ANTI-SEMITISM OF SAYING CHRIST FOUNDED THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
A religion is a body of common beliefs and different sectarian groups hating each other within the one religion does not mean that at core or in some religious legal (religion has a law even if implied) way they are not the same religion. Religion and sect can mean the same thing but don't have to. It depends. We cannot for example say that the early Christians were a separate religion from the Jews any more than we can pretend that ISIS is a separate religion from Islam. If we do we may be showing ideological bias. It is wrong to say then that Christianity was founded by Christ. It was founded decades after when his followers were forced to become a new religion.
The judgemental tone of the New Testament against the Jews is horrific. It is clearly anti-Jewish as in anti-Jewish religion and race. Jesus in Matthew 23 made out the leaders were dangerous to God's servants and thus virtually invited violence against them and by extension their families, their children.
An rather unexplored version of Christian anti-semitism is accusing the Jews of not recognising Jesus. David C Sim who is a Catholic scholar of the New Testament wrote, “Throughout the first century the total number of Jews in the Christian movement probably never exceeded 1,000 and by the end of the century the Christian church was largely Gentile.” It is terrible to believe in Jesus when trained religious scholars didn't. It is erasing. It is horrible how the text never mentions the work clerics did when the Romans attacked Jews and beat them on the streets and nailed them to crosses. The Roman occupation and its horrors are heavily diluted. You would barely notice.
While it is true that the New Testament uses the Jewish religion a lot and praises the promises God made to it this praise is toxic. The theme is that the Jews lost all this and threw it away. Thus it is a matter of the quintessential barbed compliment.
I struggle with Christmas every year in the sense that though I have objections to Jesus Christ society and the Church have no right to dishonour the fact that if the gospels are to be believed he died trying to reform his Jewish religion. He is treated as a Catholic and his Judaism is disrespected and full advantage of the fact that he is not around to object is taken. There is no evidence that he intended to form a new religion never mind a non-Jewish religion and his followers remained a Jewish party until they were expelled from the synagogues decades after his death. Christ would be in floods of tears at how he has been used by people seeking to disguise self-deception as faith. There is an intrinsic racism in how he is portrayed as non-Jewish as in religion and non-Jewish as in race. Imagine what he who attacked workers in the temple would do to cribs with their Caucasian Jesuses. Anti-semitism is the answer to all who claim that terrorism and violence have no religion. The lies are the answer to all who say that corruption and distortion have no religion.
It goes, "Jesus himself was a Jew, and he appears never to have doubted or denied the covenant with the patriarchs, the chosenness of Israel, the appropriateness of temple worship or the divine authority of the Hebrew Bible. He saw himself as fulfilling, rather than abrogating, the law and the prophets (Mt 5:17). And contrary to what is often unconsciously assumed, the earliest Christians were also Jews, and the New Testament is a Jewish book. The earliest Christians wanted no break with Judaism; in fact, they believed that accepting Jesus as the Messiah was the correct Jewish thing to do."
That is true and those who turn Jesus into a liberal or a social worker and who would have allowed liberal abortion and same sex marriage need to be reminded of that. Funny they don't argue that he allowed liberal divorce! They are worse than fundamentalists for they are more confident in their own infallibility than they are in the Bible. At least a Bible thumper can read and it is better to regard a book as infallible than as every fad as infallible. But it is obvious that Christianity has shed too much Judaism and that is a sign of anti-Judaism. It is not justified so it is a cloak for anti-Semitism. The critical matter of circumcision which makes one a Jew and a participant in God's covenant is just treated as a non-issue. Christianity disrespects the criteria set by the Jewish religion and which is inherent to it about how one becomes a Jew.
The New Testament could say plenty about pagans and Roman spiritual abuses but not a word is on its pages. Instead condemnations are hurled at the Jews. Matthew deliberately writes his gospel so that to the ordinary casual reader it says the Jews took the blame for killing Jesus. Try to read the gospels without theologians and their "explanations." The explanations are not how the average person thinks. Matthew was not writing for theologians.
John has Jesus say to the Jews: If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.
Saying God is not their Father or God, that they fail to understand because they don't want to, that their father is Satan is as far from "Love the sinner hate the sin" as one can imagine. He clearly identifies Satan with Satan's sins. Satan is described as being a liar by nature and having no truth at all in him. That is another way of saying, "Satan is not a being with sins. He is a being who is evil as a being." When he denies any suggestion that we must love Satan and hate his sins in the same breath as saying the Jews are their sins too. They are all to be hated with their sins.
Romans 3:1 has Paul asking what advantage has the Jew or his circumcision? What profit is in them? This is a rank anti-semitic statement. This statement has full divine authority for Christians and they have no right to water down the issue by pointing to the seemingly nice things Paul said about the Jews. The Jew claimed rights based on being circumcised including religious freedom and now Paul wants that erased!
The early Christians called themselves Jews. It is antisemitic to be a non-Jewish Christian or to claim to be. Christian history is encapsulated in what St Alphonsus Maria Liguori wrote, "Poor Jews! You invoked a dreadful curse upon your own heads in saying:
"His blood be on us and our children"; and that curse, miserable race, you carry upon you to this day, and to the End of Time you shall endure the chastisement of that innocent blood. O my Jesus! ... I will not be obstinate like the Jews. I will love Thee forever, forever, forever!"
That a religion would even look the other way when such speech is uttered is horrendous. If you want to hate the Christian religion but love the members then do it. But ask yourself why this man's sainthood is not revoked!
Those who deny the Jews killed Jesus might say they are not murderers but they still blame them as accessories or of creating an atmosphere that facilitated Jesus' brutal death. It means little if they don't call them murderers. The fact that Christians even ask if the Jews of yesterday were to blame for Jesus' death or of setting the stage for it is bad if Jesus was a fraud or deluded. It is a terrible thing to be wrong about. It is better to be wrong about one man than many. And it is worse that they even ask how today's Jews may or may not be to blame. Don't let the "may" soften anything. Their question is heinous.
