Bateman's Only Real Sin Was Blaming the Jews

Dave Bateman, founder and (now former) chairman of a Utah tech company, made a splash this week when he sent out an email to Utah tech and political leaders blaiming Jews for the pandemic and accusing them of trying to kill the American people (apparently with both the virus and the vaccine). I haven't been able to find the full text of the email, but various reports quote the following excerpts.

I write this email knowing that many of you will think I'm crazy after reading it. I believe there is a sadistic effort underway to euthanize the American people. It's obvious now. It's undeniable, yet no one is doing anything. Everyone is discounting their own judgment, and dismissing their intuition.

I believe the Jews are behind this. For 300 years the Jews have been trying to infiltrate the Catholic Church and place a Jew covertly at the top. It happened in 2013 with Pope Francis. I believe the pandemic and systematic extermination of billions of people will lead to an effort to consolidate all the countries in the world under a single flag with totalitarian rule. I know, it sounds bonkers. No one is reporting on it, but the Hasidic Jews in the US instituted a law for their people that they are not to be vaccinated for any reason.

The spike protein in both the vaccine and the illness are [sic] attacking the reproductive systems of women, and will eventually erode the number of T cells in our bodies that can ward off infections. Don’t get the illness and don’t get vaccinated.

I pray that I'm wrong on this. Utah has got to stop the vaccination drive. Warn your employees. Warn your friends. Prepare. Stay safe.

When the local FOX station followed up with him, he responded:

"Yes. I sent it. I have nothing but love for the Jewish people. Some of my closest friends are Jews. My heart breaks for their 2500 years they’ve been mistreated by nearly every country on earth. But I do believe Scottish Rite Freemasons are behind the pandemic (overwhelmingly Jewish)," he wrote. "And I fear billions of people around the globe right now are being exterminated."

That Bateman would believe this, not to mention broadcast it, is horrifying and he deserves all the public denunciation that he is receiving, which is primarily focused on his antisemitism. But I couldn't help but notice that most of what he said is fairly non-controversial in right-wing circles [1]. His downfall (thus far) was blaming "the Jews". That's still a bridge too far (for now), so it's the easiest part to denounce. But if he had only blamed a single Jewish person (e.g. George Soros), his ideas wouldn't be any more controversial than what is said by right-wing commentators and politicians every day.

Bateman may seem down and out at the moment, but if he hangs in there and plays his cards right [2], he will go from pariah to right-wing hero with surprising speed.

Notes:
1. Maybe not the Catholic part, but I don't know. There are fundamentalist strains of protestantism that don't accept that Catholics are even Christian, and there are conservative Catholics who don't like Pope Francis, so it's possible the Catholic part is more widesrpead than I realize. But the rest is pretty garden-variety and easy to find. Examples on this blog alone are here and here.
2. Don't apologize; get on a speaking/media tour; narrow to a single prominent Jewish person or family; blame the whole controversy on the liberal media and cancel culture; remind everyone that HE is the victim.

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Differences Between the Creation Accounts

This is a slightly updated version of something I posted four years ago.

The focus of Come, Follow Me this year is the Old Testament. The second lesson covers the Creation in a very cursory way, but asks what is similar and what is different between the various scriptural accounts. Good question! There are lots of subtleties that escape even a careful reading. We miss them, in part, because we have been conditioned by familiarity to not see things staring us right in the face. We also lack contextual understanding about their composition. I thought I would lay out the differences I have collected over the years. You may find that this side-by-side comparison is helpful for following along.

Who does the creating?
Genesis 1: God (Hebrew = Elohim)
Genesis 2: LORD God = Jehovah God (Hebrew = Yahweh Elohim)
Moses 2: God
Moses 3: Lord God
Abraham 4-5: the Gods (likely reflecting the literal Hebrew meaning of elohim, which is plural)

What is the overall story?
Genesis: God creates the heavens and the earth, and life on it, in six days and rests on the seventh day. Then for some reason we get a second story where the LORD God creates man, vegetation, animals, and then woman [1].

Moses: God creates the heavens and the earth in six days and rests on the seventh day. Then we are told that everything previously mentioned was a spiritual creation, and on the seventh day the Lord God creates man, vegetation, animals, and then woman.

Abraham: The Gods create the inanimate portions of the heavens and the earth (expanse, oceans, dry land, lights in the sky) and prepare the earth to bring forth life, in six days/times. At the beginning of the seventh time, the Gods carry out their plan for creating life by creating man, vegetation, woman, and then animals.

Elements unique to The Book of Moses:
- The account is changed to first person from God's point of view
- God speaks to his Only Begotten
- Sea and water are singular in some cases
- The sun and the moon are specifically named
- 'green herb' becomes 'clean herb'
- Moses 2:4: "I, the Lord God, made the heaven and the earth." The order of heaven and earth is reversed to match the reference earlier in the same verse.
- The mist is called forth by God
- Extended explanation of spiritual creation
- Man is the 'first flesh' or first creation
- Animals have the breath of life
- "This I know now is bone of my bones..."

Elements unique to the Book of Abraham
- Everything is done by 'the Gods'
- Different vocabulary including: organized, empty and desolate, brooding, and expanse. Some of these reflect Sexias's Hebrew grammar, which Joseph had studied.
- In Abraham 4:1 and 5:1, 'heavens' is plural, which reflects the plural Hebrew word
- References to both days and 'time'
- 'breath of life' is replaced with 'spirit'
- The rivers in Eden are not named
- Reference to Kolob and the Lord's time
- Woman is created before the animals
- "This was bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; now she shall be called Woman..."
- "and for Adam, there was found an help meet for him." Since woman was already created, the word 'not' has been removed.

The Harmonization Instinct
I want to go back to what I said about familiarity causing us to miss things. The harmonization instinct is very strong within the Church and we sometimes have difficulty allowing passages to speak for themselves because we want them to say what they are supposed to say. For example, the Abraham 4 and 5 chapter headings say that the plans for the six days of creation are set forth and then implemented. However, a careful reading shows that there is actually a mixture of creating and preparation going on. The Gods actually do create light, create the expanse, create dry land, and organize the luminaries. The planning part has to do with the eventual creation of life. The six days describe the preparation of conditions for life to be created, and then life is created in the following chapter, beginning with Adam.

Similarly, Moses describes six days of spiritual creation, followed by physical creation on the seventh day. Although this runs against the grain of mainstream interpretation, several elements of the story fall into place when the account is read that way, including the fact that Adam is described as the 'first flesh.' And as a matter of fact, that appears to have been the predominant (or at least an acceptable) interpretation around the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century (see First Flesh). This interpretation also makes sense of the following passage from the Doctrine and Covenants:

Q. What are we to understand by the sounding of the trumpets, mentioned in the 8th chapter of Revelation?
A. We are to understand that as God made the world in six days, and on the seventh day he finished his work, and sanctified it, and also formed man out of the dust of the earth, even so, in the beginning of the seventh thousand years will the Lord God sanctify the earth...
(D&C 77:12)

If you are thinking, "Well, that's not how it's described in the temple or in Church publications," you are making my point. We tend to force all four creation accounts (Genesis, Moses, Abraham, temple) to tell the same story rather than taking them on their own terms.


Notes:
1. The explanation from scholars of the Hebrew Bible is two separate stories have been merged together. The change in God's name is one prominent clue.

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