Red heifer

{{Bronze}}[[File:Red Angus Heifer.jpg|thumb|right|165px|Red heifer is not amused.]]
{{biblenav}}
The '''red heifer''' is a [[cow]] recommended for slaughter in the [[Old Testament]] as part of a purification ritual. [[Fundamentalists|Some people]] believe its sacrifice will also bring about the [[end of the world]], being connected with the building of the Third Temple in [[Jerusalem]] and the consequent coming of the [[Judaism|Jewish]] [[Messiah]]/[[Second Coming]] of [[Jesus]]. For that reason, certain very special people are actually trying to breed red heifers or even start a breeding population in [[Israel]].<ref name=wp>{{wpa|red heifer}}</ref>

Specifically, its coat can have at most one single hair that isn't red and its skin, hooves, and eyelids must also be of a reddish colour. Its hair can't have any sign of the marks made by a yoke.<ref name=bin>[http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/17303/holy-cow-red-heifer-born-us/ Holy Cow! Red Heifer Born in the US], ''Breaking Israel News'', June 21, 2014</ref> And according to the [[Bible]], it must never do a day's work in its life. Which would be awesome if it wasn't then killed and burnt. Since a heifer is a young (female) cow who has never had a calf, presumably it must also be kept away from bulls.

==Scriptural origin==
The red heifer is mentioned in the [[Book of Numbers]] [[RationalWiki:Annotated Bible/Numbers|chapter 19]] where [[God]] tells [[Moses]] and Aaron "Speak unto the children of Israel, that they bring thee a red heifer without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke". It then describes in some detail how the heifer should be killed and burnt with cedar, wool and hyssop (a herbaceous plant used since ancient [[Egypt]] in purification rituals, although as is often the case with ancient botany, people aren't entirely sure if their hyssop was the same as our hyssop<ref>{{wpa|Hyssopus officinalis}}</ref>). All those involved in this ritual will be unclean until nightfall and must wash themselves in the prescribed way, but the ashes can be used as a purification of [[sin]] for those who touch a dead body, although those who gather the ashes are also unclean until nightfall.

===Sating God's bloodlust===
In his magnum opus ''[[God_Is_Not_Great|God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]'', the late [[Christopher Hitchens]] pinpoints the locations where the [[Abrahamic religions]] converge on this concept, writing:<ref>''God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'', Christopher Hitchens, page 71.</ref>

{{quotebox|Before [[monotheism]] arose, the altars of primitive society reeked of blood, [[Human sacrifice|much of it human and some of it infant]]. The thirst for this, at least in animal form, is still with us.

Pious [[Jews]] are at this moment trying to breed the spotlessly pure "red heifer" mentioned in the book of Numbers, chapter 19, which if slaughtered again according to the exact and meticulous ritual will bring about the return of animal sacrifices in the Third Temple, and [[Eschatology|hasten the end of time]] and [[Second_coming|the coming]] of the [[Messiah]]. This may appear merely absurd, but a team of like-minded [[Christian]] maniac farmers are attempting as I write to help their co-[[fundamentalists]] by employing special breeding techniques ([[Irony|borrowed or stolen from modern]] [[science]]) to produce a perfect "Red Angus" beast in [[Nebraska]].

Meanwhile in [[Israel]], the Jewish biblical fanatics are also trying to raise a human child, in a pure "bubble" free from contamination, who will at the attainment of the right age be privileged to cut that heifer's throat. Ideally, this should be done on the Temple Mount, awkwardly the site of the [[Muslim]] holy places but nonetheless the very spot where [[Abraham]] is alleged to have drawn the knife over the live body of his own child.

Other sacramental guttings and throat-cuttings, particularly of [[lamb]]s, occur every year in the Christian and Muslim world, either to celebrate [[Easter]] or the feast of [[Eid]]. The latter, which honors Abraham's willingness to make a human sacrifice of his son, is common to all three monotheisms, and descends from their primitive ancestors. There is no softening the plain meaning of this frightful story.}}

==Jewish tradition==
The problem with the above ritual, aside from its tedious repetition of the phrase "unclean until nightfall", is that red heifers are extremely rare. Some Jewish tradition claims that from Moses's day to the destruction of the Second Temple by the [[Roman]]s in 70 CE, only 9 were found. None have been born since then.<ref name=it/> (Jews stopped sacrificing animals when the Second Temple was destroyed.)

Once discovered and scrutinised for hairs and spots, the cow must be looked after carefully to make sure it doesn't do any work and isn't branded and generally gets to be blemish free until the day of its glorious [[death]].<ref name=it>[https://archive.is/rqgwi Red Heifer Found in America], Archived from the original at Israel Today, June 26, 2014</ref>

A red calf was born near Haifa in 1996 but it grew white hairs and was disqualified and probably eaten.<ref name=ny/>

==Apocalyptic Christians==
But what if you could make a red heifer, kind of like in ''Jurassic Park''? You would have power over all the Jews, and be able to touch all the corpses you wanted, and do loads of other unclean things?

Christian tradition reportedly associates the red heifer with [[Jesus]], because he was perfect and he was sacrificed, and as a result some fundamentalist Christians believe a red heifer will signal the [[Second Coming]] of Christ.<ref name=wp/> In addition to the red heifer it is also required that Jerusalem must be fully returned to the Jews and the Temple rebuilt for the sacrifice, but the cow is seen as a good start.<ref name=ny/>

In particular, a [[Mississippi]] rancher and preacher named Clyde Lott is trying to breed red heifers and ship them to Israel to bring about the Apocalypse, battles of [[Armageddon]], [[Rapture]], reign of the [[Antichrist]], subsequent triumph of Christ, and [[Judgment Day]]. Lott, a resident of Canton, Mississippi, started in 1990 after meeting Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, who are focused on rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem (and presumably destroying the mosque currently there). Lott worked on it for at least 25 years, taking donations and organising rabbinical appraisals of candidate beasts. In 1998 it was reported he was planning to ship 500 cows to the West Bank. A couple of times (in 1997 and 2002) he thought he had found cows, but they failed to pass muster.<ref name=oc>[http://www.odditycentral.com/news/this-mississippi-rancher-who-tried-to-bring-about-the-second-coming-of-jesus-by-shipping-red-cows-to-israel.html This Mississippi Rancher Who Tried to Bring About the Second Coming of Jesus by Shipping Red Cows to Israel], ''Oddity Central'', Nov 12, 2014</ref><ref>[http://www.thingsmagazine.net/clyde-lott-and-the-red-heifer-of-millennial-doom/ Clyde Lott and the red heifer of millennial doom], ''Things Magazine'', 2012</ref><ref name=ny>[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1998/07/20/forcing-the-end Forcing the End], Lawrence Wright, New Yorker, July 20, 1998</ref>

As of 2014, things had gone quiet with Lott,<ref name=oc/> but the lack of [[Book of Revelation|7 headed beasts rising from the ocean]] suggests he's not succeeded yet.

However, an attempt to finish the job has been rather successful. A Judeo-Christian named Byron Stinson bred five heifers that were sent to Israel.{{fact}}

==See also==
*[[Eschatology]] &mdash; the study of the [[end of the world]]

==References==
{{Reflist|2}}
[[Category:Domestic animals]]
[[Category:End of the world]]
[[Category:We're on a mission from God]]

Categories: Domestic animals, End of the world, We're on a mission from God