement.

There are many Christians who possibly follow the belief (as it seems Viganò does), that we, as supposed representatives of our Almighty Father on earth, must actively make war with what we perceive as evil. I believe that we are required to expose evil but standing up in battle (albeit verbal) may not be the Biblical thing to do.

Scripture tells us in Proverbs 14:12 that ‘There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.’

The previous verse 11 states ‘The house of the wicked shall be overthrown: but the tabernacle of the upright shall flourish.’

It is however not at our hands that ‘the house of the wicked shall be overthrown’. Scripture teaches us that what we are required to do is stand:

Ephesians 6:10-13 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

1Corinthians 16:13 Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

In fact, it is made very clear in the Old Testament book of 2 Chronicles that what is required is for us to humble ourselves, pray, seek the Father’s righteousness and turn from our wicked ways. Then and only then, will the Almighty Father respond to our prayers and save us from this tyranny:

2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

I have previously posted a ‘disclaimer’ in some of my previous posts related to this Covid scam which will provide some more information on why I believe that we should not actively resist this globalist tyranny.

I personally will not participate in any resistance movement or any protest action. I believe that what we are witnessing in the world today is a repeat of history i.e. a repeat of the Biblical pattern of the Babylonian captivity as described in the book of Jeremiah the Prophet. Our example in this regard should be Daniel who accepted his captivity but remained steadfast in the way of righteousness. Daniel understood that the Babylonian captivity was ordained by his Heavenly Father as a result of the nations disobedience.

We are told in the Bible that our battle is not against flesh and blood:

Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

We are up against a spiritual enemy. This enemy is the ‘adversary’, the satan/devil (1 Peter 5:8), which indwells each and every one of us. Why is it then that believers always want to accuse others and not see that it is through our very own adulterous and idolatrous wickedness, as believers, that the Father has brought about this end time chastisement. Our Father is not concerned with the wicked and evil non-believers. They will be destroyed in the fullness of time. Our Father is calling on us, the believers, to repent and to seek Him.

When it states in James that we must resist the devil it is referring to a mental resistance. This is how we overcome the devil. The devil exists in our thoughts. Those who commit evil deeds are those who have not resisted the devil and have followed through with their evil thoughts and manifested physical evil deeds. We all suffer this same challenge. We must submit to the will of our Father:

James 4:7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

For one to take up a physical battle against this force of evil is once again disobedience and rebellion. This will not end well for those who can not see this reality. I am not just preaching to you the reader on this matter either. This is something that I personally struggle with and have to constantly remind myself about and reign myself in.

Scripture is very clear from the books of Daniel and Revelation that there is going to be a global ‘beast’ empire ruling the world in the last days. There is nothing that we can do to change this prophesied reality.

Let us rather stand firm in our faith, pray and seek the face of the Almighty. He will deliver us according to His grace and timing.

Archbishop Viganò is telling the truth but I believe that he is wrong in calling for any other action other than to expose the truth to the world.

Please read my ‘Disclaimer’ below:

Disclaimer:

The author of Unleavenedbread.co.za is not a qualified doctor or a medical professional. I am also neither an activist or a protestor of any sort and will neither organise, promote or participate in any protest action (my reason for this will be explained in the final post of this series).

My interest is purely that of Biblical Prophetic interpretation. I have no earthly allegiance to any governmental powers or opposing parties/organisations.

My Kingdom affiliation is not of this world.

The information contained on this site is for your consideration and your further research. The information is intended to broaden the horizons of the reader and to expose him/her to information that is not talked about or even considered in the mainstream media. Viewpoints are not forced upon any reader. You, the reader, are trusted to discern for yourself while browsing the pages of this website, what is true and untrue.

The author of Unleavenedbread.co.za does not necessarily agree with, support, or endorse everything that is posted, or linked to on any of our pages. Viewpoints expressed in some articles posted on this site do not necessarily represent the viewpoint of the author of this website.

The reason for my anti-activist or anti-resistance stance is due to the fact that I believe what is taking place in the world today with regards to this scam plandemic is part of prophesied end time Biblical events. I believe that what we are witnessing is the rise of the end-time Babylonian world empire as foreshadowed in the book of Genesis with Nimrod’s Tower of Babel.

King Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes 1:9 ‘ The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun’

This final world empire is described in the books of Daniel and Revelation as the ten toes or ten horns of the beast. This final world empire is mans evil attempt to grasp dominion over the whole of humanity in rebellion against the Almighty Creator who had, in the Genesis account, destroyed this type of ‘collective’, godless rulership and dispersed the people acorss the world.

We witness through the lives of Joseph, Daniel and our Messiah Yahushua that they did not resist the governmental powers during their time and in fact Yahushua rebuked Peter for attempting to interfere in the Divine plan of the Almighty. We read of this event in Matthew 16:

21 From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. 22 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. 23 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Again in John 18 we read how Peter took it upon himself to interfere with divine destiny:

10 Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus. 11 Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?

We must learn the lesson from these accounts and understand that our Heavenly Father uses the wicked rulers of this world for His purposes and often to chastise His people and draw them back, though persecution and trials, to Him.

The Almighty even called the tyrant Nebuchadnezzar His ‘servant’ in Jeremiah 27:6 and 43:10. This was because Nebuchadnezzar was used to serve the Almighty’s overall and greater purpose. When this purpose was however completed Nebuchadnezzar was brought down. The same will happen to this final world empire when the divine timing and plan reaches the fullness of time. This is foretold in Revelation:

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

Revelation 14:8

And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

Revelation 18:2

For those Christians who believe that they must fight the battle for justice on behalf of the Almighty please bear the following verse in mind:

‘For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.’

Revelation 17:17

‘For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will’

It could be that your self-righteous actions are in direct conflict with the will and divine plan of the Almighty Father. When we come across a verse with a double numerical reference, in this case 17:17, this should draw special attention to what is being stated.

As faithful believers we must stand firm in faith, adhere to the Biblical commandments and continue to be a light to the nations. This is all that we are required to do. The wise man Solomon put it to us this way:

Ecclisiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Having stated the above, I must clarify that like Daniel, there is a line that I will not cross in terms of following the Covid rules and regulations. I will not participate in the supposed vaccine program at all. What is fraudulantly called a Covid vaccine is not a vaccine by definition. Or at least according to the definition before the CDC changed it to allign with this Covid jab.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention modified its definition of the words “vaccine” and “vaccination” on its website. Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article254111268.html#storylink=cpy

It was traditionally explained that a small sample of the virus would have been included in the vaccine to enable the body to build up aantiboied against the weakened/smaller viral load. In this way the body would be able and ready to ward off a greater attack from the same virus. This is however not the case with the covid virus as this virus has never been identified and isolated in terms of Koch’s postualtes. Koch’s postulates are four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease.

Koch’s Postulates

Developed in the 19th century, Robert Koch’s postulates are the four criteria designed to assess whether a microorganism causes a disease. As originally stated, the four criteria are:

(1) The microorganism must be found in diseased but not healthy individuals;

(2) The microorganism must be cultured from the diseased individual;

(3) Inoculation of a healthy individual with the cultured microorganism must recapitulated the disease; and finally

(4) The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased individual and matched to the original microorganism.

Koch’s postulates have been critically important in establishing the criteria whereby the scientific community agrees that a microorganism causes a disease. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3775492/

‘Koch’s postulates’ was never followed in the Covid pandemic process. ‘If you have worked your way through my ‘Babylon Rising’ series you will also understand that no virus has ever satisfied Koch’s postulates because viruses are not the cause of disease. It is all a lot of voodoo science. Anyway here is another ‘traditional’ definition of a vaccine:

Vaccination: Injection of a killed microbe in order to stimulate the immune system against the microbe, thereby preventing disease. Vaccinations, or immunizations, work by stimulating the immune system, the natural disease-fighting system of the body. The healthy immune system is able to recognize invading bacteria and viruses and produce substances (antibodies) to destroy or disable them. Immunizations prepare the immune system to ward off a disease. To immunize against viral diseases, the virus used in the vaccine has been weakened or killed. https://www.medicinenet.com/vaccination/definition.htm

We are told that the Covid ‘vaccine’ neither protects you from the virus or prevents you from spreading it. It is useless. The Covid jab is an experimental gene therapy injectable and a sinister one at that. I do not believe that our Heavenly Father would condone anyone taking a vaccine. Science and the medical professionhas become a ‘god’ in this world with many Christians putting all their faith in it. I believe that ‘science’ is the new global religion that the ‘globalists’ want everyone to submit to in a form of reverence and worship.

How often have you heard it proclaimed from the mouths of the medical, scientific and political leaders that we must ‘listen to the science’ and ‘follow the science’?

Well, as for me, I listen to my Heavenly Father through His Word and I follow my Messiah Yahushua. The Creator of the universe is my God whom I listen to and I follow His Son.

My ‘god’ is not science.

As for wearing a mask, it is very seldom that I wear one as I resist places that require me to put one on. I do however wear one for very short intervals every now and then even though I understand that they are more detrimental to one’s health and reflect ones obedience to the rulers rather than provide any safety from a non-existent contagion.

Although we must expose evil (Ephesians 5:11) and not participate in any way with this evil plot, we must not assume that it is our duty to wage war against the evil rulers and ungodly practices in this world. Justice and righteousness will only return and prevail in this world when the allotted time arrives and the Sovereign Father rules through His Son – Yahushua.

I believe that we are now very close to this time which is the seventh and final day or the seven thousandth year period i.e. the Millennium reign of the Messiah.

Until then I will continue to watch the signs with keen interest and will try my very best to wait patiently.

‘And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove* them’.

Ephesians 5:11 (KJV)

s*(expose, bring to the light)

Video

Viganò calls for Anti-Globalist Alliance to stop global enslavement of humanity

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò is calling for the creation of an Anti-Globalist Alliance “under the Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the only King and Savior,” to fight back against the establishment of the New World Order.

Viganò:

”those who resist the NWO will have the help and protection of God”

by Cesare Sacchetti

There is a man that in this moment terrifies the hierarchy of the anti-Catholic church of Bergoglio. This man has been the object of tremendous and evil attacks by the mainstream media. They have been trying to smear him and depict him as a criminal or like someone who is putting in great danger to society. This man is Archbishop Viganò. His Excellency has become like a polar star of hope for those Catholics and even non-believers who have thirst for justice and common sense in this upside-down world. Viganò has been speaking calmly but his gentle voice has terrified the powerful people of the world. Viganò has exposed the Great Reset and the plan to destroy mankind. He clearly denounced the infiltration of Freemasonry into society and into the Church.

In other words, Vigano’s guilty is the one of having said the truth like a humble pastor of God. In this interview that His Excellency granted us, he once again tells us in what kind of historical period we are living. He also consoles us by reminding us that being persecuted for loving God and having Faith is the greatest honor that we may have. This is probably why so many people look at this man in this historical period. He’s one of the few pastors that can speak simply to the hearts of the common men. Here you can find his words addressed to any one of us.”

Your Excellency, in recent days you have been the victim of harsh attacks in the Italian media, and the attacks seem to be increasing in intensity. Massimo Giannini, editor of La Stampa of Turin, went so far as to call you a “scoundrel.” Another prominent Italian journalist, Bruno Vespa, said God should “forgive you” for your statements about the vaccines and the so-called pandemic. Could you explain why Italy’s mainstream media increasingly seems to consider you a sort of “public enemy”? Why are they seemingly so afraid of you?

As I have previously noted, it is typical of any totalitarian regime to seek to delegitimize any and every form of dissent, at first by ridiculing the adversary, making him the object of derision so as to discredit him before the eyes of the public opinion. Then, after delegitimizing the person as pathological, or in need of psychiatric care, suggesting that the adversary is mentally unstable who should be hospitalized in a mental institution. Finally, this process ends with the complete criminalization of all dissenters. In this way, the regime creates the necessary premises to separate all its adversaries from civil society.

Lies, insults and personal attacks — like the most recent that I have received from the Italian magazine “Venerdì” (published by the newspaper “La Repubblica”) — are part of this charade, a type of theatrical production in which the “high priests” of COVID tear their vestments, lamenting every objection to their lies. We should recall that “La Stampa” and “La Repubblica” belong to the Elkann family, a family related to the Rothschilds since the 1500s. As a matter of fact, John Elkann wrote the preface to Klaus Schwab’s book, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, in which the WEF (World Economic Forum) chairman describes the “Great Reset” in minute detail. In their adherence to the official narrative, the spokesmen for the elite also end up employing this tactic of discrediting and smearing those who oppose them, a typical practice of conspiratorial groups.

Certainly, given the deafening silence of the bishops and the propaganda of Santa Marta (Editor’s Note: the residence of Jorge Bergoglio), it is clear that a discordant voice that denounces the ongoing coup d’état being carried out by the globalist élite irritates and seems intolerable for those who ask for an unreasoning approval to their contradictory declarations.

In this context, the Italian media has gone so far as to send spies to attend the Masses celebrated by those priests, like Fr. Giorgio Ghio, who are denouncing the harm caused by the vaccines and the general anti-Christian spirit that seems to becoming ever more to dominate Western society. It seems that the spirit of the real, traditional Church is not only not dead, but even being rekindled. Do you believe that the globalist power is particularly afraid of this renewal of the traditional Catholic faith?

I would like to point out first of all that intrusion by the civil authorities in Church affairs is in direct violation of the Concordat between the Holy See and the Italian Republic. Moreover, the Episcopal Conference of Italy (CEI) does not have any authority to negotiate with the government protocols and agreements, so such agreements, in so far as agreed to by those who have no right to negotiate or ratify such agreements, have no validity whatsoever. Having said that, I think that every priest has the right, or rather the duty, to warn his faithful about the real danger – not at all merely hypothetical – represented by the inoculation of this experimental medical product. This is especially the case when the entire psycho-pandemic farce clearly aims to lead toward the establishment of a dictatorship, whose purpose is to control the citizens through a violation of their constitutional and natural rights under the guise of a health emergency.

The submission of the Catholic Hierarchy, of the Episcopal Conferences, of the Bishops and the Priests to this official narrative, is so brazen and servile as to make evident that infiltration by the “deep church” that I have denounced many times. This infiltration began at least 70 years ago, and today has become quite obvious due to its arrogance and to its persecution of all dissenting voices concerning both the alleged pandemic emergency and the even graver doctrinal, moral, and disciplinary deviations (of the present Church leadership) and the disturbing complicities of this leadership with the “deep state.”

This blatant betrayal by the Church’s pastors has sparked, as also has occurred in the area of civil government, a spontaneous opposition from the “base,” from the people, both ordinary lay people, and ordinary priests, and this opposition has concerned, significantly, both the response to the pandemic and the crisis of the Church hierarchy. On one hand, we have the promoters of the “Great Reset” with their anti-Catholic and anti-Christic ideology, supported by the Bergoglian church. On the other hand, we have those who are standing against the New World Order and who see their moral values and vision fulfilled in the perennial Catholic magisterium and in the traditional Catholic liturgy. The two cities, the City of the Devil and the City of God: the division is always the same because the opposing forces are drawn up based on positions that are ontologically opposed and inimical to one another.

A Russian Colonel who once served in the Soviet secret services, Vladimir Kvachov, has called the pandemic as a sort of “terrorist operation” that has been expressly conceived to enforce a global population reduction and usher in a global dictatorship. In an article published by the Rockefeller Foundation in 2010 whose title is “Operation Lockstep”, the outbreak of a pandemic is expressly mentioned. This pandemic allows world governments to implement authoritarian and repressive measures against personal freedom that are essential to move toward a one-world government. These restrictive measures are basically the same that we have been seeing enforced during the last year and a half, such as face masks and social distancing, which have brought mass psychosis and social hate seemingly unprecedented in Western societies. Do you think that this entire situation is an engineered crisis conceived by the globalist powers to drag mankind towards a state of constant fear and pave the way for the global Leviathan?

I do think so, and I have been saying this since the beginning of the psycho-pandemic, when in May 2020 I exposed the dangers and the absurdities of this grotesque farce. I am quite familiar with the scenarios of the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as with the ones depicted by the “Great Reset” of the World Economic Forum (WEF), whose president met the former Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, in November of 2019 and the present Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, just a few days ago. Likewise, I am also aware of the UN plan called Agenda 2030.

This operation required meticulous preparation and needed the participation of large parts of the public institutions and the private sectors, including the complicity of the Judiciary, of law enforcement and the media. These combined efforts are a real coup d’état and the pandemic is just a pretext – the profasis – through which is introduced the seeming inevitability of the violation of fundamental rights and the consequent establishment of the totalitarian regime of the New Order. In this New Order the pandemic superstition reigns supreme, with its magicians, its vaccine temples, its irrational rituals and its excommunications of sinners vitandi (“to be avoided” or “to be shunned”) — those who do not agree to give up their reason even before apostatizing from their Faith in order to embrace this insane ideological madness.

In the “Great Reset” society that Your Excellency has denounced on numerous occasions, the “transhumanist” ideology plays a fundamental role. Modern technology is advancing at a very fast pace and we are now speaking openly about the possibility of controlling human behavior through brain microchip implants. One who favors this new model of “human/robot” is Klaus Schwab, a character whom we have met in the previous questions, the head of the World Economic Forum. Do you think that the final purpose of transhumanism is really this, to deprive man of his God-given free will?

Transhumanism is a hellish project, in which the Devil mocks the creation of God by perverting and corrupting it. Obedience to the “easy yoke” of the Law of God is replaced by the enslavement and submission to Satan’s tyranny, in which there is no tolerance for good and everyone is forced to commit evil, accept evil, and legitimize evil. And despite the fact that only God can read our consciences, Satan tries to violate the sanctuary of our inner spiritual part in order to control it and induce us to commit evil even against our own will. In his recent book, The Great Reset, Klaus Schwab wrote the following:

“We are also studying new ways to use and implant internal devices that monitor our levels of activity, the hematochemical values and the ways in which these can be associated to wellbeing, to mental health, and to productivity at home and at work. We are also learning better the functioning of the brain and witnessing exceptional developments in the neurotechnology area.”

It is a delirium that only Lucifer can conceive, and it is destined to complete failure because of it Antichristic matrix, its defying of the divine Kingship of Jesus Christ. It is a delirium where the creature, rebelling against the divine laws, pretends to reach the place of the Highest and repeats, with the same disgraceful determination, the “Non serviam” (“I will not serve”) of Lucifer.

Satan is simia Dei (“an ape of God”): in everything that he does to keep us away from God and drag us toward Hell, we can always see his mocking attempt to imitate the Savior, to usurp His sovereignty, to pervert His teachings and to steal souls from Him. The Devil wants to be worshipped in the place of God. He wants the Antichrist to rule over the world and subjugate mankind to his tyranny by replacing the Church of Christ with the anti-Church of Satan, which is the Religion of Mankind, an ecumenical and ecological one.

In your videos and articles, you have spoken about the threat represented by the New World Order (NWO). Several statesmen and prime ministers, such as George H. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Nicolas Sarkozy, and David Rockefeller – just to name a few– used this expression in their public statements. These politicians describe the NWO as a sort of “Eden” we all should aim for. During the COVID crisis, we have been often hearing these words. Can you explain the idea that drives the New World Order and why the vaccines play a very important role in the fulfillment of this goal?

The New World Order is neither New nor Order: it represents the foolish ambition of Satan to overthrow the providential plan of God, to cancel the true Religion that leads to eternal salvation and finally to replace the “ordo christianus” (“the Christian order”) with infernal chaos. In this disorder, the lie replaces the Truth, injustice and abuse of power replace justice, whim instead of obedience to the law of God, death instead of life, illness instead of health, the legitimization of Evil and the condemnation of Good, the persecution of good people and the praising of evil ones, ignorance in the place of culture and wisdom, ugliness and horror instead of beauty, division and hatred instead of harmony and love. Satan doesn’t want to be worshipped by adopting the qualities of God, but by demanding to be an object of adoration through everything that is evil, obscene, false, absurd, and monstrous. He seeks complete subversion, a subversion ontologically devilish and Antichristic: a “New Order” obtained by means of a global coup d’état imposed under the guise of an engineered planned emergency.

The vaccine campaign, lacking any scientific validity, serves first of all as the apparent legitimization for implementing global tracking and controls, today under the pretext of limiting COVID spread (a pretext which is false, because, among other reasons, the vaccinated can still become infected and be contagious). But tomorrow, this campaign aims to expand its reach, extending the “Green Pass” to include information used in a “social credit system” to confront a “green emergency,” which will be likewise false and specious. The “Green Pass” is being conceived as something like the Mark of the Beast mentioned in the Apocalypse of Saint John to allow or forbid people to buy, sell, travel, spend, eat and live.

Secondly, the inoculation of people with an experimental genic serum that provokes a weakening of our natural immune system represents a very grave crime, because it turns ordinary healthy people into chronically ill people, and consequently into customers of the health care companies and private care. This situation hugely inflates the profits of the globalist élite and brings a general impoverishment of the population. Even this aspect, apparently secondary, reveals the subversive character of the “Great Reset,” because the “Great Reset” does not represent only an attack against the health of an individual, but also an attack against the national security of the States, because their armed forces are harmed by the side effects of the vaccine, while the not-vaccinated soldiers are banned from active duty. I think that this is a point not enough considered by those who are analyzing the present crisis, and it shows the malice of those who. Once in power, cooperate for the destruction of nations in order to subjugate them to the New Order.

Speaking again about the New World Order, Your Excellency said in one of your videos that Vatican II played a fundamental role in the early 1960s in paving the way for this plan. In this regard, the Council may be considered as the event that built a “new liberal Church” separated from the Catholic tradition. This “liberal Church” has embraced the spirit of the modern world, rather than trying to contain it. Essentially, the institution that should have been the “katechon,” the force that impeded the manifestation of the Antichrist, instead became the spokesman and promoter of the Antichrist. Is it possible to say the masonic forces that infiltrated the Church planned this transition? Do you think that the present Church is living the apostasy predicted by Leo XIII in 1884, and predicted by other relevant prophecies such as the ones of Fatima in 1917 and Akita in 1973?

As one of the main characters of Vatican II (1962-1965), Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens said, the conciliar revolution represented “the 1789 of the Catholic Church” [Editor’s note: The year 1798 was the beginning of the French Revolution which overthrew the entire pre-French Revolution society.] In this view, ever since Vatican II, the Church has embraced the revolutionaries’ principles, liberal ideology, Communism, collectivism, and more generally “the spirit of the world”; gender theory, and the dissolution of Christianity, not only in the doctrinal area but also in the moral and cultural area, that is, as the vital element of Christian Civilization. This betrayal was accomplished in ways not unlike the ones that were used by the masonic Lodges against the Catholic Monarchies, and it was realized through an infiltration plan that was unfolded on two fronts: one ideological, and one practical.

On the ideological side, we witnessed the corruption of orthodoxy through heresies and philosophical errors of which we are still suffering the nefarious consequences; on the practical side, we witnessed the corruption of people’s morality, subjecting individuals to passions to dominate them, enslaving them to their own vices in order to blackmail them, promoting the most corrupt to the highest posts of institutions which, through their outrageous conduct, were delegitimized and discredited. What kind of credibility may the Church claim in matters of moral sexuality when its highest prelates are corrupt perverts? What kind of credibility may the Church claim, when officials of the Holy See are implicated in financial scandals and obscure market speculations?

Therefore, a return to Tradition is necessary, and to those values that have today been removed and forgotten, such as honesty, the sense of duty, fidelity, love of Country, honor, discipline. It would be a return to the ordo christianus in the civil sphere, which would involve a radical reform of the States; the same should be done in the ecclesial sphere with the removal of the false pastors and the restoration of everything that was destroyed by the ideological fury of Vatican II. If we want to end the hard test that Providence is demanding of us, it is fundamental that we remove the cause of the chastisements that the Lord is inflicting upon us. And the inner cause is this entire Antichristic system that was conceived by masonic principles and by the Revolution.

We must restore authority as an expression of the power of Christ, and we must give a moral and spiritual education to those who govern us. It is certainly a hard task, but we should do it if we really want to transmit to our children the values that make them good Christians and good citizens, accountable before God and desirous of obeying Him, of proclaiming Him King, and of giving Him public honors. Once we have acknowledged Him again as King, Our Lord will not allow His children to perish in battle, and He will reward them with a great victory. However, until we understand the error that lies at the base of the present horrors, we cannot hope in the intervention of God.

Recently, Bergoglio has clearly said that it will be necessary to give birth to the “Great Reset,” and he has also pointed out that there will not be a return to normal. Bergoglio has turned himself into an apostle of the universal religion desired by the masonic lodges, whose ultimate goal is to completely remove Christianity. Does it have sense to state that Bergoglio is the natural conclusion of Vatican II? Do you think that the apostasy of the Church, which was foreseen in several prophecies and in the visions of the Venerable Holzhauser, has already reached its peak and is close to its conclusion?

Bergoglio is one of the most convinced adherents of the globalist religion: he embraces all of its goals, he pushes its plans, he promotes its doctrines, and he fights its enemies. If he were not to have the role that he has within the ecclesial hierarchy, he could be considered the prophet of the New World Order and the main enemy of the Church of Christ. The fact that he is universally considered as the head of the Church shows us an evident contradiction, an extremely grave conflict of interests, a blatant betrayal of the authority he possesses.

The same ways that allowed him to replace the outgoing Benedict XVI reveal the intervention of forces hostile to the Church. The manipulations of the so-called Saint Gallen mafia are a direct proof of this hostile intervention, planned beforehand also by the “deep state,” as emerges from the emails of John Podesta, who spoke about a “springtime of the Church” in which the Church would embrace the spirit of the world and abandon the proclamation of the Gospel.

This “pontificate” is the coherent application of the principles of Vatican II, as Bergoglio himself has proudly claimed. Everything that he has said and done since 2013 is aligned with the errors woven into various ambiguous passages of the Conciliar texts, from his intransigent silences to his misleading ambiguities. But like everything that comes from the Devil, this project has no hope to succeed and serves only to allow us to understand a very clear truth that we are still not able to recognize: the only hope of Salvation rests in the complete embracing of the Catholic Faith, as Our Lord taught it to the Apostles and as the Holy Church has proposed it for belief for 2000 years. All the errors, all the attempts to adapt the faith to the mentality of this age, all the compromises to carve out a place for the Church in the world, and all the betrayals in exchange for power come from Satan, and as such are destined to failure.

If Christ the King will return to reign in the Church, even before coming back to reign in civil society, He will grant the Church good and holy Pastors, a courageous Pontiff who will denounce apostasy, fight errors, gather around the Cross of Christ the good. Because the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is also destined to suffer Her own Passion, but in the dignity and wholeness of Her being, precisely, the Bride of the Immaculate Lamb, and not the concubine of the eternal defeated.

This is why I hope and pray that Providence would grant the world a time of peace and conversion, in order to lead back the Pastors and the Flock to fidelity to the Gospel, so that they will be able to face with dignity the final persecution before the Universal Judgement. If this propitious time were to be ushered in by the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart, I think that we could truly read the present facts in that eschatological vision that finds fulfillment in the victory of Christ over the Devil.

Your Excellency has launched a public appeal in recent days in which you call for the formation of an “anti-globalist Alliance.” Do you think that the headquarters of this alliance should be Italy, a country that is historically hated by Freemasonry and by the globalist powers?

Italy is a nation blessed by God and by the presence of the papacy. Its civilization — represented by the historical, cultural and artistic legacy of its cities, but also united in the bond of the Catholic Faith – has always been the object of the dissolving action of satan and his servants. Freemasonry hates Italy, hates its glorious history, which is intrinsically tied to the birth of Christianity, first, and then its later spread. Freemasonry also hates the traditions of this country, which are impregnated by Christianity, hates its art, deeply Christian, hates its culture and civilization, which is an eloquent voice of the power of the Faith in influencing every walk of life. It hates its Saints, who through their preaching and their example drew away from hell millions of souls; it hates its people, whose character seems still to hint to show that authenticity and passion that is profoundly Catholic, expressed by small gestures, by generosity, by a moral sense that is truly Christian.

This is why I believe Italy should have a key role in the opposition against the tyranny of the New Order, by proposing itself as a natural headquarters for this World Anti-Globalist Alliance. And considering the fact that the return of a Catholic Monarch seems quite hard to imagine in this moment, I think that the form of government of the pre-Union Communes and States [Editor’s note: the form of government of the Italian city states prior to the uniton of Italy in 1870] could greatly inspire those who would like a reform of Italian civil society aligned with Christian principles and, at the same time, compatible with the needs of modern society. In this regard, I think in particular at The Allegory of Good Government fresco in Siena’s town hall [Palazzo Comunale], in which the theological Virtues enlighten and guide the cardinal and civic Virtues.

Many people are suffering serious personal problems due to the discrimination caused by the “Green Pass” that was enforced by Draghi’s government. Many people are giving up their jobs and salaries to avoid taking this vaccination, and many others are protesting in the streets against this unprecedented authoritarian society. What would you like to say to those who are suffering the consequences of this dystopic society and to those who are giving in to loss of hope, indeed, to desperation?

I would like to answer with the words of Our Lord: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world (John, 16, 33).

To those who are suffering their own discrimination and the one of their beloved ones; to those who were forced to take a vaccination because the civil authority shamefully blackmailed them, with the outrageous complicity of the ecclesial authority; to those who with courage refuse to surrender to illegitimate and tyrannical laws; to those who are deprived of their means of support due to their coherence, I say this: you are the proof that the strength and the violence of Evil can possibly affect you in your belongings, in your body and in your family; but they cannot ever, ever, strip away from you the peace of having stayed loyal to the Lord.

Do you think that the martyrs were people gifted with special powers? The real martyrs were, are, and will be persons like you and I, persons with a thousand flaws maybe, but driven by the love for Christ, that is, driven by Charity, who are ready to sacrifice their lives in order to not renounce that supernatural and divine love. And if they were able, with the help of God, to face death accompanied by horrible pains, do you think that you today are not able, under the mantle of the most holy Virgin Mary, to stand up against these tyrants, as cruel as they are cowardly? Feel honored by the privilege that is granted to you of meriting Heaven: your fidelity, your strength against the impositions of a hostile power, will merit you the help and protection of Heaven even in the littlest things.

Remain in the Grace of God, which is the only good that no one can ever take away from you: all the rest will be in the hands of Her whom we invoke as the Help of Christians. And when the Virgin intervenes, Hell trembles.

source: https://web.archive.org/web/20211203160334/https://www.theyeoftheneedle.com/2021/12/03/viganothose-who-resist-the-nwo-will-have-the-help-and-protection-of-god/

Video 2

ARCHBISHOP CARLO MARIA VIGANÒ | FULL INTERVIEW | PLANET LOCKDOWN

In this exclusive interview we were able to speak with Carlo Maria Viganò, an Archbishop of the Catholic Church. Although not Catholic ourselves, we were struck by the archbishop’s release of the most encompassing text on the myriad issues related to the Covid-19 saga to date last May of 2020:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lEIDfMfS0I&t=14s

He has been in secret seclusion for the last 4 years over a combination of his speaking out against corruption in the church and entering retirement. His detractors accuse him of personal ambitions, but regardless, the man has a powerful message and is one of the most contemporary controversial and critics of our our current situation and of the Catholic political hierarchy. We asked him about the current situation and how can we historically understand it in context. It is a must listen to understand where we are today.

The interview was done remotely with prerecorded questions and in this release Robert Moynihan is the host.

The interview runs one and a half hours and is dense. We would like to encourage people to broaden their intellects and perspectives and is why we release full interviews to encourage a more thoughtful discourse.

VATICAN ANNOUNCES TODAY THAT POPE FRANCIS, THE KING OF VATICAN CITY, WILL TAKE THE PFIZER COVID-19 VACCINE, SAYS IT ‘MUST BE UNIVERSAL’ FOR WHOLE WORLD

The Vatican will launch its vaccination program against the coronavirus during the first quarter of 2021, which will also allow the pope to travel safely to Iraq in March. The vaccination will not be mandatory for Vatican workers and residents, noted the head of the Vatican’s health department, Andrea Arcangeli, but will be made available for anyone who wishes to receive it. “It must be universal, for everyone,” he said. The pope has reiterated that in the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine, successful results must be shared by all.

by Geoffrey Grider

The Vatican has announced that Pope Francis will receive the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine in January, which will also be made available to the 800 residents and nearly 3,000 workers of the Roman Vatican City state.

The king of Vatican City, Jorge Bergoglio, has announced that he will receive the Pfizer COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine in early January, and that it is his desire this vaccine become universal, and given to everyone in the whole world. This is nothing more than grooming for the coming Mark of the Beast which will also be distributed by the Vatican in the very near future.

“For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” Revelation 17:17,18 (KJB)

The Vatican did not say if Pope Francis will pretend to receive his vaccine jab publicly like Netanyahu and Pence did last week, or if his pretend vaccination will happen privately. But does it really matter? It doesn’t. The important thing is that you never forget all this is COVID Theater, it’s not real, but it comes with very real and very deadly consequences.

Pope Francis to Receive Pfizer Vaccine Against Coronavirus

FROM BREITBART NEWS: The Vatican will launch its vaccination program against the coronavirus during the first quarter of 2021, which will also allow the pope to travel safely to Iraq in March. The vaccination will not be mandatory for Vatican workers and residents, noted the head of the Vatican’s health department, Andrea Arcangeli, but will be made available for anyone who wishes to receive it.

The pope has spoken often of the vaccine, emphasizing the need to make sure it reaches the groups that need it most. In September, Francis called for universal distribution of coronavirus vaccines, insisting that the “richest” individuals should not be first in line to receive them.

“The recent experience of the pandemic, in addition to a major health emergency in which almost a million people have already died, is turning into a serious economic crisis, still giving rise to poor people and families who do not know how to move forward,” the pope said. “While charitable assistance is being carried out, it is also a question of combating this pharmaceutical poverty, in particular with a widespread distribution of new vaccines in the world,” he continued. “I repeat that it would be sad if the richest people got priority when giving out the vaccine, or if this vaccine became the property of this or that nation and was no longer for everyone.”

“IT MUST BE UNIVERSAL, FOR EVERYONE,” HE SAID.

The pope has reiterated that in the race to produce a coronavirus vaccine, successful results must be shared by all.

“Those who live in poverty are poor in everything, including medicines, and therefore their health is more vulnerable,” Francis said. “Sometimes there is the risk of not being able to be treated for lack of money, or because some populations of the world do not have access to certain drugs.”

“On the ethical level, if there is the possibility of curing a disease with a drug, this should be available to everyone, otherwise an injustice is created,” he declared. “Too many people, too many children still die in the world because they cannot have a drug or a vaccine available in other regions.”

According to a September survey by the Pew Research Center, nearly half of the U.S. population would not accept a coronavirus vaccine if one became available.

“About half of U.S. adults (51%) now say they would definitely or probably get a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 if it were available today; nearly as many (49%) say they definitely or probably would not get vaccinated at this time,” Pew declared. “Intent to get a COVID-19 vaccine has fallen from 72% in May, a 21 percentage point drop.”

Last Monday, leaders of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference released a controversial statement declaring it a “moral responsibility” for everyone to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The bishops did not say whether this same moral obligation exists in the case of all vaccines against any possible illness, or how to determine which vaccines are morally compulsory and which are not.

In their statement, the bishops specifically addressed the case of the Pfizer vaccine, declaring that in view of the gravity of the current pandemic and the lack of availability of alternative vaccines, the reasons to accept the new COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer are “sufficiently serious” to justify its use, despite its “remote connection to morally compromised cell lines.” In the early stages of testing, the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine was tested on cells lines produced from cells that originally came from an aborted fetus. The vaccine, however, is not one of those that use abortion-derived cell lines in the manufacturing process.

https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/vatican-announces-today-pope-francis-king-of-vatican-city-will-take-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine/

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