IS THE NEW TESTAMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE THE HOLOCAUST...AND WHY?Within two decades of the death of Yeshua his followers had begun to attack the Jewish beliefs of their mentor. This phenomenon, by itself, would be worthy of historical inquiry, to determine how the early Christians came to regard the religion of their spiritual founder with such hostility. But the fact of Jew-hating in Christianity is of more than mere psychological or historical interest, for it formed the backdrop to centuries of persecution of Jews and ultimately led to the extermination of over 6 million of them in the Holocaust. One of the purposes of Bet Emet Ministry is to help others look at how the Christian faith formed perceptions of' Jews among its adherents and how the attitude of the Church towards them has led to two millennia of strife and agony. In the wake of the Holocaust Christians and Jews began to search seriously for the factors and causes leading to it. It became apparent to all investigators that the Holocaust could only have occurred in an environment of enormous hatred of Jews and an equal indifference to their suffering by non- participants. For the world allowed this calamity to continue for six years without intervening, as two-thirds of European Jewry was annihilated. While the anti-Semitism of the Holocaust was greater in scope than any previous mass attacks on Jews, it was not different in motive from the Crusades, the Inquisition, or the Eastern European pogroms. Every operation had, as its cause, the hatred of Jews and as its purpose their murder and plunder. In addition to the genocidal scope of the Holocaust, it had one other significant difference from previous catastrophes. There was no physical escape for its victims through conversion as in the preceding anti-Semitic movements. This was anti-Semitism based on racist theory from which there was no escape. WHAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SUCH A CLIMATE OF HATRED TOWARD THE JEWS?One of the reasons Bet Emet Ministries is devoted to critical study of the New Testament is because it, along with the Gentile Christian Church which created it, is primarily responsible for the deaths of these 6 million Jews plus untoward others through church history. These repeated assaults on Jews are tied to a perception of them as an evil and vicious enemy. As Reverend Robert Everett has pointed out, masses of people have been conditioned to so identify Jews in the course of centuries of Church-inspired vilification of Judaism and its believers. The Church was a seed-bed of anti-Jewish thought for the general populaces In his book, Elder and Younger Brothers, A. Roy Eckardt, minister and professor of religion, asserted that the foundation of anti-Semitism, and the responsibility for the Holocaust lie ultimately in the New Testament. Eckardt further insisted in his book, Your People, My People, that Christian repentance must include a reexamination of basic theological attitudes to Jewry and the New Testament in order to deal effectively with the problem and its prevention. The Catholic theologian and scholar, Father Gregory Baum, wrote, "The Church made the Jewish people a symbol of unredeemed humanity; it painted a picture of Jews as a blind, stubborn, carnal and perverse people, an image that was fundamental in Hitler's choice of the Jews as the scapegoat" (Gregory Baum, Introduction to Faith and Fratricide, p. 7, by Rosemary Radford Ruether). In an editorial Franklin H. Litton wrote, "Without centuries of anti-Semitic Christian preaching, Hitler could never have mobilized passionate Jew-hates and immobilized dispassionate spectators. The image which the Church created could arouse instant contempt and hate of Jews (Franklin H. Littell, “Teaching the Holocaust and Its Lesson” (Editorial), Journal of Ecumenical Studies (21), p. 468, cited in A. Roy Eckardt, Jews and Christians, p. 67). This is what Jules Isaac called "the teaching of contempt" (Jules Isaac, The Teaching of Contempt, p. 34. Translated by Helen Weaver, shorter version of Jesus and Israel). Jewish refusal to recognize Yeshua as the promised messiah (since misery still prevailed in the world and world peace and resurrection of all the dead did not occur during or after the ministry of Yeshua nor were the true Messianic prophecies of the Jewish Bible fulfilled) produced vehement Christian anger and the ardent desire to negate and abolish Judaism. (Gregory Baum, op. Cit., p. 20). A fundamental reason for this hostility is Gentile Christianity's dependence on Judaism to validate its beliefs and establish its credibility. We basically resent those we depend on and need. Gentile Christianity needed Israel's antiquity and appropriated the latter's lineage to itself. Gentile Christianity based its canon on Hebrew Scriptures and its religion on the God of Israel. The new faith proceeded to adapt those Scriptures and concept of God to its own purposes. The Church claimed to be the natural heir of Judaism and denied any discontinuity with the parent. Christians became the New Israel. The New Covenant replaced the Old. When Jews answered that the Law given by God could not be repealed, annulled, or replaced, they denied Christianity the proof and authority it needed from Judaism. This denial aroused frustration which translated into antagonism and hostility. For these and other reasons, Bet Emet Ministries studies in-depth the foundation and very essence of Christianity, the New Testament, and the social-historical elements which influenced its contents. We focus on the overall misinterpretations and misunderstandings in the Christian Scriptures (the Greek Scriptures). There are entire learned works dealing specifically with certain aspects or problems of the New Testament such as pre-Christian philosophies influencing the new religion, the beliefs and impact of the Pharisees during the time of Yeshua, the Sanhedrin's relationship to Yeshua's trial, historical events during and after Yeshua's life, Paul's role in the development of Christianity, and his attitude to the Torah. The articles in this series will be attempts to present in summary fashion pertinent subjects in summary rather than in detail, and footnoted with appropriate documentation. Too often those who read our articles believe our stance and our position on matters to be just “our opinion.” I assure you that when you read our articles you encounter a research paper and not a flippant off the cuff idea espoused by someone who has not done the necessary inquiry to arrive at the facts which determine truth. In order to understand the tragic history and contemporary problems confronting today’s Christian to which the vast majority are unaware, I will attempt in these articles to at first include a brief review of highlights in Jewish history prior to the advent of Christianity. It is hoped that an overall survey of conditions at the time of Yeshua's birth, along with a description of important movements at the dawn of Christianity as a new religion, will provide an adequate foundation to aid us later in further investigation. SO HOW DID CHRISTIANITY GET SO FAR OFF TRACK?Basically the New Testament is not a continuation of the Jewish Scriptures regardless of what you may have heard. Most are not aware of this because of their lack of knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament). We are told repeatedly that the New Testament is the Old Testament “fulfilled.” Is it really? We accept this stance from our spiritual leaders without question. You need to understand at the beginning that the authors of the Gospels and the Epistles quoted freely from Hebrew Scriptures, for that was their Bible too and the only one in existence. They used certain techniques, the purpose and effect of which were to discredit the Torah and its followers and to show the superiority of their doctrines over Jewish beliefs. This is not our opinion, but a factual conclusion when all the evidence is presented and evaluated with an open mind. I am sorry to say you cannot read just 4 pages or 9 pages and get it all. But I make a promise to you....if you will be diligent to read these articles in series....and study them...and think about what will be presented....even a blind man could see what I am saying once you have an adequate understanding of the dynamics and deceptions involved in the creation of the anti-Semitic New Testament which is responsible for the shedding of blood of over 6 million Jews. HOW DID THE ROME AND THE WRITERS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT ACCOMPLISH THE GENOCIDE OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE?Before we continue let me ask you to be truthful with yourself when answering these next questions for the answer you give will determine if you are capable of learning truth when your now-existing values are challenged. Answer for yourself: Do you consider yourself an authority on the Jewish Scriptures (the Old Testament)? Answer for yourself: Do you read and speak Greek and Hebrew and feel confident about your abilities to translate Greek and Hebrew into the English? Answer for yourself: If you do not read or speak Greek or Hebrew, are you well equipped to use Greek or Hebrew study aids in your study of the Bible? Answer for yourself: When reading the New Testament, are you aware when reading a text that what you are reading is a quote from the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament)? Answer for yourself: When reading the New Testament when it quotes from the Old Testament, are you confident that the New Testament quote has been quoted accurately? Answer for yourself: Are you so well versed with the Old Testament that you could spot an Old Testament passage misquoted in the New Testament? Answer for yourself: Are you so well versed with the Old Testament that you could recognize a New Testament passage as a combination of parts of two different passages in the Old Testament which have not only two different contexts but originally two different intended meanings? Humbly speaking, this is the advantage that other ministries, as well as Bet Emet, bring to help you, the student, come to a more truthful understanding of your faith as God originally intended it. It takes years to develop these above talents, but without them you are literally led astray by the New Testament which was literally created by the Gentile church to serve as their authority to create a new religion that they hoped would replace Biblical Judaism. They have almost succeeded. If you take what I am saying seriously, then you will come to understand upon reading our articles that a frequently used technique by the writers in the New Testament was to detach verses from their original context in the Hebrew Bible and to attribute an entirely different meaning to them in the New Testament that the original writer never intended. Answer for yourself: What should be your reaction when you finally begin to see this for yourself? Another practice was to mistranslate or misquote verses from the Hebrew in order to give them a different meaning which suited the writer and his theology which was different than the original writer’s. One of the reasons for this was the use by New Testament writers of the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which had numerous inaccuracies. In fact, other than the first 5 books of the Jewish Scripture (The Torah), no Jew was involved in the translation of the Hebrew into the Greek. Such translation, or should I say “purposeful mistranslation” was entirely a Gentile accomplishment! Thus the garbled verses lost all sense of their original meaning. They were then used to prove or substantiate the thesis of the Gospel or Epistle author in spite of the original intended meaning that was conveyed by the Prophet or Moses. Answer for yourself: What should be your reaction when you finally begin to see this for yourself? Sometimes distinct and unrelated passages in the Hebrew Bible were combined to make a continuous sentence which then naturally conveyed a different meaning from that of each of its parts within the original context. Biblical scholars might protest here that Jews detached verses from their context also in the Midrash and Haggadic sections of the Talmud. However, neither of these bodies of literature are authoritative for Jews. Only the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible comprising the Law, Prophets, and the Writings) and the Halakhic (or legal) part of the Talmud are authoritative in Judaism. The Gospels and Epistles, of course, cannot say that because they are definitely authoritative for Christianity and are part of the Christian canon. Furthermore, Jewish authorities did not allow the indiscriminate detachment of verses from their context even for homiletic and sermonic purposes. The exegesis had to agree with the Oral Tradition. This put a control and limit on taking verses out of context and misinterpreting them. Gentile Christianity has no such limitations imposed upon their sermonic preaching which easily can be seen today by just a casual listening to tele-evangelists. Answer for yourself: What should be your reaction when you finally begin to see this for yourself? Related to this use of quotations from the Tanakh was the employment of Old Testament symbols to fit the doctrines of the New Testament authors which were foreign to the doctrines first connected to the symbols originally. Besides altering words and meanings, the evangelists, authors of the Gospels, and the apostles, writers of the Epistles or letters, also used Hebrew Biblical symbols in such a way as to contradict and undermine the original Jewish significance. Examples of Hebrew symbols which underwent considerable change in Christian literature were the "suffering servant" and the messiah which ended up in Christian literature with very un-Jewish meanings attached to them which the original writers never intended them to have. Often passages in the Gospels and Acts were severed from their context and/or mistranslated or misquoted on purpose to serve the religious interests of the Gentile writers and redactors of the New Testament. Aside from misconstruing verses from the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament authors made direct, hostile charges against Jews and disparaging statements against them. Although the Gospels tell about events which occurred prior to those reflected in the Epistles, most of the latter were written before all the Gospels and Acts were composed. The seven basic Epistles of Paul (I Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Galatians, Romans, and Philemon) were completed more than a decade before the first Gospel was written. It seems logical, therefore, to discuss those anti-Jewish passages and accusations in the letters of Paul and his contemporaries before examining comparable verses in the Gospels. Furthermore, at least one Gospel writer, Luke, was influenced by Paul and his ideas. As we progress in this series of articles I will examine and expose those aspects of the Pauline Epistles and other letters which are an expression of the rivalry between the established religion of Judaism and the emerging faith of Gentile Christianity. The letters written by Paul and his allies and adversaries must be viewed in the light of this competition between the two religions and in terms of Paul's cultural roots and religious background. It is easier to understand Paul’s statements repudiating the Torah when we appreciate "where Paul is coming from" and where he wanted to go. Lastly we will deal with those anti-Jewish passages in the Gospels and Acts which reflect not only the animosity of the Gospel writers but the historical events and powerful political movements that influenced them. An example of this type of anti-Jewish accusations is the spurious charge that the Jews crucified Yeshua or were responsible for his death. Much of the historical material presented in this series of articles comes from contemporaneous writings of Roman and Jewish historians such as Josephus, the writings of the Nazarenes and the early Christians, and Rabbinical tractates in the Mishna and Talmud. The Mishna is actually part of the Talmud. The Mishna is a commentary and codification of Jewish law. It was redacted around 200 C.E. Some material dates from the first century B.C.E. The Mishna and Gemara comprise the Talmud. The Gemara consists of commentary, discussion, interpretation, and elaboration of the Mishna. There are two Talmuds: Babylonian and Jerusalem; each contains a different Gemara. Both Talmuds were developed in great academies of Jewish learning over a period of centuries. The Jerusalem Talmud was completed around the year 400 C.E. while the Babylonian Talmud was completed by about 500 C.E. Inasmuch as the New Testament covers a wide variety of topics, I have chosen to shorten my articles somewhat by discussing such topics individually and concisely. Hopefully this makes for greater ease in understanding the material involved. Overall those who read our articles voice disagreements because they lack the necessary foundations to make intelligent decisions about much of what they speak. This is understandable since most Christians are acquainted mainly with the New Testament and have such a limited knowledge and understanding of the Jewish Scriptures (Old Testament). I suppose that this should be expected. Still, it makes my job harder and I hope breaking these articles down to “bite-size” tid-bits will help more read and understand the information at hand which is necessary for comprehending the events discussed correctly. My goal is to present enough information to restore an accurate interpretation of the Christian Scriptures as well as reveal which parts of them, as we have had them passed down to us, are nothing but fraudulent additions of an anti-Semitic Roman establishment intended to replace the religion of Yeshua with a religion about him. In the articles which follow, after laying a foundation necessary to proceed, we then will compare New Testament text with Old Testament text, line upon line, precept upon precept and see if the New Testament writers did injustice to the Jewish Scriptures. You will be amazed like I was. No longer will you be able to read the New Testament and accept what it says without question. After reading the following articles, you will be able to recognize for yourself the corruption and creationism of the New Testament which does great harm to the true Jewish Scriptures. Just for your benefit let me summarize what we will see when we begin to compare text with text. We will find that the New Testament writers used certain literary techniques, the purpose and effect of which were to discredit the Torah and its followers and to show the superiority of their doctrines over Jewish beliefs. Those will include the following:
Answer for yourself: What kind of authority should such a document carry in your religious belief system when you finally see these things in forthcoming articles for yourself? Answer for yourself: Do you realize that if you were in high-school English class, and you were called on to write a research paper, that if you misquoted your sources, combined quotes from your sources into a single quote and tried to pass it off as if was an original quote as did the authors of the New Testament, yet saying nothing about purposeful mistranslations, then your teacher would have given you a “F” on that paper? But wait a minute; maybe not. It is possible she was not familiar with your sources and would not have ever noticed. She might have read your paper trusting you for the work you represented. She might have trusted your commitment to truth. She might have trusted the integrity she felt you had. Such is the case with Christianity for the most part and the non-Jews’ unfamiliarity with the Jewish Scriptures. All along you, who wrote the paper, would feel “safe,” for after all, what are the chances she would look up your references and check you out? Well, I and many others have checked the original sources and we have found that an “F” is a generous grade for the New Testament considering what we discovered. I cannot take all the credit for coming to these truths, because I was helped along the way by many men and women who prepared the way for me through their diligent study of the documents. To them I give credit. And to you I make my research available. May you be blessed by it. Repentance in our religious belief systems is the order for the day! |