Confusion towards Meat-Eating in the
writings of Clement.
Though flesh-eating is strongly denounced
in some of Clement's writings,
He does not himself see Vegetarianism
as Essential.
Clement accepts the notion that Jesus
ate fish,
and accepts the fence straddling teachings
of Paul regarding eating flesh.
Clement's writings themselves personify
the Split Tradition of Early Christianity:
The Rift between the Jewish Christians,
the Ebionite/Essene/Nazarene Vegetarians,
and the Gentile or Pauline tradition
which subverts vegetarianism as non-essential
Origen Documents that Matthew the Disciple
And Matthew the Gospel Writer are the
Same Person,
Thereby Showing the Falsity of New
Testament Scriptures.
It was not clear to Clement
of Alexandria (150-215) that the cleansing of the temple and Jesus' vegetarianism
were inextricably united. Clement's views are not perfectly in line
with those of the Ebionites, Nazarenes, Essenes and the late Jewish prophets
who taught that God desired a pure heart and good deeds, not the slaughtering
of God's creatures and the eating of their corpses.
In "The Instructor" (The
Pedagogue) Clement of Alexandria did not recognize sentience and free will
as existing among animals, whom he, like the Pauline writers of the New
Testament, regarded as "irrational creatures." Clement also accepts
the traditional interpretation of Jesus' statement that what goes into
a person's mouth is secondary to what comes out of it. In "The Instructor"
Clement saw moderation as more important than vegetarianism. Yet
he does in a number of his writings regard dietary purity as essential
to the early Christians who saw themselves as a religious group practicing
compassion towards other creatures. For example, contradicting his
relatively complacent attitude towards flesh-eating in "The Instructor,"
regarding the sacrifices at Delos, Clement is the voice of vegetarianism
when he says:
"They are fond of talking about the purity of the most ancient altar atWhen I first read that Clement described Matthew as eating no flesh, I had believed that I had found another strong voice for vegetarianism among the early Christian fathers. But though Clement of Alexandria says above that "Sacrifices...are an invention of mankind to excuse the eating of flesh," and in these writings apparently champions vegetarianism, in his The Instructor" he constantly alludes to Paul and Paul's fence straddling qualifications regarding meat-eating, and Clement also accepts the notion in that work that Jesus ate a bit of fish, and that it was acceptable, because it was a moderate eating of flesh.
Delos, that altar which, we are told, was the only one approached by
Pythagoras, because it was unpolluted by slaughter and death: will they then refuse credence to us when we say that the truly hallowed altar is the righteous soul, and the incense which ascends from it, the prayer of holiness? Sacrifices, I believe, are an invention of mankind to excuse the eating of flesh... " P. 112, Alexandrian Christianity: "Selected translations of Clement and Origen" with Introductions and Notes by John Ernest Leonard Oulton, D.O. and Henry Chadwick, B.O. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press.
1954.
What the scholar must conclude is that Clement himself accepted the false scriptures that were being written by the Pauline faction that was in the process of successfully subverting the original teachings of Jesus.
Moreover, we must realize that the writings of Clement of Alexandria, like the writings of most of the Church Fathers, has been in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church, which has from the beginning, as indicated by the Roman in its name, vested with the parochial interests of Rome which included meat-eating and the collection of taxes from the meat industry. Only in its own mind is the Roman Catholic Church objective. It always keeps its own interests as foremost, as is indicated by the fact that it kept the Dead Sea Scrolls, after buying them for Israel, for over forty years before publishing them, their scholars and bishops no doubt pondering whether some of them should be released. And who knows, with the technological capabilities available to one of the richest institutions on the face of the earth, for the Roman Catholic Church is little more than Mammon attempting to wear a halo, the Roman Catholic Church could also have revised the Dead Sea Scrolls. Nonetheless, however, there is indisputable evidence in virtually all the translations of the Scrolls that I have read that animal sacrifices were denounced, and that the Essene tradition was vegetarian as well as egalitarian.
In other words, not
only have the scriptures of the world been revised, but so too have the
writings of the earliest commentators been revised by orthodox authorities.
That too is one of the problems in reading the Hadith, the teachings outside
of the Koran, of Muhammad. However, even in that case, there are numerous
Hadith, as we shall see, that contradict the sanctioning of animal sacrifices.
MATTHEW THE APOSTLE WAS VEGETARIAN
Clement of Alexandria in "Christ the
Educator:"
Matthew does not eat flesh.
"Matthew the apostle used to make his
meal on seeds and nuts and herbs, without flesh meat." Pp.107-108, The
Fathers of the Church, Clement of Alexandria, "Christ the Educator,"
translated by Simon P. Wood, C.P. New York, Fathers of the Church, Inc.
1954.
Origen's "Commentary on Matthew"
states that Matthew the apostle was
Matthew the Gospel Writer.
Orthodox Christians Disclaim the Idea
because it was well known that Matthew
was Vegetarian.
In his "Commentary
on Matthew" Origen says that Matthew the apostle and the evangelist are
the same person. "First was written the Gospel according to Matthew,
formerly a publican and later an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published
it for believers from Judaism, composed in Hebrew letters..." P. 52, New
Testament Apocrypha by Edgar Hennecke, Westminster Press, Philadelphia,
l963.
The On-going Deception by Orthodox Christian Scholars
Later orthodox Christians
contradict Origen because, knowing that Matthew was documented as vegetarian
by Clement, and knowing that Matthew was one of the vegetarian Ebionites,
it would be only too obvious that the vegetarianism of the hand-picked
apostles and disciples of Jesus had been changed to affirmations of carnivorism
in the New Testament. In spite of the blunt declaration in
"Epistle to the Hebrews" that Jesus' mission was to abolish the animal
sacrifices, in spite of the cleansing of the temple, an event in which
Jesus in a one day demonstration chases the animals to be sacrificed out
of the temple, and in spite of the fact that Jesus over and over again
quotes the late Jewish prophets who were vegetarians, those assembling
and writing the scriptures to be put into the New Testament state
that Jesus stated "all foods are clean." Thus, the bishops under
the auspices of Constantine put Jesus into the same lying mold as the revisers
of the Torah put Moses before him and the revisers of the Quran
put Muhammad after him.
THE EVILS PROMOTED BY THE ORTHODOXIES
OF JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM.
All three teachers were
presented preposterously as supporting slavery, resentment-breeding societies
of rich and poor, male chauvinism, bigotry against homosexuals, the disease-promoting
diet of carnivorism, and the notion that humans were sanctioned by God
to subdue the earth and have dominion over other creatures.