- Dec 21, 2012
- 6,777
- 781
- Country
- United States
- Faith
- Oneness
- Marital Status
- Private
- Politics
- US-Others
This statement is severely misleading, on multiple points.
Mysticism is just pursuit of knowledge of divine mysteries. It is not a unique trait of "the occult" or of "cults".
There was no "original Orthodox Judaism". The Jewish religion has been ever-evolving, as every religion has done in history. The oldest evidence we have was of polytheistic Canaanites. Some of them banded together and founded kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Both were thoroughly polytheistic. By the middle of the first millennium BC, Israel was gone and Judah was perpetually under foreign rule. Judah's national polytheism evolved into national monolatry, then national monotheism, which splintered between different sects (Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, etc). But polytheism still existed within Judah, and among Judeans who had settled abroad. Mysticism has always been a part of Judean religion. The most obvious example of mysticism is the prophets themselves, who sought to communicate with the divine directly. This is especially the case with the apocalyptic prophets, since an "apocalypse" is literally a "revelation" of those divine mysteries.
There was also no "original" Christianity. If we're starting with Jesus, he was not a Christian. He was an apocalyptic Galilean who shared certain common views with Pharisees and Essenes. The Transfiguration event is an expression of mysticism. Jesus' eschatology in the gospel of Matthew is straight out of 1 Enoch, one of the clearest expressions of mysticism from Second Temple Judaism. If we're starting with Jesus' earliest followers, there were multiple competing sects. If we look to Paul, he practiced mysticism (his "revelation" of Jesus as God's son, his vision in 2 Cor 12), and taught mystic practices to his churches (prophecy, visions, and tongues).
"Orthodox" Judaism didn't emerge until a while after the second temple's fall, and even then the Rabbinic literature testifies to mystic practices, such as merkava and hekalot vision-seeking. "Orthodox" Christianity only began forming in the late second century (since there were still competing sects). Mysticism was still common in this time, such as the visions in the Shepherd of Hermas or the followers of Montanus.
Judaism and Christianity both have their roots in mysticism. Their mysticism just happens to not look like the cartoonish rituals people imagine are practiced by "the occult".
We have almost no historically reliable information about Jesus' earliest disciples. The twelve apostles were not "Christians", they were Torah-abiding members of Second Temple Judaism who believed the messiah had come. They evidently believed the end of the world was coming in their lifetime, which the Synoptic gospels show Jesus teaching. This tells us Jesus and his disciples believed certain apocalyptic traditions, which were common to the late Second Temple period. Where apocalypticism is found, you're looking at mysticism. Jesus and the disciples did not "combat" mysticism, it was necessary for their apocalypticism.
You say there was no original Orthodox Judaism, that statement is false. What is true is that the Jews were always in trouble with God, for adding what is not pure to God and Judaism.
Throughout history, there has been Orthodox Jewish Rabbis who were against Kabbalah. There are still Jewish movements today that are anti-Kabbalah. Hasidic Judaism is a movement within Haredi Judaism that focuses on the study of the spiritual and joyful elements of the Talmud. It has its roots in the anti-Kabbalah movements of the 13th century.
Upvote
0