I must emphasize the obvious because the orthodox Christian church, as well as the orthodoxies of Islam and Judaism, suppresses this essential fact, namely Jesus' intimate ideological link and spiritual rapport with the vegetarian prophets of the past.  So too Christian orthodoxy suppresses the fact that many of the earliest martyrs were killed precisely because they refused to partake of Rome's animal sacrifices.  By refusing to eat the animals sacrificed by Rome, they too--like Jesus and the earliest disciples--were in the front lines saying No to evil, to oppression, to those manifesting the demonic by killing life, when all is sacred, and all life is created by a divine Creator.

    So the following brief survey merely shows the obvious: that most of the prophets Jesus quotes are clearly and explicitly vegetarian. Those who have read the other pages on this web site dealing with the origins of Judaism may rightly conjecture that all the patriarchs and prophets of the Torah were in fact vegetarian also but were painted over as carnivorous after the destruction of the centers of Asherah worship.

     Jesus frequently refers to Zechariah whose following scriptures are perhaps the least quoted and most suppressed verses in the Old Testament for quite obvious reasons: they denounce animal sacrifices and point to the profit motive behind them.  This passage should be juxtaposed next to those scriptures describing the cleansing of the temple by Jesus, and also to the scriptures in "Epistle to the Hebrews" describing Jesus' mission to be the abolition of the animal sacrifices.

"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.
 

   Hosea is referred to often by Jesus, the same Hosea who says (in some versions) "I desire mercy and not sacrifice."

"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.

  One of the most quoted prophets by New Testament writers is Isaiah.   A passionate advocate of vegetarianism, one of Isaiah's most famous passages is

"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.

The same Isaiah says

"...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.

   Isaiah sharply distinguished the orthodoxy of Judaism taking part in animal sacrifices from the pure remnant of Judaism remaining true to the vegetarian covenant of Genesis.  Isaiah, proponent of lacto-vegetarianism in chapter seven, was used by early Christians to argue against the carnivorism of Leviticus 11, Frend tells us in his Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church.
 

     And New Testament writers refer to Amos, whose intent was the same as that which was pronounced to be the mission of Jesus in "Epistle to the Hebrews:" the abolition of the animal sacrifices.

"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.
 

   New Testament writers refer to Joel as well, who, like the vegetarian Moses and Joshua of the Dead Sea Scrolls tells the Israelites

"Behold, I am sending to you grain, wine and oil, and you shall be satisfied...Joel 2: l9.

Like Isaiah and others Joel foresees a time when all flesh will be at peace.

"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.
 

   Micah and Daniel are quoted as well, the Book of Daniel being a major element in the structure and ideology of "Revelations."  Both Micah and Daniel are dynamically against animal sacrifices.  Attacking the practice of animal sacrifice in both Samaria and Jerusalem, Micah promises that agriculture shall replace the raising of animals to be slaughtered and eaten.

 "What is the transgression of Jacob?  Is it not Samaria? (which contained a temple where animals were sacrificed).  And what is the sin of the house of Judah?  Is it not Jerusalem? which also contained such a temple). 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.

   The vegetarian prophets saw clearly, as did Baruch, as did the real Moses and Joshua, that worshiping idols and animal sacrifices were the same event.  There was no such thing as a pleasing animal sacrifice to the true god.  Animal sacrifices were to idols, i.e. demons, as Origen and Clement of Alexandria and Lactantius fervently maintained. While attacking the animal sacrifices, Micah attacks the nonsense of the made up scriptures saying that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.

"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 Book of Daniel, so essential to the New Testament and to "Revelations" in particular vividly portrays Daniel's affirmation of the purification resulting from abandoning carnivorism and pursuing
vegetarianism:

"In those days I, Daniel, was mourning for three weeks.  I ate no delicacies, no meat or wine entered my mouth..."Daniel l0: 2.

   In a vision Daniel retells the story of the Fall from vegetarianism into carnivorism, then a purification and rising from that fallen state through eating the vegetation of a tree of life parallel to that described in 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.

     Jesus likewise alludes to and honors Jeremiah who, paralleling the "Words of Moses" in the Dead Sea Scrolls said:

"And I brought you into a plentiful land to enjoy its fruits and its good things.  But when you came in you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.  The priests did not say, "Where is the Lord?"  Those who handle the law did not know me; the rulers transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Ba'al, and went after things that do not profit.  2: 78.

"Your burnt offerings are not acceptable, nor your sacrifices pleasing to me.  6: 20.  "Therefore do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer on their behalf, for I will not listen when they call to me in the time of their trouble.  What right has my beloved in my house, when she has done vile deeds.  Can vows and sacrificial flesh avert your doom?  Can you then exult?"  11: 14-15.

   Reiterating the theme of justice and karma, that the hunter will become the hunted, Jeremiah also links the carcasses of flesh, i.e. animal sacrifices, with idols.  "Behold I am sending for many fishers,
says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterwards I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them....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: 16-18.

   In "Lamentations," Jeremiah is quite graphic:

"This was for the sins of her prophets and the iniquities of her priests, who shed in the midst of her the blood of the righteous."  4: 13.

"They wandered, blind, through the streets, so defiled with blood that none could touch their garments."  4: 14.

These are bloody garments of the Levites sacrificing animals.
 

     And from the scriptures of Ezekiel, certainly an essential part of the foundation of "Revelations,"

"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.
Ezekiel, moved by the "spirit of the living creatures," says

"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.
 

    The dialogues of the Book of Job, considered to be one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, are a definite link with Hinduism and clearly suggest an influence even earlier in Jewish tradition.  Job is told that if he changes from his cattleman ways,

"You shall inspect your fold and miss nothing."  5: 24.

  This compassion for individual cattle is in great and stark contrast to the carnivorism of
the orthodox scriptures.  The description of the invincible sea creature, Leviathan, who eats grass only, is a disguised description, or a persona, of Krishna in his form of Vishnu.  Behemoth, described as a hippopotamus, dwells in the waters where the lotus, sacred to India, grows.  The writer of
Job states that those of the waters of Jordan, i.e. the Jews, cannot vanquish those of the waters where the lotus dwells, and clearly claims a spiritual superiority for the vegetarian traditions
of the East, which advocate compassion towards the other creatures.

   Job, we must remind ourselves, was a cattleman, and his misery is archetypally that of one whose way of life involves oppressing, enslaving and slaughtering other creatures of God; therefore Job's
immense misery--it is karmically related to the misery he has caused other creatures.

"Behold, Behemoth, which I made as l made you; he eats grass like an ox.  Behold, his strength in his loins, and his power in the muscles of his belly.  He makes  his tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together.  His bones are tubes of bronze, his  limbs like bars of iron. He is the first of the works of God; let him who made him bring near his sword!  For the mountains yield food for him where all the wild beasts play.  Under the lotus plants he lies, in the covert of the  reeds and in the marsh. For his shade the lotus trees cover him; the willows of the brook surround him. Behold,  if the river is turbulent he is not frightened; he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth. Can one
take him with hooks, or pierce his nose with a snare?"  40:15-24.

   Zophar tells Job that after repenting,  "You will lie down and none will make you afraid."  This is a frequent and common theme among the Old Testament vegetarian prophets, that will be a final time of total peace for all creation.  From Zephaniah, 3: 13:

"You shall pasture and lie down and none shall make you afraid."

    Isaiah says

"Damascus will cease to be a city, and will become a heap of ruins. Her cities will be deserted for ever; they will be for flocks, which will lie down, and none will make them afraid." 17: 1-3.

    Micah's famous passage

"...and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more; but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree..." concludes with "and none shall make them afraid..."  4: 3-4.

    Ezekiel uses the same refrain in describing a utopia within which there is pain neither for human nor beast:

"They shall no more be a prey to the nations, nor shall the beasts of the land devour them; they shall
dwell securely, and none shall make them afraid."  34: 28.

    Bildad, one of those involved in questioning and answering Job, asks Job, with a telling bluntness and irony, reminding him of his karma being a cattleman, and his attempt to cloud his denial through
verbiage.

"How long will you hunt for words?....Why are we counted as cattle?"

     Job in fact describes feeling that his own body is torn apart the way the bodies of cattle are torn apart.

...then let my shoulder blade fall from my shoulder, and let my arm be broken from its socket, for I was in terror of calamity from God, and I could not have faced his majesty. 31: 22-23

"The fear and the dread of you shall be upon all the beasts of the earth and upon all the birds of the sky--everything with which the earth is astir--and upon all the fish of the sea; they are given into your hand. Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat; as with the green grasses, I give you all these." Genesis 9: 2-3

     We have seen how the portrayal of God in Genesis 9 is diametrically opposed to the all compassionate Deity of Genesis 1, who commands vegetarianism for all creatures, and who sees all creation as good.  We must remember that it is not god who is schizophrenic but those portraying him as such. For it is quite obvious that the Old Testament, like the New Testament and Quran, have been revised by businessmen desiring to sanction evil towards animals for reasons of profit.
 

"Yes, the light of the wicked is put out, and the flame of his fire does not shine.  The light is dark in his tent, and his lamp above him is put out. His strong steps are shortened and his own schemes throw him down. For he is cast into a net by his own feet, and he walks on a pitfall. A trap seizes him by the heel, a snare lays hold of him. A rope is hid for him in the ground, a trap for him in the path. Terrors frighten him on every side and chase him at his heels." 18: 1-11

    In some ways the Book of Job may be regarded as central to an understanding of the Old Testament, for its revisers did little or nothing to the body of the work.  Instead they attempted to change the mind of the reader solely through revising the final passages, an easily seen through fabrication, an "all's well that ends well" attitude by the reviser who rewrote the last chapter of the book to make it appear that God favored animal sacrifices.  The ending of the book of Job contradicts the 95% of the dialogues which precede it. As we shall see in a critical analysis of the Book of Job itself, the main body of work in the book is strongly, persistently and often passionately vegetarian and egalitarian.

     Jesus was we know immersed in the Old Testament, with its undeniable Hindu origins. Undeniably Essenic, he himself probably actually read, and perhaps even copied, some of the very manuscripts uncovered in our time. It is clear he knows that the ancient scriptures were tampered with and he tells the orthodox in no uncertain terms that they use the scriptures to cover their own
deceit.

     What is central to our study in this chapter, however is that anyone can trace each
reference to the Old Testament and see where it leads them.  More often than not, it leads to a vegetarian prophet who has attacked the animal sacrifices and the injustice of the people conducting them toward their own human kind as well.
 

Appended to the Clementine Recognitions is a profession of faith to Pauline Christianity which refers to the Essenes as Osseans.

"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 anathemize the Osseans, the blindest of all men who use other scriptures than the Law."

 From p. 54, The Essene Odyssey by Hugh Schonfield, Element Books, Ltd. Longmead, Shaftesbury, Dorset, 1984. P. 87.  Quoted from page 398, The Conflict of the Church and Synagogue, by James Parkes.
 

   Jesus and the vegetarian prophets preceding him understood the link between having dominion over animals and having dominion over humans, and condemned both. They knew that those who claimed they sacrificed animals to the true God proved themselves to be liars by the very injustice of their lives, by the fact that the same people accepted the inequality of a class structure allowing for rich and poor, instead of equality for all. They proved they were evil by the fact that they chose to have dominion over their own human kind instead of promoting equality for all: they had slaves.  And they demonstrated their lack of compassion by their hunting, fishing and animal sacrifices.   They turned away from an all-compassionate God, the term Mohammed as well as the Buddha before him sometimes used, so as to at least hint, if not explain totally, to those he knew would be deceived by evil authorities, that his Deity--I do not want to use the word God as generic for deity--commanded vegetarianism, was All-compassionate, that is, compassionate to all, and all means each and every one of God's creatures.  Mohammed described God as all-compassionate so as to at least make it harder for the evil authorities to defend their ways.  He had studied and observed what had been done to the originally pure words of Moses and Jesus. And he knew that the same thing would be attempted when he departed, as indeed it did, in great part because the carnivorous Sunnis took power away from the vegetarian tradition of Ali and the Shiites (pronounced She ites).

    The elitist, the enslaver of others, is by definition not all compassionate; neither is the industrialist invading earth, the slaughterer of animals, or anyone even coercing in the slightest manner any other being.  They are all, by definition, since they are evil towards some creatures, not all-compassionate.