Billy
Meier, The Talmud of Jmmanuel
Reviewed by Robert M. Price
Delving with the Devil
This awful book fully merits the epithets used by Edgar J. Goodspeed
(in his great book Famous Biblical Hoaxes) for another modern
apocryphon, The Archko Volume, namely “disgusting and
ridiculous.” Indeed, it takes the prize. There is the usual pack of
lies about an underlying Aramaic document being discovered in 1963,
imbedded, somehow, in resin since the first century when Jesus’ loyal
disciple, a guy named Judas Iscariot, wrote it down. Seems that an
improbably named Greek Orthodox priest bearing the moniker “Isa [=
Jesus!] Rashid” discovered Jesus’ burial cave, and Eduard Albert
“Billy” Meier spelunked further, finding the present gospel. What we
are reading represents, we are told with forked tongue in cheek, only
the first quarter of the very long text, the rest being destroyed, or
so Father Rachid figured, by Israeli troops who were violently
pursuing him. (You will recognize the implicit element of uncertainty
as a rat-hole through which Billy Meier may eventually squeeze the
rest of the text if this portion sells well enough. At least if he can
come up with that much baloney.)
Meier anticipates that the orthodox and the obscurantists will alike
denounce his discovery as a hoax (p. xv). Well, let me tell you, you
don’t have to be particularly orthodox to denounce this thing as what
we theologians like to call Bullgeschichte.
What does the title mean? “Talmud” is just a Hebrew word referring to
a deposit of learning. We are more familiar with its use referring to
the massive collection of Rabbinical law, lore, and commentary, the
Talmud of Jerusalem and the Talmud of Babylon. So here it just denotes
“the teaching of Jmmanuel.” Of whom? Have you ever noticed
something strange in Matthew’s Nativity story in which Matthew says
Isaiah 7:14 was fulfilled by the advent of baby Jesus, and that though
Isaiah says the child will be called “Emmanuel,” in Matthew’s story
Jesus is called, well, “Jesus.” That is pretty odd. I’ve never heard a
good explanation. But Meier tries to harmonize the two names,
producing the weird hybrid “Jmmanuel.” (Why do I keep thinking of
pancakes?) Meier says “Jmmanuel” means “man of godly wisdom,” but any
Bible reader knows it does not. It means “God with us.” At least
“Emmanuel” does, but then I guess if you’re making up a name, you can
say it means whatever the hell you want. (For the record, Epiphanius
of Salamis did the same thing back in the fourth century, pretending
that one spells “Essenes” with a J, too: “Jessenes,” so he could
connect Jesus with them.)
Another improbability about the frame story: how, pray tell, did the
mythical Father Rachid “discover” the cave-tomb of Jesus since the
book tells us Jesus was buried in the now-notorious tomb in Srinagar,
Kashmir? This old structure has been promoted since the nineteenth
century as Jesus’ tomb by the Ahmadiyya sect of Islam. Orthodox
Muslims believe Jesus was raptured to heaven before the crucifixion,
with someone else put to death in Jesus’ place. But the Ahmadiyya
believe he was crucified and survived, then left the Holy Land to
preach for decades longer, eventually winding up in Kashmir, where he
died at a ripe, old age (110 or 120, Jmmanuel says). This site,
though fraudulent, is well known. What was there for Rachid to
discover?
And
did I really say the book is supposed to be the work of Judas
Iscariot? The disciple who betrayed Jesus? No, dear reader, as we soon
find out, it was not Judas Iscariot who turned Jesus over to the
G-men, but rather the similarly named “Juda Ihariot”! You see, it’s
pretty easy to mix up a couple of guys with names that close. This is
just unintentionally hilarious!
Jesus as Ventriloquist
Dummy
The Talmud of Jmmanuel
is structurally just the same as other long-winded gospels like The
Aquarian Gospel. It builds on a harmony of the four canonical
gospels, picking and choosing favorite episodes and elements from
them, then adding new bits of its own. The result is a glaring
unevenness if quality. Grant me a seeming digression. Scholars have
noted a pattern in ancient apocalypses, in which some ancient worthy
is depicted as predicting the history of his people from ancient times
down to the end of the age. The “predictions” match up with known
historical events very well indeed till right near the end, at which
point the train leaps from the tracks and careens wildly into the
ditch. What happened? Well, of course, the actual author of the
document lived at a historical position very close to the end-time his
book anticipates. The preceding history matches up because the author
knows it as history. He is only pretending to be the ancient character
whose name he borrows (Daniel, Enoch, Baruch, whomever). So he has
perfect 20-20 hindsight, but when he starts venturing real
predictions, it is clear blue sky, and he plummets like Icarus. Well,
it’s the same with these gospels: as long as they stay close to their
source material, they sound pretty authentic, even if their authors do
a bit of embellishing. But as soon as they kick away the training
wheels, as soon as they stop using the tracing paper, the result is
awful. And it is in the new material, obviously, that we have to look
to find the main reason for writing the new gospel. What is the new
teaching that this gospel wants to ascribe to its Jesus?
First, I think it is pathetic that people resort to such a gimmick. It
plainly means the writer knows his ideas would carry no particular
conviction if set forth under his own, utterly insignificant name, so
maybe hanging them on Jesus will lend the ideas a degree of gravity
they would otherwise lack. But he fails to see that the only reason we
take seriously the words attributed to Jesus in the traditional
Gospels is that they carry their own weight. By far the most of it has
the ring of truth to it, whoever said it. In fact, that’s how some of
it came to be in the gospel in the first place! Someone heard some
good saying and said, “Wow! That’s good stuff! Worthy of Jesus!” as
when we say, “It ain’t in the Bible but it ought to be!” Believe me,
no one is going to find himself saying that of the soporific gibberish
(and worse) in this book, which “Billy” dares to equate with the
real, true, original teaching of Jesus before the fiendish
churchmen, beginning with the nefarious fisherman himself, distorted
the living daylights out of it.
The
teaching here is warmed-over Theosophy, but very poorly expressed. We
learn that there is a “god” who rules the earth but is essentially a
long-lived mortal much like ourselves (16:55-56; 28:59). Above him is
the “supreme” entity, called “Creation” (16:52) which sounds something
like unchanging Brahman (18:44). But then we are told that it, too, is
incomplete and changing (18:43; 21:28) and defers to a still superior
being (25:56). It is one without division (21:27), and yet it
possesses parts (34:39). But while Billy/Jmmanuel is calling it
infinite, he says we are part of it, so that what is true of it is
ipso facto true of us, too. And if we tap into that fact by
enlightened knowledge, we can do pretty much anything (16:44). That is
a prime case of the Division Fallacy in logic: what is true of an
entity as a whole is not necessary true in the same way of its parts.
I may understand the Theory of General Relativity, but it does not
follow from this that my little finger understands Relativity. Anyway,
when Peter succeeded momentarily in walking on water it was because he
had a fleeting grasp of this “knowledge” and was able to suspend/defy
gravity. But what sort of “knowledge” is it that refuses to reckon
with elementary physics? It is substituting fantasy and wishful
thinking for knowledge. This is all the more ironic since Jmmanuel is
always talking about the “laws” of the Creation, which, I guess, do
not happen to include gravity!
So
what are we supposed to be doing about it? Well, it is our mission to
realize our potential by efforts at self-perfection over the course of
many lifetimes. Even Creation (a him? Her? It?) experiences a kind of
reincarnation, a series of eons-long periods of dormancy alternating
with equal periods of life and activity (34:27-34), all the coin of
Theosophy, borrowed from Hinduism. As Pogo once said about nuclear
energy, “It ain’t so new, and it ain’t so clear.”
Ridiculous
I’ve borrowed Goodspeed’s put-down of another modern gospel, calling
this one “disgusting and ridiculous.” Let’s look first at the
“ridiculous” part, because we may be quite out of patience or of any
residual sympathy if we look at the “disgusting” aspect first. What’s
most ridiculous about The Talmud of Jmmanuel is its espousal of
Flying Saucer religion. To get things straight here: I consider it
plausible that extra-terrestrials have visited the earth. But the
possibility, even the plausibility, of it does not entitle us
forthwith to believe it is true. There does not yet appear to be
compelling evidence for contact with Flying Saucers. But there sure is
plenty of evidence that people who claim to be in regular contact with
space men are a bunch of delusional nuts. Nor is it their belief in
extra-terrestrial visitors what makes them nuts. No, no,
there’s way more than that. Some of these people make wild and
extravagant claims that can only proceed from their imagination, at
least because they sound like very bad science fiction. And all of
this stuff does, from the Black Muslim “Mother Plane” orbiting the
earth with Elijah Muhammad in the captain’s chair (so help me, I wish
I were making this up), to the Raelian belief that aliens mutated apes
to produce the first humans, to Heaven’s Gate lemmings believing a
spaceship hidden in a comet’s tail was telling them to castrate
themselves, to the Aetherius Society, to Unaria, etc.
Well, “Billy” Meier belongs in the same ranks. That’s for damn
sure. Nursing classic delusions of grandeur, including the persecution
complex, Billy predicts his own eventual assassination: “the editor is
even more endangered because he is the contact man for
extraterrestrial intelligences and very highly developed spiritual
entities on exalted planes who transmit to him true spiritual
teachings that he disseminates without modification, thereby exposing
the lies of the cult religions, which will lead to their slow but
certain eradication” (p. xix). The “cult religions” are the major
faiths. If this isn’t classic Freudian “projection,” I don’t know what
is. Personally, I don’t think the Islamo-fascist mullahs are going to
be wasting a fatwah on this guy any time soon, much less the
Catholic Church.
Not
surprisingly, The Talmud of Jmmanuel embodies UFO theology. Its
Jesus (“Jmmanuel”) is the result of Mary’s impregnation by the angel
Gabriel who is an alien arriving in a space ship for their date. Jesus
is eventually taken aboard the same craft, much like Brian of Nazareth
in the Monty Python movie. When he “ascends” he is stepping aboard the
spacecraft, though only for a couple of stops down the line, getting
off in Damascus. Why bother with Spielbergianism? Simply because Bill
wants to combine the usual props of UFO-Jesus-ism (beam-up ascension)
with the Asian travels/Srinagar tomb scenario. He likes ‘em both.
All
science fiction reinterpretation of Christianity, the stock in trade
of Flying Saucer religions, entails a dusting off of old
eighteenth-century Rationalism: what looked like miracles to the
ancients must have been advanced technology, at least as we, their
far-superior pseudo-intellectual descendents, imagine it. Such science
fiction, too, becomes dated and laughable after a while. And thus UFO
theology starts looking even more ridiculous than the supernaturalism
it hopes to replace. In this case, the resurrection of Jesus is
treated with a technique borrowed from old-time Rationalism rather
than its twentieth-century sci-fi counterpart, though. Jesus does not
die on the cross, but is taken down in a coma, then placed in Joseph
of Arimathea’s tomb, where he is given medical care and recovers.
Usually the eighteenth-century Rationalists had Joseph call upon the
Essenes to nurse Jesus back to health, but for some reason they are
not good enough this time around. The “risen” Jesus actually meets
some Essenes later in the story, and they invite him to join their
group, but he refuses. (Why does Billy not allow them a more positive
role? You’ll see in the next section: the trouble is that they’re
Jews.)
Joseph even somehow contacts Jesus’ colleagues in India and summons
them to come and treat him! Would there really have been time for
this? I guess Gabriel could have picked them up in his space ship and
rushed them into the OR, but then we’d have to wonder why the aliens
didn’t just revivify Jmmanuel like Gort did Klaatu in The Day the
Earth Stood Still. Well, anyway, Joseph gets away with the scheme,
despite Jewish and Roman guards at the tomb because he had taken the
precaution of designing his tomb with a hidden back entrance! Why? How
could he have known this day would come? It’s all just so stupid.
Plus, The Talmud of Jmmanuel has its own theory to offer for
the Shroud of Turin. It is a shroud on which Joseph of Arimathea had a
likeness of Jesus’ bloody body painted! But this nonsense clashes with
the Carbon 14 dating test of the Shroud just as much as the Catholic
belief in its genuineness: it goes back no earlier than the fourteenth
century.
By
the way, the book includes a pen sketch of Jmmanuel that is supposed
to be based on an ancient portrait rendered by “Semjase, the pilot of
a beamship, whose home planet, Erra in the Pleiades, is about 500
light years from our solar system” (p. viii). Actually, it appears to
be based on an ancient Chinese Manichean painting of Jesus, an
artist’s conception. “Semjase” is the name of the leader of the fallen
angels in the apocryphal Book of Jubilees.
The Disgusting
The Talmud of Jmmanuel
is blood-curdlingly anti-Semitic. Its appropriation of the familiar
Jewish title Talmud is offensive, but that is the least of it. Here
are a few choice passages:
“Do not go into the streets of Israel, and do not go to the scribes
and Pharisees, but go to the cities of the Samaritans and to the
ignorant in all parts of the world. Go to the unenlightened, the
idol worshippers and the ignorant after I have left you, because
they do not belong to the house of Israel, which will bring death
and bloodshed into the world.” (10:5-6)
“Truly, I say to you: the nation of Israel was never one distinct
people and has at all times lived with murder, robbery and fire. They
have acquired this land through ruse and murder in abominable,
predatory wars, slaughtering their best friends like wild animals. May
the nation of Israel be cursed until the end of the world and never
find its peace.” (10:26-27)
“Therefore, beware of Israel, because it is like an abscess.” (10:38)
“For the people of Israel are unfaithful to the laws of Creation and
are accursed and will never find peace. Their blood will be shed,
because they constantly commit outrages against the laws of Creation.
They presume themselves above all the human races as a chosen nation
and thus as a separate race. What an evil error and what evil
presumption, for inasmuch as Israel never was a nation or a race, so
it was never a chosen race. Unfaithful to the laws of Creation, Israel
is a mass of people with an inglorious past, characterized by murder
and arson.” (15:22-26)
“You will be outcast among the human races, and then you will
alternately lose your occupied land, regain it and lose it again until
the distant future. Truly, I say to you: your existence will be
continual struggle and war, and so the human races will strike you
with their hostile thinking and enmity. You will find neither rest nor
peace in the country stolen by your ancestors by means of falsehood
and deceit, because you will be haunted by your inherited burden of
murder with which your forefathers killed the ancient inhabitants of
this continent and deprived them of life and property.” (24:45-47)
“…
just like the Israelites who plundered this land and have dominated
and oppressed the legitimate owners of the land.” (27:12b)
“I
am the true prophet of all human races on earth: but in all truth I am
not the prophet of those confused Israelites who call themselves sons
and daughters of Zion.” (30:8b)
“And the time will come in five times 100 years when you will have to
atone for this, when the legitimate owners of the land enslaved by you
will begin to rise against you into the distant future. A new man will
rise up in this land as a prophet and will rightfully condemn and
persecute you and you will have to pay with your blood. […] Even
though, according to your claim, he will be a false prophet and you
will revile him, he will nevertheless be a true prophet, and he will
have great power, and he will have your race persecuted throughout all
time in the future. His name will be Mohammed, and his name will bring
horror, misery and death to your kind, which you deserve. Truly,
truly, I say to you: His name will be written for you with blood, and
his hatred against your kind will be endless.” (30:10-11, 13-15)
What is this? Propaganda for Hamas? Okay, it’s not as bad as the
abhorred Theozoologie of the mad monk Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels,
but it’s still pretty revolting if you ask me. It appears to be
Jew-hating, pro-Palestinian propaganda. What we have here is like the
Gentile Jesus of the Third Reich theologians.
Random Observations
It
seems anticlimactic to scrutinize this miserable travesty further. But
it may be worth it after all, in case anything else is needful to
discourage any adolescents who may still be interested in it. There
are historical errors that would just not b possible in a writing from
someone who lived in the period. Jesus is said to be born in the reign
of Herod Antipas (2:1). Actually it was Herod the Great. Talmud
Jmmanuel 16:9 repeats Mark’s mistake (Mark 6:17), confusing Herod
Antipas’ brothers Philip and Herod. (That was an easy mistake to make,
even for a contemporary, as Herod Antipas actually had brothers named
Herod Philip and just plain Philip). Obviously Jmmanuel is
dependent on the canon, hence by no means an ancient document.
Humble fellow that he is, Billy the Evangelist has Jesus predict him:
“Not until two thousand years will an insignificant man come who will
recognize my teaching as truth and spread it with great courage”
(14:18). See also 15:75-81. But Jesus seems to underestimate just
how insignificant the man will prove to be.
Jesus’ audience in the Nazareth synagogue asks, “Is he not the son of
the carpenter, Joseph, whose wife became pregnant by the son of a
guardian angel?” “From where does he get all this wisdom and the power
for his mighty works?” (15:18, 72). Oh, I don’t know… could it have
anything to do with his being the son of an angel?!
“A
prophet is never esteemed less than in his own country and in his own
house, which will prove true for all the future, as long as humanity
has little knowledge and is enslaved by the false teachings of the
scribes and the distorters of true scripture” (15:74). This
nonsensical inflation of Mark 6:4 sounds like the rambling, bogus
Ezekiel quote Samuel L. Jackson repeats again and again in Pulp
Fiction!
We
get a bit of invented soap opera in chapter 16, where it develops that
Salome, dancing daughter of Herodias, was in love with the imprisoned
John the Baptist and wistfully smooched his severed head.
Corrections of Canonical
Gospel Teachings
The
New Testament gospels set the ethical bar pretty high. From any
standopoint, that’s a good thing: set them lower and you are too easy
on yourself. If your reach not only does not exceed your grasp, but
does not even extend that far, you are just a lazy slob. But
The Talmud of Jmmanuel doesn’t mind taking Christian morality down
a peg.
“Give to them who ask of you, if they make their requests in honesty,
and turn away from them who want to borrow from you in a deceitful
way” (5:42). In accord with the Rabbis, Jesus seems uncritical in his
counsel to give to any beggar. The Rabbis were fully aware that there
were cheats. In one of their tales, a man passes a hovel of beggars
and overhears them deliberating on whether to fest that night on gold
or silver dishes! But the sages said that didn’t matter: you could
never be sure if someone’s professed need were real. It was up to you
to be generous, period. Any other strategy would freeze out the
genuine poor for the sake of stopping the cheats. But Jmmanuel
seems to think you can tell the sincere sheep from the grafter goats.
Good luck.
Everybody recognizes that, if it comes right down to it, it is noble
to give your life for your country and what it stands for. Religious
martyrdom is the same, as long as one does not seek it out as some
kind of fanatic. In the last analysis, you have to preserve your
integrity at whatever price. But not according to this gospel: “Flee
from the unbelieving, because you should not lose your life for the
sake of truth and knowledge. No law requires that of you, nor is there
one that admits to such recklessness” (10:21).
“No
Sabbath is holy and no law dictates that on the sabbath no work may be
done” (13:10)—or at least no law that an anti-Semite would take
seriously, I guess.
“You are Peter, and I cannot build my teachings on your rock… I cannot
give you the key of the spiritual kingdom, otherwise you would open
false locks [=?] and wrong portals with it” (18:23-24). Take that,
Papists!
Jmmanuel saith: “Do not suppose that prayer is necessary, because you
will also receive without prayer if your spirit is trained through
wisdom” (21:15). And yet Jmmanuel prescribes a prayer:
“My spirit, you are omnipotent.
Your name be holy.
Let your kingdom incarnate itself in me.
Let your power unfold itself within me, on Earth and in the heavens.
Give me today my daily bread, so that I may recognize my guilt and
the truth.
And lead me not into temptation and confusion, but deliver me from
error.
For yours is the kingdom within me and the power and the knowledge
forever. Amen” (6:12-18)
But
what’s the difference, I guess, since you’d be praying to your own
self?
At
first, one might be tempted to think this Talamud of Jmmanuel
is a progressive, with-it kind of gospel for the new age: “Do away
with the enforcement of the old law that woman should be subject to
man, since she is a person like a man, with equal rights and
obligations” (12:25). But, Liberals, you may want to shield your eyes
from this one. It looks like grief for Gays, though leniency for
Lesbians: “And if two men bed down with each other, they should also
be punished, because the fallible are unworthy of life and its laws
and behave heretically; thus they should be castrated, expelled and
banished before the people. If, however, two women bed down with one
another, they should not be punished, because they do not violate life
and its laws, since they are not inseminating, but are bearing”
(12:6-7). How’s that again?
*
The Talmud of Jmmanuel,
alas, seems to have plenty of fans. It deserves none. But then, on the
other hand, maybe people get the gospel they deserve. Maybe there are
some devout UFO skinheads who are ecumenical haters of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims. This gospel is just right for them. But even
so, a visit to a psychiatrist might be better.