Religion Confusion, Part 2

Judaism

Modern Judaism is a particularly difficult nut to crack. It must be understood that ancient Judaism (the Judaism of the Bible) no longer exists either in its religious or racial aspect. This is a fact of historical record. The Judaism of the Old and New Testaments was a hierarchical religion based on the Law of Moses and the priesthood of Aaron with its performance of various animal sacrifices which could only be consummated in the Temple in Jerusalem. This was the “true religion” up until the day that most of the Jewish hierarchy rejected their promised Messiah, Jesus Christ, around the year AD 30. For the next 40 years, Judaism was a walking corpse. When the Roman Legion razed the Jewish Temple and exterminated the entire priestly class in AD 70, Biblical Judaism simply ceased to exist.

From that time on, what we have is Rabbinical or Talmudic Judaism, a religion based on the commentaries and doctrines of rabbis (non-priestly theologian-types who teach and otherwise lead their congregations in the synagogues), which over the next several hundred years were written down and codified in the Talmud. I am not an expert on the Talmud (and there is actually more than one version, the most commonly used being the Babylonian Talmud), but those who are experts have said that many of its passages flatly contradict the Mosaic Law as given in the Torah (the first 5 books of the Bible), which Jews today claim to reverence. And wherever there is a conflict or contradiction, the Talmud always trumps the Torah. (This is basically what Jesus condemned about the teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees in Mark 7:1-13.) Jewish teaching in the synagogues today is from the Talmud, not the Torah. There are, to be sure, many good and exemplary rules and teachings in the Talmud, but those are not the things that concern us here. What we find problematic are the other teachings, the ones that require the violation of the Mosaic Law and the words of the Prophets (those teachings that “nullify the word of God” (cf. Matt 15:6-9; Mk 7: 1-13)). The Talmud also makes numerous vile and, from the Christian perspective, blasphemous statements about the person of Jesus (Yeshu), perhaps as a way to “inoculate” Jews against conversion to Christianity. (When confronted with these passages during medieval public debates on the Talmud’s contents, the pat answer (if they answered at all) was, “Oh, we don’t mean that Jesus. It’s some other [unspecified] guy named Jesus.” Yeah, right.)

So the Jewish religion we see being practiced today (established ca. AD 70, although its spiritual antecedents go back much farther) is actually of more recent origin than Christianity (established ca. AD 30, although its spiritual antecedents go back much farther), and is based principally on the definitive rejection of Jesus Christ (as if to say, “whoever the Messiah might be, it wasn’t him!”) and any notion of a suffering Messiah who would die in order to free mankind from our slavery to sin. The modern Jewish concept of “Messiah” is strictly and exclusively political, not spiritual, and most (if not all) political revolutions throughout history (e.g. France 1789 and Russia 1917) can be traced in some way to the advancement of this Talmudic Jewish idea of establishing the (political) “Kingdom of God” here on earth through force of arms and under Jewish hegemony. (Perhaps this is what was percolating through Mel Gibson’s mind as he ranted recently while in a drunken stupor.)

What is called the “Jewish race” today is also something entirely different than that which lived in Ancient Israel or Roman Palestine. That ancient race was scattered (deported and resettled) throughout the Roman world after the sack of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Jewish resistance at Masada a few years later. The Jews who survived subsequently (over the course of centuries) either converted to Christianity (at which point they relinquished their identity as Jews), intermarried with the various local tribes among which they found themselves, or were persecuted and killed for their perceived antisocial behaviors. (This last item is not a practice I would endorse or condone; I’m simply saying what happened.) The Jewish race of antiquity was thus “diluted” over time to the point where it essentially disappeared. However there were always pockets of “religious” Jews (i.e. people who kept the rabbinical laws of the Pharisees as given in the Talmud) scattered throughout the Roman and Byzantine Empires and they became disproportionately influential for their numbers in certain localities (chiefly through the use of finance). Although the Jewish “race” no longer existed as such, and the Jewish sacrificial religion of antiquity was no more, still there persisted a group of people that lived a distinct tradition (as codified in the Talmud) in more or less closely-knit communities throughout Europe, Northern Africa and Western Asia that were known universally as “Jews.” [Incidentally, that “race” which today has its political center in the modern state of Israel, its economic center in New York and its cultural center in Hollywood, is actually of Slavic not Semitic extraction (which explains why contemporary Jews/Israelis are generally fairer and look more like Russians, Czechs and Poles than their Eastern Mediterranean neighbors).]

Needless to say, (modern) Judaism and Christianity cannot both be true. I do not hesitate to affirm here that there are many good people who are professed and practicing Jews (Rabbi Daniel Lapin comes immediately to mind), and I do not mean to sound as if I condemn any of them in any way. I also affirm that Christianity is the fulfillment of the ancient Jewish religion. But the modern Jewish religion is an explicit renunciation of the Christian faith. So if we are looking for the one true religion (assuming for the moment that there is one), we cannot have it both ways. If one is true, the other must be false. We owe it to ourselves—and to our fellow man—to find the truth. If we are satisfied to accept the status quo (which seems to amount to an indifference to the truth) then only confusion can result, and that’s not good.