Dr. Alfred Rosenberg on the Old Testament

“Is it not more important now to promote this spiritual folkishly rooted life than to hang on inwardly to long fallen dogmatic idols?”

Taken from Dr. Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century (first published in 1930):

“In discussion with learned theologians, I was further able to establish the following: they conceded to me that the evaluation of ancient history from the racial soul aspect was correct. But when I drew the conclusion that the Jews must then necessarily also have their own completely determined character— their blood linked idea of god—that consequently this Syrian [Rosenberg uses “Syrian” as a synonym for Levantine.] life and spiritual form did not concern us in the least, then the Old Testament dogma arose like The Great Wall Of China between us; suddenly, the Jews appeared as an exception among Folks. In all seriousness, the Cosmic God was said to be identical with the dubious spiritual assertions of the Old Testament! Hebrew polytheism was elevated to a model of monotheism, and no deeper a knowledge had come to Lutheran theology from the original magnificent Aryan Persian idea of the world and the cosmic comprehension of God.” –p. 9

“…this coming time affirms both the Strasburg cathedral as well as the Wartburg, and denies the arrogant Roman Centre just as it does the Jerusalem Old Testament. It draws more strength from the roots of Germanic drama, its architecture and music, than from the comfortless tales of the Jewish people.” –p. 11

“…no sooner had Christianity become the state religion under Constantinus, than the old testament spirit of hatred showed its hideous face. The Christians at once demanded the application of the punishments prescribed in the old testament against the worship of idols. In Italy, with the exception of Rome itself, the temples of Jupiter were closed.” –p. 87

“The Gospel of saint John, which still retains an aristocratic spirit, strove to defend Christianity against this collective bastardisation, orientalisation, and Judaisation. About the year 150, Markion, who was a Greek, once again represented the Nordic idea of a world order based on organic tension and hierarchical structure. This was in direct contrast to the Semitic conception of a capricious god who exercised a boundless despotism. Marcion therefore rejected the old testament as the book of laws of so false a deity. Similar efforts were made by a few of the Gnostics.” –p. 88

“Chiliasm, which has also poisoned many other protestant movements up to the present day, was imbibed from the old testament. It led Czech farmers to abandon their goods and property in imminent anticipation of the kingdom of god on earth…” –p. 109

“A science of our kind could as little emerge from the world picture offered in the old testament as it could from the witchcraft and demonology of the African.” –p. 116

“Originally, the Hebrews and Jews had been involved in an entirely pluralistic theology. To be sure, their tribal god looked after their interests and they after his, but none doubted that other gods of other peoples were just as real and effective as Jehovah. It was under the Persian empire that the Jews first learned of a universal, cosmic god, Ahura Mazda (the god of light) and of his enemy, dark Ahriman. They were later taken over as a universal despot—Jehovah— and his rival, Satan. The Jew gradually rid himself of all pluralisms, placing Shaddai Jehovah at the centre of all things, with himself as his authorised servant. Thus he created a focal point for himself, and this has preserved and bred his thinking, his race and his type—even if purely parasitic—up to the present day and despite any marginal racial mixing. Even when recreant Jews abjured Jehovah, they only put in his place what was essentially the same concept under other names. This they called humanism, liberty, liberalism, class. From these there reemerged the same old rigid Jehovah, breeding his offspring under a variety of designations. Since Jehovah is conceived as being materially effective, the rigid Jewish insistence upon one single god is interwoven with practical material concerns—that is, materialism—and the most sterile philosophical superstition, for which the old testament, the Talmud and Karl Marx represent closely related visions. This static self assertion is the metaphysical ground for the strength and tenacity of the Jew, as well as for his cultural sterility and parasitism.” -p. 120

“The reaction in Europe against the crippling weight of the church was powerful enough to force a lasting spiritual pluralism into the Jewish Roman theology. Thus one can quite justifiably speak of catholicism and its saints as a polytheistic belief. By catholicism we mean, of course, the religious phenomenon, not the political entity. But in spite of this development, the centralised authority of the churches strengthened a static and monistic outlook in Europe and, by way of the attached new testament, smuggled the spirit of the old testament into a protestantism which was originally individualistic.” –p. 121

“Much later, Luther did cast aside the Jews and their lies, and declare that he no longer had anything to do with Moses. But by then the bible had become a popular work, and the prophecies of the old testament integral to religion. As a result, the Judaisation and torpidity of our life were pushed a step further, and it is no wonder that thenceforth blond German children were forced every Sunday to sing: To you, to you, O Jehovah, will I sing; for where is such a god as you?” –p. 121

“Nothing reveals more clearly the futility and falseness of our churches than that they prate of things which have nothing to do with religion, and that they still defend doctrines in which they no longer believe. They are entirely correct when they argue that if the old testament or the Nicene creed were pried out of the structure of the church, the corner stones would be lacking and the whole building would collapse.” –p. 124

“Before it could fully blossom, the joyous message of German mysticism was strangled by the anti European church with all the means in its power. Nevertheless, the message has never died. The great sin of protestantism has been that instead of listening to the former, it made the so called old testament into a folkish book, and interpreted the Jewish texts literally. The present period of renewed spiritual readiness will either listen to the message of German mysticism, or end up under the feet of the old forces before it has had time to unfold, like many past attempts at a transformation from Roman Jewish poisoning.” –p. 177

“The doctrine of freedom of the soul is one of freedom from god. The doctrine of detachment signifies the utter rejection of the old testament and its ideas, along with the sickly sweet pseudomysticism of later times.” –p. 180

“The unapproachable terrifying god enthroned over all; the Jehovah of the so called old testament who is praised in contrition and prayed to in fear.” –p. 194

“The ANALOGIA ENTIS (if one leaves out an assumption of creation of the world from nothing) has been forced on the Nordic European spirit by the old testament.” –p. 195

“In the entire old testament we find no trace of belief in immortality, unless it be the reflection of the proven outward effect of the Persians on the Jews during the banishment. The Jewish aim is the creation of a paradise on earth. For this purpose, as is stated in the later holy books, the righteous (that is, the Jews) will creep into the promised land from their graves all over the world, emerging through holes bored in the earth by unknown forces solely for them. The Targum, the Midraschim, and the Talmud describe with delight this magnificent state of affairs in the expected paradise. The chosen people will then rule over the entire world. All other peoples will become its slaves. They will die and be born again in order to go anew to hell. The Jews, however, will not go there, but will lead a blessed life on earth. Jerusalem will be rebuilt in the most splendid way. The sabbath boundaries will be set with jewels and pearls. If anyone should have debts to pay, then he will need only tear a pearl from the hedge and he will become free of all obligations. Fruit will ripen every month, grapes will grow as large as an entire room, grain will grow of its own accord, the wind will blow the corn together, and the Jews will only need to shovel up the meal. Eight hundred varieties of roses will grow in the gardens, and streams of milk, balsam, honey and wine will flow through Palestine. Every Jew will possess a tent over which a golden vine will grow on which thirty pearls will hang. Under every vine will stand a table with jewels. In this paradise 800 kinds of flowers will bloom. In the midst the Tree of Life will grow, radiating 500,000 kinds of taste and scent. Seven clouds will lie over the tree, and the Jews will knock its branches so that its magnificent perfume is wafted from one end of the world to the other.

This land of milk and honey grew with religious sanction and then celebrated its rebirth in Jewish Marxism with its splendid future state. The greed of the Jews exists because of their bankrupt theology, whether of the past or present. At the same time, they almost completely lack a truly spiritual and artistic creativity. The primary religious element is lacking. The outward belief in immortality has been given only a superficial adjustment to an essentially alien outlook. It has never been an inwardly determined driving force.” –pp. 263-264

“The figure of Shylock cannot please us as such since the thought of him contradicts our spiritual precepts. Seldom does a creation impress us in the same degree as this figure, because it is racially spiritually perfect in itself. It is outwardly conditioned, encompassing all Jewish racial features from the rock pictures of Egypt up to Trotsky. Spiritually, Shylock portrays the essence of the old testament ideal—as well as the essence of the figures from the Talmud—up to the modern Wall Street banker. This thousand year old organism represented in Shylock is also the new creation of the Jewish essence—just as the Margrave Rüdiger and Faust represented the Nordic.” –pp. 291-292

“The belief in immortality becomes more and more a condition for us under which we can alone maintain life in a Jewish German state which is mistakenly fabricated out of clay and iron. The religious concept of Christianity is false. True religion is the personal relationship to god. True worship is the unconditional present ….. Paul brought the old testament into the church.” –p. 319

“The tragic thing about the spiritual history of the last hundred years is that the churches have made the liberal materialistic outlook their own. They then defended their position in the field of science instead of operating in their own sphere of values. And it is even more tragic that they had to do this since they were developed historically. They had proclaimed old testament tales to be true. The later materialistic legends were the fundamental constituent of their totality. Thus the Darwinian era was able to create enormous confusion.” –p. 406

“Accordingly, the so called old testament must be abolished once and for all as a book of religion. By this, the unsuccessful attempt of the last one and a half thousand years to make us spiritually into Jews will be eliminated. This is an attempt for which we, among other things, had to thank our terrible materialistic Jewish rulers.” –p. 409

“The powerful preacher and the angry man in the temple, the man who impelled others along with him and whom they all followed, not the sacrificial lamb of Jewish prophecy, not the crucified, is today the formative ideal which shines forth to us from the Gospels. And if it cannot shine forth, then the Gospels are dead.

The scientific criticism of the text has made such rapid progress that all technical prerequisites for a comprehensive new creation are present. The Gospel of Mark probably contains, even if with additions, the real core of the message of the child of god. This stands in opposition to the Semitic doctrine of the slave of god. The Gospel of John was the first gentile interpretation. We find here the eternal polarity of good and evil in contrast to the old testament delusion that Jehovah created good and evil out of nothing. Simultaneously he said of his world that it was very good, in order to then himself become the instigator of lies, deceit and murderous deeds. Mark still knew nothing of Jesus other than as the fulfiller of the Jewish idea of the Messiah. Thus, Matthew and Paul have provided us with the misfortune of the entire western cultural world.” –p. 409

“John has interpreted Jesus in a genial way. He recognised that here one was dealing with an anti Jewish spirit hostile to the old testament. But this has been covered over by a Jewish tradition which was linked with the spiritual waste products of the Hellenic world shaped anew in the Roman church.” –p. 411

“The German Faith Communities have hitherto not passed into a stage beyond a theoretical beginning. The practical attempts have not been encouraging. But in whatever manner these develop, the research carried out by these bodies in the realm of Nordic religious history will nevertheless form the yeast which will permeate the former catholic and the former Lutheran components of the German church. In place of the old testament pimps and cattle dealer stories, the Nordic sagas and legends will appear, at first simply told, and later represented through symbols. It is not the dream of hatred and murderous messiahism, but the dream of honour and freedom which must be kindled through Nordic, Germanic sagas—from Odin by way of the old folkish tales up to Eckehart and Walther von der Vogelweide. It will be reserved for a genial hand to select from the spiritual sediment of millennia the hitherto neglected pearls of the German spirit and to bind them together organically. What is temporal, Roman and Jewishly conditioned appears clearer than ever today. But all the more distinctly the real heartbeat of our folkish tales resounds. We hear tales of Eckehart and Luther in our ears. For more mature pupils a vivid picture of religious searching from Iran, India, indeed also from Hellas, will unroll, alien and yet simultaneously closely related. The longing to give the Nordic race soul its form as German church under the sign of the folkish Myth, that is for me the greatest task of our century. Just as the Roman Myth of the representation of god by the pope comprised very different peoples and opposing directions and bound them, so will the Myth of the blood, once grasped, bind like a magnet all personalities and religious communities, irrespective of their diversities, in a clear structure bearing relationship to a centre. Thus, we have a life creating arrangement transformed into the folkish totality. The coming life will then clarify and determine individual details of its structure. No one can foresee them today. ” –p. 416

“The Roman whore and the old testament superintendent will gradually lose their power over individual personalities, and, consequently, also over political activities. The first prerequisites for a religious, but, then, also, for a cultural and state lifestyle will be created. The new German racial church will make changes in the Roman ritual. It will abandon sermons about slaves and scapegoats and the lamb of god. It will forget about claiming that Peter founded the Roman church. There will be no more talk of the fulfilment of the old testament, of Indulgences or of miraculous powers. A corresponding alteration of external rites will also have to result. We will work hand in hand with the great literature of enlightenment, which is to be spread by the spiritual heads of the German church within their existing communities.” –pp. 416-417

“The old testament and its scientific truths have been proven false.” –p. 424