The Theology of ADL Conspiracy Theories

Despite his bishop's order to cease publishing his opinions on Jews and Judaism, Bob Sungenis has written a new article for Culture Wars magazine on Judaism and the Old Covenant. In a recent Q&A posting on his web site, Sungenis drew a line between dealing with Jewish Theological issues and Jewish cultural/political issues, promising to deal with the former exclusively in his writings:

I'll leave criticism of Jewish politics and culture to people more capable than I apparently am. My expertise is in theology, and that is where I will put all my efforts. Hence, any future dealings that I have with the Jews, whether on our website or in published articles, will only concern the theological side of things. As you can see by the Jewish material presently on our website, every article is about theological matters, and that will always be the policy of our apostolate from here on out.(Q&A of January 25, 2008, "Response to P. Catan", Link)

One presumes that the words "every article [presently on our website]" includes the most recent Culture Wars article, "The Old Covenant: Revoked or Not Revoked?" And yet, like a pig to his mud puddle, Bob simply cannot help himself; he makes it an entire two pages into the article before going into a paranoid rant on the ADL and B'nai B'rith:

The original spelling was "B'ne B'rith," which, because of variants in Hebrew vowel pointing, could also be pronounced "B'nai B'rith." In any case, B'ne B'rith originated in 1842, ostensibly for Jewish humanitarian reasons. In 1913, the spelling changed to B'nai B'rith and it then became an organization whose main purpose was to thwart anti-Semitism. By the mid-twentieth century, the ADL arm of B'nai B'rith had grown so large that Congressman John Rarick was compelled to give critical testimony before Congress on Dec 6, 1971. Here are his sobering words: "The world's largest spy network, the ADL...is either too powerful to be curbed or too well embedded to be mentioned or to come under public scrutiny. What is the ADL? It is a private investigative organization engaged in spying and preparing secret dossiers and reports which it uses to suppress free speech and discussion and to influence public thought and sentiment on an unsuspecting citizenry." Rarick adds that the ADL is a "monstrous Gestapo of the establishment," whose purpose is the "use of its intelligence network as a private super-pressure [organization]," and that it engages in "coerced cooperation of newspapers and other media of communication..." Quoting the words of senator Jack Tenney of California, Rarick continued: "The ADL has become the world's most powerful Gestapo; the brain center of a vast spy network and the intelligence unit of a myriad of Jewish organizations. Their secret agents spy on American citizens. Extensive files and dossiers are complied on those whom they dislike...Throughout their multitudinous controls of the media of communication, they are capable of destroying reputations and silencing all rebuttal....We are beginning to appreciate its vast spy network sprawling across the nation and throughout the world. Our imagination is staggered by its apparent control of the avenues of communication." (Sungenis, "Covenant", p. 2, fn. 5)

I will leave it to the more imaginative to explain how the "spy network" of the ADL has anything to do with theology.

The other point that needs to made here is that once again Bob has proven himself unwilling to do real research, or use primary sources, while writing on Jewish issues. The above quotes from John Rarick and Jack Tenney simply lack any citations or references, other than the passing mention of the fact that these words were spoken "before Congress on Dec 6, 1971."

Ostensibly, then, one could find this speech in the Congressional Record. And on a cold Saturday morning, I set out to do just that. First, I searched the Internet for some clue, and discovered that Bob's footnote above is little more than a verbatim copy-and-paste job from his 2005 article, "Neo-Cons and the Jewish Connection." Unfortunately, he doesn't give any sources or citations in that article either.

Arriving at the library, I quickly located the stacks which contained government documents. After finding the volume that contained the entries for December 6, 1971, I tracked down the speech in question, and it took all of five minutes to confirm my hunch. Comparing Rarick's speech with Bob's article, it is now a demonstrable fact: wherever Bob got these quotes from, he did not take them from the Congressional Record.

It was a strong suspicion in my mind from the beginning that Bob didn't go through these sorts of steps to do his homework and find these quotes. After all, we're talking about the man who once said, "Posting such CAI News articles is no hard work for me. I just copy and paste." (Q&A, Question 16, November 2006) It is simply not part of Bob's track record, when writing papers on his pet theories, to invest himself in any kind of effort to obtain (or validate) the quotes he uses. In this case, it is beyond doubt: he did no such research.

I am not interested in helping Bob out here by giving him volume and page number information. I have no intention of being his "fact-checker and source-exonerator for CAI articles on Jewish issues", a job he once publicly awarded to Ben Douglass, just months before Ben left CAI over Bob's anti-Jewish activities (cf. Sungenis, "Christopher Blosser and the Catholic ADL", p. 4)

It will suffice to say simply this: I did the leg-work, and I did the research, and it can now be said with certainty that Bob did not get his quotes from Rarick and Tenney by looking at the Congressional Record.

Which naturally raises the question: where did he get these quotes? Obviously, he plagiarized them from a secondary (or even tertiary) source, which he did not credit in either of the articles in which he "quoted" Rarick. Rather, as is his M.O., he acted as though he was using a primary source in order to give the impression that he actually did his homework, when in reality he was just plagiarizing again. This facade of having done primary research is probably why at least some people still think of him as a reputable scholar. He is not. He is a plagiarist.

So what was his secondary (or tertiary) source, in this case? I have no doubt that with a bit more checking, I could discover this as well, but to be quite blunt, I'm not interested enough at this juncture. Instead, I am raising this open challenge to Bob: reveal your actual sources for the Rarick material, because it certainly wasn't the Congressional Record.

Given Bob's past history with dealing with challenges against his sources ("I don't remember where I got it", or "it doesn't matter where I got it from, what matters is whether it's true"), I don't expect an answer.

Jacob Michael

Sungenis and the CASB 2 (Apocalypse of St. John): More Source-Reference Problems

The purpose of this short entry is quite simple. Several people in the past few months have made comments about Robert Sungenis in light of his Jewish Controversies, expressing sentiments along these lines: "Sungenis may have some problems in the Jewish area, but his biblical work is still quite good and very sound."

It has been the contention of RSATJ for quite some time, however, that this is simply not true. Sungenis has demonstrated the same pattern of sloppy scholarship in his non-Jewish writings as he has in his Jewish writings. The pattern is consistent: as long as Sungenis feels he is right on some issue, he absolves himself of adhering to scholarly standards. This was documented several times in Sungenis and the Jews: Just what the Doctor Ordered?, where Sungenis was shown to have taken several short-cuts in his references in Galileo Was Wrong, and in at least one case, to have used a "rumored" quote attributed to Carl Sagan (fn. 242 on p. 107 says, "The quote is attributed to Sagan, but is invariably included among other quotes from Carl Sagan.").

Apparently, the pattern is not going to be broken in Sungenis's newly-released Catholic Apologetics Study Bible, Volume 2: The Apocalypse of St. John.

In the study bible, Sungenis says on pages 14-15 that "The traditional view is that the Apocalypse was written between the years 95 AD and 97 AD, during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian." It should be noted that just a few years ago, in CASB 1, Sungenis had said of this position, "It is admitted by proponents of this view, however, that Irenaeus' language is ambiguous and that he is the lone witness for the assertion, thus leaving doubt as to its significance." (CASB 1, p. 351)

St. Irenaeus's ambiguous language and doubtful significance take a back seat in CASB 2, where the saint's testimony to the dating of the Apocalypse is now propped up as solid evidence: "One of the major patristic witnesses to this late dating is Irenaeus who, in his monumental work, 'Against Heresies', states that the Apocalypse was written 'toward the end of Domitian's reign'."

The question of whether St. Irenaeus was even talking about the writing of the Apocalypse in this passage is disputed, and the counter-evidence has been laid out in more detail here: Dating the Apocalypse of St. John: Was it Written Before or After Jerusalem Fell?

The point here, however, is that Sungenis went from saying that advocates of the late-date theory had one "lone witness", whose ambiguous testimony leaves "doubt as to its significance", to insisting that the late-date theory is the "traditional view", propped up by the "major patristic witness" of St. Irenaeus.

Sungenis's change of position was highlighted in a post at the Catholic Answers forum, and Sungenis issued a public response. He writes:

Now, the Matthew CASB 1 was written in 2003. Since that time, I have found more witnesses to the 95 AD writing of the Apocalypse than Irenaeus. (Sungenis, Jacob Michael: Incompetence and Immaturity, p. 5)

Indeed, Sungenis made it appear as though he had found "more witnesses" to the late-date view. He mentions them in the CASB 2, in fact. He mentions them again in his most recent defense of the issue:

Incidentally, the additional witnesses to a 95 AD date that Mr. Michael failed to mention are: Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine. Footnotes to the sources are provided in the text of the CASB 2. Not too shabby, are they? (Sungenis, Jacob Michael: Incompetence and Immaturity, p. 5)

Here is where we arrive at the reason for this entry: Sungenis says that "Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome and Augustine" all testify to the late-date theory, and more importantly, that "Footnotes to the sources are provided in the text of the CASB 2."

But this assertion was recently brought to the attention of Mark Wyatt, who has been one of the biggest public promoters of CASB 2, and a specific challenge was put to Mr. Wyatt, again at the Catholic Answers forum:

An "excellent" work such as this surely ought to have the patristic sources supplied in the footnotes, and Sungenis claims here that they are provided "in the text of the CASB 2."

So here's the million-dollar question, Mark: what are those patristic sources, referenced in the footnote(s) on pp. 14-15, which show that Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, etc., held to an AD 95-97 date of composition for the Apocalypse? You have the book, so it shouldn't take you long to find them ... (Jacob Michael, CA forum post, 7/6/2007)

Mr. Wyatt, who has shown himself capable of responding to dozens of posts at Catholic Answers within very short time frames, was curiously silent about this challenge. Several days have now passed with no answer.

Perhaps the reason for the silence is simply this: there are no patristic sources given in the text of the CASB 2 for this issue, contrary to Sungenis's explicit claim otherwise.

Rather, the source Sungenis gives in his footnotes is not to any patristic witness, but to Fr. Haydock's extensive commentary in the Haydock Bible. Upon further examination of the "Haydock source", however, it turns out that not even Fr. Haydock gives patristic sources on the issue of the dating of the Apocalypse. In fact, Fr. Haydock doesn't claim any patristic witnesses for the date of the Apocalypse at all.

A quick review of what Fr. Haydock actually says on the page number referenced by Sungenis in the CASB 2 reveals immediately what happened: Sungenis wasn't reading carefully, and thus misrepresented Fr. Haydock's claims. Fr. Haydock writes:

Though some in the first ages doubted whether this book [the Apocalypse] was canonical, and who was the author of it, (see Euseb. 1. 7. Histor. c. xxv.) yet it is certain much the greater part of the ancient fathers acknowledged both that it was a part of the canon, and that it was written by S. John, the apostle and evangelist. See Tillemont in his ninth note upon S. John, where he cites S. Justin, S. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertull. S. Cyp. S. Athan. Eusebius, S. Amb. S. Jerom [sic], S. Aug. &c. (Rev. Fr. Geo. Leo Haydock, The New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with a Comprehensive Catholic Commentary [Monrovia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991], p. 1627; italics in original)

Note well: Fr. Haydock is talking, not about the dating of the Apocalypse, but its acceptance within the canon of Scripture, and its Johannine authorship. These are the two issues for which he claims the patristic witnesses of St. Justin, St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, St. Ambrose, and the other Fathers whom Sungenis has pressed into service as witnesses of the late-date theory (notice that Sungenis's roll-call is even in the same order as Fr. Haydock's, except for the exclusion of Eusebius, and the insertion of St. Irenaeus).

Here is where the confusion enters. Fr. Haydock goes on, after claiming these Fathers as witnesses to the canonicity of the Apocalypse and to its Johannine authorship, to give his own opinion as to the date of the Apocalypse:

It was written in Greek to the churches in Asia, under Domitian, about the year 96 or 97, long after the destruction of Jerusalem, when S. John was banished to the island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea. (ibid., p. 1627)

It is clear what happened here. Sungenis took Fr. Haydock's own personal opinion on the date of the Apocalypse and confused it with the patristic evidence concerning the book's canonical status and Johannine authorship. He then claimed in the CASB 2, erroneously, that all of these Fathers testify to a late date for the Apocalypse. He then further trotted out these same names in his most recent response, but now with the additionally dishonest remark that "Footnotes to the sources are provided in the text of the CASB 2. Not too shabby, are they?"

Yes, those patristic witnesses are indeed "not too shabby", and they would be even more impressive if they were actually lending their testimony to the subject at hand: the date of the Apocalypse. What really would have been "not too shabby" is if Sungenis had actually included the patristic sources in the CASB 2 footnotes, as he explicitly claimed to have done. He did not, and now we can understand why: he was using Fr. Haydock as his primary source, and Fr. Haydock himself does not give primary source references, but rather points back to "Tillemont in his ninth note upon S. John."

In other words, Fr. Haydock is citing a secondary source, and Sungenis is therefore citing a tertiary source, but publicly claiming to have actually put the primary patristic sources in the CASB 2. On top of all of that, he is claiming these Fathers as witnesses on an issue for which not even Fr. Haydock claimed them.

Little wonder why Mr. Wyatt went silent. The "excellent work" in the CASB 2 that he has been tirelessly promoting on Sungenis's behalf turns out to be downright misleading and inaccurate.

Let me just anticipate the objection up front: Sungenis and his associates will undoubtedly complain that I'm "nitpicking" and trying to discredit an entire book based on "one example." But keep the sequence of events in mind: it was Sungenis who brought up this question of the patristic witnesses, and he was the one who used it as alleged evidence that his critics need to do their homework before challenging him. As usual, following up on Sungenis's dogmatic assertions has only unearthed new problems. Sungenis put this evidence forward for examination; it has been duly examined, and found wanting.

As far as the ramifications of this discovery go, it is not a question of discrediting an entire book based on one glaring mistake. It is a question of establishing a pattern in Sungenis's work; one example by itself would not be significant, but the cumulative effect of multiple examples in several places across many years is a different story - a garbled Truesdale quote here, a bogus Schoeman quote there, a ruined Haydock citation masquerading as patristic evidence here, a falsified Einstein quote there, an unverified Sagan quote here, a bogus saying of John Paul II there. The question can legitimately be asked: how can anything Sungenis cites be trusted at face value, without double-checking it yourself? And at that point, if you're already having to validate his sources, then of what value is his work? You might as well do the research yourself, since he can't be trusted to accurately report what his sources say.

Unfortunately, the end result of testing this latest Sungenis claim is decidedly negative: rather than being an example of how Sungenis is "solid" on biblical issues unrelated to the Jews, the CASB 2 turns out to be another example of how Sungenis has a bad habit of bypassing scholarly standards - even in his biblical work - when he thinks he is right on any given issue.

The Ginsberg "Quote"

To make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors...Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity to rub it in (The Fatal Embrace, p. ix, as cited in Piper's The New Jerusalem). (Sungenis, Neo-Cons and the Jewish Connection, September, 2005, source)

To make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors...Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity to rub it in (The Fatal Embrace, p. ix, as cited in Piper's The New Jerusalem). (Sungenis, Politics, Religion, Israel and the Seduction of the Catholic Voter, p. 38, source)

Caller: To take this slightly away from religion, or, mostly away from religion for a little bit, I think the whole thing can best be explained by Benjamin Franklin's statement to the Continental Congress in 1789, when he warned them, "Gentleman, if you let them in, in 200 years your children - your descendants, rather - will be cursing you in your graves, because they will be in the fields as slaves, while the ones you let in" - and we know who they're talking about - "will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands." That was Benjamin Franklin's statement, and I think it explains the whole thing. Because the man knew, he was a student of history - and he wasn't the only one - but he was a student of history who knew - he knew what they'd done in Europe, and all the countries in Europe that they'd been kicked out of, over and over again, because it's the same game plan for these people, no matter where they are, where they go, it's always the same game plan - has been for 2,000 years.

Bob: Yeah, as a matter of fact, just to add to what you're saying - we've been quoting Benjamin Ginzberg a lot on this program, and here's what he says, along those same lines - he says, "to make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors. Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity to rub it in." That comes from The Fatal Embrace, page Roman numeral nine. (Sungenis, on the radio program Mark Dankhof's America, February 23, 2007)

Speaking of quotes falsely attributed to men named Benjamin, the quote from Benjamin Ginsberg might be fraudulent as well. I haven't read the whole book The Fatal Embrace, so the quote might be in there somewhere. But it certainly is not on p. ix. I told Bob this a long time ago, when I did all the digging to give him the primary sources he needed for his essays, thus obviating his reliance on Hoffman, Piper, et al. He agreed to remove the quote, and it no longer appears in the updated version of his essay:

http://www.catholicintl.com/noncatholicissues/JNC.pdf

Though apparently he left it in another version: http://www.catholicintl.com/epologetics/articles/pastoral/priscv.pdf (see p. 38)

And it would appear that he is back to his old tricks again. (Ben Douglass, comment left on Sungenis's Views on Display at Republic Broadcasting Network)

Here is page ix of Ginsberg's book. The reader is invited to attempt to locate the quote anywhere on this page.

When the reader has given up on this hopeless task, he is invited to read this excerpt from pages seven and eight of Ginsberg's book. The portion Bob quoted is in bold, while the rather enlightening contextual bits he left out are in bold red.

Certainly, everywhere that Jews have lived, their social or economic marginality - their position, "outside society," as Hannah Arendt put it - sooner or later exposed Jews to suspicion, hostility, and discrimination. Even in multiethnic societies, Jews have usually been the most successful and visible - and, hence, the most exposed - outsiders. In America, Jews currently appear to be accepted by the larger community. Nevertheless, at least in part by their own choosing, American Jews continue to maintain a significant and visible measure of communal identity and distinctiveness in religious, cultural, and political matters. At the same time, most gentiles continue to perceive Jews to be a peculiar and distinctive group. Though Jews have learned to look, talk, and dress like other Americans, they are not fully assimilated either in their own minds or in the eyes of their neighbors. Even in America, the marginality of the Jews makes them at least potentially vulnerable to attack.

In America as elsewhere, moreover, Jews are outsiders who are often more successful than their hosts. Because of their historic and, in part, religiously grounded emphasis on education and literacy, when given an opportunity Jews have tended to prosper. And, to make matters worse, Jews often, secretly or not so secretly, conceive themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to their neighbors. Jews, to be sure, by no means have a monopoly on group or national snobbery. In contemporary America every group is encouraged to take pride in its special heritage and achievements. The problem is that Jews as a group are more successful than virtually all the others. Indeed, Jews are extremely successful outsiders who sometimes have the temerity to rub it in. As one outraged right-wing columnist noted recently, a Yiddish synonym for dullard or dope is "goyischer kopf," that is, someone who thinks like a non-Jew.

The question with which this book is concerned, however, is not so much the roots of anti-Jewish sentiment as the conditions under which such sentiment is likely to be politically mobilized. As we shall see, where an anti-Semitic politics becomes important, usually more is involved than simple malice toward the Jews. In politics, principles - even as unprincipled a principle as anti-Semitism - are seldom completely divorced from some set of political interests. In the case of anti-Semitism, major organized campaigns against the Jews usually reflect not only ethnic hatred, they also represent efforts by the political opponents of regimes or movements with which Jews are allied to destroy or supplant them. Anti-Semitism has an instrumental as well as an emotive character. Thus, to understand the cycle of Jewish success and anti-Semitic attack - and to understand why the United States is not exceptional - it is necessary to consider the place of Jews in politics particularly, as Hannah Arendt noted long ago, their peculiar relationship to the state. (Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace [Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1993], pp. 7-8)

And so yet again, Bob is caught quoting secondary sources as though they were primary sources, giving bad reference information, and leaving out rather important contextual statements - and all of this, even after he was informed by Ben Douglass back in 2006 that his source information was incorrect.

But what did Mark Wyatt say, once upon a time, when Bob was caught using a bogus quote in his Galileo Was Wrong manuscript?

Seeing that the quote appeared not accurate, I asked Robert about it, and upon investigation he admits that in fact the quote is incorrect. He has checked out practically every quote in the book for accuracy, unfortunately , that one he did not. He says he has purchased thousands of dollars worth of books and articles during the research phase, and carefully checked (and in some cases rejected / corrected) the quotes. The person who made the advertisement also liked the quote, so he used it in the ad.

He personally thanks you, since in fact he has not sent out the first CD's yet, and will expunge the quote (or correct it as makes sense) from both the ad and the book. He is a stickler for literary accuracy, and in fact it is a good thing you pointed this out. (Mark Wyatt, in defense of Bob Sungenis, source)

A "stickler for literary accuracy"? That statement is, at this point, just plain laughable.

And so, we turn again, with a new perspective, to Bob's claims about his own research:

The Jews are the best sources of information to talk about the Jews, it's amazing. That's what I found in doing my research. (Sungenis, on the radio program Mark Dankhof's America, February 23, 2007)

No, that is not what Bob has found in his research, because he hasn't done the primary research that would lead him to actually read the works of Jewish authors. What he meant to say above is that other anti-Jewish authors who quote Jews out of context are "the best sources of information to talk about the Jews." That is what he has "found" in doing his "research."