Pesher

THE CAMBRIAN PESHER

THE VOICE OF THE DESPOSYNI TO THE AMERICAN DISPERSION

St. Joseph's Day, 1999 (March 19, 1997, vulgar)

Brethren:

In the library basement, in the Special Documents Department of our local university, you will find the Statutes at Large for the State of Kansas for many of the years since its statehood, just prior to the Civil War. In the back of these volumes you will find the official text of the U.S. Constitution under which the State is governed. In that text you will find the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. Here is how the text reads:

"If any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor, or shall, without the consent of Congress, accept and retain any present, pension, office or emolument of any kind whatever, from any emperor, king, prince, or foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen of the United States, and shall be incapable of holding any office of trust or profit under them, or either of them."

Researchers have found the above "original" 13th Amendment in the old law books of all the States which were admitted prior to the Civil War. And a debate currently rages over the significance of this Amendment. (I obtained a notarized copy of the above, just in case said volumes "disappeared" from the library shelves, an anomaly known to occur when documents are found which embarrass the current government.)

I do not intend to spend much time discussing this Amendment, except to point out that its purpose was to perfect the independence of the United States by purging its citizenry of dual loyalties - something reminiscent of Biblical ways. I bring up the lost 13th Amendment (or the "Titles of Nobility" Amendment, as some call it) in my God & Government Classes to illustrate how easily history is rewritten to deceive the masses. Virtually no one in the United States knows about this bona fide Amendment which has never been repealed. We are all taught in school that the 13th Amendment is the one which freed the slaves. That is listed in some of these volumes as the 14th Amendment. No one seems to know that the War of 1812 was precipitated by England's attempt to stop its ratification, and why Washington D.C., with many of its records, was burned to cloud its validity. No one knows that for half a century this Amendment prevented foreign attempts to control our judiciary and the legal profession. Nor does anyone seem to know who was responsible for writing it out of the Constitution. Whoever it was, must command astonishing power and influence over the American people and even the world - because the truth of this Amendment was lost in a mere generation.

Now, I want to turn to Church history. The above rewrite has occurred within the last century, during the time of a "free" press and the world of books. If such a thing could happen to our founding document, is it possible, that over the course of the centuries, we have lost the true story of Christianity?

If you have been following the controversy surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls, you will know that a major paradigm shift is about to take place in Christian dogma. I have refrained from discussing it in this publication because I have been waiting for researchers in the field to publish their final conclusions. However, the recent release of Robert Eisenman's 1000-page tome - James the Brother of Jesus (Viking/Penguin Books, 1996) - has compelled my early response - one which, of course, will require more than one report.

Eisenman's thesis is not new. He has been arguing it for over a decade. His quest to find missing puzzle pieces to the story of the 1st Century Church led to his successful crusade to get the complete texts of the Scrolls released to the public. Party-line researchers have nervously complained of Eisenman's approach. Fundamentalist conspiracy watchers (like Texe Marrs) are so upset by the results that they claim the Scrolls are an elaborate hoax! But what is remarkable about Eisenman's research, is that he did not need the Scrolls to prove his thesis. He was stunned to find his evidence in the long-accepted documents of the Early Church and the Scriptures themselves. Our traditional understanding of the New Testament Church is about to be turned on its head.

What is his thesis? Simply put, it is that Christianity is a religion which was founded, not by the Apostles, but by Jesus and His brothers (who were called the Desposyni). It was not in any sense a new religion, but a return to an ancient one: the militantly Messianic vision of the Patriarchs. In the words of Eisenman:

The leader of the "early Church" or "Jerusalem Assembly" in Palestine from the 40s to the 60s, James met his death at the hands of a hostile Establishment before the events that culminated in the Uprising against Rome and the destruction of the Temple (66-70 CE). To have been "Head" or "Bishop" of the "Jerusalem Church" (Ecclesia) or "Community" was to have been the head of the whole of Christianity, whatever this might be considered to have been in this period. Not only was the centre at Jerusalem the principal one before the destruction of the Temple and the reputed flight of the Jamesian community to a city beyond the Jordan called Pella, but there were hardly any others of any importance. . .

But the subject of the person and teaching of James in the Jerusalem of his day is not only more important simply than his relationship to the interpretation of the Scrolls, it is quite independent of it. Even without insisting on any parallel or identification of James with the Righteous Teacher of the Scrolls, the Movement led by James - and it does seem to have been a "Movement" - will be shown to have been something quite different from the Christianity we are now familiar with. James' relationship to the Scrolls is only collateral not intrinsic to this.

One of the central theses of this book will be the identification of James as the centre of the "opposition alliance" in Jerusalem, involved in and precipitating the Uprising against Rome in 66-70 CE. The Dead Sea Scrolls, like other recent manuscript discoveries - as for instance those from Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, which came to light at about the same time as the Scrolls - while important, only further substantiate conclusions such as this, providing additional insight into it.

In the course of this book, it will become clear that James was the true heir and successor of his more famous brother Jesus and the leader at the time of whatever the movement was we now call "Christianity", not the more Hellenized character we know through his Greek cognomen Peter, the "Rock" of, in any event, the Roman Church.

- from the Introduction

Before returning to Eisenman's treatment of this subject, it is important to realize that the Church of Cambria teaches that there were two apostasies in the Early Church. The first one occurred in the First Century and represented those Messianic Jews which returned to Pharisaical Judaism. They rejected the Messianic claims of Jesus and his brothers. They collaborated with the Herodians and sought the destruction of the Jamesian Community. That movement was destroyed in 70 A.D. at the destruction of the Temple. This is the apostasy the New Testament warns against with such urgency.

The second apostasy occurred in the Second Century after the Bar Kochba rebellion. This apostasy produced "Gentile" Christianity which used Paul as its theological authority. They sought to rid themselves of the rigid compliance with Mosaic law and the Messianic episcopacy of the Jamesian succession. The Classical form of Christianity, such as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, came from this apostasy. It established a rogue episcopacy and an antinomian theology.

The Protestant Reformation represented a halfway reform. Its Puritan wing flirted with the restoration of Old Testament law, but fell back into the Classical hermeneutic. It rejected the pseudo-authority of the Catholic episcopacy, but it did not embrace the Davidic episcopacy. It adopted presbyterianism, instead. So, while we can say that Protestantism is not nominally under the rule of pseudo-christ bishops, it is still a headless movement because it lacks the bishops of the Desposyni. It is the head which gives unity to the Body. Protestantism lies in a thousand pieces.

The Churches of Cambria have always had the Desposyni at their head, even though it was not always generally known that such was the case. American Protestantism, to a large degree, represents the gathering of the Celtic dispersion. What it lacks to complete the Reformation is the Davidic ministry: those who are masters of the Torah in the Jamesian tradition found in the Desposynic episcopacy.

Satan and his followers hate the Jamesian tradition for several reasons. They hate it because they want to deface and destroy the image of God in man. They do this through perversions like sodomy, usury, occultism, and war. Opposite to these things is the Law of Moses which teaches family, the jubilee, virtue, and providence.

They hate the Jamesian tradition because it teaches the present reality of Christ's kingdom through His kinsmen according to the flesh. It cannot be spiritualized away. The Vine of David continues to grow and challenges Satan's control over the Adamic race.

Understandably, my readers have reason to be puzzled at my apparent inconsistency over Church government. Sometimes, I sound as if bishops are a great evil. Other times, I sound like they are God-ordained. Why is this so? It is not because bishops are the problem; the problem is who the bishops are. The Davidic episcopacy is one which grew organically from the elderships of family governments. Ecclesiastical episcopacies (like the Roman Catholic) do not. They are the result of the Mahuzzim heresy and a misplaced faith in "super spiritual" people to be the leaders. (A problem in Protestantism, as well. Many Pastors do not claim to be Popes, but certainly act like Popes.)

Returning now to Eisenman, he takes a dim view of the reliability of the New Testament as historical documents. Here is why:

A. James, the the ruler of the Church, appears without introduction and without explanation in the book of Acts. Considering the fact that Acts offers detailed explanation on lesser figures (Priscilla and Aquilla, for instance), it defies credulity to believe that something so momentous to Christianity - as the first successor of Jesus - would be, so unceremoniously, written out of the book.

He is right on this point. The accounts which relate to James appear without telling us who he is and how he came to hold his office. It really does appear as if there is a missing chapter (or chapters) from the book of Acts.

B. Reliable [and respected], extra-Biblical sources fill in the gaps. Curiously, certain events in the life of James parallel certain others in Acts. For instance, according to the Clementine literature, James was appointed bishop to the Jerusalem Church at the same time Matthias was chosen to replace Judas Iscariot. It was our Lord's request that James serve as His successor to lead the Church. Acts tells us about Matthias but not about James.

In another event, the confrontation between Stephen and the Sanhedrin also parallels the attempted murder of James, by none other than Saul of Tarsus (later Paul) - who threw him down the steps of the Temple and left him for dead - while the mob proceeded to drag Stephen away to be stoned to death. Acts is silent about this incident in relation to James. What heightens the mystery is the fact that Ignatius tells us that Stephen was James' personal assistant. How is it possible that a historical document can so completely ignore someone so important to Christianity?

Some traditional historians have dismissed these sources as pseudepigraphal. Unfortunately for them, the Dead Sea Scrolls have forced scholars to acknowledge their authenticity.

C. Eisenman concludes that Acts and even the Gospels represent a cover-up, a bungled attempt to write-out the Lord's brethren (the Desposyni) out of the story of early Christianity. What was the motive? Eisenman believes the cover-up represented an attempt by Gentile Christianity to disassociate itself from the Messianic (and revolutionary) character of the Jamesian community. They wanted Rome to think of Christianity as just another "other worldly" religion that posed no real threat to Establishment power.

After the destruction of the Temple in the holocaust of 70 AD, the Christians who fled the siege of Jerusalem in obedience to our Lord's warning (Matthew 24, et al), returned as the uncontested spiritual leaders of Judea. Their efforts to Christianize the region and restore the Kingdom of God proceeded until it culminated in the Bar Kochba rebellion of 134 AD. At this point, the Christian Jews had no choice but to resist the Roman juggernaut. The Romans were in the midst of plans to erect a temple to Jupiter on the old Temple site. This would have made Jerusalem the center of a pagan religion. The Christians were compelled to stop the plan.

The Jerusalem Church expected material support from the Gentile churches. But fearing Roman reprisal and the prospects of living under Mosaic law should the Messianic Jews succeed, they did not support the revolt. The insurgents fought valiantly, but the weight of the Empire proved to be overwhelming. Gentile Christians were pressed into service. They were viewed as traitors, otherwise. This gave rise to the Catholic version of the "Bar Kochba persecution". What such revisionism really represents is a whitewash of the Imperial quest to exterminate Davidic Christianity and the Jamesian community.

(The Gentile Christians paid dearly for their dereliction in the Imperial persecutions which followed in subsequent generations.)

So then, do we have a cover-up? If so, why? By whom?

Eisenman, in his sincerely cynical mode, thinks Herodian Christians, pals of Paul, rewrote the Gospels and Acts to appease the Romans - this in the same manner as Josephus. Christianity was not the only religion that was re-made. So was Judaism. In the early 2nd Century, there began what was to be called Rabbinic Judaism. Like the Pauline Christians, they sought accommodation with Rome and attempted to write-out the Messianism of the 1st Century. They produced a new Old Testament text (Masorete) to replace the Septuagint. They removed the "Apocryphal" books from the canon. And they re-worked the Talmud to excoriate Jesus Christ and His Messianic legacy. Finally, they gave-up Palestine as their homeland by placing God's Kingdom off to some distant wonderland.

In either case what can be said is that Messianic Judaism (or Davidic Christianity - they are all synonymous terms) disappeared from Classical history. This is partly because it lost, and it is the winner who writes the history books - in this case - Roman collaborators. But it also vanished because its proponents were exterminated and ceased to exist physically. All we have left are the scraps provided for us from the ancient historians and the archaeological remains of ghost towns like Qumran: apparently the wilderness camp for a branch of the Jamesian church where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found.

Of course, such material is not new to the Church of Cambria, which can be proven easily if one takes the time to read the books and literature we provide. The Cambrian Church has known this because it is, itself, the offspring of Davidic Christianity, spiritually and genetically. However, it has always been loyal to the Canon of Scripture. Like Eisenman, we believe there was a cover-up. Unlike Eisenman, we believe it was a Divinely-inspired cover-up. Although the Early Fathers resisted the claims of the Gnostic heretics that they were privy to a secret oral tradition in the Early Church, they never denied that there was such a tradition, or if they did, as in the case of Clement of Alexandria, they admitted it privately. This oral tradition was known as "the Mysteries" which were taught to trusted men. Many of the early leaders mention these Mysteries, the secrets of the Church.

They taught that portions of the New Testament were written in code. I say "portions" because the Gnostics thought it all was in code and came up with some rather stupid interpretations. The coded messages were always flagged in the text. The book of Revelation was one of them. So were the Kingdom parables. The Gospel of John was called "the mystical Gospel". If you knew the code, you could translate the message.

One of the mysteries was the existence of the Desposyni - the descendants of the Lord's family who were called to rule the Churches of God. Satan's minions sought their extermination. To protect them, the Fathers wrote them out of the text of the New Testament writings. Yet, enough markers were left in the Scriptures for us to find the hidden trail. Eisenman stumbled onto that trail, but questioned their motives, as most liberals do.

As I write this, it is St. Joseph's Day, the husband of Mary and father of the Desposyni family. He was the principal heir of the Davidic Covenant in his day. However, because he was a descendant of the line of Jechoniah, he was barred from the throne by a curse. It was left to Jesus, an heir through Mary's line, to lift the curse by His sacrificial death upon the Cross. Through His Atonement, the breach was healed and the Throne was restored to His kinsmen.

The Church of Cambria is a Desposynic Church. For that reason, it is fitting to honor its father: Joseph the Zadok.

In recent months Desposynic leaders have gone public about their existence, although we question the wisdom of it. There are many deceivers, as well. Therefore, we feel compelled to add our witness. We have changed our seal to reflect that fact and the name of this publication.