VEGETARIANS IN OLD TESTAMENT TIMES
A Brief Survey
Jeremiah
"And I will doubly recompense their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations." 16: 17-18.
I will set shepherds over them who will care for them, and they shall fear no more, nor be dismayed, neither shall any be missing... 23: 1-4.
In earlier more accurate
versions of the Old Testament, there were no doubt many more explicit denunciations
of animal sacrifices and the meat industry, such as the following:
Zechariah
"Thus said the Lord my God: `Become shepherd of the flock doomed to slaughter. Those who buy them slay them and go unpunished; and those who sell them say, "Blessed be the Lord, I have become rich"'; and their own shepherds have no pity on them." 11: 4-5.
Zecharia's name itself
may etymylogically be broken down into Zayin, or Z and acharya, that is
Z acharya. This may be seen clearly by consulting the Peshitta Aramaic
web site. An archarya is a Hindu teacher, one who knows the rules. Once
again the Hindu origins of Judaism are affirmed.
Isaiah
"Hear the word of the Lord you rulers
of Sodom! Give ear to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!
What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had
enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight
in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of
he-goats." 1: 10-11.
"...even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression... l: l5-17.
"A voice cries: `In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. (emphasis mine)'" 40: 3-5.
"He who slaughters an ox is like him who kills a man." 66:3.
Contrast the above with
Paul's "Is it for oxen that God is concerned?" 9: 9, Romans, or with the
statements falsely attributed to Jesus which state "are you not more than
many sparrows," and not more than the ox rescued from the pit.
Nahum
The Lion as Representing the Carnivore
Like other scribes of Old Testament times and the Essenes, Nahum uses the lion as a symbol of carnivorism. Strangling animals, such as fowl I presume, was common among some Jews, though it was technically forbidden by law.
"Where is the lion's den, the cave of
the young lions, where the lion brought his prey, where his cubs were,
with none to disturb? The lion tore enough for his whelps and strangled
prey for his lionesses; he filled his caves with prey and his dens with
torn flesh....Behold, I am against you, says the Lord of hosts, and I will
burn your chariots in smoke, and the sword shall devour your young lions;
I will cut off your prey from the earth, and the voice of your messengers
shall no more be heard." 2: 11-13.
Amos
"I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer me your burnt offerings...I will not accept them and the peace offerings of your fatted beasts I will not look upon. 5: 2l-22.
"Woe to those who lie upon beds of ivory and stretch themselves upon their couches, and eat lambs from the flock, and calves from the midst of the stall..." 6: 4.
Micah
Sacrificing Animals, Carnivorism, is
Idol Worship.
Destroying the Temples of Animal Sacrifice
in Jerusalem and Samaria
"What is the transgression of Jacob? Is it not Samaria? And what is the sin of the house of Judah? Is it not Jerusalem? Therefore I will make Samaria a heap in the open country, a place for planting vineyards; and I will pour down her stones into the valley and uncover her foundations. All her images shall be beaten to pieces, all her hires shall be burned with fire, and all her idols I will lay waste..." 1: 6-7.
"With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the lord be pleased with thousands of rams....Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has showed you, O man what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" 6: 6-8.
Daniel
Daniel's vision of the tree of life
of Genesis
"The visions of my head as I lay in
bed were these: I saw, and behold, a tree in the midst of the earth; and
its height was great. The tree grew and became strong, and its top
reached to heaven, and it was visible to the end of the whole earth.
Its leaves were fair and its fruit abundant, and it was food
for all. The beasts of the field
found shade under it, and the birds of the air dwelt in its branches, and
all flesh was fed from it." 4: 10-12.
"Then Daniel said to the steward
whom the chief of eunuchs had appointed over Daniel, Hanani'ah, Mish a
el and Azariah, "Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables
to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance
of the youths who eat the king's rich food be
observed by you, and according to what
you see deal with your servants." So he hearkened to them in this
matter and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was
seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the
youths who ate the king's rich food. So the steward took
away their rich food and the wine they
were to drink and gave them vegetables." 1: 11-16.
The king tests Daniel and his vegetarian friends and...
"In every matter of wisdom and understanding
he found them ten times better than all the magicians and enchanters that
were in all his kingdom." 1: 20.
Joel
In the "Book of Joel" the people of Judaism have not only been overcome by carnivorous nations, but have chosen to adopt their ways, and consequently suffer nature's displeasure, for the ways of nature are controlled by God.
"For a nation has come up against my land, powerful and without number; it's teeth are lions' teeth, and it has the fangs of a lioness. It has laid waste my vines, and splintered my fig trees; it has stripped off their bark and thrown it down; their branches are made white....The cereal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord....The fields are laid waste, the ground mourns; because the grain is destroyed, the wine fails, the oil languishes." 1: 6-10
Joel, typical of the late
prophets, sees the devastation as karmic, as coming from the fact that
the Jews have adopted the ways of their carnivorous conquerors, and Joel
echoes the same message of the other prophets and of the vegetarian Moses
whom we see clearly in the Dead Sea Scrolls, a
message which states: remain vegetarian,
even when those around you are not.
"Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine and oil, and you shall be satisfied... 2: l9.
"Fear not, you beasts of the field, for the pastures of the wilderness are green; the tree bears its fruit, the fig tree and the vine give their full yield." 2: 22.
And Joel succinctly sees the same vision of peace for all animal creation that Isaiah sees, and that exists in Revelations, namely peace for all creation:
"And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh..." 2: 28.
Once again, seeing all flesh, that is, all creatures flesh and blood, as receipients of salvation is a Hindu concept and was the belief of the original Jews, but it is not the belief of orthodox Judaism.
Hosea
"For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings. But at Adam they transgressed the covenant; there they dealt faithlessly with me." 6: 6-7.
Commentary: Saying 85 of the Nag Hammadi "Gospel of Thomas" states "Adam came from great power and great wealth, but he was not worthy of you. For had he been worthy he would not have tasted death." The "Gospel of Philip" states that Adam fell because he ate from the "Tree of Animals." The "Gospel of Philip" also says "This world eats corpses" but Jesus did not. Eating the corpse of a sacrificed animal, Adam tasted death.
"They love sacrifice; they sacrifice
flesh and eat it; but the Lord has no delight in them." Hosea 8:
l3.
Psalm 5
"For there is no truth in their mouth;
their heart is destruction, their throat is an open sepulchre..." Psalm
5: 9.
A Vegetarian Moses
Health and Longevity as Proof of Virtue:
One cannot preach carnivorism
and preach longevity and health at
the same time.
Pliny in section 151 of Apologia Pro Judaeis affirms that the Essenes commonly had centenarians among them.
Students of Buddhism know that when Buddha described the longevity of his vegetarian flock he described their life expectancy as being merely that of a hundred years (for example in the Dhammapada), and he did this over and over again.
Psalm 90 from the
Old Testament, however, commenting on the life expectancy of the orthodox
carnivorous Jew, describes it as "three-score and ten" and occasionally
eighty. Neither Buddha nor the author of Psalm 90 was focussing on
the longevity of their people with the express purpose of
comparing the longevity of their own
culture with that of another culture. They were each simply describing
a fact of life in their respective cultures, and the facts speak for themselves.
Who wrote Psalm 90? Moses, who lived to be 120 years old!, which in itself
virtually proves what later prophets
and commentators have said, that Moses'
real words were changed in order to fit the desires of evil men seeking
to profit from animal sacrifices.
"I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice, and cleaving to him; for that means life to you and length of days..." Moses, Deuteronomy 30: 19-20.
Though it is "The Words
of Moses"in the Dead Sea Scrolls that document a vegetarian Moses
and directly align him with the vegetarian tradition, even the Old Testament's
orthodox Moses asserts that longevity was a proof of virtue, which in itself
is dramatic evidence that the original Moses, who lived to be 120, was
vegetarian. Moses' age of 120 years was not uncommon among the vegetarian
Essenes. Moreover, even sections of the notorious "Pentateuch" are
barely revised versions of the original vegetarian scriptures. For
example, certain scriptures dealing with the Israelites' craving for flesh,
and their eating of the quail which brings on them the plague, clearly
suggests that their
craving for flesh is evil. Even
in "Leviticus" (which, like most of the Pentateuch, would make a very effective
horror movie) God's words are sometimes more like the words of Essenes
and late Jewish prophets than they are like the Jehovah-turned-demon who
commands the animal sacrifices.
Apocrypha
The works called
the Apocrypha of the Old Testament are much like the gnostic and
heretical gospels of the New Testament. They often contained scriptures
that were disliked by the orthodox. Specifically, of course, apocryphal
works often denounced brutality towards animals and the animal sacrifices.
Sirach
Sirach succinctly summarizes the difference between the human-oriented perspective of orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims,and the creation-oriented attitude of Hindus and Buddhists.
"The compassion of a man is for his
neighbor, but the compassion of the Lord is for all living beings."
18: 13.
Baruch
Baruch's truthfulness like that of the real Ebionite Jesus no doubt infuriated the Jewish orthodoxy, which is doubtlessly the reason his scriptures were judged to be apocryphal. Baruch links the sorrow-filled history of orthodox Judaism, a history of misery which persists to this day, with its insistence on conducting animal sacrifices, which he equates with demon-worship.
"Take courage, my people, O memorial of Israel! It was not for destruction that you were sold to the nations, but you were handed over to your enemies because you angered God. For you provoked him who made you by sacrificing to demons and not to God." 4: 5-7.
"He who prepared the earth for all time
filled it with four-footed creatures." 3: 32.
The Values in the
Ethiopic Book of Enoch are the Values of Hinduism,
Jain Buddhism and Buddhism,
not the Values of what we call Orthodox Judaism.
That is Why the Book of Enoch
Was Relegated as Apocryphal by Orthodox Jews.
Enoch and Noah both totally denounce animal sacrifices and industry
As do the Shauvite, Vaishnava, and Renunciate Traditions of India.
In his study of the
Enoch literature on the Internet James C. VanderKam, a man recognized for
his knowledge of the Enoch material and who is described as being the world's
foremost authority on "Jubilees" asks: was God justified in sending the
universally destructive flood? And, puzzled by the value system expressed
in the Book of Enoch, he asks: And where is the Torah? In other
words, where are the values of the Torah? It is in fact a very legitimate
and good question. And, if it had come from the mouth of a vegetarian,
I would take the question to be rhetorical and/or sarcastic. For
it is very obvious that the Book
of Enoch, like Genesis 1: 30, regards all creatures as being sentient
and as having wills of their own, and flesh and blood living beings with
values. Genesis 1: 30 is a very deliberately ignored scripture, because
it reflects an attitude that strikes a lethal blow at the very
heart of the orthodoxy of Judaism,
the religious parent of orthodox Christianity and orthodox Islam.
God Commands All Creatures to be Vegetarian
Other Creatures are Portrayed as Sacred
And as Having Wills of their Own.
"And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." l: 30.
This verse is perhaps one of the least discussed scriptures in the Old Testament, because it in fact crushes the philosophical and religious foundations of orthodox Judaism, as well as the foundation of all religions that claim that only humans have souls and therefore meaningful lives. Genesis 1: 30 shows God well aware of not only the sentience but the will power of all creatures. In other words, creatures are not portrayed as instinctual automatons, which is the way orthodox religions and industrialists want them to be portrayed, so that we will--hopefully in their minds--not be bothered by oppressing, enslaving and killing these creatures.
VanderKam quotes the following rationale for the flood. Notice that the earth's creatures are described as "all flesh" which would include humanity as well: "the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth" (6:12) Therefore the universal destruction, for universally, flesh and blood creatures of all types were acting in evil ways.
In other words, to
answer VanderKam's question, Was God justified in sending the universally
destructive flood?, the All-Just Deity did not turn its back on justice
by destroying all creatures on land. All creatures have free will and the
power to discriminate between what is good and what is evil,
and also to attract to themselves the
very karma they exude. We had begun to discover personality in other
creatures more fully during the latter half of the twentieth century.
Jane Goodall's observations on the personal nuances of the primates she
lived with are mind-boggling. Some of the primates ate grubbs. Others
were strict vegetarians. Very beautifully so, the author of Genesis, the
late Jewish prophets and the Essenes and the real Ebionite Jesus, who is
seen clearly only in the Gospel of the Nazirenes, kept alive this recognition,
not only of the uniqueness and sacredness of all creatures, but of the
fact that they have sentience and free will.
Businessmen Rewrote Scriptures
To Sanction Animal Sacrifices and Slavery,
And Today Businessmen Control
the Curriculums of our Educational
Systems,
In Order to Marginalize Human Compassion
towards Other Creatures.
But the businessmen
of Judaism, Christianity and Islam had to squelch such consciousness, had
to describe it as foolish. So orthodox persons, some even dubbing
themselves intellectuals, spout the most non-intellectual and nonsensical
stuff about other creatures: "If animals were intelligent
they'd be speaking to us, they'd invent
tools, they'd live in houses, they'd start civilizations." No, they
wouldn't, is the answer. The intelligent creatures live with creation
as it was made. Nature is the Creation of the Divine. Industry is the creation
of Fallen Humanity.
And then we have absolutely inane utterances coming from supposedly brilliant individuals, Descartes saying animals are like clocks, Thomas Aquinas saying animals have no souls. And businessmen of every carnivorous creed saying that the other creatures are here for us to use, to subdue, to have dominion over, even to eat. These very persons, and the traditions they represent, are the proof positive of what nonsense can come from the individual brain or the collective brain of a culture feeding itself cholesterol.
To say in one breath that God is all-compassionate and in the next breath that God wishes us to exploit and kill other animals is not really to be logical, to be moral, or really, even to be sane.
But it is and has been the teaching of orthodox Judaism, Christianity, and Islam for thousands of years. We know that cholesterol hurts our hearts. But the cholesterol junkie in denial really doesn't want to look at what's obvious, that cholesterol hurts and hinders the brain as well.
Mainly, human-oriented humans are refusing to admit that the lives of other creatures have value in themselves. To orthodox Jews, other animals have value only insofar as they may be used by humans. Eating flesh is a cause of human merriment, says the orthodox Jew. Never mind that the orthodox Jew's merriment came at the price of the other animal being bludgeoned, or cut in half, or decapitated or suffocated.
To Live Harmoniously with Other Creatures
(Hinduism-Jainism-Buddhism)
Versus
To subdue and have dominion over other
creatures
(Orthodox Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam)
So it was no doubt businessmen who very strategically inserted Genesis 1: 26-28 right before Genesis 1: 29-30 in an attempt to detract from the very clear and forthright Vegetarian Covenant.
"And God said `Behold I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food." l: 29-30.
The first
verse is the "Vegetarian Covenant (for humans) which even orthodox Jewish
Rabbis have admitted was the Dietary Law for all humans until after the
Deluge, when God according to the Old Testament gave humans permission
to eat all manner of flesh, and when God said that now all
animals would live in dread, or in
fear or terror of humanity. However, quoted constantly by the orthodox
are the following notorious scriptures, which industrialists and slaughterhouses
and vivisection labs and hunters quote constantly, Genesis 1: 26-28, which
are quoted even more often than God's words to Noah after the Deluge, in
order to justify the exploitations of industry and the meat industry in
particular.
Then God said "Let us make
man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and
over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the
earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image
of God he created him; male and female
he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful
and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over
the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living
thing that moves upon the earth." Genesis 1:
26-28.
Verses 26 through 28 are
examples themselves of the logic of Fallen Humanity, and these verses are
proof themselves of the Fall, the disassociation from the original harmony,
a time in which all creatures were seen as "good" and none was to eat any
other, to a condition in which humans may oppress and kill other beings
and eat them. Although some orthodox Rabbis assert the real sanction
for flesh-eating occured later, after the Deluge to Noah, the fact is that
some apologists for carnivorism use these scriptures even more often than
God's purported covenant of carnivorism
with Noah and his lineage.
AFTER THE FALL:
SOME ANIMALS ARE SUBDUED AND DOMINATED,
(AND KILLED AND EATEN.)
Before the fall,
all animals were blessed and their creation was seen by God as good.
After the fall, which most of the late Jewish prophets, the Book of Enoch,
and the Gospel of Philip, to name just a few works, say was the institution
of animal sacrifices, God says to the serpent: "cursed are you
above all cattle, and above all wild
animals." 3: 14.
BARUCH ATTACKS GENESIS 1:26-28,
the notion that we may subdue the earth
and have dominion over its creatures.
Everyone interested in religion must read Baruch, whose scriptures are designated as apocryphal. In beautiful lines making me think of Keats' "Ozymandias," Baruch attacks those Jews to subdued the earth and had dominion over other creatures and asks:
Where are the rulers of ther nations,
they who lorded it over the wild berasts of the earth, and made sport of
the birds of the heavens: they who heaped up the silver and the gold in
which men trust; of whose possessions there was no end? They schemed anxiously
for money, but there is no trace of
their work: they have vanished down
into the nether world... 16-19
The outlaw demonic scriptures, Genesis 1: 26-28, show a movement away from a vision of universal harmony among all creatures, to a demonic vision asserting that some creatures may be subdued and dominated, which is a condition of oppression and slavery for the creatures who are subdued and dominated, a condition of evil.Scriptures Inspired by Demons,
The Fallen Angels of the Book of Enoch,
Angels Sanctioning Brutality towards God's Creatures
And the Disease-Promoting Diet of Carnivorism.
It can easily
be seen, through using methods of literary criticism examining the context
and tone of these scriptures, that these scriptures are obvious revisions
or inserts. Thematically and tonally they are misfit scriptures in
a eulogy expressing praise to the Creator and dwelling on the goodness
of all creatures. These "outlaw"
scriptures, Genesis 1: 26-28, with their admonition to have dominion and
subdue, are an obvious insertion meant to subvert the command or covenant
to be vegetarian, and were purposely placed immediately before the first
powerful statement of God's vegetarian
covenant, Genesis 1: 28-30, a passage
which describes the Tree of Vegetation that will feed all creatures equally
with its vegetation. The insertion, verses 26 through 28, interferes
with the tone and theme of the eulogy to God and creation, interrupts its
flowing movement, and is a definite
blemish on an otherwise beautiful and
inspiring poem.
Verses 26 through 28 Were Inserted or Written by Businessmen
Those who refer
to these outlaw, misfit scriptures, do so in order to find a scriptural
basis to oppress, enslave, exploit, and slaughter animals, and even to
enslave and exploit humans. And it is these people, these who subdue
other animals and kill them, and who even subdue other humans as
slaves or as wage slaves, who
are the chief transgressors against the Creator who created all creatures,
all creation, and saw that it was good. And they comprise the majorities
in orthodox Judaism, Christianity and Islam as well as in some forms of
Brahmanic Hinduism which promote carnivorism and the caste system; these
groups are the heretics, the rebels against God's law. God's law is equality.
It is the elitist, the rich, the industrialists, and those in governments
who support such evils who are demonic. There are, we know vegetarian
and egalitarian minorities within each of these faith. These groups
are the pure remnant remaining true to the original ideals of their religions.
Demonic Elitism
Elitism and Egotism: Believing that
one's group
has the only version of the truth,
whether it be
the Old Testament, the New
Testament, the Koran or the Laws of Manu.
Who is so foolish and ignorant as to
say
That humans have had no hand
In revising these works?
Only the demonic, those of Mammon,
Who wish the world to think they
They have a divine sanction for animal
sacrifices,
for the animal oppression that exists
in industry,
or for the enslavement of other humans
or the caste system.
False religions are those which claim that their God is so special that "he" will only associate with the likes of themselves. These demonic creeds--I call them religions only because we have been historically conditioned to regard them as such--are houses divided among themselves, and, elitists that they are, they order their reality to be divided between the chosen people, themselves, and the infidel or pagans, all others. However, when I read Hindu and Buddhist texts, what comes through is a recognition by them that God is in all traditions.
I always wondered why the Eastern religions didn't directly attack the carnivorism of the portrayals of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed in their respective scriptures. Did they know something I didn't? Yes, they did: whether intuitively or through historical deduction they knew that the origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam were vegetarian and egalitarian. They knew, because it was their cultures that started these pure traditions that were later corrupted.
It was obvious to me when reading the Old Testament account of Noah and the Arc and the Deluge, that the orthodox Old Testament's version of what occured was a cover-up for what actually happened, and when I read the Ethiopic Book of Enoch, this was confirmed: God cleansed the earth of an evil culture that fed on animal sacrifices, that mined the earth, disregarding the creatures living in that earth, and that they made weapons of war and destruction with their metals. And women and perhaps men as well became unnatural through using cosmetics as well.
The Ethiopic Book of Enoch sees the deluge as retribution for the evils of animal sacrifices, mining and creating weapons to create bloodshed with the metals, with the angelic beings mating with women, and with women using cosmetics. In fact, as Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible notes, everything that we call civilization in general is condemned. The morality of the Book of Enoch is quite clear and plain: leave creation alone, do not disturb any of the creatures, do not shed their blood, do not eat them, do not disturb the earth by mining, do not pretend to be something you are not by using cosmetics. Trees are constantly described in the book of Enoch, trees for fragrance,Who is the God of the Ethiopic Books of Enoch and Noah? Shiva Pasupati, Lord of Creatures and Protector of Cattle
Shiva, the Lord of the Trees, and Tu B'shevat, Feast of the Trees
The Jews minimally retained this
special attention to trees, at least in their Feast of the Trees, Tu B'shevat.
Who is the God of the Ethiopic Book of Enoch which contains the account
of the Fall of the Angels and the Deluge? None other than Shiva, who was
Sheba, Seba and Saba to the Ethiopians, and whose Hindu name is not even
disguised in Tu B'shevat (my underlining), just as it is not disguised
in Shavu ot, the Jewish Feast of Weeks and the Christian Pentecost.
Both holidays are, as one can infer from the names themselves, dedicated
to Shiva, whose attributes in Hinduism
include emanating tongues of fire and
being Lord of the Trees.
This view of humanity's transgressions against other creatures and among themselves coincides rather well with Isaiah's classic denunciation of animal sacrifices, a denunciation which links the animal sacrifices with Sodom and Gomorrah. The Apocryphal "The Martyrdom of Isaias" portrays Isaias as leaving Jerusalem and Bethlehem and as living in the mountains with others who have renounced the evils of orthodox Judaism. They live off cooking roots and herbs. Called back into civilization by the rulers of his day, the rulers tempt Isaias to recant or at least revise his denunciations of the Jewish orthodoxy. And Isaias, true to his heroic form, and he, like Jesus, indeed was heroic both in expression and in action, tells the ruler to be damned. For that act, Isaias is martyred, sawn in half. This is the method of his Ascension, a martyrdom that had occured in the Jewish past, and that was to occur numerous times in the future among those who opposed the animal sacrifices of the orthodox Jews. The Maccabees, Jesus, his brother James, Stephen, Polycarp, and numerous other people described in Greek and Roman histories were to share the same martyrdom. Hey--Businessmen don't like being challenged. They don't like to have the fact pointed out that their animal-sacrificing ancestors killed vegetarians and rewrote the scriptures to sanction their immoral but profitable bloody atrocities.
There is no such thing as carnivorous religion.
Since being brutally slaughtered is no good for the animal, and eating cholesterol is no good for you, how can murdering animals and eating their corpses be something that you would morally or nutritionally pursue?
Carnivorous religion is
a fiction made up by those wishing to profit from selling the slaughtered
corpses of animals to eat, or from oppressing, displacing and killing creatures
through industry. Both of these are forbidden by the Ethiopic Book of
Enoch, and both of these were condemned by
the original Jews.