We have seen that Jesus and Jeremiah were anti-Jerusalem.  But why?  And what was the origin of the Jerusalem priesthood? 

     To find out, we must consult two of the most obscure books of the Bible – 2^nd Samuel and the first part of 1^st Kings.  These two are derived from an older text which scholars call the Court History or Court Narrative of King David, of which there is no particular reason to doubt its historical veracity.  From this text, we learn that King David, in his old age, had two chief priests.  One was named Zadok, and the other was named Abiathar.[1] 

     Previously, King David had killed a man to take his wife, and from that incident he fathered Solomon.  The wife's name was Bathsheba.  Many years later, when they were old and gray, Bathsheba tried to convince David that their son Solomon should succeed him as king.  The priest Zadok joined Bathsheba and Solomon in this plot.  However, the priest Abiathar supported an elder son of David named Adonijah, born of a different wife, and Adonijah was the rightful king because all Israel looked to him as the heir to the throne.  At this time, David was old and perhaps little senile, laying on his deathbed, together with a beautiful young girl many years his junior.  So he felt obliged to acquiesce to the nagging of his former lover, Bathsheba, who was by now a scorned old woman.  It was under these circumstances that Solomon secured the throne.  All these facts come straight from the Biblical book of Kings.[2]

     Upon becoming king, Solomon killed his rival brother Adonijah.  He also exiled the priest Abiathar to a town called Anathoth, and gave Abiathar's authority to Zadok, thereby making Zadok the sole high priest.  Solomon and Zadok ruled from the city of Jerusalem.  They built the first temple of Jerusalem, which housed Zadok and his underlings.[3]  In this manner, the priests of Jerusalem became a national institution.  Before this time, Israel had worshiped at Shiloh, which was the original sacred tent of Abiathar's priestly order and indeed of all Israel.[4]  Moreover, the Prophet even records that the usurper will hold the scepter until it returns to Shiloh.[5]

     350 years later, the Prophet Jeremiah arrived on the scene.  The Biblical book of Jeremiah introduces him as coming from "among the priests of Anathoth.[6]  This links him to the exiled priest Abiathar.  Moreover, Abiathar was a Shilohite priest, and Jeremiah is the only one of the Prophets to mention Shiloh.[7]  For these reasons, which Friedman points out,[8] we may conclude that Abiathar and Jeremiah were affiliated with the same religious tradition.  This tradition apparently had been opposed to Zadok and to the Jerusalem priesthood from the days of Solomon.

     An obscure oracle from the mouth of Jesus Christ ties into this ancient web of intrigue.  Jesus said,

 

Have you not heard what David did when he was hungry and in need, and those with him, how he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest?[9]

 

The Old Testament story Jesus was recollecting tells of how King David was befriended by a father-son combo of priests named Abiathar and Ahimelech.  One was the son and the other the father, although which was which is not certain, for the Old Testament contradicts itself on this detail.[10]  Two other priests, Zadok and his father Ahitub, were also alive at this time.[11]  However, David did not go to Zadok and Ahitub in his youth.  Moreover, Jesus Christ never called them high priest.  Instead, Jesus called Abiathar high priest, thus relegating Zadok and Ahitub to something below that office.  It seems that Jesus regarded Abiathar as the legitimate high priest, and Zadok as something else.  Abiathar was the priest of Shiloh.  Zadok was the priest of Jerusalem. 

     These facts taken together indicate that there were two rival priesthoods, one of Abiathar and the other of Zadok, and that Jesus and Jeremiah regarded Abiathar as the more legitimate of the two.

     The 1^st century historian Josephus informs us,

 

For a long time, the Jews were divided into three schools of thought – the Essenes, the Sadducees, and the Pharisees.[12]

 

The second of these, the Sadducees, or Zadokees, were named after Saduc, or Zadok, the first high priest of the Jerusalem temple.  This is the same Zadok who helped Solomon become the king and who was the first high priest of the Jerusalem temple.  In Jesus' time, the priesthood of the Jerusalem temple was affiliated with the Sadducees, and effectively worked together with the Sadducees as the same sect.[13] 

          Josephus and the New Testament inform us that the Sadducees did not believe in angels, nor in the resurrection.  They believed in free will.  They rejected Jewish oral tradition, conforming only to the scriptures.  They were harsh in their enforcement of the criminal justice, and they quarreled amongst each other and with the Pharisees.  They were respected among the wealthy, but lacked popularity with the masses.[14]

Return to this section's landing page:  Genesis 1 is a forgery.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.

---