DIVINE ORDER OF DRUIDS

Divine Order of Druids

The controversy between Pagan and Christians have been brewing for many years. For thousands of years, differing religions have been fighting each other, and amazingly, most of the fighting has been over interpretations of writings and oral histories. The Pagan way of looking at this is that through all the Crusades, the inquisition, the Dark Ages and beyond, the Christian Church elements by usurping, changing, and forcing their version of ancient spiritual teachings are undeniably responsible for having killed and murdered over 9 million people in the name of Jesus in the past 2000 years. Of course, it is way higher than that, because, just like today, hundreds of thousands of people are being killed by a "Christian USA" and throughout various wars globally that are not being reported.

The theory that Hebrews wrote down the most perfect of letters on a tablet is kind of where we have to start in our assessment of modern religion. The theory that beduin nomads that walked around the dessert for 40 years could actually put together a piece of work that is not only read one way, by the letters, but that each letter had a numerical value seems to be quite a stretch.

At the time that these scrolls were being written, there was a group of folks that could do this, and the names of the people were many. Many of the alphabets of the times were credited to many groups, but even the direct linkage of one group of Celtic warrior priests, links to others of the same persuasion of religious groups, set us up to have a world wide group writing in many places under many names.

The fact that Julius Caesar wrote in 62 BCE about a group of priests gives us pause as to really know who we are talking about. Caesar referred to them as Druids, but of course, there were many groups of Priest class groups around that were amazingly called pretty much another, but different, word. It would seem that if two things that were basically the same, but called something else by a letter or two, would be pretty close to the same.

In Bible history, Jesus' story was told around Hebrews, yet many thought he was dealing with Essenes, yet what exactly was the group they were connected to called "Druze"? As for Western sources, Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler who passed through Lebanon in or about 1165, described the Druze as "mountain dwellers, monotheists, who believe in 'soul eternity' and reincarnation."

Druids, Druze, Drui, or even the Pythagoreans stemmed from 5th Century BCE. The legacy of Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato was claimed by the Wisdom tradition of the Hellenized Hebrews of Alexandria, on the their grounds that their teachings were derived from those of Moses. Through Philo of Alexandria, this tradition passed into the Medieval culture, with the idea that groups of things of the same number are related or in sympathy. This idea evidently influenced Hegel in his concept of internal relations. Now you have the Hebrews claiming rights of ideas that do not belong to them, and you have a hijacked history of a group that was mystical, way before the Hebrews.

The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint) can be regarded as the conception of Christianity, because the Septuagint was the official Bible of the non-Palestinian Hellenist Hebrews, who brought about Gentile Christianity. The Septuagint became the Bible of all the Gentile Christians. The New Testament writers borrowed most of their Old Testament quotations from the Septuagint. The Palestinian Hebrews rejected the Septuagint because it deviated considerably from the Hebrew text. It contained extra books such as the Old Testament Apocrypha. The Hebrews rejected the Apocrypha. They did not even consider them in the meeting in Jamnia at 90 CE. The Daniel of the Septuagint contained three sections, which were not part of the Hebrew Daniel: The Prayer of Azariah and The Hymn of The Three Young Men, Susanna, and Bel and the Dragon. The Septuagint Psalms included an extra psalm, psalm 151. These insertions and most of the Old Testament Apocryphal books remained part of the Septuagint (the Bible of Christianity) until the Council of Trent (1545-1563 CE) removed them (the Catholics kept some of them, and called them Deutero-canonical).

The Septuagint became an international book. Philo wrote, “The entire race of mankind might be benefited, by using these philosophical and totally beautiful commandments for the correction of their lives.”

Its translation was celebrated yearly by Hellenist Hebrews and Gentiles. Philo wrote, “Even to this very day, there is every year a solemn assembly held and a festival celebrated in the island of Pharos , to which not only the Hebrews, but a great number of persons from other nations sail across .” The Septuagint made available to the Gentiles the god of the Jews. It also fueled the Hellenistic Hebrew movement in Alexandria and the writings of Philo, which brought about the birth of Gentile Christianity.

Since Alexander the Great gave the Alexandrian Hebrews special privileges, and his successors gave them the privilege to be called Macedonians, they were by far more Hellenized than the Hebrews of Palestine. They studied Greek philosophy, they embraced the terms and ideas of the Stoics, of the Middle Platonists, and of Pythagoras. The Alexandrian Hellenist Hebrew writers asserted that Pythagoras taught the doctrines of Judaism. They claimed that the fallen angels of God (the “sons of God” mentioned in the 6th chapter of Genesis) taught God’s doctrines to Pythagoras. They used Greek stories (which they altered to fit their message) and Greek sayings to promote Hellenistic Judaism to Gentiles. During the Christian era Paul used the same method to promote Gentile Christianity to Gentiles. He employed popular Greek beliefs and sayings to attract the Gentiles. Paul explained his method like this: “To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews. ... to those who are without law, as without law ... so that I might win those who are without law. ... I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel ...” (1 Corinthians 9:20-23 NASB)

Aristobulus of Alexandria (flourished at about 150 BCE), the first Hebrew “religious philosopher,” made a very affirmative evaluation of the Pythagoreans. He made extensive use of the Pythagorean numerological doctrines. Later, the writer of the apocryphal book Wisdom of Solomon, who probably was an Alexandrian Hellenist Hebrew, promoted Judaism using Pythagorean beliefs.

Aristobulus wrote The Explanations to the Book of Moses, of which only short fragments have been preserved to us by Clement of Alexandria and Eusebius. Clement of Alexandria wrote that Aristobulus’ aim was “to bring the Peripatetic philosophy out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets.”

In one of his surviving fragments Aristobulus made the assertion that Plato and Pythagoras borrowed much of their philosophy from an early Greek translation of Moses’ law. (There was no Greek translation of Moses’ law before the Septuagint.) By claiming that Moses inspired Plato and Pythagoras, Aristobulus linked Judaism with Greek philosophy to win Gentiles over to Judaism.

He interpreted the Pentateuch according to Greek philosophy, primarily Stoic and secondarily Platonic and Pythagorean. He interpreted the law allegorically to make Judaism palatable to the Gentiles. Aristobulus was one of the first Hellenist Hebrews to use the allegorical method of interpretation, a method founded by Plato. This method of interpretation led to the creation of original Christianity. Two hundred years later, Paul used Aristobulus’ method. He, too, interpreted the law allegorically, to make his religion palatable to the Gentiles. These events were not seen as literal or historical.

What we have here is groups of people pointing fingers at each other saying that this person was right, that one person wrote books based upon the laws of someone else, meanwhile using the new manuscripts. It is still logical that since the books were continually written and the "philosophy" of religion discussed by philosophers who were determining ideas and thought concepts way ahead of the basic Hebrew on the street. But who exactly is writing the books of the Bible?

Scholars differ on when the various authors wrote and when the Redaction occurred. No one today knows who the initial authors were - the predominant view is that many of the stories were handed down orally for generations before being written down. It's not clear which texts are older (although the Song at the Sea in Exodus 15:1-8 is usually acknowledged as among the oldest verses), or which author wrote which verses. Nor is there agreement on the gender of the authors. Some scholars believe the J-writer was a woman, as described in The Book of J by David Rosenberg and Harold Bloom (1990).

Basically, even with the "predominant" view being stories handed down orally, who could even go against the fact that since if you see Druidry, or whatever it name it could be, you understand that the stories of Druidry were handed down orally, and since they are older than what has been established, that the group of Priest class people, that may and or may not have included Plato, Pythagorus, Socrates, and even some of the names associated with the Bible would be from "THE" mystic group that encompassed many continents and showed at differing times, that "The Word", or "The Way" was being taught by the Priest Class of Atlantis way before the Bible was being shaped, and that as such, we can feel right knowing that the Druids did indeed write the books of the Bible and that each time a Redaction would take place, something else changed in the book, as well as it's perception.

Just a thought ...

~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.

My thanks to the Divine Order of Druids for their information.