Philip in the Nag Hammadi "Gospel of Philip" says that the Fall was "Eating from the Tree of Animals." He also says that the animal sacrifices were offered by those who ate from the tree of animals and who became like animals themselves, animals here meant in a pejorative sense, as being "brutal." Philip contrasts those who eat animals with Jesus who is vegetarian and who brings instead the bread of truth. We have already discussed the fact that the event of the cleansing of the temple of the animals to be sacrificed is in harmony with the many denunciations of the animal sacrifices by the late prophets, with the actual meaning of "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" from Hosea, whose scriptures are filled with denunciations of eating flesh; with the correct or original meaning of the scripture repeated here referring to the bodies of hypocrites as "whitened sepulchers full of dead bones" of animals and not men's bones (See Conybeare's The Origins of Christianity); with Jesus' reference to the Pharisees or hypocrites as "hidden graves" because their bodies literally contain, and in fact are made up of, the bodies of the animals they have eaten, and with Jesus' statement regarding the Final Times, that in the final days the lightning will shine from the East (home of HInduism and Buddhism and vegetarianism) even unto the west, and that where the carcass is the vultures will be also, that is, where the murdered body of an animal is, the carnivores will feed.
In the Ethiopic Book of Enoch in the final times the Elect are to eat from what John in "Revelations" later calls the Tree of Life. Significantly, the tree is described as not having a carnal odor, that is, not having the odor of flesh. In other words, at the end, in the Omega of the Final Days, the elect shall eat vegetation, as they did in the Alpha of Genesis 1: 29-30, when all creatures ate vegetation.
And that tree of an agreeable smell, not one of carnal odor, there shall be no power to touch, until the period of the great judgment. When all shall be punished and consumed for ever, this shall be bestowed on the righteous and humble. The fruit of the tree shall be given to the elect. For towards the north life shall be planted in the holy place, towards the habitation of the everlasting King. From Chapter 24: 9, Book of Enoch, edited by R. H. Charles.And the following verses show that the Book of Enoch was central to "Revelations," wherein the elect are to eat from the Tree of Life.
And I blessed the Lord of glory, the everlasting King, because He has prepared this tree for the saints, formed it, and declared that He would give it to them. Enoch 24: 11
Then shall they greatly rejoice and exult in the Holy One. The sweet odor shall enter into their bones; and they shall live a long life on the earth as your forefathers have lived; neither in their days shall sorrow, distress, trouble, and punishment afflict them. Enoch 24: 10Notice that the above verse is the clear source of the following verses in "Revelations:"
"Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. "Revelations" 21:1-4.We can see clearly that John of Patmos' mind in "Revelations" was thoroughly permeated with the scriptures of the Book of Enoch.
"To him who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." 2: 7.In Revelations 22, in the description of the New Jerusalem, we have the lifting of the curse against animal creation, and a return to the tree of life:
"the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. There shall no more be anything accursed..."Revelations" 22:2-3We have already seen that Esdras stated that the same truth was taught by the late prophets denouncing the animal sacrifices and the earliest Jewish patriarchs."Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside...are murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood." Rev. 22:14-15.
39. Unto whom I will give for leaders, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Oseas, Amos, and Micheas, Joel, Abdias, and Jonas,And we have also already seen how the scriptures of most of the late prophets denounce animal sacrifices. See the chapter Against Sacrifices. Hosea (Oseas), whose name is a form of Oseo, a name of Shiva, Amos, Joel, and Zechariah (whose name is built on the Hindu word for teacher, Acharya) are quite bluntly against the animal sacrifices. For example, let us look at scriptures from Hosea and Zechariah.
40. Nahum, and Abacuc, Sophonias, Aggeus, Zachary, and Malachy, which is called also an angel of the Lord. II Esdras 1: 39-40
From Hosea "...for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land. There is no faithfulness or kindness and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, killing, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds and murder follows murder. Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air; and even the fish of the sea are taken away." 4:3.
"...they have left their God to play the harlot. They sacrifice on he mountains and make offerings upon the hills." 4: l2-l3.
"With their flocks and herds they shall go to seek the Lord, but they will not find him." 5:6.
"For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God, rather than burnt offerings." 6:6.
"They love sacrifice; they sacrifice flesh and eat it; but the Lord has no delight in them." 8: l3.
"...and they shall not please him with their sacrifices." 9:4.
From 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.And we can see the logic of Cain's militance towards the bad shepherd Abel in the following quotation.
Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who stands next to me," says the Lord of hosts. "Strike the shepherd, that the sheep may be scattered." 13: 7.The attempt by Catholic editors and other Christian editors to describe Zechariah's scriptures denouncing animal sacrifices as an allegory to be interpreted symbolically is simply one more rather laughable and ridiculous attempt to belittle all scriptures that contradict the immoral and literally unhealthy notion that "all foods are clean."My anger is hot against the shepherds...10: 3.
...and I will make an end of the pride of Philistia. I will take away its blood from its mouth, and its abominations from between its teeth; it too shall be a remnant for our God. 9: 6-7.
The above scriptures from Hosea and Zechariah conclusively support the original vegetarian covenant and not the bogus scriptures of Gen. 9: 2-3, nor the numerous false scriptures claiming that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob affirmed the legitimacy of animal sacrifices. The following scriptures from Esdras, which echo Isaias, also points to bloodshed as a sign of the Fall, and the final word, manslaughter, may be seen as a revision for slaughter in general, whether of animals or humans, for we have more than sufficient evidence that the original Book of Esdras affirmed vegetarianism.
Seeing ye have forsaken me, I will forsake you also; when ye desire me to be gracious unto you, I shall have no mercy upon you.Compare with Isaiah:
Whensoever ye shall call upon me, I will not hear you: for ye have defiled your hands with blood, and your feet are swift to commit manslaughter. 2 Esdras 1: 25-26
...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 doIf we mistakenly think that the references to blood in the above scriptures refer only to human blood, and that Esdras is not concerned with the animal sacrifices, we have only to see that Esdras' view of the Final Times is of an age without bloodshed, like the world of the Book of Enoch.
good; seek justice, correct oppression... Isaiah l: l5-17.
So too was Esdras like John of Patmos was conscious of the morality of the Book of Enoch and its presentation of the Tree of Life, and Esdras presents a city made by God and not men which is similar to the "Revelations'" city of New Jerusalem, made by God and not humans.
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying "Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away." Revelations 21:1-4.
"...because it is for you that paradise is opened, the tree of life is planted, the age to come is prepared, plenty is provided, a city is built, rest is appointed, goodness is established and wisdom perfected beforehand. The root of evil is sealed up from you, illness is banished from you, and death is hidden; hell has fled and corruption has been forgotten; sorrows have passed away, and in the end the treasure of immortality is made manifest." 2 Esdras 8: 52-54.When Esdras says that a city is built, he means that it was built by divine, not human powers, who built it without exploiting other creatures, without excavating the earth and displacing, abusing, wounding and killing the creatures living there, whether insects or other small animals. In other words, the city is built within the context of the perfection of Paradise, a perfection wherein there is "no sorrow or death or mourning." This is unlike the cities built by humans, in which the earth, home of numerous creatures, is excavated, invaded, abusing, displacing and killing the creatures there.
Carnal Odor Versus "a pleasing odor"
The tree of a carnal odor, obviously the tree of animals who are sacrificed, and whose bodies, when burned, also caused an odor to ascend. Those who revised the scriptures called it a "pleasing odor," but the smoke rising from the burning flesh was looked at differently by early Christian Church Father Origen who attacked animal sacrifices as offerings to demons:
"Some do not consider the truth concerning daemons, namely that if they are to remain in this gross air near the earth they need food from sacrifices and so keep where there is always smoke and blood and incense. Accordingly, they hold it a light and indifferent matter to offer sacrifice. To this we would say that if those who provide food for thieves and murderers and barbarian enemies of the great king are punished as offenders against society, how much more would they be most justly punished who by sacrificing to the ministers of evil give them food which maintains them in the region near the earth..." Exhortation to MartyrdomSo too Tertullian earlier commented on the fumes of burnt animal sacrifices. In his Apology, chapter 22, f., Tertullian says:
"We Christians affirm the existence of certain spiritual beings. Nor is their name new. The philosophers recognize demons....the poets, too, recognize demons and even the ignorant masses use them often in their oaths. In fact, they appeal in their curses to Satan, the prince of this evil gang with a sort of instinctive knowledge of him in their very souls. Socrates himself waited on a demon's impulse.... Plato himself does not deny the existence of angels, and even the magicians attest both kinds of spiritual beings. But it is our sacred scriptures which record how certain angels, who fell of their own free will, produced a still more fallen race of demons, who were condemned by God together with their progenitors and with that prince to whom we have already alluded. Here we cannot do more than merely describe their doings. The ruin of man was their sole aim. From the outset man's overthrow was essayed by these spirits in their wickedness. Accordingly they proceed to inflict diseases and evil accidents of all kinds on our bodies, while by means of violent assaults they produce sudden and extraordinary excesses of the soul. Both to soul and to body they have access by their subtle and extremely fine substance. Invisible and intangible, those spirits are not visible in the act; it is in their effects that they are frequently observed, as when, for example, some mysterious poison in the breeze blights the blossom of fruit trees and the grain, or nips them in the bud, or destroys the ripened fruit, the poisoned atmosphere exhaling, as it were, some noxious breath. With like obscurity, the breath of demons and of angels stirs up many a corruption in the soul by furious passions, vile excesses, or cruel lusts accompanied by varied errors, the worst of which is that these deities commend themselves to the ensnared and deluded souls of men, in order to get their favourite food of flesh-fumes and of blood offered up to the images and statues of the gods."We may conjecture that those who revised the Torah, besides themselves manifesting their own addiction to burnt animal flesh and their pleasure at smelling it cooking, also were directly commenting on the morality and tone of the Book of Enoch by describing the odor of the burnt offerings as a "pleasing odor." For example, the persona of Moses, fabricated by those "inventing scriptures for gain" in "Exodus" says:
"Then you shall take one of the rams, and Aaron and his sons shall lay their hands upon the head of the ram, and you shall slaughter the ram, and shall take its blood and throw it against the altar round about. Then you shall cut the ram into pieces, and wash its entrails and its legs and put them with its pieces and its head, and burn the whole ram upon the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord; it is a pleasing odor..."Exodus" 29:15-18.It is perhaps unnecessary to say that burning animal flesh is repulsive on many levels to all those who venerate the original vegetarian covenant and who consider all flesh as sacred.