Over Shabbat, I read some more of the Rav’s latest shiurim, and then a whole bunch of gemaras.

In true ‘Rav’ style, he also covered a whole bunch of topics including when ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’ actually lived (something I’ve been pondering for quite a while now….) and he also gave a bunch of references in the Gemara, which he said everyone should go and read.

====

This is a very short snippet, BH, I will try to translate way more of this shiur, from the motzae Shabbat before Purim.

This occurs in the middle of a discussion about ‘Alexander the Great’, and when he actually met ‘Shimon HaTzaddik’:

How long did the Temple stand for? How long?

You have to go and learn all the Tractates, Yoma, Avoda Zara, to know all the cheshbonot (timings).

How long did the Temple stand for? How long?

There’s then a few references for Avoda Zara 9a, and also for Yoma 9a-b – which led me to reading a whole bunch of other stuff in the Gemara.

====

For this post, the bit that caught my attention was the discussion of Ben Katin, King Munbaz, and his mother, Queen Helena of Adiabene, and the gifts they gave to the Second Temple, in Yoma 37a.

Here’s the bit that caught my attention, from a footnote in the Artscroll Edition:

Rashi (to Bava Batra 11a)…. says [Munbaz] was one of the Hasmonean Kings.

This is probably derived from Seder Olam Zuta, where Munbaz is described as the son of the Herodian King Agripas (Agrippa) son of Hordos (Herod).

==

There is a whole big balagan around these people – and the reason for that is that one member of this family launched the civil war against Rome, and became the template for the historical ‘Yoshki’ that was actually satirised by the Roman writers of the xtian Gospels.

I am in the middle of trying to unpick it all, and I am making some headway, BH.

In this post, I wanted to share with you where I’ve got to trying to figure out more stuff about this ‘King Agrippa’ and Munbaz / Queen Helena of Adiabene, because they hold the key to understanding what really happened around Judea’s great war against Rome, and the destruction of our Temple.

And of course, how that whole story was then twisted and propagandised to demonise the Jews, and create a new ‘hybrid’ religion to pull both Jews and gentiles away from the Torah, and a genuine belief in God, into the net of a Roman-created religion designed to enslave its followers, in a bunch of different ways.

It’s big stuff.

==

The first thing to understand, is that the writings of ‘Josephus’, and also the gospels, are Roman-sponsored government propaganda.

They contain some factual information, but especially when it comes to what was going on around the Jewish Revolt and the ‘Yeshua’ character, they are full of deliberate lies and deception.

The winners always write the history books, don’t you know?

So going forward, where I find a Talmudic source that contradicts Josephus, or ‘accepted history’, I am going with the Talmudic source as likely to be way more truthful and factual.

So now, let’s dive in to the next chapter of this extraordinary tale.

====

The story begins HERE, where this is a Geni discussion trying to figure out the real family tree of Titus, the Roman destroyer of Jerusalem.

If you’re interested, take a look, but the main thing to note is that this discussion contained a link to a different, simpler, and way less complicated family tree for the family of Herod the Great, that appears on the old Rootsweb site, HERE.

I started clicking around, like you do, and very quickly, I realised I was tripping over some game-changing information.

====

This is a picture of the family tree I put together based on this Rootsweb site:

==

And this is the basic information you need to know:

Herod the Great, that same evil king who built Caesaria, and took over from the Hasmonean Kings…. apparently also descends from the Hasmoneans, patrilineally.

Like this:

Eleazar Auran (Maccabeus – Hasmonean brother 4) > Jason (born in Idumea) > Antipas (born in Idumea) > Antipater II m Cypros of Nabatea > Herod the Great, Roman client king of Judea.

====

I am still trying to piece things together, but it seems at least possible that this ‘Jason’ is the ‘Jason-Jesus’ who is currently buried in the middle of Rehavia, that we wrote about HERE.

That guy was the hellenising High Priest who was in the middle of the war against Antiochus, and who made a lot of trouble at the time of the Chanuka miracle. No-one knows what happened to him, but there was a suggestion he somehow disappeared off to Sparta, or somewhere.

Now, it looks like maybe he laid low in Idumea…. and became the great-grandfather of Herod the Great.

====

Also, let’s take a closer look at Jason’s father, ‘Eliezer Auran’, the Maccabee brother who we know nothing about, other than the book of Maccabees tells us he got crushed to death by an elephant.

Here’s how that tale is usually told, from HERE:

According to 1 Maccabees 6:43–46, during the Battle of Beit Zechariah, Eleazar identified a war elephant that he believed to carry the Seleucid King Antiochus V, due to the special armor the elephant wore. He decided to endanger his life by attacking the elephant and thrusting a spear into its belly. The dead elephant then collapsed upon Eleazar, killing him as well. 

Despite this heroic effort, the smaller Jewish army was defeated in the battle. Josephus wrote that Eleazar, though killing many enemy soldiers, did not gain any real effect besides the name he made for himself. In another variation of this story which appears in the Megillat Antiochus, Eleazar’s body is discovered after sinking in the excrement of an elephant.

====

To be honest, I always found this story a little strange, because how would stabbing an elephant to death ‘kill Antiochus’ in the first place, even if he was sitting on it?

And at this stage, re-reading it, it’s sounding to me like it’s made up bubbie meises….

It’s likely the book of Maccabees was also written as deceptive propaganda, at least in parts, and to cover the trail of what seems to have been an awful civil war between the Kohanim of the ‘House of Tzadok’, which gave us both the hellenising High Priests, as well as the Maccabbee family members who were still loyal to Hashem.

And it seems, that ‘Elazar’ may not have been on the right side of that equation, after all.

====

So, Elazar’s son seems to have been born in Idumea, before Idumea was conquered by ‘John Hyrcanus I’ and forcibly converted to Judaism, as per the tale we are told by Josephus, who we already know is not reliable.

And that also explains how ‘Antipater II’ comes to be the trusted advisor of the Hasmonean King Hyrcanus II – they are actually close family.

Except, that Antipater II either isn’t Jewish, or is ‘Jewish’ the same way people are ‘Jewish’ if they have one Jewish grandparent….

And his son, Herod, is Rome’s choice for King of Judea, after Mark Antony has his main Hasmonean rival for the throne, King Antigonus Mattityahu, crucified and then beheaded….

====

This is already pretty shocking.

But there’s more.

While Josephus and ‘standard history’ tells us that there were two King Agrippas, the Talmud only ever talks about one ‘King Agrippa’.

And it was while I was trying to piece together more of that side of things, that I stumbled across this blog:

http://therealmessiahbook.blogspot.com/

It’s written by someone called Stephan Huller, who describes himself like this:

of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world. “I grew up thinking that I was the last of the mohicans,” he muses. “All of this might sound kind of dramatic, yet that’s just the way I was raised. It was that kind of thinking that inspired the research behind this book.” Stephan has literally spent two decades piecing together the origins of his tradition’s fusion of the New and Old Testaments with a unique Jewish slant. His book The Real Messiah is scheduled to be released by Duncan Baird Publishing in the UK and Sterling Books in the US.

====

What does a Frankist have to do with ‘King Agrippa’s messianic hopes’ 2,000 years ago?

I already knew I was going to learn some interesting stuff here.

Long story short, he  has a few posts on his blog (from the last decade…) that seem to be suggesting that there really was only one ‘King Agrippa’, and that Josephus seems to have falsified or distorted a lot of the information surrounding him.

And also, that this ‘King Agrippa’ was actually starting to make a lot of real teshuva, before he conveniently disappears out the story in 44 CE, apparently poisoned to death.

==

Have a look at the following blog posts for more details, and then I’ll bring a couple of snippets below:

https://marcusjuliusagrippa.blogspot.com/2008/05/danny-schwartz-on-agrippa-part-two.html

Snippet:

The first time “Agrippa” appears in the chronology of Jewish War appears at 2:178 which reads “In the mean time Agrippa, the son of that Aristobulus who had been slain by his father Herod, came to Tiberius, to accuse Herod the tetrarch.” The text might well have offered a different explanation of who this ‘Herod’ who killed Agrippa’s father. Nevertheless we need only note for the moment that the parallel text in Antiquities makes clear that the year is 37 CE.

====

https://marcusjuliusagrippa.blogspot.com/2008/05/agrippa-son-of-king-coin.html

He’s talking about a coin that was found that shows there is only one Agrippa:

Once we throw the idea of the coin depicting TWO DIFFERENT AGRIPPAS on each of its sides out the window we are left with the certain fact that ‘KING AGRIPPA’ on the front of the coin is one and same with ‘AGRIPPA THE SON OF THE KING’ on the other. As we shall see this is proved by other Agrippa coins from the period. However for the moment we are left with one nagging question – if ‘King Agrippa’ is the ‘Agrippa son of the King’ – who is ‘the King’?

====

This guy says ‘the King’ is Caligula, but the Talmud via Rashi already told us who ‘the King’ actually is: Herod.

And here is another screenshot, that shows you the basic direction this Frankist descendent’s blog is heading in:

====

It’s interesting, how Kohanim are always in the middle of this story of false messiahs.

Shabtai Tzvi / SHACH also fits that bill.

And also in our day, there are people who descend directly from Kohanim, who seem to believe in the ‘Moshiach ben Aharon’ that the Essenes apparently were also waiting for.

====

There’s a lot to unpick here…. And I’m not going to get through everything in this post.

But, I’m trying to share the information as I go along, because each bit of clarity that gets a wider audience on this topic will lead to more ‘birur’ and more truth coming out.

So now, here’s another snippet from another one of Huller’s blogs on the topic, HERE, including excerpts from Robert Graves’ books about the Emperor Claudius, who was known to be a close friend of Agrippa in Rome.

====

Robert Graves on Agrippa the Messiah

You might also like this article: