Transcription
So what Ezra saw his job as being now was to kind of bring about the new Israel, which would be America, by bringing in not just cabalistic text, but ultimately, you know, he's talking about all the learning at the East is going to come in. So all these things are going to come into America, and they're going to be purified, and then we'll go back out into the world with those things and bring truth and liberty to all these nations that are in darkness. You could almost say America is the new Israel, right? You know, America certainly is the new promised land.
Technically, there's nothing wrong with looking at a pattern in scripture and just sort of saying, "Hey, we see this playing out again." You know, all of our lives are fractal in that way, right? And so, that's not necessarily wrong. But obviously, in America, it gets carried to a certain place. Is there some truth to it in the sense that is there some sense of this, you know, America as kind of like the last place? Yeah.
Right. Um, when other religions come here, do they do they become more themselves or do they lose themselves?
Yeah. What do you think? This is Jonathan Pouro. Welcome to the symbolic world. All right. Hello everyone. And so it is the first Monday of Lent, and Deacon Sarapim and I are wondering why is it that we decided to have our final discussion about American religion and Cabala on this day? But why would we do this to ourselves? This is just how it's going to be. And so, uh, so that's what we're supposed to talk about.
I will say it's not going to be our final discussion of American religion. It's more like going to be our final look at the New York, New England kind of continuum that we've been looking at, which is, you know, there because America is just very large and has a lot of layers spiritually speaking. So obviously, if we were going to, we could do a whole different series where we talk about, like, the American Southwest and the Spanish mission and Our Lady of Guadalupe.
I want to take a bit of a pause and talk about something else.
Yeah. Know, we're going to definitely like, like this is as much modern, I'm really trying to stick this out for you guys, but this is about as much modern history as like I can really do. So we're going to have to take a bit of a pause and go back and talk about King Arthur or something, just to just to give me like a little palate cleanser, you guys. So this will be the last America one for now. But I do intend later this year, um, I would specifically like to go. I've been actually having a lot of good conversations with, um, actually a lot of Orthodox people about Our Lady of Guadalupe and the way that that icon has been kind of received within the American Orthodox tradition.
Um, and, uh, which I think is really wonderful and a nice kind of touch point of commonality. And so that, anyway, that those are things that I would like to talk about in the future. But for now,
Today, I promised you guys there would be some kavala, and then really have just never delivered on that promise. So, uh, I thought that what we'd do today is kind of go through the arguments and some of the story, uh, that's laid out in this book. By the way, a lot of the things I'll be referring to, uh, today will be from this book, which is called Kabala and the Founding of America: Early the Early Influence of Jewish Thought on the New World. A title and thesis which will not be remotely controversial for any reason in anything that's going on in today's world.
Especially not now.
Especially not right now.
Yeah. Like, all right. So the basic idea here, so he he opens up in a, um, at the beginning of the book, uh, the author, whose name is Brian Ogrren, he opens up with this, this kind of a sort of sets a scene. And the scene is a letter from Thomas Jefferson to John Adams in 1813. So two founding fathers of our nation. Um, although you can tell which one we really like better because there's no Adams memorial, uh, in the mall in DC. But in any case, um, so he he writes, and of course, Jefferson is a deist, but he's really interested in kind of enlightenment philosophy in general and enlightenment philosophical ideas about God. Adams is as well, but Adams is essentially he's a Unitarian, right? So neither of them are actually Trinitarian Christians, for, you know, you know, any by any definition that they, you know, and they would have said this themselves, they would have said, "Yeah, that's that's correct." So, uh, so he's writing to John Adams about the moral philosophy of, uh, the Hebrews. And he lists off the Mishna, the Gamarra, the Cababala, uh, the, I'm probably going to say this wrong, the Sephir Yetzirah, the Zohar, the Kutsari, and the Talmud. Lists all these off as things that he's reading. Jefferson is reading, you know, at the moment.
The Zohar.
Yeah. Reading the Zohar. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Um, and but what he says is that is he said, we really need to read and understand these texts as part of our project of founding the American nation.
And his project, uh, the way he puts it is that he's he's looking for, uh, and this will not be complimentary. He's looking for diamonds in a dung hill. That's his phrase.
Mhm. So the idea is that there's, uh, um, and this goes back to this this idea that was a really big deal in the 17th and 18th centuries in, uh, first on the continent and then in America. But he's looking for this this idea of like the pure religion, the true religion. A lot of the later theosophy, you know, those those, you know, that whole world kind of comes from this idea that if you dig far enough back in the mystical systems of the Jews, the Muslims, etc., usually not Christian mysticism, by the way, sometimes, but usually not, >> that you can find the sort of pure religion. And, uh, this idea, which we'll get to more at the end of this conversation, that what Christianity is very good at doing is kind of managing people's moral behavior. But then what we also need is a kind of a a stronger mystical underpinning that will also, you know, satisfy that desire for, basically, the smart people, the intelligencia, you know, the people who are kind of at the top of the intellectual class. So, uh, his idea here is that if if if he could go through here and and kind of cross-reference the the the moral ethical teachings of these various texts with the moral teachings of Jesus, um, in the same way that he's trying to strip away the the teachings of Jesus from what he sees as being like Platonic, Gnostic, Rabbinic accretions. Uh, um, Adams, Adams, uh, is less charitable about this. He says, uh, in his response letter to Jefferson, he says that in order to, uh, actually properly examine all these Jewish texts, you would need the life of Methuselah. In other words, you have to live a very long time, and it would probably prove to be a wasted life.
Right? So this is the the kind of, um, you know, reductionist approach. But Ogrren's thesis is that Jefferson and Adams are actually late comers to a very long conversation that goes all the way back to the earliest, uh, history of Protestantism in North America, um, under the separatists who came here originally, separatists and the Puritans and so on. And so what he does is he tries to trace that path. And he traces it through the Scottish, uh, Christian Quaker theologian George Keith, who was born in 1638, to give you a sense of the area of time that we're looking at. This is mostly 17th, 18th century. Then, and from there, um, the Puritan minister Cotton Mather, and Cotton's father, Increase Mather, very famous and incredibly important, uh, Puritan authors at the time. And then, um, they had a disciple who was actually the very first, as far as we know, the very first Jewish convert, uh, in America, converted to congregational Christianity under Increase and Cotton, a guy named Judah Monis, who's going to be very important to the story. And then finally, uh, the congregational minister and the seventh president of, uh, of Yale University, Ezra Stiles, who died in 1795. So that kind of brackets all that off. So, uh, Jefferson and Adams are are talking about actually something which has been going on in their world for, you know, more than 100 years before them.
So, uh, so the, the very first chapter of this book, uh, begins with a really remarkable discovery, which is that there is, in fact, a, a 25-page, uh, cabalistic manuscript written in English, dates to the late 17th century, so late 1600s, and it belonged to Increase Mather. So you have these, you know, usually when we think about Puritans, we think of Calvinism, and we think of, you know, witch trials, and we think of all these things. And of course, the Mathers are involved in all that stuff. They're involved in all of that stuff. And their particular version of Christianity is, uh, what is usually referred to as American congregationalism. And basically, although there's a lot of different things going on, a lot of different influences going on within American Christianity, as we have talked about already, um, at the end of the day, almost all American Christianity owes various, uh, owes various debts to this, you know, to American Protestant congregationalism.
Um, but, uh, he has in his man, in his library, among a bunch of other Quaker tracts that he had also collected, he has this, um, this manuscript that was written, um, uh, with, you know, basically, it's a cabalistic text, and it, it was, it was part of an epistle that he had addressed to a man by the name of Daniel Leeds, who was a Quaker surveyor, and who had compiled and published a collection of German mystical writings, things called The Temple of Wisdom. So you have these people who are, you know, this is the fun thing about early America, and now I guess YouTube, because you have these people who spend all day working as like surveyors or data analysts or whatever, but then like in the night, in the evenings, they're like composing texts of mysticism and circulating them among their friends and stuff like this. It's a very, it's a very fun, interesting time for publication. Lots of little, uh, presses being set up, people publishing things like this.
Mhm. And, uh, again, kind of reminds me in certain ways of of our of our current moment. And basically, uh, they're having this argument about, uh, they're, they're having this argument about Quakerism. They're having this argument about the resurrection. They're having this argument about, like, certain Gnostic aspects of of, uh, Quaker religious identity. All these different things. And you have Increase Mather actually falling back on, uh, the, on the Kabbalah, and in particular, this idea of Adam Kadmon, which maybe you can explain, because, um, I think you probably know a lot more about this stuff than I do. Uh, but, but basically, he he falls back on this, uh, this idea, and he kind of argues that this is the soul of Christ extended across all of creation, which is a pretty common Christian interpretation of Kabala. I should mention that since the Middle Ages, Christians, mostly Roman Catholic, uh, theologians, cardinals, bishops, etc., have been have been reading and interpreting like this. So there's actually an entire Christian, mostly Catholic, but an entire Christian stream of cabalistic interpretation that's been going on for a long time before this.
Yeah. But it is, but it is super interesting. Like, you don't think of, uh, you don't think of, uh, uh, you don't think of Puritans and Quakers as people who are necessarily reading and circulating Kabala.
So, well, how many, do you know how how many of these people were Freemasons? I said I would never do it again, but here we are. We are announcing the Symbolic World Summit in May 2026. I have so many great people around me that I'm just excited to do it, even though I thought it would be crazy to do it again. Our summit's going to be from May 14th through 16th in Broadview Heights, Ohio. You can buy tickets at symbolicworldsummit.com. Keynote speakers this year are Father Josiah Trenum and Dr. Mary Harrington, which is a combination nobody knew that they wanted, but I think is going to be absolutely incredible. Of course, Jonathan and I will be speaking, as well as several people from around the Symbolic World community. A lot of people that you like, that you've seen, are going to be there, are going to come. We're going to have book signings. It'll be a lot of time for people to meet and to greet. We're also doing Supra as well, and so come and join us. We can't wait for this, and we're excited to meet you in person.
Well, how many, do you know how how many of these people were Freemasons?
I have no, actually no idea.
Is Adam a Freemason? We know Jefferson was, right?
Oh. Oh. Oh. If you're talking about the founding fathers. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. But that was, this is, this is much, uh,
This is much earlier than that.
Earlier, okay. Much earlier than that.
We don't know how, because there is definitely there's a connection in general between cabalistic, uh, interest and Freemasonry, because obviously in Freemasonry, you have a kind of, you kind of, you have a kind of gathering of people that are that that at least pretend to be above the religious level. You know, that have a kind of esoteric doctrine of the unity of all men, the unity of all faith, and all of that. And so there's a place for these kind of transfers to have. There were some pretty prominent, uh, Jewish members of the, the, the Great Lodge of of England, for example. And so there's this like discussion happening up above. And so like you said, this idea that you have to go to the mystical writings of the Jews and the Muslims is is already a kind of Masonic, uh, thinking in terms of what it is that that's going on. The second thing I would say is that what seems to have happened, at least from an Orthodox perspective, is that sometime in the late Middle Ages, the mystical, the kind of integrated mystical aspect of Christianity seems to have diminished or to have been opposed or to have disappeared, um, or to have become kind of marginal. And therefore, there's this, because like, for example, the idea of Adam Kadmon, the idea that this this idea of like the eternal Adam, or that that in some ways Adam as in heaven, you could say, and that there's Adam in heaven, and then that is kind of the an aspect of Adam that is at the beginning of creation, which fills the world.
It's like, well, you know, when you have St. Maximus saying that that God is in all at all times and in all things working out his incarnation, it's like, well, it doesn't shock us. Doesn't shock me. It doesn't shock us. But for people who have developed this more, can I say this, like this more mechanical way of thinking, this more, this more not materialist yet, but moving towards a kind of rationalism and materialism, these ideas were not as, um, were not as prevalent.
Yeah. So I think that the the people I'm talking about right now, like George Keith and Mather, they're a little earlier than the introduction of Masonry to the New World, but not by very much.
Certainly those ideas are already in the air. Certainly that's, you know, it's a big part of what's going on.
It's really hard to, um, it's really hard to kind of sort through this period in history when you're when you're looking at these organizations. Obviously, some of them were quite secret, although usually not as secretive as, you know, they like to be. They like, my my impression always with some of these secret societies, you know, for the the literati of the time, is that they were constantly telling people how secret they were. You know, it's just, it's a very exclusive club. You probably never heard of it. Let me tell you about how exclusive it is and exactly how much you haven't heard of it. But, um, in any case, so so George Keith, what he eventually comes to, because he's really struggling. I don't want to get too much into Quaker theology today, just because we're, you know, we've got a time limit for this video. Um, but, uh, the, uh, the thing that he's sort of arguing is is this insistence between, you know, there's this, um, in in Quakerism, this idea of like the internal light, right? That's supposed to guide the believer, right? So, uh, and a lot of Quakers moved away, were moving away at the time, from, uh, from like a belief in the historical person of Jesus Christ, the historical, you know, resurrection and so on and so forth. And,
Oddly enough, Keith is actually using the, uh, he's trying to use Kabbalah to make an argument for both. And so this is how he's using it. He's using it to interpret, you know, identify Christ with this this cabalistic figure, Adam Kadmon. He's he's trying to use it to basically make an argument for, uh, that we can have both an internal light and an external historical Christ, and they're actually both necessary for salvation. And here's these old cabalistic categories we can kind of use to argue this. He is eventually ousted from Quakerism in 1692.
Um, and is because, uh, partly through from the accusation of preaching two Christs, uh, is the is the that's the charge that they use when they ousted him from from
Christ for that reason.
Yeah. Exactly.
Oh yeah. Yeah. So the two images of Adam, he he doesn't see them as being the same. And I think that that's that that's an interesting for us at least as Christians, you know, we have this idea that Christ is the new Adam, right? Or is the fullest aspect of Adam, um, and kind of heals the broken Adam from the the Old Testament. But we don't need, we don't need two Christs. The universal Christ, the one that is from there from the beginning of creation that fills all creation with his with his presence, is not different from the one that, you know, was born in in Bethlehem in the first century.
Yeah. So, um, the interesting thing is that, uh, in, uh, there's there's a lot of initially kind of polemics between George Keith and the Mathers. So for instance, when Cotton Mather is 27 years old, he publishes a, uh, a tract against, this is what people did back in the day. Now we just, you know, subweet people. But but back in the day, you know, if you really had a substantive disagreement with somebody, you would publish a tract, which would be, you know, very often several hundred pages long. Um, and you would circulate it, but it's specifically, it's like here's this person's beliefs, and here is my systematic takedown of of everything that they believe, right?
Um, and, um, is a think of it as sort of print mogging, if you will, for the for the for the Gen Gen A Gen Z crowd out there today.
Um, and, uh, uh, you know, basically kind of gives him this backhanded compliment, says he's got more Hebrew and Greek than ever Pilate had upon the cross, which is to say, ah yes, you're very learned, but you've kind of betrayed the whole religion here, right?
Mhm. Um, and, uh, uh, one of the, um, but if you if you looked at this and you thought, okay, well, the Puritans like the Mathers are just against Kabbalah, you would be you would be wrong.
Yeah. You'd be wrong because in fact, they're super interested in it. They're super interested, and they're super interested in it specifically, uh, in the light of of, uh, the what's going on in the wider Jewish and European world. Um, in resp, uh, specifically in respect to a movement called Sabbatianism. Now, you probably know about this, Jonathan.
Um, yes, I do know about that. Let's let's just dive right into that mud that you can ser right in. Do you want to introduce it?
To talk about Sabbatianism.
Yeah, man.
I mean, sure. If I've never, I don't think I've ever talked about it in public. Most.
So, Shabbetai Zevi was a candidate for Messiah, >> right? >> And he was a very mystical person. He did all kinds of weird stuff. He married the Torah and was like a very strange, strange figure.
His name, his name, you know, means the rule of Saturn, you know.
Yeah. Or Sabbath.
Yeah. Sabbath.
Generous. Yeah, but I mean, a lot of people at the time were like, "Ooh, Saturn." Because like there was within within a lot of mystical traditions in Europe, this idea that the Messiah, the messianic age was going to come in the age of Saturn, you know.
Yeah. So, so the the thing that happened with him that's wild is that, >> he basically the Shah, I think it was the Shah, who who who who became very suspicious about this man who was making a lot of noise and so and so arrested him, and then Shabbetai converted to Islam. Uh, and then that became a sign for several of his believers that they should convert. And so these movements led to the mass conversions in in, uh, in Spain, you know, in Portugal. All of these weird movements where all of a sudden there was these mass conversions, uh, were related to things that were going around around Shabbetai. And the question was, in some ways, you could convert and remain secretly Jewish. Uh, and there, and then there was this also this whole antinomian thing in Sabbatianism, which was to secretly break the rules to the >> messianic age. Things that had been previously wrong would now become right. And so you could secretly go against >> so Jacob Frank, which is like one of the the people that said it was like a reincarnation of Shabbetai's feet, basically went all out in that. So they would have secret orgies, they would produce, they would have all these secret things that they would do, which were to break the law. Uh, and so it was this whole aesthetic of infiltration and of conversion, but infiltration, which a lot of people use now today, talk about that now today in terms of, you know, the more anti-Semite types will talk about Sabbatianism as if it's like the main thing that Judaism is, which is which is which is definitely not true.
Yeah. I mean, all the rabbis objected to Sabbatianism, like all the all the kind of official rabbis until today, like they.
So, >> so the thing that's really fun about all of this is that at the time, there were Christian writers, and when I say Christian writers, I mean mainly like Protestants, mainly, you know, Puritans, but also like Puritans in England. It wasn't just in America, it was on the continent. It was in England, on the continent as well. There were Christian writers who, uh, were pointing to certain passages in the Bible. Um, and, uh, basically pointing this and saying, okay, yes, Edom and Amalek are going to be overthrown. Well, Edom means Rome. So in this case, it means the the funny thing is that the Sabbatians thought Edom meant Rome, but they applied that to all Christians. And the Puritans, the Protestants thought that Edom meant Rome, but they applied that specifically to the Roman Catholic Church.
Right. Right. Um, and then, and so Edom and Amalek are going to be overthrown. So Amalek is obviously Islam, and then Edom, the Edomites, that's the Roman Catholic Church. And so what they were, you know, it, you can't stress actually how, how poorly we have understood how connected, even the early modern world, forget the ancient world for a minute, the early modern world, which is really the period we're talking about now, how connected it was. Um, there, people were noticing. I mean, Sabbatianism is mainly happening in the Middle East, but people are talking about it in London. They're talking about it in the colonies in America. They're talking about it everywhere. People are noticing. And it's not like at this particular time in history, there are just like a lot of Jews in the colonies. Like, by some accounts, there may be less than 3,000 at this time. You know, it's not a lot. And, uh, but people are noticing it, and they're taking note, and they're talking about it, and they're, uh, they're, you know, writing letters about it, and people are publishing, in London, tracts are being published all the time, basically to say, "All right, this is it, guys. This is it. This is the end of days. Jesus is coming back. And here's what's going to happen. The the the Jewish army that rises up is going to destroy Islam. And the Protestant army that rises up is going to destroy Rome. And then the two will meet in the middle, and all the Jews are going to convert, and they'll become Protestant. And then Jesus will return."
So how does this have to do? What does this have to do with Sabbatianism?
It was it was happening at that time as a response to Sabbatianism.
Okay. Okay. People like Protestants in Western Europe and in the colonies were were aware of the movement. They were they were following it, you know, closely as close as they could, you know, with the technology and the communication of the time, and and at at least at the initial moment, I mean, this is before his conversion to Islam. Uh, at least at the initial moment, it looked to them like, okay, this is it, guys.
So, before his conversion, this is it. Like, the Jewish Messiah's come, and they're going to raise an army and Okay. Okay. I thought like after I was like, why? I was like, "What?"
Yeah. When you convert to Islam, things get weird. Like,
Yeah, things get weird. No, this is just before that. Yeah, this is before that. Yeah. So, all of this is kind of going on. And, uh, and then of course, you know, not, you know, nothing happens like the the the, you know, he's he's converted, you know, either willingly or forcibly, but he's converted. And, you know, no great Protestant army ever rises up to destroy, you know, Rome. Um, no great Jewish army ever rises up to destroy Islam. Like, none of those things happen. But this stuff is sort of in the air, and people are people are really thinking about, um, you know, okay, there's there's these messianic movements within Judaism, and this stuff is somehow going to be, uh, going to be connected to the return of Christ and to like the sort of the new, well, the new world, actually.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So this is what's very interesting. Uh, there is a, a sermon by Increase Mather, who, um, um, he, uh, uh, in which he says, um, this is from a series called The Mystery of Israel's Salvation, um, that he, he says that, um, when the Book of Revelation talks about the new world, you know, usually in in King James English is translated new earth, but, uh, you could also call it new world.
Mhm. He says, "Well, that's us. This is the new world."
So, America, Increase Mather identifies the new world of Revelation chapter 21 with, uh, as being an eschatological prophecy concerning the American continent. And he says this works because America is unknown to the penmen of the Holy Scriptures. It is outside of, um, it's outside of space and time. And so it's this place where a new space and a new time, basically, where the remnants of all these things from the old world can be gathered and find their redemption. So he sees, yeah, there's a false messianism with with Shabbetai, but that can be cosmologically redirected towards this new to towards the proper truth of Christ and the bringing about of the eschaton, which is fundamentally, um, uh, uh, tied up with America. And so for Increase Mather, this is Ogrren's argument, and some other scholars' arguments as well, the the discovery of America itself, and the establishment of America itself, is something which, um, uh, kind of heralds like actually a whole new age of hermeneutics, a whole new way not to just read and interpret the scriptures, but to read and interpret everything.
Mhm. So all of this eventually kind of, um, the the this this period of messianic fervor that's going on at this time in the 1660s, kind of makes it to America, and you have, um, um, early American authors writing like Samuel Sewall, who, you know, writes about, you know, he's writing about hearing about Sabbatianism and again, this is before the whole movement kind of collapses, but he's talking about, you know, the imminent conversion of the Jews, all these for things.
All right. So, all of this culminates in this guy named Judah Monis. Judah Monis is an Italian-born Sephardic Jew. He's from a converso background, uh, who arrives in the Boston area. And in 1722, he, after having kind of come under the influence of the Mather family, converts to congregational Protestant Christianity. And they have a huge public, very public ceremony about it. Like, this is in all the papers, everybody's talking about it. Um, and in fact, he is baptized at Harvard's College Hall.
You know, so, um, And, uh, before he became a Christian, Monis had been a, um, uh, a disciple of a rabbi named, um, Jacob Cisporus, uh, which I'm again, probably saying the name wrong, but he was a prominent anti-Sabbatian rabbinic authority, who was, he was a cabalist, but he was strongly anti-Sabbatian. And, um, you know, so, so he, and and so through him, Monis has inherited that that sort of whole, you know, cabalistic inheritance.
Mhm. And so when he converts, he brings with him the, uh, uh, significant cabalistic texts. Um, you know, he had his his his own compendium of this, which includes, you know, obviously things like the Zohar, as well as other materials. Um, it, it looks like his collection of cabalistic materials that he kind of inherited from his rabbi was really a combination of like Kabbalah and then also a bunch of Christian occult stuff. I mean, again, like people just sort of,
This stuff, you know, people are going to be mad about this on either side, I guess, but this stuff really, really bled over into each other, kind of constantly throughout the period. Yeah. So in any case, the the funny thing is that, uh, his his teacher had been, um, you know, anti-Sabbatian precisely to try to defend rabbinical Judaism against these anti-nomian threats. And then his student ends up converting to Protestant congregational Christianity. Right? His, um, uh, his, whereas the Mathers, they were anti-Semite, and but it's for it's because they see that as a distraction from the the true eschatology. So what you end up getting is this kind of funny moment where, okay, yeah, the the eschaton is never brought about in this other way. But when, um, but when Monis is baptized, the Mathers basically say, this is it. This is the beginning. We're going to convert all of the Jews. It begins now. This is it. This is the eschaton. It's happening.
Mhm. Now, as far as we know, Monis was the only Jew that the Mathers ever converted. This was not a successful undertaking. But what happens is that Monis introduces the Mathers, who are already familiar with cabalistic works through some of their polemical writings against various Quaker figures, but but Monis introduces them to,
These texts.
These texts. And in fact, he writes an extended series of treatises, um, which are eventually collected into a a single treatise called, so the originally the treatises were called The Truth, The Whole Truth, Nothing But The Truth, and then finally they're compiled into a single treatise called The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Nothing But The Truth. And in this, in the third part of that, that treatise, he actually, it basically gives you an entire cabalistic text. It's the first cabalistic text wholly produced and published in North America. And basically, what it is doing is trying to use passages from the Zohar to, uh, argue for the Christian understanding of the Trinity.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that there were already examples of that happening, uh, in different parts in Europe, where there were disputations between Christians and Jews, where Christians would try to use rabbinical texts, to, uh, to show that, no, it's already there, even in your own text, you know, that, you know, like the ideas of the Messiah Ben David and Messiah Ben Joseph, like these are these are all kind of pointing to to Christ.
Yeah. Well, definitely in the, in the, like especially like the Italian Christian cabalistic stream, you have a lot of people writing and talking about that stuff.
Yeah. Um, so this, this kind of creates then this this, uh, you could say a stream or a lineage of transmission there in the kind of the Harvard, Yale, those old, you know, Ivy League schools, like we consider them now. And eventually, this kind of, um, this kind of, uh, uh, ends up boiling down to a guy by the name of Ezra Stiles. Now, Ezra Stiles lives a little bit later than these guys. Um, Stiles is, uh, in the, he's 18th century. He's, um, born in 1727, dies in 1795. So he's a little bit later than the Mathers, but he basically receives all of this stuff, like all these cabalistic texts that the the New England Puritans have have kind of been cultivating, and as well as all of the arguments that have been they have been trying to make. And the arguments kind of they they kind of go in a circular way. So it's hard to trace them, but it's something like America is the new world. This is the eschaton. We are, um, there is a transmission of dispensations, right? Or of covenants. So that the covenant was originally given to Adam, and then it's given to Moses, and then it's given to David, and then it's given to the early church, and then it passes on, and, you know, as each of these groups apostatizes, that the covenant continues to be transmitted. The current holders of the covenant are American Protestant congregationalism, right? So, um, so that covenant, you know, that the Jews are no longer part of that covenant, but whatever is, uh, but that the the conversion of the Jews and bringing them back into the covenant is the last, sort of last necessary step, and is the thing that they expect to happen imminently as part of the establishing of the new, of the new world as the new earth, as the kingdom of God, right? And so you have these writings, um, you know, there's there's famous things like this, the city on a hill image, and all of these other writings. But there's there's all of these, um, I'll just, uh, read a little, a little quote from Stiles here. Uh, Ezra Stiles. Um, he says, it, it, um, it may have been of the Lord that Christianity is to be found in such great purity in this church exiled into the wilderness of America.
Um, and so basically, he, within the context of the sermon, he explicitly refers to God's American Israel, and he says that the United States will, by the ordering of heaven, eventually become this people. So it's not quite Manifest Destiny, which is like, I think a much kind of coarser version of this kind of downstream. By the way, my country beat your country in hockey yesterday.
I've I've been seeing that all day.
Yep. Yep. I I really am trying to lay off the French a little bit. Um, but in this case, it's just all of Canada. It's not, it's not French specific. Uh, this is another, this is another line from, uh, Stiles. Um, uh, and by the way, Stiles was super into into this stuff, and to the extent that he would draft, um, he had learned Hebrew, so he would actually draft his sermons in Hebrew, and then he would translate his own sermon from Hebrew into English because, uh, uh, Stiles had this idea that, you know, Hebrew is this sort of, it's the sacred language. And so like you write important things in Hebrew, and then you translate them later.
So he translated his own work from Hebrew into English. I have no idea if his Hebrew was actually any good, but this is what he did. So this is what he says. He says, the this great American revolution, this recent political phenomenon of a new sovereignty arising among the sovereign powers of the earth will be attended to and comp and contemplated by all nations. Navigation will carry the American flag around the globe itself and display the 13 stripes and new constellation at Bengal and Canton, on the Indos and the Ganges, on the Wonggho, on the Young Sea, and with commerce will import the wisdom and literature of the East. That prophecy of Daniel is now literally fulfilling that there shall be a universal traveling to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased. This knowledge will be brought home and treasured up in America, and being here digested and carried to the highest perfection, may reblaze back from America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, and illuminate the whole world with truth and liberty. So it's, I mean, that's pretty wild stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. Pretty wild stuff. But, you know, the the the connection between this and the other stuff is again, like there was this moment of messianism that was kind of, uh, experienced this failure to launch in the old world, and these new world writers, what they're saying is, oh no, it's because it's actually supposed to happen here. But the way it's going to happen here is going to be through the the actually the creation of a new Torah.
That's that's how Stiles writes about it. So Stiles' first name is Ezra, right? And he basically kind of saw himself as the new Ezra, the second coming of Ezra. I don't think he actually believed he was the actual reincarnation of Ezra, but he very much saw himself as like a new Ezra in the sense that, you know, in in the there's there's all these traditions, uh, within Judaism, and then some of them even, you know, taken up in Christianity, that, you know, when when Ezra rewrites the, you know, when when Ezra comes back to rebuild, uh, the the temple, that, you know, the law has actually been completely lost. Um, and so the entire thing has to be rewritten by Ezra and by the, you know, by the the synagogue, actually under divine inspiration, right? That that's kind of the idea.
So what Ezra's idea is, uh, Ezra Stiles's idea is that there's this transmission. He says, "The Kabbalah is next to the scriptures, the most ancient learning. It was orally communicated from Adam to Moses, and from Moses to the 120 of the Great Synagogues." So is this idea,
Mhm. That there's this, that there's in addition to the written Torah, there's also this secret transmission, the which which is the the prisca theologia, the the the the pure religion that's transmitted from Adam to Abraham to Moses to Ezra and the Great Synagogue, then through the cabalistic teachers to Monis, this Jewish man who converted to Christianity, and then from him to American congregational Christianity, all the way down to Ezra Stiles. So what Ezra saw his job as now as being now was to kind of bring about the new Israel, which would be America, by bringing in not just cabalistic text, but ultimately, you know, he's talking about all the learning at the East is going to come in. So all these things are going to come into America, and they're going to be purified, and then we'll go back out into the world with those things and bring truth and liberty to all these, you know, nations that are in darkness.
Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because you can feel this flavor, this way of thinking, like you can see how it is definitely a flavor of American religiosity, you know, and whether it's congregationalism or Baptists or whatever, like this idea that, you know, sometimes implicit that in some ways, you know, we're the land of the missionaries now, like we're the land that's that have come to the pure faith, and now we're sending out, you know, people all over the world to basically become Southern Baptists, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I I can't actually, I'll I'll make a little confession here, and that is to say, I have no idea what it would have been like to grow up Baptist in Canada, because being Baptist and being American went together. So, like, I have no idea what your identity would be if you were Baptist in some other country. It would be very American, is what it would be, in the sense that,
You could, you know, and and I hate to say this because a lot of obviously a lot of my my my growing up, my Baptist, there, I mean, there was a little bit of a Belgian European connection, but most of it was was American. Like this this connection to to the United States was very, was very strong. You know,
By the way, a lot of early Baptists, um, uh, were into this stuff, too. Ezra Stiles, he gets one of his main, uh, manuscripts of the Zohar from a a London Baptist Calvinist pastor who has his own edition that he's been working on meticulously,
And, uh, and sends to him.
Well, it's super interesting because what you're seeing happening is a desire to recover a kind of what we call in the Orthodox tradition, a phronema, that is a a kind of mode of thinking, something which is at the deepest level of of religion, that will infuse it, you know, with its deepest meaning. And in the rejection of the Christian one, people are kind of looking around to see where to find it. And I think that you see exactly this in a lot of Messianic Christianity. You see this this kind of messianic flavored Christianity. You see this problem, which is that we have rejected the this deep line, like this deep living, uh, river. We have the text, and so now we're looking for this deep river, and we're we're we're going back to this kind of pre-Christian source in order to find it. And I want to tell one little story to connect to this. Uh, someone that I care about very much, but a pastor once, I was went to a Baptist church after I became Orthodox. And, you know, they knew that, >> I had converted to Orthodox. He was made it all very weird. Uh, I think it was like my wife's, it was the church actually that my father was pastor when I was younger, you know, but my wife's parents still go there. Anyway, so the pastor came up to me and was super excited to tell me about this rabbi who came to church to do a Sabbath, like service in front of everyone, the whole church, and like explaining what the wine was and the bread and all this. And he was like, "Wow, it was so rich. It was so deep. I could, it was like it really helped me understand, you know, uh, more, understand communion and all the things they're doing." And I, and I was like, I can't, like I wasn't going to say anything. I would just smile, but I I kept thinking, you had it. Like you had all, you had it, and you threw it away, and now you're going to these, this, like source.
Um, but it's weird, like since we've been talking about this from the beginning, that's the sense that I have is that this, this kind of desire to find a mystical tradition when you've destroyed your own or you've thrown it away.
You'll probably get a kick out of this. The Stiles never got in trouble with other Christians for digging into like Jewish mysticism, but he did get in trouble sometimes for also reading Dionysius. And, um, but at one, at one particular point in time, he he made friends over the course of his life, Ezra Stiles made friends with several different rabbis, >> and some of them were like really close friends. And and so they would sit and they'd stay up all night, like comparing like the the celestial hierarchies with the Zohar and like all this different stuff. And it's, um, it's super interesting, uh, because he's like, uh, he he says privately in a letter to someone, um, he, uh, because of course, the entire Reformation was very dismissive of the Areopagitic corpus. In fact, that's actually the whole sort of, to to understand how far this goes, right? The same guy who debunked the, >> the, uh, that's the second, second vapor lock, the sec, the, all right, the same guy who debunked.
The Donation of Constantine, which is the forged fraudulent document on which you know a lot of late medieval ideas of the power of the papacy, not just over the church but over like also secular authorities, was all based on. Well, the same guy he debunked that, and it was so successful. He was like, "I wonder what else I could debunk." So he starts out and and going and debunking other things, books of the Bible, apostles, and so on and so forth.
One of the things he he debunks is the Dionysian corpus, and he says there's no way this could have been written by, you know, you know, Saint Dionysius the Areopagite. Well, the main church of the kings in France in Paris is, please say it in French.
Yeah.
Saint-Denis.
Uh, which is, you know, named after Saint Dionysius. And in fact, they used to have a a Greek liturgy there at that at that church at at one particular point in time, uh, as kind of like a nod to that that patronage. But the style that church was built in, uh, because because like debunking Dionysius was debunking the entire medieval project, and therefore the style that that church was built in, they decided to pejoratively refer to as Gothic.
Yeah.
As a way of saying it's barbaric, it's barbaric.
Barbaric. Yeah. That's right. So, but so there's actually like a string from like a there's there's a you can connect the dots from, you know, debunking of the Dionysian corpus to the reason we call Gothic architecture Gothic architecture, right? You know, it's just so weird to me, so funny. But, uh, so he he basically says, of course, Luther had Luther Luther hated Dionysius. Just really hated him. He he had all kinds of disparaging things to say about him. But, uh, so this is so so but here's Ezra Stiles like sort of like reading Dionysius almost like that's the taboo thing, that's the secret thing, and it's being like, "It sure seems like maybe we kind of had this, maybe these things like are describing something kind of similar." And yeah, so it's it's just it's super interesting.
Um, I think maybe a question that I could ask you to to sort of wrap up this video, which we're trying to keep a little tighter for time's sake because we have other things we have to do today, would be to say, um, obviously this idea that America is the, you know, you could almost say America is the new Israel, right? Uh, you know, America certainly is the new promised land, right? That's that's an idea. There there's there's technically there's nothing wrong with looking at a pattern in scripture and just sort of saying, "Hey, we see this playing out again." You know, all of all of our lives are fractal in that way, right? And so that's not necessarily wrong. But obviously in America it gets carried to a certain place where, you know, the early American project began to think of itself as being, um, you know, so Thomas Jefferson, one of his proposals for the seal of the Great Seal of the United States is, uh, is, um, um, Heneon Horson one side, uh, the those are the, you know, leaders of the Angles, the Saxons, and Jutes who, um, how do how do I say this gently, colonized Britain. And then, um, uh, on the other side, it would be the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness.
So there's this kind of overlap of Anglo-Saxon identity. And of course, there was there was like a whole thing of England as Israel that was also going on at this period in history as well, which should be interesting to talk about because it's probably not as well known. But this this idea, this overlap of Anglo-Saxon identity with the children of Israel and with with, uh, you know, the the the the journey of the Puritans and of the Separatists into the new world as being the journey of the children of Israel through the wilderness into the new promised land. And this new promised land is going to be the place where, uh, basically all the prophecies about the eschaton come true, uh, including of course, obviously the conversion of the Jews.
Yeah.
And it seems to me like there's something about this which which definitely resulted in a a peculiar quality to American religion, um, not just to the religions that are you could say like native to our soil, um, like Mormonism, as we've talked about, which very much has this again, like just just extrapolate that a little further. It's not hard to see how, how the early Mormons thought of themselves as, yeah, we're the children of Israel literally wandering through the desert, literally being persecuted, you know, all these things, you know, because we're going to establish a promised land in Missouri or Utah or wherever, right? All these different, you know, things they had going on. So, it's not hard to see how how American religion, whenever American, uh, religion takes on an identity, at least American religion that comes from this layer, let's say, whenever it takes on this identity, it it always has to kind of play out these different things. And you can obviously point to lots of parallel examples of where that's happening right now in American state.
But I did want to sort of ask you, is there some truth to it in the in the sense that is there some sense of of this, you know, America as as kind of like the last place?
Yeah.
Right. Um, when when other religions come here, do they do they become more themselves or do they lose themselves?
Yeah. What do you think? Canadian ever talked about this publicly? Probably not. I mean, my insight is that it it is true. Uh, and that, you know, my brother Mat once had this great sense. He said, "God loves irony." You know, it's like it doesn't matter what people's intentions are and what like what exactly they think they're doing. There are some things that are just happening. And even if people try to provoke them or whatever, and there's something weirdly immoral about trying to provoke the eschaton, well, it doesn't matter. Like, some of the stuff is still kind of happening, right? And so I think that America is the place of the end.
Yeah. And so in being the place of the end, you know, it it actually has these contradictions in them, which is that I sense that it is a lot of the images in the Book of Revelation seem to be shining through America. You know, it doesn't mean that it's the final form, that don't that the world's going to end tomorrow. Like that's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that the the image of the beast is clearest coming through the American lens. The image of the is like clearest coming through the American lens. And then the image of the heavenly Jerusalem as the gathering of all that is good together, you know, and basically everything kind of offering up, uh, towards God is also happening in America. So if you think of, you know, think of in Orthodoxy, I mean, think of the Ephronite monasteries, like that is something that is happening in America, where there there is a man who seems to have been a holy man who founded all these monasteries that are thriving, that are alive, that are that are that are, you know, that are building, and it's like this wild thing. But there's also, I mean, basically most of the porn in the world comes from your country, right? Most of the most of the most of like the the horrible influences on culture have come from America, and sometimes they're being reflected in other cultures. It's like people complain about manga, for example, but it's like, dude, manga is like a dark reflection of something that came from America into Japan and then is being reflected back. The same with happened to Japan in like the middle last century. Did something happen that would like make them darkly nihilistic and want to to, you know, so so I think I think that your insight is absolutely right, and I think that it is also related to, uh, America's relationship with with Jews as well, that is America has been a place where Jews were welcome and were thriving, uh, and so all of the all of the the possibilities and contradictions and problems and opportunities that that offers is is clear in in America. So that's how I see it. So I don't I don't think that like America is the land of the eschaton. I think America is the land of the end. And so because of that, you have all of these images shining brighter, all the negative and positive aspects of the Book of Revelation.
I think there definitely was, you know, Martin Martin Shaw was just down here for the Orthodox Arts Festival, which was really beautiful this year. But, um, when I when I picked him up and, you know, you've driven from the airport in Dallas, like, you know, it's kind of a just a endless concrete hellscape and, uh, it's just like, it's like the worst of American like visual landscape in Dallas.
Martin said something about it that was shall we just say not complimentary, and, uh, I was like, yeah, yeah, no, you're just just totally fair. And then but then later on, we were, um, you know, of course, then like we get to the the church was this beautiful, incredibly beautiful church, and it's like, yeah, there's it's the weird thing is is, you know, there's beautiful little gems like this tucked all over the metroplex, and then there's just like a lot of concrete, and it's just very, it's it's not consistent, you know, it's just very. But I've always kind of tied the suburban sprawl, and this is actually this is related to our video, at least the series we've been on in terms of the symbolism of America. I've always tied the urban sprawl, uh, the suburban sprawl to something that, uh, used to be called prairie madness. So ideas, you you'd be out on the prairie by yourself. You know, where I'm sitting right now was just all prairie, you know, 100 years ago, and and, uh, you'd be out in the prairie by yourself, and and it's always the kind of the crazy people who want to go live out there anyway. Any, you know, like to to even say I'm going to the new world, and then to say now I'm going to Kentucky, and then to say, as David Crockett said, "You may all go to hell, but I'm going to Texas," you know, to to like be the kind of person who is just like, I want to go out where there's no other people like that, that's a special kind of crazy to begin with. So it's it's important to remember that we are a country that was started exclusively by insane people.
But I want to say one last thing in this in relationship to this because I want to be careful. I always thought, and I want to be careful people don't think that what I'm saying is arbitrary, that is when you imagine that there's a land that at least from the point of view of the Europeans is completely unknown or has been completely forgotten, and it's a huge land, it's the richest land, it's the one where everything is possible, where all the landscapes, all the different types of, you know, it's like it basically condenses. If you take North America all together, it condenses the Arctic, you know, to the deserts, to the to the luscious rainforest, like it has everything in it, right? And so when you leave where you are and you go somewhere else, there are two things that happen. One is the chaos of the new place, right? It's all the rejects that go out and then create all this kind of weird chaos, some of a lot of the weird chaos that we're talking about. Then there's also people who leave for opportunity, and in leaving now want to create something that is more real than where they came from, because they need to, because they're far, and so they have to create a pure version of what they had because of the they need to do it in a deliberate way, and therefore they leave where they are. They go out and then they make their church more that church than where it came from. Yeah. And so those two things are happening simultaneously. It's like you imagine that it's almost like a new land, you know, Christ is all the seed is being poured there. All the wheat and the tears is growing more in this land because because of that, because of that problem. And therefore you have this weird this weird idea that America is both the land of the most conservative Christians and where porn is made. Like those two extremes. I think that is exactly the right place to end this video.
Um, and I'm sorry if you were hoping folks for like a detailed analysis of Kabbalah. You're never going to get that from me for a multitude of reasons. I'm not the right person to do that. But, um, yeah. Anyway, I hope this has been fun for everybody. I, uh, it is it is a lot harder to talk about than, you know, some medieval stuff. In large part, I think, just because it's, you know, it starts to get a little close to home, you know, and you have to be careful about how you talk about it. But also because, um, you know, I I was telling Jonathan before the video started, I was like, "Just please let me do like Arthur again after this. Just I need a little just a little medieval palate cleanser, get back to my my home base where I feel comfy." Um, but, you know, America is is kind of a weird place in that you can both, you know, go to the supermarket and also feel like you are more at home in, uh, in Arthurian literature than you are in contemporary history and politics. So, yeah, it's a it's a weird place in that way.
So, uh, yeah. So we next time we'll be doing something else. Uh, but but eventually I we will get back and we'll start talking about other parts of American history. Actually, there's a lot of interesting stuff with the the the settling of Canada, which might be fun to talk about. Um, there's a lot of, uh, non-controversial stuff with like the the Spanish colonization efforts, um, which would also Jonathan would would love to talk to you guys about those things.
So I'll talk about anything. But thank you so much for putting all this effort into bringing us the the mythology of, uh, of America to the to the forefront. And you guys can stop sending me books now. Seriously.
All right, guy. Everybody, we'll see you soon. And thanks a lot.