The Polarizing Complexity of the Kyrie Topic - Part Two

The Historical Perspective

Welcome to the three-part analysis of The Polarizing Complexity of the Kyrie Topic. This is Section II of three. You can find Part I here and Part III here.

One thing to call out is that when discussing the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism), we must understand how wars spread these religions. These “Holy Wars” propagated these religions far and wide.

For example, the continent of Africa is home to Christianity and Islam. We can’t simply state that it was the pureness of the religion than won converts. Still, we need to acknowledge the role of war, conquest, and enslavement in propagating each faith.

During wars, items and precious relics are stolen, destroyed, or lost for good. We learned from the Queen’s death about her multiple jewels from other countries. Not only are precious relics stolen, but identities, cultures, and histories could also be altered or tampered with.

Remember, history is always written by the winners.

Lastly, in wars and with history, empires come and fall. To truly understand our conversation, we’re going to focus on a group of people from a fallen empire known as the Khazars

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. 

The Khazars were a nomadic group that ruled Eastern Europe from 650 to 969 AD. They were a group with many religions, including Judaism. After the fall of the empire, it’s said that they spread throughout Europe, giving rise to other groups of people that we know today, such as the Hungarians, Ukrainians, and more.

We’ll come back to the Khazars, but we must note that they are essentially Europeans from a fallen empire.

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With that background on wars, we’re going to dive into our historical perspective, and for that, we’re going to start with World War I, but more specifically, we’re going to examine the Middle East.

I highly recommend ReallyGraceful’s video on the topic because it provides the historical background concisely. For a high-level summary, in 1916, during World War I, there was a secret treaty

²

 between England and France on how to split up the land in the middle east.

In 1917, England announced that it would look to provide a home for the “Jewish People.” This announcement was known as the Balfour Declaration

³

.

I use quotations around “Jewish people” because we do not know what “jew” they’re referring to, either the individual who practices the religion or a descendant of Jacob; at this time, there is no modern land of Israel as we know. This announcement could very well have been the first political movement associated with Judaism that we know of.

This point in time is when things start to get cloudy.

Going back to the Balfour Declaration, what’s even more interesting is who signed the declaration. It was signed by Lord Walter Rothschild

⁴

, a leader of the British Jewish community

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.

What’s interesting to note is that, according to Wikipedia, British Jews are people “who identified as Jews.” Identifying as a jew is a stark difference to those who either a) converted or b) are a descendant. Remember, at this time, there is no modern state of Israel.

For those not familiar with the Rothschilds

⁶

, they’re a wealthy Ashkenazi (we’ll discuss later) Jewish banking family. If you’re familiar with the hit TV show Game of Thrones, they’re “The Lannisters.” A family so rich that entire kingdoms are indebted to them. From the Wikipedia page, we read the following:

During the 19th century, the Rothschild family possessed the largest private fortune in the world, as well as in modern world history.

So from World War I, we see the plans of the wealthiest family in the world to make a land mass for “Jews” to call home. Palestine was named the prime location, even though the Palestinians - yes, the modern-day Palestinians - were already living there.

And this is where we must realize the realities of war because, at this time, we have the formation of modern-day Israel and the modern-day Israelites.

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So we started with the Khazars, who were eastern Europeans, and we ended up with a wealthy Ashkenazi Jewish family creating a new country in the Palestinian homeland. As stated earlier, the Khazars were thought to be the originators of many of the many modern Europeans that we see today, and there’s one interesting theory known as the “Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry

⁷

.”

The theory states that the Ashkenazi Jews, who make up most modern-day Jews, were Europeans who converted to Judaism. This key factor is critical to note because anyone can convert to Judaism, but that’s a stark difference between being a descendant of the Biblical figure named Jacob - whose name later was changed to Israel - who’s also the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

This Khazarian theory has been around since the 1800s but, as you can imagine, has faced a lot of controversies. Essentially, it claims that most Jews are converts to the faith versus Biblical lineal descendants, which may not be well perceived by, specifically, European Jews. But it is out there, so we must address and be aware of it.

In 2012, Dr. Eran Elhaik, a Jew, and associate at the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, released his research article titled “The Missing Link of Jewish European Ancestry: Contrasting the Rhineland and the Khazarian Hypotheses

⁸

” in the Genome Biology and Evolution journal.

In it, he uses gene testing to investigate if this theory - that most modern-day Jews are, in fact, Europeans who converted to Judaism - has some validity to it. Within his research, he concludes with the following:

Our findings support the Khazarian Hypothesis depicting a large Caucasus ancestry along with Southern European, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European ancestries, in agreement with recent studies and oral and written traditions

To summarize this section, we have a group of Europeans who practiced the religion of Judaism, spread throughout Europe, settled in the country of Palestine, and established a new land known as the modern-day state of Israel.

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As one can imagine, this is a very controversial topic, especially when dealing with one’s history and perspective. However, looking at the Black Hebrew Israelite

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 movement, we see something similar. Both its founders, Frank Cherry and William Saunders Crowdy, stated that African-Americans were the descendants of the twelve tribes of Israel. As you can see, we have two ethnic groups claiming ownership of the same identity.

When we talk about history, we can only truly understand it when we consider political ideologies and individuals behind the scenes. For one, Cherry and Crowdy were Freemasons, and as we’ll explore shortly, there’s a Jewish fraternity known as B’nai B’rith

¹⁰

. To understand not only this topic but our world, we need to know what role these societies play, and for that, I would recommend the following YouTube video.

Now that we know the religious and historical ramifications, to tie everything together and truly understand the meaning of this Kyrie controversy, it’s time to move to the political perspective.

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This concludes Part II of The Polarizing Complexity of the Kyrie Topic. You can find Part I here and Part III here.

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References

1. Khazars | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars

2. Sykes-Picot Agreement | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement#Mosul_and_Palestine_modification

3. Balfour Declaration | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

4. Lord Rothschild | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rothschild,_2nd_Baron_Rothschild

5. Identifying as Jew | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Jews

6. Rothschilds | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family

7. Khazar Hypothesis | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazar_hypothesis_of_Ashkenazi_ancestry#History

8. Khazar Genome Research | https://www.scribd.com/doc/123652605/Genome-Evolution-of-Jewish-Population-John-Hopkins

9. Black Hebrew Israelite | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites#History

10. Jewish Fraternity | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%27nai_B%27rith