Among the more interesting facets of the Talmud Immanuel (see above) is the strong belief that the book has inspired in some people. Retired professor Jim Deardorff has a website dedicated to "scientifically" defending the genuineness of the Talmud Jmmanuel document. Don't be too impressed by his title; Deardorff is a retired professor of Atmospheric Sciences. In relation to ancient documents he is no professor.
It would not be meaningful to comment on everything at Deardorff's site. The sort of verse-by-verse argumentation that Deardorff uses tends to draw our attention away from the main issues and get us bogged down with details. Therefore, rather than dispute individual claims, I shall concentrate on the basics.
Deardorff makes an important distinction: we can examine reality with an open mind, or we can decide in advance that certain things are intrinsically impossible. If we assume that space aliens do not exist, or that it is unthinkable that they are in touch with certain select humans beings -- then we have closed minds and will of course not believe any of the claims regarding the TJ document. However, if we examine the document with scientifically open minds and admit that such alien contacts are possible, we will (according to Deardorff) have to admit that the TJ claims are credible. Or (expressed the other way around), the TJ is credible only if intervention by space aliens is a real possibility.
Difference in the basis of credibility
At this point we should note that the evidence for the genuineness of the Bible does not presuppose any intervention by God or any other power whose existence cannot be scientifically established. The evidence depends entirely on manuscripts and sources which can be examined by science. If we claim that the Bible is the Word of God, we enter into the realm of religious faith. But the genuineness of the Biblical manuscripts is scientifically examinable regardless of religion.
The credibility of TJ is based on the statements of a single man, Eduard Meier. Outside of his claims there is not a shred of evidence. His story involves several other people, but on further reading you will find that Meier has taken great care to remove all possibility of examination. All material evidence, all other witnesses, every solid independent fact that could have been subjected to scrutiny, is conveniently unavailable. Meier is certainly not the only person with an amazing story to tell. Thousands around the world tell stories about "flying saucers", abductions by aliens, sightings of Bigfoot, Elvis, angels, or the Loch Ness monster. Dreams that came true, omens and precognitions, telepathy and telekinesis. Such reports of unknown or scientifically unexamined phenomena carry no scientific weight whatsoever.
Below, Deardorff's text is on the left -- as quoted directly from his website -- and my comments are on the right. (Any text in red in the left column is also mine.)
Without the originals, as in the case of the Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ), one has only its surviving co-discoverer's word that it had been in the form of scrolls, somewhat crumbly in places despite the resin encasement in which they had been preserved. However, this is much more than scholars have to go on with respect to their studies of the New Testament gospels, for example, for which neither the originals nor their first translations or copies, nor their second copies... exist, and for which of course no eyewitness testimony exists. |
The word of one living person is "much more" than the existing manuscript evidence for the New Testament? Hilarious. For the credibility of the real NT, see under "Has the Bible been censored?" on this site. |
|
When the TJ scrolls were translated into German during the years between 1963 and 1974, occasional peculiarities within the Aramaic writing found their way into the German text, through having been translated rather literally. These are called Aramaisms. The most definite ones that have come to this investigator's attention are as follows: (full text of examples ommitted here) |
Among the examples of Aramaisms presented by Deardorff, we find "fell on their faces", "and not", "if not through", "they, the celestial sons", "A stone will turn into bread", "Amen", and "Behold!" It is irrelevant whether they are real aramaisms or not. But it is very relevant that most of them occur in the New Testament and in ancient apocryphs. Anyone imitating the literary style of the Bible would of course seize upon expressions which are untypical for his own modern language. |
|
Because there was no punctuation within the ancient texts, it was frequently the custom in Aramaic to alert the reader to the beginning of a quotation through use of an expression like "He answered and said...", with the "said" indicating the start of the quotation. |
This is a type of expression not just found in Aramaic but in many ancient texts from before the invention of puctuation. It is quite frequent in the Bible, and many modern Bible translations have kept the redundant "and said". Of course an imitator would notice this as a characteristic formula, and use it in his forgery. |
Sometimes the lack of any quotation marks leaves doubt as
to where a quotation ends and the narration recommences. Then the translator
or editor may misplace the end-quotation mark. There is one spot in the
TJ where this appears to have occurred: |
Proves nothing except that Meier made his quote a bit too long for Deardorff's taste. The quoted passage is interesting from other points of view though.
It speaks of sterilization of women, a surgical procedure which requires
opening the abdominal cavity. Such surgery was unknown before the 19th
century. This is clearly an anachronism. |
Another indication that the original had been an ancient text lacking punctuation is that in many places within the TJ's German text there is a series of three or more nouns, adjectives or verbs in a row, each separated by and ("und") rather than by a comma and a final and. A similar clue involving or (the German "oder") occurs at TJ 20:24 and 33:10, where three nouns or prepositional phrases are connected by two or's without use of intervening commas, as in "A or B or C," rather than the modern structure "A, B or C." In Meier's Foreword to the TJ (1978 version, p.8; 1996 version, p. xvi) one may notice that he uses the modern structure. |
The same applies here; these peculiarities are characteristic of non-punctuated text (including NT manuscripts) and have been retained in some translations, which is probably where Meier picked them up. |
Even a brief comparison of the TJ against the Gospel of Matthew discloses that one depends upon the other. The correspondence in order of events and sometimes in wording is too close to permit any other possibility. In comparing them, then, we continually raise the question: Is it more plausible that the writer of Matthew based his text upon the ancient TJ scrolls, or that a 20th-century literary hoaxer based the TJ upon Matthew? In these comparisons, the Matthean verse(s) are listed first under "Mt," followed by the parallel or cognate Talmud of Jmmanuel (TJ) verse(s) when the parallels exist. To access those Matthean verses that have received scholarly criticism or question, just click within the Table below. Explanations follow the Table. (long table omitted here) |
Deardorff presents a table of parallells where numbers in blue and green color indicate that the Matthew text has received "valid questions and criticisms" from scholars, "to which the TJ is not subject". He then claims that the number of criticized passages in Matthew is greater than the number of criticized passages in "Talmud Immanuel", and takes this as proof that TJ is the original and Matthew the distorted rewrite. This is very unscholarly. It's like putting two cars beside each other, subjecting car A (but not car B) to a thorough technical inspection -- and then presenting the examination results of car A as proof that the unexamined car B is better! He digs up "criticism" on passages in Matthew from certain select scholars, but presents no results of similar scholarly examinations of TJ. Probably because there are none; serious scholars wouldn't touch TJ with a ten foot pole. In fact, the results of scholarly examination of Matthew indicate the opposite of what Deardorff thinks. The genuine ancient text of Matthew is the result of a complex process where information was gathered from various sources such as the synoptic text and others. What we have today is a collection of Jesus stories and sayings edited together to form a whole. The very fact that it is not the work of a single writer, strengthens the probability that it is not a hoax. A problem-free, polished "biography of Jesus" would have a much higher hoax probability. |
|
I have tried not to present "invalid" criticisms based only upon assumptions that with hindsight appear to be false, even when they support the TJ's text over the Matthean text. The most common "invalid" assumptions are: (a) The supposition that a Matthean verse is non-genuine merely because it or a portion of it is not found in Mark; (b) The supposition that [Suppositions c through f ommitted] |
Deardorff attempts to make his presentation look more scholarly by discarding a number of suppositions that would seem to support his case. He does not tell us where these suppositions come from and it would be highly surprising of they were the products of 20th century Bible scholars. It's clever. He invents some obviously false ideas which (if they were true) whould strengthen his case. Then he discards them to give us an impression of scientific honesty. However, in terms of relevance he might just as well have discarded the supposition that drunkenness is caused by pink elephants. He also fails to define what he means by "genuine" in this context. |
To each of the verse/passage comparisons in the table above a probability has been assigned that it could be a hoax, while avoiding the invalid suppositions listed above. Each probability, labeled PHoax, is a fractional value lying between 0 and 1; a value of 0.5 represents complete uncertainty whether the TJ is a hoax or not, judging from the particular verse comparison, a larger value represents probability that it is a hoax, and a smaller value represent probability that it is not a hoax. I estimated probability values to the closest 0.05 only, and have combined them for each Mt-TJ chapter's set of verse comparisons according to the rules for accumulating probabilities. (table omitted here) What is the resultant probability, then, based on the hypothesis that either the TJ is a hoax constructed from Matthew or that Matthew was constructed out of the TJ, that the entire TJ could be a hoax? Upon accumulating the above odds for the 28 Matthean chapters, one finds the overall chance that the TJ is a hoax to be around 2 x 10-112. This is no misprint. |
Scholars have long debated to what extent the utterances of Jesus in the gospels are genuine quotes, or have been formulated by the gospel writers. The difference is subtle. Let's say that I heard a famous person speak, a few years ago. His words made a lasting impression. Today I write a book about him. I think back and remember a couple of phrases he used. But most of what I remember is the gist of the speech, not the exact words. What Jesus says in the gospel of Matthew is probably a mix between real quotes and utterances formulated by the author to capture the gist of what he actually said. But Deardorff makes no allowance for a possibility other than "genuine" or "hoax". In his view, the gospel either reports every word exactly as Jesus said it, or it is an intentional distortion of the truth, designed to deceive readers. This is where he is wrong. Moreover, even if the evidence pointed to a serious distortion of Jesus, perpetrated by the gospel writers, this would say nothing whatsoever about the genuineness of the TJ. It would still remain an obvious hoax. Further, the probabilities which Deardorff has assigned to the verses of Matthew and TJ are subjective. Let me do my own version of math here, in similar way. Facts and their assigned probabilities for that TJ is a hoax:
So there it is, scientifically and mathematically proved: The probability that TJ is genuine is one in 628 zillion. And I'm not even a mathematician! :-) |
The reader is reminded, however, that many scholars exist who insist that Matthew is dependent upon Mark, that a hypothetical document "Q" once existed, that no such thing as the spirit world exists (they haven't studied the past-life, NDE and OBE data), and that UFOs aren't real and associated with extraterrestrials (they haven't studied the UFO phenomenon). | Scholar's research results (on the sources of NT texts) are here mixed with their personal religious beliefs (denial of the spiritual world) and opinions about UFO phenomena. All of which are lumped together to show how prejudiced they are. By the same logic, we can assume that all scientists who don't believe in a spiritual world or UFOs, will produce false scientific results. What Deardorff forgets to say is that his own theories depend on a religious belief in scientifically unproven claims such as telepathy and contacts with space aliens. |
The group of scholars who are best known for their deductions of genuine versus non-genuine Gospel verses is the Jesus Seminar. This group, once larger than 100 scholars, devoted one of their major efforts towards discussing and voting upon the genuineness of Matthew's teaching/discourse verses (see "Voting Records" in Forum 5, No. 1, March 1990). They judged 86% of these 719 Matthean verses to be non-genuine or probably non-genuine. |
The "Jesus Seminar" started with an agenda. Their basic approach was that "Christianity as we know it did not originate with Jesus of Nazareth". Rather, the religion was formed later by Paul and others who assigned to Jesus the role of Messiah. From that basic, pre-conceived assumption, the Jesus Seminar set out to distill from the NT the "real historic Jesus" by stripping away everything that smacked of Christianity. They are not the first to attempt this "demythologization" of Jesus. Regardles of whether they are right or wrong, it should be pointed out that the Jesus Seminar represents a radical, extreme position in modern exegetics. NOT a general scholarly consensus of any sort. |
Although this percentage is not so far from what the TJ indicates, this Seminar had few valid clues as to what was genuine and what not, and their batting average in this respect was dismal. They mainly assumed that "Jesus" genuinely spoke only weird or illogical, impractical utterances, such as "Turn the other cheek," "Love your enemies," and the parable of paying the workers in the vineyard the same wage whether they had worked one hour or all day. |
Deardorff finds it incredible that Jesus could have made "weird or illogical, impractical utterances". In other words, a "Jesus utterance" can only be genuine if Deardorff agrees with it. With this fallacious reasoning, Deardorff reveals himself not only as an anti-Christian, but also as a lousy scientist. Whether we agree or not has no scientific value whatsoever in assessing the genuineness of a historical quote. |
The 1992 German version of the Talmud Jmmanuel (TJ) edited by Eduard Meier differs very considerably in detail, though not in substance, from his 1978 German version. For scholarly, investigative reasons, the 1978 TJ may be preferable to the 1992 and later editions. Thus these differences are discussed here. Meier made the alterations at the prompting of one of his Pleiadian ET contactors named Ptaah... |
If there are space aliens around who know the exact wording, we should be able to get a complete version from them, no? Why even bother with trying to prove the TJ manuscript's genuineness when it is not needed for the information? |
Jim Deardorff has taken issue with my comments on the TJ and has provided more material, two further web pages with about 70,000 characters of text. He repeats untenable arguments which have already been debunked. He draws attention away from the truly critical facts, and focuses on side issues. I will deal with a few things here, but only briefly since I am sure that I'm wasting my breath, or keyboard...
Deardorff is a typical modern cultist in that he presents an unsubstantiated pseudo-religious belief, but tries to make it out as science. So did Rudolf Steiner (Antroposophy), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Ron L Hubbard (Scientology) and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation), among others. In an age when science has surpassed religion as provider of ultimate truths, new cults attempt to sell their message as "science". UFO cultism appeared after the second world war, much to the frustration of all those who were interested in scientifically examining reports of unidentified flying objects. People like George Adamski and Gloria Lee discovered that contacts with aliens was a selling message. It still is.
Deardorff's text is on the left, mine on the right.
|
In my discussion of the letter and attack, I mention that after this attack, U.S. newspapers reported how deplorable the "overkill" was in these June 20-22, 1974 air raids on the U.N. supervised Palestinian refugee camps, and that it was out of all proportion to the stated provocation. This tends to back up Rashid's claim. |
The idea that the Israelis would commit whole regiments in a large-scale attack, cause vast collateral damage and bring upon them intermational and UN condemnations, just to take out one guy, is preposterous. It's far more likely that Meier needed to put his fictional character in a violent situation in order to explain how the manuscript was lost. A Palestinian refugee camp would be ideal. |
|
It should not be surprising that certain top Israeli officials would be in close communication with certain of their top religious leaders, as church and state (synagogue and state) in Israel are of course inseparable. |
Like all conspiracy theorists, Deardorff makes extensive use of unsubstantiated suggestions.
The more absurd his claims are, the more likely Deardorff is to insert an "of course" in his text. We are asked to accept at face value a convoluted story where all inconsistencies, all lack of evidence, all unlikely statements are explained away with reference to conspiracies by unidentified government, military and religious authorities. This is not science. |
|
Meier learned in 1976 that Rashid and his family had been assassinated in that year. It would again be no surprise if that had been accomplished through the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. The assassination occurred in Baghdad, where Rashid and family had fled in 1974. The Mossad is well known for its successful operations. |
Considering the political tensions between Irak and Israel, do you honestly believe that an assasination like this could pass without a major outcry from the Irakis? Even in Irak, you can hardly wipe out a whole family without authorities and/or media taking notice. I also notice that two statements have been altered here. First, what has elsewhere been presented as a fact (that Rashid was killed by Israeli agents) is now suddenly just an unsubstantiated suggestion: "it would be no surprise if". Second, instead of just Rashid being assassinated, his whole family was now also killed. Conveniently. |
|
If Eldberg were to start read the TJ's Foreword more carefully, he would find part of the explanation there, in its front pages. There it states that "The spelling of Jmmanuel with a 'J' is no mistake, for according to the Pleiadians, this name is traced back to their forefathers, who spelled the name Jmmanuel in written language with a 'J'." | Unlike Deardorff, I prefer to treat manuscripts in a scholarly manner, as documents written by human beings, and without reference to divine intervention. Since neither the existence of God or of space aliens can be scientifically proved, I perform my analysis without taking their possible actions into consideration. In fact, any theory which presupposes the existence of such supernatural or unexamined forces, has no scientific value whatsoever. |
|
Meier was informed that some time after 1963 the tomb site had been covered over by a rockslide. | How convenient. It remains that as long as the site has not been identified and examined by archaeologists, its existence must remain pure speculation. |
|
Meier had earlier been informed, in a contact in 1956, that he would come into the possession of such a document, and that it would be part of his mission to promulgate it. He would not be able to do this if he had dutifully handed the scrolls over to Jordanian officials upon their discovery. So it's not written up in any archaeological records, and no archaeologists were in on the dig or informed about the matter. |
Anyone with the least interest in matters of truth and evidence should realize that documenting a find site is as important as retreiving the finds. You don't just dig a hole and pick up the goods. You shave off the dirt in small increments (ca 4 inches at a time, less when you reach a layer with finds). You draw maps of each new layer you uncover. When a find is made, even if it's just a piece of broken pottery, you draw it onto the map and take a photograph of it where it lies, before removing it. |
|
After learning from Rashid in 1963 of the essence of some of the TJ's gravest heresies for Judaism and Christianity, both he and Rashid of course realized that if the scrolls were to be turned over to authorities, or even to scholars, it would never see the light of day. So the translation project proceeded in secret, with Rashid to retain possession of the scrolls and Meier to be the recipient of Rashid's German translation. | As I have pointed out before, there are plenty of ancient manuscript finds with heretical contents which have not been suppressed. There are also quite a few non-religious scholars around who would be delighted to get their hands on an ancient document with anti-Christian or anti-Jewish content. If Meier and Rashid had any intention of making their find believable, there still remains no reason for why they did not photograph the scrolls. |
|
It should be mentioned that a part of Meier's philosophy borrows from that of his ET contactors: People should not be forced to believe what they cannot tolerate, or what they are not at all yet prepared to believe. (The UFO phenomenon has been proceeding under this same guideline.) Hence Semjase at times omitted material from Meier's Contact Reports that had occurred during their conversations, and it is possible that Meier is withholding information that would directly tend to validate the TJ's genuineness. | So evidence exists but is being kept hidden? Meier wants to present the truth -- but not so that we are forced to believe it? He is deliberately making his case weaker so that there will be room for doubt? In other words, Meier does not want rational, scientifically trained people to believe his story. Evidently, he is promoting a cult. |
|
In Meier's Contact Reports, before 1977, Meier had referred to Rashid as "M. Rashid," to provide him with some anonymity (Rashid being a very common Palestinian name). This was to help protect him and his family from further persecution. Also, in the 1978 TJ he kept him anonymous in the Foreword, though not in the copy of Rashid's 1974 letter published in the rear of the TJ, which he may have attached only after learning of Rashid's assassination in 1976. He has since desired to keep the name of the village anonymous in which Rashid and relatives had lived in Palestine, to protect the latter from possible assassination, as it can be imagined that some of them may have been aware of Rashid's translation project. | How convenient. Doesn't it strike you as odd that there are so many holes in this story, all of which are covered up with reference to mysterious conspiracies, convenient land slides, conveniently dead people, commands from space aliens and other circumstances which are obviously designed to put all possible evidence safely out of the reach of scholarly and scientific examination? |
|
From what has been learned, Rashid had been a lay priest in Greece some time before 1948, so I suspect he was never ordained. If Meier knows where he preached in Greece, he is not disclosing that, either, for the same reason, since Rashid's mother and some of her relatives may have lived in that place, and may have been informed of the TJ. | There is no such thing in Greek Orthodoxy as "lay priests". Laymen who preach might exist, but would need a special permission from the bishop, which means there must be records. |
|
The answer to all these questions is simple and obvious. The cave, Rashid and the scrolls never existed. This conclusion can come only if one's mind is already made up. | My mind is made up because I have examined Deardorff's evidence and found it to be utter balderdash. All he has managed to do is to systematically present weak excuses for why every piece of real evidence for the TJ is unavailable. In contrast to him, I am using a scientific method which involves asking for evidence. For the TJ, there is NONE. |
After this, Deardorff again writes bout the alleged superior credibility of TJ in comparison with the NT. As before, his evidence is in two parts: Exegetical criticism against the gospel of Matthew, and attempts to prove from the TJ text itself that it is "superior". Both notions have been debunked elsewhere on this site, and there is nothing new in Deardorff's material.
Further on in Deardorff's text it becomes evident that he believes in other hoaxes, too. Even such which have been examined by scholars and revealed as fakes with no trace of a doubt. I guess that should not come as a surprise.