The Myth Of A Judeo-Christian Tradition: What Is The Truth? Jesus Christ And The Pharisees - Fraud
05 May 2011By Adam Johnson
The following article from New Dawn
Magazine No.23 Feb-March 1994.
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superseded by propaganda, and education by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
ahistorical. 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 the 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 scrutinising 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-Christian 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 favoured 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 1940s, 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 Christian 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."
Joshua Jehouda, a prominent French Jewish leader,
observed in the late 1950s: "The current expression 'Judaeo-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 'Judaeo-Christian'
does point to a common origin, there is no doubt that
it is a most dangerous idea. It is based on a 'contradictio
in abjecto' which has set the path of history on the
wrong track. It links in one breath two ideas which
are completely irreconcileable, 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 endeavouring to
construct a civilisation." (l'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 outstanding Christian
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 no 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 New Testament verses in the drive to give
a Scriptural basis to their argument.
Confusion over the origin of Rabbinic Judaism and
Christianity is the root of the Judeo-Christian myth.
Biblical scholars Robert and Mary Coote clearly show
in their book Power, Politics and the Making of the
Bible that neither is Christianity a patched up
Judaism, nor is Rabbinic Judaism automatically
synonymous with the religion of Moses and the old
Hebrews.
The Cootes' illustrate the religious climate in Judea
two millennia ago: "The cults, practices, and
scriptures of both groups, rabbis and bishops,
differed from those of the temple; thus we reserve the
terms Jew, Jewish, and Judaism for the rabbis and
those under their rule and use Judean, contrary to
custom, for the common source of Judaism and
Christianity...."
"Despite the ostensible merging of Judean and Jew even
in certain New Testament passages and by the rabbis
who became rulers of Palestine in the third century
and continued to use Hebrew and Aramaic more than
Greek, the roots of Christianity were not Jewish.
Christianity did not derive from the Judaism of the
pharisees, but emerged like Judaism from the wider
Judean milieu of the first century. Both Christians
and Jews stemmed from pre-70 Judean-ism as heirs of
groups that were to take on the role of primary
guardians or interpreters of scripture as they
developed on parallel tracks in relation to each
other." (Power, Politics, and the Making of the
Bible).
The few New Testament 'proof texts' utilised 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 Coote, that the Greek word "Ioudaioi"
in the New Testament should be translated as
"Judeans", rather than the more usual "Jews". The
Israeli scholar David Stern 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 New Testament, never
possessed a valid religious connotation, but was
simply used to identify members of the native
population of the geographic area known as Judea.
Also it is important to understand that in the
Scriptures, the terms "Israel", "Judah" and "Jew" are
not synonymous, nor is the House of Israel synonymous
with the House of Judah. The course of history is
widely divergent for the peoples properly classified
under each of these titles. Accordingly, the
authoritative 1980 Jewish Almanac says, "Strictly
speaking it is incorrect to call an ancient Israelite
a Jew or to call a contemporary Jew an Israelite or a
Hebrew."
A writer for The Dearborn Independent, published in
Michigan back in 1922, summarised the problem thus:
"The pulpit has also the mission of liberating the
Church from the error that Judah and Israel are
synonymous. The reading of the Scriptures which
confuse the tribe of Judah with Israel, and which
interpret every mention of Israel as signifying the
Jews, is at the root of more than one-half the
confusion and division traceable in Christian
doctrinal statements."
Jesus Christ and the Pharisees
The New Testament Gospels reveal an
intense conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees, one
of the two 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 centred on what was later to
become the foundation and highest authority of
Judaism, the Talmud. In the time of Jesus Christ, 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 recognized the laws of Moses, they
also claimed that there was a great body of oral
tradition which was of at least equal authority with
the written Law - and many claimed that the Tradition
was of greater authority. 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. 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. This was the foundation of Rabbinic
Judaism.
This Judaism was very different from the religion of
the ancient Israelites. The late Rabbi Stephen S.
Wise, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United States,
expressed this conclusively when he said: "The return
from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian
Talmud, marks the end of Hebrewism, and the beginning
of Judaism." The Jewish Encyclopedia tells us that the
Talmud is actually "the product of the Palestinian and
Babylonian schools" and is generally referred to as
"the Babylonian Talmud".
Dr. Boaz Cohen in Everyman's Talmud states the Talmud
is the work of "numerous Jewish scholars over a period
of some 700 years, roughly speaking, between 200
[B.C.] and 500 [A.D.]."
Rabbi Louis Finkelstein in Volume 1 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 adaption
of custom, and adjustment of Law, 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 and legends, 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, more than any other literature, so defined
Judaism that Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser admitted, "Judaism
is not the religion of the Bible." (Judaism and the
Christian Predicament, 1966, p.159) It is the Talmud
that guides the life and spirit of the Jewish people.
"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, Solomon Grayzel).
Both Jewish and Christian scholars agree that it was
Jesus Christ's 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.
Defining Christianity
If, as we have seen, the Pharisees and
the Talmud forever defined Judaism, then most
certainly the writings of the post-Apostolic Christian
church leaders help us in understanding the
relationship of the early Christian faith to both
paganism and Judaism.
Justin Martyr (c100-165 A.D.) was indeed the earliest
and most significant of these post-Apostolic church
apologists. Following in the theological footsteps of
Paul, who taught that the Gospel was the fulfilment of
Moses and the Prophets, Justin argued that the Gospel
was in the mind of God from the beginning and it was
given to Abraham and the righteous Patriarches long
before Judaism existed. This is in keeping with the
Gospel teaching that the Hebrew Scriptures find their
'flowering' in the life, purpose, and accomplishments
of Jesus the Christ.
Hence, the Christian faithful have traditionally
understood the Old Testament through the New
Testament.
In his Dialogue with Trypho Justin seeks to persuade a
Jew of the truth of Christianity. Unlike the other
apologists, he focuses mainly on the nature and
meaning of Christ. Christ was the Logos who inspired
the Greek philosophers and is present in all men as
the Logos spermatikos (seminal reason or word).
Through Him, the best of the philosophers were able to
produce significant works of theology and philosophy.
Their ideas could serve as beacons of truth just as
much as could the inspired writings of the Old
Testament Hebrews. Those who lived according to the
Logos, even before Christ, were Christians. In the Old
Testament it was the Logos who was revealed as God,
because the transcendent Heavenly Father could not
thus speak to man.
Justin wrote in Apology:
"We have been taught that Christ is
the first-born of God, and we have declared above that
He is the Word [or reason] of whom all mankind
partakes. Those who lived reasonably [with the Word]
are Christians, even though they have been called
atheists. For example: among the Greeks, Socrates,
Heraclitus and men like them; among the barbarians
[non-Greeks], Abraham...and many others whose actions
and names we now decline to recount, because we know
it would be tedious."
Christianity, seen through Justin Martyr's writings,
takes on a 'cosmic' breadth:
"I both boast and strive with all my strength to be
found a Christian...Whatever things were rightly said
by any man, belong to us Christians. For next to God
we worship and love the Word, who is from the
unbegotten and ineffable God, since He also became man
for our sakes, that by sharing in our sufferings He
might also bring us healing. For all those writers
were able to see reality darkly, through the seed of
the implanted Word within them." (2 Apology).
Jesus Christ had come, argued Justin, to restore true
religion and to denounce the hypocrisy of the religion
of Judea. For that crime Jesus had been crucified.
Consequently, Christianity is not a form of Judaism or
simply Jewish prophecies fulfilled but 'the true
philosophy'.
Justin's Christianity was eventually reducible to
three major principles: (1) worship of God, mostly
through private prayer and communication of being; (2)
belief in an after-life with rewards and punishments
for one's actions in this world; and (3) the
importance of leading a virtuous life in imitation of
Christ and in obedience to His commandments.
The Romans killed Justin for his religion. He was ever
known as Justin Martyr, and not as St. Justin. His
works defined Christianity as a culminating religion
and a "universal" faith incorporating the essential
and perennial truth of the pre-Christian religious
tradition. Christianity was the restatement of a very
old doctrine encompassing the Old Testament and the
grand verities of the ancients. Two centuries later
Augustine again clarified the Christian faith in these
terms when he wrote:
"That which is now called the Christian religion
existed among the ancients, and never did not exist
from the planting of the human race until Christ came
in the flesh, at which time the true religion which
already existed began to be called Christianity."
Justin not only showed that Christ is the culmination
and completion of all the partial knowledge of truth
in Greek philosophy, He is also the culmination of the
history of ancient Israel. According to Justin Jesus
Christ is Israel and because of Him the church now
bears the name of Israel.
This is to say, therefore, that the central message of
the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the New
Testament. It must be understood that this was the
position of Christendom for at least 1900 years. It
was the position, not only of Justin Martyr, but of
such Stalwart saints as Irenaeus and Hippolytus; a
position embraced by Martin Luther and John Calvin,
the two towering figures of the Protestant
Reformation.
Here we have not only a clear separation of
Christianity and Judaism, but a direct challenge to
Judaism's core dogma of a Chosen Nation. A point which
has not been lost by Jewish writers.
We read in Zionist author Uri Zimmer's Torah-Judaism
and the State of Israel: "The Jewish people, Rabbi
Judah Halevy (the famous medieval poet and
philosopher) explains in his 'Kuzari', constitutes a
separate entity, a species unique in Creation,
differing from nations in the same manner as man
differs from the beast or the beast from the
plant...although Jews are physically similar to all
other men, yet they are endowed with a 'second soul'
that renders them a separate species."
Fraud
Traditionally Jewish scholars, as we
have shown, were highly critical of the
Judeo-Christian myth. There are many others, under the
influence of modernism and secular Zionism, who do see
some advantage in it.
Rabbi Martin Siegel, reflecting a Messianic zeal, was
quoted in the 18 January 1972 edition of New York
Magazine as declaring: "I am devoting my lecture in
this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that
we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the
spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of
the emotional and rational and the resistance to
categories and forms will emerge through the forces of
anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of
society. I call this process the Judaization of
Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle
through which this society becomes Jewish."
While historic Christianity has looked to the eventual
triumph of the Kingdom of God throughout the earth,
according to the Zionist leaders Talmudic Judaism is
zealous in the "drive to perfect man's earthly
habitat" (Gershon Mamlak, Midstream, Jan., 1989,
p.31).
Dr. Mamlak admits that "many Jews have filled the
ranks of the various revolutionary movements" (op.
cit., p.32) in order to satisfy this urge. [But who
can agree on the terms of the social contract? Were
the Zionist Irgun and Stern gangs who terrorised and
massacred the Palestinian Arabs in the campaign to
establish the Israeli state, shining role models for
young Jews? What about the immorality of "the end
justifies the means"?]
Rabbi Michael Higger, renowned Talmudic scholar, in
his book The Jewish Utopia, discusses the reshaping of
the world into a Jewish Eden. The victory of this
Utopia is inexorably tied to the coming of the Jewish
Messiah.
"And the Messianic Age," argues the eloquent Jewish
Zionist author Leon Simon, "means for the Jew not
merely the establishment of peace on earth and good
will to men, but the universal recognition of the Jew
and his God. . . For Judaism has no message of
salvation for the individual soul, as Christianity
has; all its ideas are bound up with the existence of
the Jewish nation." (Studies in Jewish Nationalism).
Driven by political agendas compromising Jews and
compromising Christians began, only in this century,
to disseminate the theretofore unheard of doctrine
that Christianity originated from Judaism and that the
two share a common worldview.
Dr. Gordon Ginn, an American Christian scholar, made a
very valid point when he noted: "It is most
interesting, indeed, that rabbis as well as Jewish
scholars such as Mamlak and White agree with orthodox,
historical Christianity that 'Judeo-Christian' is a
contradiction in terms, even though that truth is yet
to be discovered by contemporary evangelical and
fundamentalist Christians" (Smyrna, August, 1993).
Christianity and Judaism are two distinct religious
inheritances, despite all the superficial attempts by
modern scholars to manufacture a naive
"Judeo-Christianity." The very term "Judeo-Christian"
is a mischievous misnomer without historical or
Scriptural validity.
The religions of the world are the product of
progressive revelation to a diverse humanity,
separately expressing as they do the great
metaphysical realities of life. Attempts to distort or
eliminate these unique, ancient and divinely ordained
patterns, through non-divine syncretism and
politically-motivated concoctions, is both
anti-traditional and truly diabolical.
Appeals to a nonexistent historical unity and calls
for a banal, modernist theology do nothing for
religious understanding and mutual respect.
"Judeo-Christianity" should be seen for what it is -
another secular twentieth century fraud, manufactured
for narrow political ends, that is supremely
disrespectful to all true believers.
Any fundamental unity that does exist between world
religions cannot be appreciated by ignorant and
secular scholarship, but only through knowledge of the
great primordial and universal truths.
As Luc Benoist aptly wrote, "Our age is seeking a
universal understanding which men of vision can
already foresee and which is the longing of all great
souls. There is ample evidence that the world's
economic problems can be solved without the different
religions having to abandon their unique spiritual
insights; after all, brotherly agreement does not
prevent the individual growth of each member of the
family, bodily separate, but united in heart and
mind." (The Esoteric Path).
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