There have been a lot of reaction to this. Some of the better ones I’ve found:

Rev. Wil Gaffney picks apart some of the claims made by Messer.

13. The notion that there is such a thing as a “king chromosome” is a fiction, as is the claim that it is kohenic, that is priestly; the Israelite and Judean monarchs — there were queens as well — were not priests.
14. The man’s articulation of what “God wants,” is to say the least unsubstantiated outside that particular setting.
15. The man never says how he knows that none of Long’s ancestors or relatives has ever seen a Torah scroll.
16. While there are some traditional reflections on the human body — including DNA and chromosomes — in the mystical Kabbalistic tradition, the speaker is crafting a verbal montage without reference to the classical texts or their theologies.

Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches has been watching Long for awhile:

I wish I could say I was surprised by Long’s latest antics, but I’m not. Actually, I am surprised he stayed away from the church this long. After declaring in December that he was taking a hiatus to work on the problems in his marriage, Long has returned with a new lacefront and a defiant attitude. Having a fake rabbi declare him “King” of a fading, dying mega-church is a joke, but what is not are the deluded New Birth Members cheering him on.

Clearly they have drunk the “Kool Aid” and I don’t use that term lightly. I’ve believed since my trip to New Birth back in 2010, when Long promised to fight his civil case, that New Birth was a cult-like organization. Long’s hold over his congregation reminds me of Jim Jones. That may sound harsh, but Jim Jones slept with his members too, before leading the People’s Temple into the jungles of Guyana.

Messer is sometimes called a Messianic Rabbi, but he’s part of the “Hebrew Roots” movement, which other Messianic Rabbi do not accept. Apparently, this is all just part of Messer’s shtick. From Bartholomew’s Notes:

This is not the first time Messer and his scroll have come to the rescue of a beleaguered evangelist; in 2007 Tampa Bay Online reported from Randy White’s Without Walls International Church, following White’s split from church co-founder Paula White:

[Randy] White preached for a few minutes before turning over the pulpit to Ralph Messer, a Messianic rabbi from Denver who teaches about the Hebrew roots of the Christian faith.
Messer preached about the Torah and Jewish entrepreneurship and spoke again at the 11 a.m. service, where he led the congregation in a prayer that ended emotionally for White.

The Torah that Messer presented is apparently linked to Rabbi Menachem Youlus. According to the Grey Lady, Youlus has recently confessed to fraud:

For years Rabbi Menachem Youlus, a self-described “Jewish Indiana Jones,” received plaudits from those captivated by his stories of traveling to Eastern Europe and beyond to search for historic Torahs that were lost or hidden during the Holocaust.

But on Thursday, Rabbi Youlus stood inside the federal courthouse in Manhattan and confessed that he had made up those tales of daring.

“Between 2004 and 2010, I falsely represented that I had personally obtained vintage Torah scrolls — in particular ways, in particular locations — in Europe and Israel,” he told Judge Colleen McMahon of Federal District Court. “I know what I did was wrong, and I deeply regret my conduct.”

[via]

A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews has prevented some women from voting in local elections in Jerusalem. It’s the latest step by the extremely pious Jews to try to force their practices on others.

Israel’s Channel 2 TV video showed the men screaming at a few dozen women, demanding that they leave a voting station Wednesday. Then the men pushed them away.

The incident happened soon after Jerusalem’s secular mayor, Nir Barkat, left the station after speaking out against gender discrimination.

Recently Israel’s ultra-Orthodox minority have become more active in trying to impose gender segregation beyond their communities. Women have been forced to the back of some buses that serve their neighborhoods.

The vast majority of Israel’s Jews object to such measures.

[source]

Rabbi Dov Lior, a senior authority on Jewish law in the Religious Zionism movement, asserted recently that a Jewish woman should never get pregnant using sperm donated by a non-Jewish man – even if it is the last option available.

According to Lior, a baby born through such an insemination will have the “negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews.” Instead, he advised sterile couples to adopt.

Sefer HaChinuch (a book of Jewish law) states that the character traits of the father pass on to the son,” he said in the lecture. “If the father in not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel.”

I guess this racist Rabbi skipped parts in the Torah where the Jews go and barbarically wipe out other cultures because someone said a God commanded it.

Lior added identified Jews as merciful, shy and charitable – qualities that he claimed could be inherited. “A person born to Jewish parents, even if they weren’t raised on the Torah – there are things that are passed on (to him) in the blood, it’s genetic,” he explained. “If the father is a gentile, then the child is deprived of these things.

“I even read in books that sometimes the crime, the difficult traits, the bitterness – a child that comes from these traits, it’s no surprise that he won’t have the qualities that characterize the people of Israel,” he added.

Because True Jews never do anything criminal, of course. Those are False Jews. You know, just like True Christians never do anything criminal either.

“If a child is born without a father, he cannot be 100% normal.” He stated that rabbinical literature defines these kids as “criminals and subjects of other negative phenomena.”.

That’s right, just look at Adam (their first man) who was a bloody criminal, Moses (who was also a bloody criminal), and Jesus (who was killed for being a bloody criminal).

Maybe if this derp of a Rabbi had a better father, he wouldn’t be so crazy.

(via)

Jews throughout Williamsburg snapped up caffeine suppositories today, hours before the start of the Yom Kippur fast that would deprive them of the jolt — and hunger suppression — that coffee typically provides.

he day-long fast is the centerpiece of the holiest day on the Jewish calendar — but some religious Jews see a Talmudic loophole that allows them to ingest their daily dose of caffeine, albeit through a different orifice.

“It helps — you know, it’s hard to concentrate when you’re fasting and also addicted to caffeine,” said Baruch Herzfeld, an Orthodox Jew who owns a bike store in Williamsburg. “Some take it before sundown, but most take it throughout their fasting. These guys love a good loophole.”

These huge, rectally inserted pills are popular. Pharmacists at Rafieh — one of many distributors in south Williamsburg on Lee Avenue — sold nearly 150 suppositories today.

“We have caffeine suppositories!” the store’s handwritten sign heralded. “Be ready!”

But is it kosher?

There’s some controversy over whether Jews observing the Biblical fast should be taking an easy out (or, more accurately, in).

Some Jewish leaders said that consuming anything — through the body’s traditional entrance or its exit — is against the spirit of the ritualistic fast.

“We’re supposed to do it the old fashioned way — I wouldn’t advise [suppositories],” said Rabbi Simcha Weinstein, a Hasidic leader. “We wanna keep Jews in the synagogue and not in the bathroom.”

So absurd. Don’t even know where to begin.

Apparently there are a number of these engines springing up, mostly dedicated to a specific religious viewpoint. But most of them seem to be tools, like Jewogle which can find information about famous Jews along with kosher recipes. Our friend Luke at Common Sense Atheism has set up an engine that searches atheists sites.

These engines aren’t an attempt to replace or sanitize Google, they’re just a way to get specific information from the sprawling ‘net more efficiently. I may be wrong about this, but SeekFind, which proclaims that it’s mission is to “provide God-honoring, biblically based, and theologically sound Christian search engine results,” seems more like an attempt to create conservative Christian safe-area on the web.

A quick search for “atheism” turns up several sites attempting to debunk the position. For example, allaboutphilosophy.org, which jumps into the “atheists have no morality” argument straight away. A search for “PZ Myers” takes you to articles at the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis criticizing Myers. Coupled with the fact that ICR and AIG almost never provide links back to the things they criticize, and you’ve got a neat way of preventing any contact with opposing views.

Via Game Blend, a new video game is coming out that is based … excuse me, “based” on the Book of Enoch:

El Shaddai: Ascension Of The Megatron Breathtaking Debut Trailers

The book of Enoch was one of the coolest books of the Bible no one ever got to read in the original KJV. Nevertheless, Ignition Entertainment is taking the missing book of Enoch and turning it into one kick-butt game called El Shaddai.

The book of Enoch is originally what spawned great works like The Divine Comedy, and subsequently, Dante’s Inferno. The new game based on the book follows Enoch’s journey to bring back the soul’s of the original Fallen Angels whose actions ultimately resulted in the great flood.

Alright, number one: That’s Metatron, who appears in 3rd Enoch. Metatron is supposedly Enoch, who was taken up into heaven and exalted to become one of the God’s highest angles, or even a lesser God. He is described thus:

This Enoch, whose flesh was turned to flame, his veins to fire, his eye-lashes to flashes of lightning, his eye-balls to flaming torches, and whom God placed on a throne next to the throne of glory, received after this heavenly transformation the name Metatron.

Or you can just think of him as Alan Rickman from Dogma:

Megatron is a Transformer. He’s the leader of the Decepticons and violates the heck out of the law of Conservation of Mass by transforming into a handgun.

There’s a little bit of a difference.

(source)

If you want to understand the history of Israel, look at a map. For some reason, God placed his chosen people on land in a very bad neighborhood. In ancient times, the kingdoms of Northern Israel and Judah were stuck between the three greatest world powers of the day: Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Hittite Empire. Israel was destined to have a turbulent life.

Israel’s position was a blessing and a curse. Blessing because they controlled the trade routes between the great empires. Curse, because those empires could crush them and take control. For most of its existence, Israel was a football passed around by the great empires.

Fall of the Bronze Age

Pullquote: It was probably the greatest collapse in the ancient world, and the greatest loss to civilization until the fall of Rome.

In the late 13th century, most of Canaan was under indirect Egyptian control through a number of vassal states. But then suddenly, the kingdom of Egypt was beset by a mixed group of raiders that the Egyptians called the “sea people.” Older enemies joined the attack, the Libyans from the west and the Nubians from the south. Egypt was weakened, broke apart, and lost control over their vassals in Canaan.

The Hittite Empire collapsed at about the same time, beset by the sea peoples as well as older, inland foes. In Mesopotamia, Assyria and Babylon face new threats in the form of the Aramaeans. All told, by the mid-twelfth century, the three great empires had been rolled back. It was probably the greatest collapse in the ancient world, and the greatest loss to civilization until the fall of Rome.

But it did create a window of opportunity in the Levant.

Not that the Canaanites had everything their own way. Some of the “sea people” who had attacked Egypt settled into towns along the southern coast of Canaan that had previously been under Egyptian control. These would become known as the Philistines, and they’d be the force that would inadvertently unify Canaan.

United Monarchy

Pullquote: Solomon came to power after the usual dynastic bloodbath, and he set about consolidating what his father had conquered.

The Philistines likely settled in and took some time to get established. Once that was done, it must have been time to expand. This expansion came at a cost to the current residents of Canaan, who at the time lived in small and separate kingdoms and cantons. Their lack of unity most likely made them easy pickings for the more aggressive Philistines.

So the Canaanites sensibly decided to unify and find a single figure to lead their military. Their choice was Saul, who was at least able to create a standing army. This didn’t translate into lasting military success, and Saul was usurped by David.

David was able to hold the Philistines in check, though he never defeated them completely. He was able to expand the empire and spread outside the borders that had originally held the tribes of Canaan. But he suffered domestic problems. Saul had been from the North, while David was a Southern boy. The more developed North didn’t take this well, and David violently suppressed Northern revolts.

Things didn’t improve for the next generation. Solomon came to power after the usual dynastic bloodbath, and he set about consolidating what his father had conquered. In doing so, he placed much of the tax burden on the North, treating it more like a conquered territory than part of a unified whole. Perhaps this disunity explains why the military fate of the country began to go downhill, as Solomon saw some of his father’s gains get retaken by their original owners.

It all came to a head after the death of Solomon. The larger, more prosperous north broke off. The Unified Monarchy ended.

Legacy

Pullquote: Roughly three generations – let’s call it 90 years – of rough unity beginning with Saul and ending with Solomon. Yet this is the golden age that a great deal of the Bible hearkens back to.

And that’s it, really. The great powers of Assyria and the Babylon returned, renewing their control over the area. Northern Israel went on to become a local power, but was eventually destroyed by the Assyrians. Little Judah – small and weak enough to be ignored – lasted a bit longer. Long enough, at any rate, to write down a lot of stories explaining how they got where they were.

Roughly three generations – let’s call it 90 years – of rough unity beginning with Saul and ending with Solomon. Yet this is the golden age that a great deal of the Bible hearkens back to. It gave rise to a lot of the concepts that would later be applied to Jesus: Davidic king, messiah/christ/”anointed one”, son of God.

The Fall of the Bronze Age created a power vacuum in the Levant that the tribes of Canaan were able to fill, for a while. The legacy of that brief period is with us every time we open the Bible.

Recently 1,000 rabbis warned that homosexuality in the military may cause further natural disasters:

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America issued the following statement:

“When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it’s shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama’s kooky coalition.

“We agree with Eileen Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness that this will hurt the cohesiveness of the military, cause many to leave the army, and dramatically lower the number of recruits, perhaps leading to the reinstatement of a compulsory draft.

“Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

“We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.”

Here is a video of this nutcase delivering that message from Allah Jesus God G-d:

Click here to view the embedded video.