January 17, 2010

• THE MYTH OF A JUDEO-XTIAN TRADITION

  This is an age in which news has been superseded by propaganda, and education by brain-washing and indoctrination from the advertising used to sell poor quality goods, to the classes in schools designed to make children into conditioned robots of the State, the art of persuasion has displaced the simple virtue of truth.
  
   Since the end of the Second World War we have been bombarded from all sides with references to the Western world's "Judeo-Christian religion," and "our Judeo-Christian heritage." We are told by both church leaders and scholars that our society is based on a supposed "Judeo-Christian tradition". The notion of "Judeo-Christian religion is an unquestioned - almost sacrosanct - part of both secular and church thinking. American Christian leader Prof. Franklin H. Littel, a vocal supporter of the Zionist state, frankly declared that "to be Christian is to be Jewish," and that consequently it was the duty of a  Christian to put support for the "land of Israel" above all else. Pat Boon, the North American singer and evangelist, said there are two kinds of Judaism, one Orthodox and the other Christian. Yet such a decidedly Christian Zionist outlook is to say the least  wildly simplistic and profoundly unhistorical.

   

  As the astute Jewish writer, Joshua J. Adler, points out, "The differences between Christianity and Judaism are much more than merely believing in whether the messiah already appeared or is still expected, as some like to say."
  
   The comments of Jewish author Mr. S. Levin may well explain the Christian's need for the Judeo-Christian myth. Writing in the Israeli journal ,Biblical Polemics, Levin concludes: "'After all, we worship the same God', the Christian always says to the Jew and the Jew never to Christian! The Jew knows that he does not worship the Christ-God, but the Christian orphan needs to worship the God of Israel and so, his standard gambit rolls easily and thoughtlessly from his lips. It is a strictly unilateral affirmation, limited to making a claim on the God of Israel, but never invoked with reference to other gods. A  Christian never confronts a Moslem or a Hindu with 'After all, we worship the same God'."
  
   Back in 1992 both Newsweek magazine and the Israeli Jerusalem Post newspaper simultaneously printed extensive articles scrutinizing the roots of the sacrosanct  Judeo-Christian honeymoon.
  
   The statement heading the Newsweek article read: "Politicians appeal to a Judeo-Christian tradition, but religious scholars say it no longer exists." The Jerusalem Post article's pull quote announced: "Antisemitism is a direct result of the Church's teachings, which Christians perhaps need to re-examine."
  
   "For scholars of American religion," Newsweek states, "the idea of a single Judeo-Xtian tradition is a made-in-America myth that many of them no longer regard as valid." It quotes eminent Talmudic scholar Jacob Neusner: "Theologically and historically, there is no such thing as the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's a secular myth favored by people who are not really believers themselves."
  
   Newsweek cites authorities who indicate that "the idea of a common Judeo-Christian tradition first surfaced at the end of the 19th century but did not gain popular support until the 1940's, as part of an American reaction to Nazism and concludes that, "Since then, both Jewish and Christian scholars have come to recognize that - geopolitics apart - Judaism and Christianity are different, even rival religions.
  
   The Jerusalem Post accused the Christian Church of being responsible for the holocaust. The French Jewish scholar Jules Isaac was quoted as saying: "Without centuries of Xtian catechism, preaching, and vituperation, the Hitlerian teachings, propaganda and vituperation would not have been possible." "The problem," concludes the Jerusalem Post, "is not, as some assert, that certain Christian leaders deviated from Christian teachings and behaved in an un-Christian manner; it is the teachings themselves that are bent."

   

  A few perfect example of these teachings are such as (SAINT) JOHN CHRYSOSTOM: The strongest attacks on Jews and Judaism by the Church Fathers are to be found in the homilies of Chrysostom (344-407) in his Antioch sermons. He is considered to be among the most beloved and admired in Church history. Besides his proclamation of Jews as

  "godless, idolaters, pedicides, stoners of prophets, and commiters  of 10,000 horrors [which, incidentally, is found in the Christian  book in Matthew 23:37-38], Chrysostom said in his book Orations Against The Jews that:: "The  Jews are the most worthless of all men.   They  are  lecherous,  rapacious, greedy. They are perfidious murderers of  Christ.  They  worship  the   Devil.  Their  religion is a sickness.  The Jews are the odious assassins of Chrst and for killing  God there  is  no  expiation possible,  no  indulgence  or pardon.   Xtians   may never cease vengeance,  and  the  Jew must live in servitude forever. God always  hated  the  Jews.  It  is  essential that all Christians hate them." (year 379)

   

  Chrysostom's homilies were to be used in seminaries and schools for centuries as
  model sermons, with the result that his message of hate would be passed down to succeeding generations of theologians. The nineteenth century Protestant cleric R.S. Storr called him "one of the most eloquent preachers who ever since apostolic times have brought to men the divine tidings of truth and love." A contemporary of Storr, the great theologian John Henry Cardinal Newman, described Chrysostom as a "bright, cheerful, gentle soul, a sensitive heart."
  

   

  Then there is the Father of the Protestant Church, Martin Luther, who stated:"What then shall we Christians do with this damned, rejected race of Jews?
  First, their synagogues should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of God and of Christianity, in order that God may see that
  we are Christians. Secondly, their homes should be likewise broken down and destroyed.
  Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer-books and Talmuds in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught. Fourthly, their rabbis must be forbidden under threat
  of death to teach any more..."
  
   Joshua Jehouda, a prominent French Jewish leader, observed in the late 1950's: "The current expression 'Judeo-Christian' is an error which has altered the course of universal history by the confusion it has sown in men's minds, if by it one is meant to understand the Jewish origin of Christianity...If the term 'Judeo Christian' does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that it is a most dangerous idea. It is based on a 'contradiction  in abjecto' which has set the path of history on the wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which are completely irreconcilable, it seeks to demonstrate that there is no difference between day and night or hot and cold or black and white, and thus introduces a fatal element of confusion to a basis on which some, nevertheless, are endeavoring to construct a civilization." ("Antisemitisme Miroir du Monde pp. 135-6)
  
  What is the Truth?
   Is there then any truth in this term, "Judeo-Christian"?  Is Christianity derived from Judaism? Does Christianity have anything in common with Judaism?
  
   Reviewing the last two thousand years of Western Christian history there is really no evidence of a Judeo-Christian tradition and this has not escaped the attention of honest Christian and Jewish commentators.
  
   The Jewish scholar Dr. Joseph Klausner in his book "Jesus of Nazareth" expressed the Judaic viewpoint that "there was something contrary to the world outlook of Israel" in Christ's teachings, "a new teaching so irreconcilable with the spirit of Judaism," containing "within it the germs from which there could and must develop in course of time a non-Jewish and even ANTI-Jewish teaching."
  
   Dr. Klausner quotes the  Xtian theologian, Adolf Harnack, who in his last work rejected the hypothesis of the Jewish origin of Christ's doctrine: "Virtually every word He taught is made to be of permanent and universal humanitarian interest. The Messianic features are abolished entirely, and virtually - importance is attached to Judaism in its capacity of Jesus' environment."
  
   Gershon Mamlak, an award-winning Jewish Zionist intellectual, recently claimed that the "Jesus tradition" is essentially the ultimate extension of ancient Greek Hellenism and is in direct conflict to Judaism's "role as the Chosen people" 
  
   Dr. Mamlak, writing in the Theodor Herzl Foundation's magazine of Jewish thought, Midstream, maintains that the prevailing theory that Christianity originated in the spiritual realm of Judaism "is anchored in a twofold misconception: 1) the uniqueness of Judaism is confined to its monotheistic God-concept; 2) the 'parting of the ways' between the Jesus coterie and Judaism is seen as the result of the former's adaptation of the doctrines of Christology
  
   The first misconception means: "When the affinity of the Jesus coterie with Judaism is evaluated by common faith in the One, severed from the believer's duty to execute the Law of the One and to acknowledge the Chosen Nation of Israel as His instrument-faith in the One becomes anti-Judaism par excellence
  
   In Gershon Mamlak's view, "The conflict between Judaism and the Jesus tradition goes beyond the confines of theology. [The Jesus tradition] was the cosmopolitan renunciation of the national phenomenon in general and extreme hostility to Israel's idea of a Chosen Nation as the divine instrument for the perfection of the world."
  
   Evidently the concept of a common Judeo-Christian tradition has more to do with post 1945 politics and a certain amount of 'public relations' than it does with historical and Biblical reality. Never the less a number of modern Christian polemicists have managed to rest certain Greek text verses in the drive to give a Scriptural basis to their argument. 
  
    The few Christian book 'proof texts' utilized by Christian Zionists and secular proponents of the modern Judeo-Christian myth are the product of poor  translation. Messianic Jewish writer Malcolm Lowe in his paper "Who Are the Ioudaioi?" concludes, like Robert and Mary Goote, that the Greek word "Ioudaioi" in the Greek text should be translated as "Judeans", rather than the more usual "Jews". David Stern, a Jew turned Christian, also came to the same conclusion when translating the "Jewish New Testament".
  
   Few Christians are aware that the translators of Scripture often mistranslated the word "Jew" from such words as "Ioudaioi" (meaning from, or being of: as a geographic area, Judean). The word Judean, mistranslated as "Jew" in the Greek Text, never possessed a valid religious connotation, but was simply used to identify members of the native population of the geographic area known as Judea.
  
   Jesus Christ and the Pharisees

   

   The Greek text reveals an intense conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, which was made up of two schools of thought and were principal Judean religious sects (see Matthew chapter 3, verse 7; Matthew chapter 5, verse 20; Matthew chapter 23, verses 13-15, 23 29; Mark chapter 8, verse 15; Luke chapter 11 verse 39). Much of this controversy was centered on what was later to become the foundation and highest authority of Judaism, the Talmud. In the time of Jsus , this bore the name of "The Tradition of the Elders" (see Matthew chapter 15, verses 1-9).
  
   The Judean historian Josephus wrote: "What I would now explain is this, that the Pharisees have delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses
  
   While the Pharisees observed the laws of Moses, they also had a great body of oral tradition which is its explanations of how to observe the written. By their tradition, they undertook to explain and elaborate upon the Law. This was the "Tradition of the Elders", to which the name of Talmud was later given. In the written form, it had its beginning in Babylon, during the  Babylon captivity of the people of Judah, where it developed in the form of the commentaries of various rabbis, undertaking to explain and apply the law. 
  
  
   Rabbi Louis Finkelstein in Volume I of The Pharisees, the Sociological Background of their Faith says, "Pharisaism became Talmudism, Talmudism became Medieval Rabbinism, and Medieval Rabbinism became Modern Rabbinism. But throughout these changes of name, inevitable adapting of custom, the spirit of the ancient Pharisee survives unaltered."
  
   According to The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, Vol. VIII, (1942) p.474: "The Jewish religion as it is today traces its descent, without a break, through all the centuries, from the Pharisees. Their leading ideas and methods found expression in a literature of enormous extent, of which a very great deal is still in existence. The Talmud is the largest and most important single member of that literature."
  
   Moshe Menuhim explains that the Babylonian Talmud "embodied all the laws [ Misnah] and legends [Midrash], all the history and 'science,' all the theology and folklore, of all the past ages in Jewish life - a monumental work of consolidation. In the Talmud, Jewish scholarship and idealism found their exclusive outlet and preoccupation all through the ages, all the way up to the era of Enlightenment. It became the principal guide to life and object of study, and it gave Judaism unity, cohesion and resilience throughout the dark ages."
  
    "The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs, or ceremonies we [Jews] observe - whether we are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists - we follow the Talmud. It is our common law." (A History of the Jews, SoIomon Grayzel).
  
   Both Jewish and Christian scholars agree that it was Jesus'  flagrant rejection of this "Tradition of the Elders" and his open confrontation with the powerful Pharisees that created the climate that led to his death. Historically, Christian thinkers argued that the Talmud was directly responsible for the rejection of Christ. In their view these "traditions" blinded the eyes of the people to a true understanding of the prophecies  which related to the coming of the Messiah. These Christian thinkers seem incapable of understanding that they have made of the Jesus person just another type of Pagan god, walking around on two feet and performing miracles, rising from the dead and vanishing in a blaze of light, sitting on the right hand of the god on that high chair - like some of Zeus's sons and  like so many of those gods on Mount Olympus. They have even attempted to say that Jesus is derided in the Talmudic writings.We should also point out here that, contrary to many Christians' thinking, the Talmudic literature does not contain criticism of Jesus.  Some have sought to link him with a Yeshua Hanotzri, who is said to have practiced magic and sought to lead Israel astray (Sotah 47A and Sanhedrin 107B).

   

   But a foremost historian of the rabbinate, the twelfth century Abraham ibn Daud, wrote (Sefer Ha-Kabbalah, Jewish Publication Society Edition, p. 15) that we possess a true tradition (Kabalat Emet) that this Yeshua Hanotzri lived during the reign of Alexander Yannai (died 76 B.C.E.), and had been a disciple of Joshua ben Perachiah, thus making it impossible for him to have been the founder of Christianity.  This tradition is also given by Nahmanides (Vikuakh Ha-Ramban, Mossad edition, p. 306).  Some have tried to link Jesus with a magician named Ben Stada, but R. Jacob Tam-the eminent Tosafist and grandson of Rashi-dismissed this (Shabbat 104B), as he had lived during the second century.
  

  The point of the post is not to say that different people can't live,work and just plain exist side by side. It points out that there is no theological connection between Judaism and Christianity or Jewish scripture and Christian scriptures, as some may like to believe. While our book shows over and over that God forgives anyone that repents and seeks Him, the Christian book changes the very meaning of the concept of a coming new covenant from Torah being placed in our heart as though it were instinct to a human sacrificial concept with a being "washed in the blood" as many Christians phrase it, and a ritual consumption of the flesh and blood of messiah/god that excludes all that disbelieve. This may seem rather blunt, but it reflects the pagan ideas of consuming one's god as in the Mithra Cult and a dozen others. Those that followed the Mithra Cult would cover themselves in the blood of sacrifices to "wash away transgressions".

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