"The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he
found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their
business.  And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the
temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables." John
2: 13-15.

  "For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins."  "Consequently,
when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a
body hast thou prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no
pleasure.  Then I said, `Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,' as it is written of me in the roll
of the book."  "Epistle to the Hebrews," 10: 4-7.

  Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder affirm the longevity of the Essenes, many of whom were centenarians. The Essenes denounced the animal sacrifices and were vegetarian. Moreover, as is seen in the Hymns of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Deity of the Essenes was compassionate towards all of the creatures it created. The Essenes remained true to the original vegetarian covenant of Genesis 1: 29-30, and not to the false covenant of Genesis 9: 2-3.  The various designations for Essenes are derived from the names of Shiva or Sheba, God of seven worlds, seven rivers, seven mountains, after whom the Shabbath, or Sabbath, the seventh day, was named. Zechariah Sitchin in Lost Realms says that Elishiva in Canaan meant "My God is seven.  Epiphanius described the Essenes as Osseans, which is derived from Oseo, a name of Shiva. Epiphanius also described the Essenes as Jesseans, which is derived from Jesse, or Yishaiy in Hebrew, which is also the souce of the names Isaiah and Joshua or Yeshua. Isa is one of the names of Shiva and we see the Isa root in Yishaiy and Isaiah. Isa or Issa is the name by which Jesus was known to the Tibetans, Hindus and Muslims. 

   The cleansing of the temple was not simply an attempt to attack a non-effective means of
atoning for sins, nor was it Jesus' revolt against conducting business in the temple, which is the
superficial explanation given in the New Testament, based on the scriptures: "you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade....you have made it a den of robbers."

    Jesus, like a good militant Hindu or Buddhist, put his body on the line against the cruelty of
the animal sacrifices of orthodox Judaism, and against profiting from such cruelty and
unhealthy nutrition.  Orthodox Judaism was then and still is today daily involved in oppressing
and slaughtering flesh and blood, feeling creatures, created by an all-compassionate God.  The
elders, priests, and patriarchs who profited from the animal sacrifices plotted Jesus' death after
this event (Mark: 11: 18).
 

   According to the orthodox interpretation of the cleansing of the temple, Jesus was protesting
that the sacrifices should occur outside rather than inside the temple. The orthodox
interpretation is absurd.  A charismatic person like Jesus, if he had been carnivorous and in
favor of the animal sacrifices, would, like a good orthodox Jew, simply have asked to consult
with the priests and patriarchs of orthodoxy, if the location of the sacrifices had been the issue.

   The intelligence, emotional stability, and mission of Jesus are all demeaned by the orthodox
interpretation, which makes Jesus appear as a hot-headed zealot catalyzing the Jewish
establishment to kill him for a superficial reason.
 

   The superficiality of the orthodox interpretation had a definite purpose. For those concocting
the New Testament, and those wishing to promote the notion that "all foods are clean"  had to explain away the obvious purpose of the cleansing of the temple, which, as we can see by reading Roman documents about the Christians written in the next three centuries, was a crucial event in the minds of the earliest Christians, who understood it for what it is: Jesus' protest against the animal sacrifices.  Orthodox Christians, accustomed, even addicted, to eating flesh, and desiring to sanction their habit or addiction by pointing to scriptures asserting that "all foods are clean," totally ignore the stated mission of Jesus as stated in the "Epistle to the Hebrews," namely that it was his divine mission to abolish the animal sacrifices.
 

   As a Nazarene Jew, Jesus was quite aware that the vegetarian Nazarenes were cursed in the
synagogues, and that the rich Jewish elite, the patriarchs who owned cattle, were involved in
the meat industry of the day. After the animals were sacrificed in the temple, they were
dismembered, butchered into smaller segments, then circulated in Jerusalem and elsewhere
where they were sold. The meat industry was then, just as it is now, a profitable industry, and
then, just as now, the elite establishment, the wealthy, were those who profited most, though
all those involved shared in the profits to a lesser extent.

    I ask the reader, especially the young, or the open-minded orthodox reader, to study
carefully the following scriptures, for they show without any doubt that it was Jesus' mission to
abolish the animal sacrifices, the burnt offerings.  Moreover, in context of what the scriptures
say occurred, namely the execution of Jesus by crucifixion, we can see the scripture writer
was aware that the statement of Jesus' mission was in fact an "exhortation to martyrdom."
 

  "For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins."  "Consequently,
when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a
body hast thou prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no
pleasure.  Then I said, `Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,' as it is written of me in the roll
of the book."  "Epistle to the Hebrews," 10: 4-7.

  "For since the law has but a shadow of the good thing to come instead of the true form of
these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices which are continually offered year after
year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be
offered?  If the worshipers had once been cleansed, they would no longer have any
consciousness of sin.  But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year."  10: 1-3.

    The above scriptures are the essence of the "Epistle to the Hebrews," for most of the rest of
the epistle evades the critical issues raised by the above scriptures.
 

   Saint Epiphanius in his Panarion admits that the earliest followers of Jesus were called Essenes and Nazarenes.

   Attached to the "Clementine Recognitions," is another suppressed piece of Christian history which perfectly confirms the information given in the Panarion.  It is a curse against the vegetarian Nazarenes and Essenes that every Jew converting to orthodox Christianity in some of the eastern churches had to recite:

"I anathematize the Nazareans, the stubborn ones, who deny that the law of sacrifices was
given by Moses, who abstain from eating living things, and who never offer sacrifice.  I
anathematize the Osseans, the blindest of all men, who use other Scriptures than the Law."
Quoted from page 398, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, by James Parkes.
 

   The term Nazarene in Jesus' time referred to a vegetarian religious group who were well
known for opposing the animal sacrifices.  A number of scholars argue that Nazareth, if it
existed at all during Jesus' day, could not have been his family's home because of its distance
from the places where Jesus preached and congregated.  Most scholars readily acknowledge that Nazareth was not mentioned by historians or chronicles until well after Jesus' time. Another group of scholars affirms that Nazareth got its name from the fact that it was an area that had been inhabited by Nazirites and Nazarenes.  Either way scholars do not dispute the vegetarianism of the Nazarenes. "Jesus the Nazarene" was changed to "Jesus of Nazareth" by orthodox Christians after the Romans took over because they did not want to associate Jesus with the well-known and well documented vegetarian Nazarenes.

   INRI, the sign on the cross above Jesus' head should logically be translated as Jesus the
Nazarene, King of the Jews.  The location of Jesus' home would have been irrelevant
information to be put on the cross, for Jesus was obviously well-known in the area, whereas the fact that Jesus was one of the Nazarenes, who were hated by orthodox Jews because they protested against the animal sacrifices, was totally relevant information that justified his crucifixion in their eyes.  A crucified Nazarene was a defeated enemy, an answer to the prayers of the orthodox.

  Epiphanius in his Panarion described orthodox Jews as praying three times a day for the
destruction of the Nazarenes.  The curse: "Let the Nazarenes and the heretics perish as in a
moment, let them be blotted out of the book of the living and let them not be written with the
righteous." (quoted in Marcel Simon's Jewish Sects At the Time of Jesus, Fortress Press,
Philadelphia, 1967, page 136.)  See Psalm 69: 28.

   When one reads that some scriptures are described as Apocryphal, Gnostic, or
Pseudoepigraphical, one of the main things to remember is that all these terms are meant to
express the fact that these works are not accepted by the orthodox, that is, by those who are in
power now. The victors write history; the victors write scriptures; the victors write your
educational curriculum.  Therefore it is absolutely necessary to study what is not orthodox, to go where no orthodox mind has gone.

   There is a growing number of objective scholars who look realistically at the epistles of Paul,
and the Gospels and epistles in general and understand that Paul and the Romans attempted
to undermine the egalitarianism and vegetarianism that existed among the earliest Christians. Among these scholars are Baigent and Leigh, authors of Deception and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Robert Eisenman, author of James the Brother of Jesus.
 

  This is a short survey of the later prophets. For a longer study consult other pages on this web
site dealing with the individual prophets.  Some editions of all of the prophets' books of scriptures may be downloaded freely on the web.
 

  Zechariah not only denounces animal sacrifices, but he looks at the profit motive of the
cattlemen who kill their cattle in 11: 4-5,

"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.

   We can see in the above scripture the same recognition by Zechariah, that orthodox Judaism
was an evil shepherd not caring for the creatures of God, but killing them and selling their
flesh to eat.  Jesus, in contrast, manifests the Good Shepherd who cares for his flock and
doesn't want the creatures in his flock killed. Therefore he cleansed the temple.

"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."  Zechariah 13: 7.

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.

  Zechariah's name is Z'akharya in the Peshitta Aramaic. Z'akharya contains the word Acharya,
which in Sanskrit means one who knows the rules, a holy teacher. Zechariah's name itself is
testimony to the Hindu (and vegetarian) origins of Judaism and Jewish Christianity.
 

"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.

"You have not... satisfied me with the fat of your sacrifices. But you have burdened me with
your sins, you have wearied me with your iniquities." 43: 24.

"He who slaughters an ox is like him who kills a man."  Isaiah 66:3.
 

"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."
Hosea 6: 6-7.

"They love sacrifice; they sacrifice flesh and eat it; but the Lord has no delight in them."  Hosea
8: l3.
 

"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.
 

"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.
 

"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.
 

"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 first-born 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.
 

"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:

"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.
 
 

"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 it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh..."  2: 28.
 
 

"Then I said, Ah lord God! behold, I have never defiled myself; from my youth up till now I
have never eaten what died of itself or was torn by beasts, nor has foul flesh come into my
mouth."  4: 14.

"Thus says the Lord God, Behold, I am against the shepherds; and I will require my sheep at
their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed
themselves.  I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, that they may not be food for them."  34:
10.

"On that day I swore to them that I would bring them out of the land of Egypt into a land that I
had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of all lands.
And I said to them, Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast on, every one of you, and
do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. But they rebelled
against me and would not listen to me; they did not every man cast away the detestable things
their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt."  20: 6-8.

  Above Ezekiel is referring to the incident of the Israelites who craved flesh and received it in
the form of quails. After eating the quail, many Israelites became sick and died.  It was a
capsule lesson of the real Moses' teaching: be true to God's vegetarian covenant, for it will
mean the length of your days, that is, that you will live longer.
 

   "The spirit of Ahimsa (non-violence)  was ever present with Gautama from his very childhood. One day, his cousin Devadatta shot a bird. The poor creature was hurt and fell to the ground. Gautama ran forward, picked it up and refused to hand it over to his cousin. The quarrel was taken up before the Rajaguru who, however, decided in favour of Gautama to the great humiliation of Devadatta.

   In his wanderings, Gautama one day saw a herd of goats and sheep winding their way through a narrow valley. Now and then the herdsman cried and ran forward and backward to keep the members of the fold from going astray. Among the vast flock Gautama saw a little lamb, toiling behind, wounded in one part of the body and made lame by a blow of the herdsman. Gautama's heart was touched and he took it up in his arms and carried it saying, "It is better to relieve the suffering of an innocent being than to sit on the rocks of Olympus or in solitary caves and watch unconcerned the sorrows and sufferings of humanity". Then, turning to the herdsman he said, "Whither are you going, my friend, with this huge flock so great a hurry ?". "To the king's palace" said the herdsman, "We are sent to fetch goats and sheep for sacrifice which our master - the king - will start tonight in propitiation of the gods." Hearing this, Gautama followed the herdsman, carrying the lamb in his arms. When they entered the city, word was circulated that a holy hermit had brought the sacrifices ordered by the king. As Gautama passed through the streets, people came out to see the gracious and saintly figure of the youth clad in the yellow robes of a Sadhu (renunciate) and all were struck with wonder and awe at his noble mien and his sweet expression. The king was also informed of the coming of the holy man to the sacrifice. When the ceremonies commenced in the presence of the king, there was brought a goat ready to be killed and offered to the gods. There it stood with its legs tied up and the high priest ready with a big bloodthirsty knife in his hand to cut the dumb animal's throat. In that cruel and tragic moment, when the life of the poor creature hung by a thread, Gautama stepped forward and cried, "Stop the cruel deed, O king!". And as he said this, he leaned forward and unfastened the bonds of the victim. "Every creature" he said, "loves to live, even as every human being loves to preserve his or her life". The priest then threw the knife away like a repentant sinner and the king issued a royal decree throughout the land the next day, to the effect that no further sacrifice should be made in future and that all people should show mercy to birds and beasts alike." From teachings/ahimsa.htm

    Those aware of Hinduism know that the majority of Hindus venerating the main avatars of Hinduism, such Shiva, Krishna, Kali, Uma, are vegetarian. There are, however, carnivorous Hindu sects worshipping Kali and Shiva.

     In any case, it should now be easy to see how Jesus fit in the pattern set by the prophets following the true covenant of Judaism, the covenant of Genesis 1: 29-30, which is a covenant of ahimsa towards all creatures. It is dramatically the opposite of the absurd covenant of Genesis 9: 2-3.