The Phineas Priesthood , also called Phineas Priests , are American domestic terrorists who adhere to the ideology which was set forth in the 1990 book Vigilantes of Christendom: The Story of the Phineas Priesthood by Richard Kelly Hoskins.
31-495: The Phineas Priests are not an organization, and it has no discernible leadership or institutional structure. For ideological adherents, a "Phineas Priest" is someone who commits a "Phineas action" – meaning the person follows the example of Phineas , a Hebrew man who was rewarded by God for killing an interfaith couple , according to the Old Testament . The term "Phineas action" is broadly used by white supremacists , as
62-655: A "covenant of peace," and grants him and "his seed" an everlasting priesthood. This passage was cited in Hoskins's book as a justification for using violent means against people who have interracial relationships and practice other forms of alleged immorality . Phinehas According to the Hebrew Bible , Phinehas (also spelled Phineas , / ˈ f ɪ n i ə s / ; Hebrew : פִּינְחָס , Modern : Pīnḥas , Tiberian : Pīnəḥās , Ancient Greek : Φινεες Phinees , Latin : Phinees )
93-709: A Midianite woman while they were together in the man's tent, running a javelin or spear through the man and the belly of the woman, bringing to an end the plague sent by Yahweh to punish the Israelites for sexually intermingling with the Midianites. Phinehas is commended by Yahweh in Numbers 25:10–13, as well as King David in Psalm 106 ( Psalms 106:28–31 ) for having stopped Israel's fall into idolatrous practices brought in by Midianite women, as well as for stopping
124-468: A deficit/excess in relation to the mean . In Islam, Judaism and Christianity, sin is a central concept in understanding immorality. Immorality is often closely linked with both religion and sexuality . Max Weber saw rational articulated religions as engaged in a long-term struggle with more physical forms of religious experience linked to dance, intoxication and sexual activity. Durkheim pointed out how many primitive rites culminated in abandoning
155-574: A direct connection between Balaam and the events at Peor, stating that the Moabites "caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the L ORD in the matter of Peor". Moses gave orders to kill all the idolaters, yet Zimri , the son of the Israelite prince Salu from the Tribe of Simeon , openly defied Moses and publicly showed his opinion to those standing at
186-461: A few things against you: You have people there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality ." Giving a more elaborated version of events, the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus asserts that Balaam sent for Balak and the princes of Midian and told them that, if they wished to bring evil upon Israel, they would have to make
217-544: A new religious centre, and send Phinehas to investigate. According to Joshua 24:33 , Phinehas owned land in the mountains of Ephraim, where he buried his father. In addition to these episodes, Phinehas appears as the chief adviser in the war with the Benjamites . He is commemorated in Psalms 106:28–31 . According to some rabbinical commentators, Phineas sinned due to his not availing his servitude of Torah instruction to
248-953: A saint on 1 July and 1 March. The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates him as a saint on 12 March (25 March on the New Calendar ). Immorality Immorality is the violation of moral laws , norms or standards. It refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong . Immorality is normally applied to people or actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to groups or corporate bodies, and works of art. Callicles and Thrasymachus are two characters of Plato 's dialogues, Gorgias and Republic , respectively, who challenge conventional morality. Aristotle saw many vices as excesses or deficits in relation to some virtue, as cowardice and rashness relate to courage. Some attitudes and actions – such as envy , murder , and theft – he saw as wrong in themselves, with no question of
279-478: A term for murders of interracial couples and as a term for attacks on Jewish people , members of other non-white ethnic groups , " multiculturalists ," and anyone else who they consider their enemy. The ideology which is set forth in Hoskins's book includes Christian Identity beliefs which oppose interracial relationships, the mixing of races , homosexuality , and abortion . It also is marked by anti-Semitism and anti-multiculturalism . The Phineas Priesthood
310-556: Is an actual organization called the Phineas Priesthood, probably because there was a group of four men in the 1990s who called themselves Phineas Priests. The men carried out bank robberies and a series of bombings in the Pacific Northwest before being sent to prison. But there is no evidence that their organization was any larger than those four individuals." In 2012, Drew Bostwick renamed a splinter faction of
341-548: Is an ancestor of Matitiyahu . Pinechas is the name of the 41st weekly Parashah or portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the eighth in the book of Numbers . The beginning of this parashah tells the judgement of Phinehas son of Eleazar; the end of the previous parashah tells of his zealous act. The Hebrew expression "One who acts like Zimri and asks for a reward as if he were Phinehas" ( עושה מעשה זמרי ומבקש שכר כפנחס ) refers to hypocrites who ask for undeserved rewards and honors. It derives from
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#1732776002533372-641: Is difficult as many different religions, cultures and societies have held contradictory views about sexuality. But there is an almost universal disdain for two sexual practices throughout history. These two behaviors include infidelity within a monogamous , romantic relationship and incest between immediate family members. Other than these two things, some cultures throughout history have permitted sexual behaviors considered obscene by many cultures today, such as marriage between cousins, polygyny , underage sex , rape during war or forced assimilation , and even zoophilia . Michel Foucault considered that
403-622: Is named after the Israelite Phineas , grandson of Aaron ( Numbers 25:7 ). According to Numbers 25, Phineas personally executed an Israelite man and a Midianite woman while they were together in the man's tent, ending a plague which had been sent by God in order to punish the Israelites for intermingling both sexually and religiously with Baal -worshipers. Phineas is commended for having stopped Israel's fall into idolatrous practices that were introduced to it by Moabite women. God commends Phineas as zealous through Moses , gives him
434-551: Is not considered an organization because it is not led by a governing body, its members do not hold gatherings, and it does not have a membership process. One simply becomes a Phineas Priest by adopting the Priesthood's beliefs and acting upon them. Adherents of the Phineas Priesthood ideology are considered terrorists . According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "Many people mistakenly believe that there
465-641: The Babylonian Talmud ( Sotah , Ch.22, p. 2), where it is attributed to the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannaeus (see Hebrew Misplaced Pages עושה מעשה זמרי ומבקש שכר כפנחס ). In some traditions (for example in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan ) Phinehas is identified with Elijah . This identification apparently arose during the first century A.D. The Roman Catholic Church commemorates him as
496-569: The Tabernacle entrance with Moses by going in to Cozbi , the daughter of the Midianite prince Sur. In a moment of great strength born of holy zeal , Phinehas went after them and ran them through with a spear. He thus "stayed the plague" that had broken out among the people, and by which twenty-four thousand of them had already perished. Yahweh noticed that Phinehas showed loyalty and bravery for him. Yahweh decided not to destroy all of
527-655: The neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations the "Tabernacle of the Phineas Priesthood-Aryan Nations" when he replaced August Kreis as the group's leader. Their crimes include numerous abortion clinic bombings in 1996, the 1996 bombing of The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Washington bank robberies, and plans to blow up FBI buildings. Four men who professed to follow the "religious philosophy of Phineas priests" were convicted of crimes that included bank robberies and bombings, and each of them
558-521: The Israelite roll-calls, the Israelites did not lose a man in the expedition. Phinehas son of Eleazar appears again in the book of Joshua . When the tribes of Reuben and Gad , together with the half-tribe of Manasseh , depart to take possession of their lands beyond the Jordan , they build a great altar on the other side; the remainder of the Israelites mistake this for a separatist move to set up
589-429: The Israelites sin. Balaam advised that they send the most beautiful women to seduce the Israelites to idolatry. This strategy succeeded, and soon many of the Israelites had been seduced. Phinehas later led a 12,000-strong Israelite army against the Midianites to avenge this occasion. Among those slain in the expedition were five Midianite kings, Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba, and also Balaam , son of Beor. According to
620-614: The Old Testament interprets the name to mean "the bronze-colored one". The account appears immediately after the story of Balaam , who had been hired by the Moabite chieftain, Balak , to curse the Israelites. Balaam failed to do so, as Yahweh put words in his mouth of blessing for Israel, instead (the first prayer said by Jews as part of their daily prayer service comes from this exact text). Having failed to curse them, Balaam left for his own country. The Book of Numbers asserts
651-593: The Phineas Priesthood as described by Hoskins in Vigilantes of Christendom . On November 28, 2014, 49-year-old Larry Steven McQuilliams fired more than 100 rounds at a federal courthouse, a Mexican consulate building (which he also tried to set on fire), and a police station in Austin, Texas; he was killed by return fire from police. A copy of Hoskins's book was found in McQuilliams's home. The Phineas Priesthood
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#1732776002533682-436: The children of Israel in anger because Phinehas had made atonement for their sins. Yahweh declared that Phinehas, and his sons' sons for all eternity, would receive divine recognition for this; a covenant of peace and the covenant of an everlasting hereditary priesthood. The Christian book of Revelation mirrors this sentiment. Revelation describes Jesus as speaking to one of seven Christian churches: "Nevertheless, I have
713-581: The desecration of Yahweh's sanctuary. After the entry to the land of Israel and the death of his father, he was appointed the third High Priest of Israel , and served at the sanctuary of Bethel ( Judges 20:28 ). The name "Phinehas" probably comes from the Egyptian name Pa-nehasi ( pꜣ-nḥsj ). According to the Oxford Companion to the Bible , "the Bible also uses Egyptian and Nubian names for
744-543: The distinction between licit and immoral behavior. Freud 's dour conclusion was that "In every age immorality has found no less support in religion than morality has". Coding of sexual behavior has historically been a feature of all human societies; as too has been the policing of breaches of its mores – sexual immorality – by means of formal and informal social control . Interdictions and taboos among primitive societies were arguably no less severe than in traditional agrarian societies. In
775-564: The land and its people. ... For the Egyptians used to these color variations, the term for their southern neighbors was Neḥesi, 'southerner', which eventually also came to mean 'the black' or 'the Nubian'. This Egyptian root (nḥsj, with the preformative pʾ as a definite article) appears in Exodus 6.25 as the personal name of Aaron's grandson, Phinehas (= Pa-neḥas )". The Theological Wordbook of
806-411: The latter, the degree of control might vary from time to time and region to region, being least in urban settlements; however, only the last three centuries of intense urbanisation, commercialisation and modernisation have broken with the restrictions of the pre-modern world, in favor of a successor society of fractured and competing sexual codes and subcultures, where sexual expression is integrated into
837-674: The masses at the time leading up to the Battle of Gibeah . In addition, he also failed to address the needs of relieving Jephthah of his vow to sacrifice his daughter. As consequence, the high priesthood was taken from him and temporarily given to the offspring of Ithamar , essentially Eli and his sons. According to 1 Chronicles 6:35–38 , his relation to Zadok is the following: Phinehas begat Abishua , Abishua begat Bukki , Bukki begat Uzzi , Uzzi begat Zerahiah , Zerahiah begat Meraioth , Meraioth begat Amariah , Amariah begat Ahitub, and Ahitub begat Zadok. According to 1 Maccabees , he
868-407: The modern world was unable to put forward a coherent morality – an inability underpinned philosophically by emotivism . Nevertheless, modernism has often been accompanied by a cult of immorality, as for example when John Ciardi acclaimed Naked Lunch as "a monumentally moral descent into the hell of narcotic addiction". Psychoanalysis received much early criticism for being
899-518: The workings of the commercial world. Nevertheless, while the meaning of sexual immorality has been drastically redefined in recent times , arguably the boundaries of what is acceptable remain publicly policed and as highly charged as ever, as the decades-long debates in the US over reproductive rights after Roe v. Wade , or 21st-century controversy over child images on Misplaced Pages and Amazon would tend to suggest. Defining sexual immorality across history
930-567: Was (initially) sentenced to life in prison in 1997 and 1998. A copy of Hoskins's book, War Cycles, Peace Cycles , was found in a van that was driven by Buford Furrow when he killed one person and wounded five others in an attack on a Jewish Community Center in California in 1999. Although that book is about economics, Michael Reynolds of the Southern Poverty Law Center noted that Furrow's actions were consistent with
961-635: Was a priest during the Israelites ' Exodus journey. The grandson of Aaron and son of Eleazar , the High Priests ( Exodus 6:25 ), he distinguished himself as a youth at Shittim with his zeal against the heresy of Peor . Displeased with the immorality with which the Moabites and Midianites had successfully tempted the Israelites ( Numbers 25:1–9 ) to inter-marry and to worship Baal-peor , Phinehas personally executed an Israelite man and