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I use the phrase “Judeo-Christian.” When I use it in a published piece, at least one disgruntled reader will shoot me a grumble of protest. “Judeo-Christian” is a controversial phrase. Since it raises hackles, why do I use it?
First, let’s look at the controversy. “Judeo-Christian” is so controversial that a 368-page scholarly book has been written about the history and usage of the phrase. Chicago University Press went so far as to call it “dangerous” and a “linguistic battlefield.” I guess that makes those of us who use the phrase warriors. Professor Mark Silk suggests that the phrase is “neo-fascist.” Others call it a “dog whistle myth for the far right.”
After Donald Trump used the phrase “Judeo-Christian” in 2017, Meredith Warren, Lecturer in Biblical and Religious Studies, University of Sheffield, insisted that she could read Trump’s mind, and expose to the world Trump’s hidden, nefarious intentions. Warren’s mission, as is so often the case in Woke rhetoric, is to take something positive and poison that something positive in the minds of the audience. “It might seem neighborly, even pluralistic, to include Judaism in a declaration of purported Western values,” Warren warns. You simple-minded people, she seems to say, you fall for a phrase that seems “neighborly” and “pluralistic” but really isn’t. I’m here to tutor you in Woke Think.
Let’s not slide right past Warren’s use of the words “purported Western values.” “Purported” means that Warren doubts that there is any such thing as the West, and, if the West really does exist, it does not have distinctive values. Anything distinctive about the West is probably bad, and not a real “value” that anyone should cherish.
Warren continues. Trump’s “‘Judeo-Christian values’ are about protecting Christians at the exclusion of others … It is only now that a new demographic of Muslim immigrants … have reached the West that Jews are being included … on someone else’s terms.”
Warren is insisting that Jews have always been excluded from American life. This news will surprise everyone from Haym Salomon to Philip Roth, from Louis B. Mayer to Louis Brandeis. It might also surprise Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, and their three children, who are all Jewish. Warren insists that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” was invented by Christians without the participation of Jews. It is used “on someone else’s” – that would be Christians’ – “terms.” This is false, as we will see, below.
Warren knows Trump’s real thoughts, feelings, and intentions. When “Trump uses the term what [he] really implies is an ‘us-versus-them’ division between the West and Islam. This is not about the inclusion of Jews in the values of these nations, then, but about the xenophobic exclusion of an ‘other.'” Warren insists that Donald Trump, who has had public and apparently mutually beneficial relationships with Jews and Muslims for decades, engaged in hate-filled dog whistles when he used the phrase “Judeo-Christian.”
Warren identifies, on Twitter, as “Dr. Meredith ‘Land Back’ Warren.” She further identifies as a Native American who wants her “land back” from Americans of European descent. In photos, Warren appears to be of European, not Native American, ancestry. Warren acknowledges some European ancestry, which she identifies as “settler.” A normal person, unaware of the dog whistle Warren is sending, might breeze right past Warren’s use of the word “settler” to damn her own, English ancestors, and her own blood.
“Settler” is a Woke ethnic slur used to demonize all European-descent diaspora populations, wherever they are found. Native Americans are “indigenous,” and “indigenous” is a privileged identity in the Woke caste system. In Warren’s case, the term “indigenous” is inaccurate. There were people living in what is now Canada when Warren’s Cree ancestors arrived. These vanished people are virtually nameless. They are dubbed the paleo-Eskimo, though they were different from more recently arrived populations. After what is now known as the Eskimo, aka Inuit arrived, the Paleo-Eskimo completely disappeared. By Warren’s own value system, today’s indigenous Canadians were “settlers” on land that “belonged to” the now vanished Paleo-Eskimo. And note that the Paleo-Eskimo have disappeared completely, whereas there are more Eskimo alive today than when Europeans first arrived. The “indigenous” Canadians Warren privileges may have been more efficient at physically and culturally erasing those occupying the land before their arrival than were Europeans.
Warren, a published and prize-winning scholar, participates in the historically revisionist Woke fiction that rejects evolution and the theory that Native Americans arrived in the Americas via a land bridge from Asia. Rather, Native Americans have always lived on “Turtle Island.” More recent arrivals, European-descent “settlers,” can only ever be seen as categorically different, that is as alien, genocidal, invaders. Warren rewrites history and participates in ethnic hatred, even as she condemns the phrase “Judeo-Christian” as a “problematic” exclusionary “dog whistle.”
And there’s more. The phrase “settler” is used to justify a genocidal approach to Jews living in Israel. Both history and genetics reveal that Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel for millennia. The Woke ignore that reality, and insist that Jews are “settlers” and Muslims are “indigenous.” There is no factual support for this position. Judaism predates Islam by a thousand years. The ancestors of today’s Palestinians were relatively recent arrivals. Historical revisionism is used to justify the call for Israel to cease to exist. Warren, a Woke woman who, ahistorically, condemns the phrase “Judeo-Christian” as intolerant of Jews, uses a Woke, anti-Semitic dog whistle, “settler,” that is used to justify a racist ideology, a false history, and a genocidal agenda against Jews living in Israel.
In short, look twice when someone tells you that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” is problematic. There may be an agenda behind their condemnation that is not immediately apparent. The speaker may be revising history. And those who insist that they are protecting Jews from the big, bad, threatening Christians, may very well be wolves in sheep’s’ clothing.
Those “problematizing” the phrase “Judeo-Christian” travel back, linguistically, to its first usages. In the early nineteenth century, the prefix “Judeo-” might be used to describe Yiddish as “Judeo-German.” It was also used to describe those early followers of Jesus who had been born Jewish but came to be members of what would become a new religion; thus, they were “Judeo-Christians.” Eventually “Judeo-Christian” came to describe a posited worldview, cultural heritage, or ethical system first introduced to the world by Jews, inherited and shaped by Christians, and currently shared, to a limited but important extent, by Christians, Jews, and all participants in Western Civilization, no matter their provenance or their belief system. The Judeo-Christian tradition is frequently cited as one of the pillars of Western Civilization, along with Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment.
Anti-Semitism, along with other race hatreds, began to rise dramatically in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Anti-Semitism was rising even as Christian piety, certainly among the elite, was decreasing. In the new language of scientific racism, fueled by social Darwinism, Jews were characterized as a “race” apart from Europeans and others. Other groups were similarly suddenly distinct “races.” A 1924 US immigration law was supported by racists like Madison Grant who categorized Poles and Italians, for example, as members of distinct and inferior races. These diabolical trends would culminate in Nazism and the Holocaust. Nazis mass-murdered not just Jews, but also Poles, Soviet citizens, and Serbs, all members of so-called inferior Slavic races, and members of another so-called inferior race, Gypsies, as well as so-called racially worthless handicapped people and homosexuals.
In the 1930s and during World War II, Christians and Jews used “Judeo-Christian” as a form of resistance to murderous anti-Semitism at home and abroad, among Nazis and the KKK. These good people emphasized the many features that Christians and Jews share. The most important feature they shared during those cataclysmic years was their committed resistance to Nazism and their willingness to sacrifice blood and treasure to stop it.
According to Mark Silk, Professor of Religion in Public Life, Emeritus at Trinity College, “Ground zero of this means of affirming a shared religious basis for Western values was the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York — the site of the large convocations of liberal academics and intellectuals held annually from 1940 by the Conference on Science, Religion and Philosophy in Their Relation to the American Way of Life, Inc. Organized by Lyman Bryson of Columbia Teachers College and Jewish Theological Seminary’s [professor, provost, president, and chancellor] Louis Finklestein.” As Silk points out, Jews played a significant role in advancing the phrase “Judeo-Christian,” and they did so as part of a serious struggle against genocidal anti-Semitism. Contemporary Social Justice Warriors like Meredith Land Back Warren irresponsibly distort history and intentions when they erase this beneficent history of the phrase.
Silk reports that “Judeo-Christian” remained a popular tool of ideological warfare after World War II. Upon defeating the Axis, America entered another epochal conflict, that between freedom and capitalism in the West and totalitarian communism in the USSR and China. The Judeo-Christian tradition was opposed to Marxism. President Eisenhower referred to the Judeo-Christian tradition as a necessary foundation for Western values, the values that were at odds with communism.
Times, and attitudes, changed. Some not all Jews came to hear in “Judeo-Christian” an anti-Semitic phrase. For these people, the phrase erased the distinctiveness of Judaism. The phrase, to their ears, signaled Christian “hegemony” and Christian “supersessionism.” Supersessionism is a theological concept. In this belief, the covenant between God and the Jews has been passed on to a “new” Israel, that is, Christians.
Some Jews came to feel that the US posed a new challenge to Jewish existence. American Jews, as opposed to their Ashkenazi ancestors, were less likely to follow the 613 commandments and many folkways that so distinguished Jews in the Old Country. Most American Jews trace their ancestry to the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In those lands, for much of their history, Jews had their own official bodies regulating group member behavior. They spoke a different language, Yiddish, than non-Jews. They wore distinctive clothing and hairstyles. They worked in different fields than non-Jews. Marriage to a non-Jew might be followed by a period of mourning for the “lost” community member.
American Jews, by contrast, typically eat, dress, wear their hair, and speak like other, non-Jewish Americans. In 2020, Pew reported that, “Fully 42% of all currently married Jewish respondents indicate they have a non-Jewish spouse. Among those who have gotten married since 2010, 61% are intermarried.” “Jews in U.S. are far less religious than Christians and Americans overall,” Pew reported in 2021. Some call assimilation and lessened religiosity a “Silent Holocaust.” There is a Jewish folk expression, “You are not Jewish until your grandchildren are Jewish.” Assimilation to mainstream culture threatens that duty. A phrase like “Judeo-Christian” could be heard as the last straw of assimilation. “No,” those Jews who don’t like the phrase will protest. “We are not part of some melting pot identity. We are our own thing, separate from you.”
There are Christians who protest the phrase as well. Just like the Jews who don’t like the phrase, these Christians want to emphasize the differences between Judaism and Christianity. Some Christians who protest the phrase are clearly anti-Semitic. Some Gnostic Christians in the early days of Christianity wanted a divorce from the Old Testament. Their position is denounced as a heresy by mainstream Christians.
Some who protest the phrase are themselves atheists who insist on perpetuating invidious and inaccurate stereotypes of the Old Testament as irrational and its God as vengeful, as opposed to the God of the New Testament, who is stereotyped as a warm and cuddly Hippie figure. Richard Dawkins, one of the leading New Atheists, typified this approach when he wrote “The God of the Old Testament is … jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
In response to ignorant attitudes like Dawkins’, scholars like Dennis Prager and Dr. Jordan Peterson have disseminated very popular explorations of the truth of the Old Testament. One YouTube viewer offers praise of such material. “Watching JP’s lectures has been one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. His explanations have fundamentally changed the way I see the world. I am now a better man because I have regained the most valuable thing a human can have in their life: meaning.” Of course not all atheists reject the phrase “Judeo-Christian.” Douglas Murray, who identifies as an atheist, said, “The more atheists think on these things, the more we may have to accept that the concept of the sanctity of human life is a Judeo-Christian notion which might very easily not survive Judeo-Christian civilization.”
Recent years have seen a new phenomenon. Ever since the sixties counter-culture, it has been cool to be oppositional. The most recent manifestation of leftist, oppositional chic is Woke. “Christian” has become an insult, along with “white,” “hetero,” “American,” “cis-gendered,” and “male.” In Woke environments, being a white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, American, Christian male is the lowest possible life-form. There are Wokesters among both Christians and Jews. These folks do everything they can to dress their religion in Woke-friendly costumes. There are Christians who insist that Jesus was a socialist and that Mary, his mother, in the Magnificat, expresses a Che-Guevara-like revolutionary call. Similarly, there are Jews who revile the phrase “Judeo-Christian” for a new reason. These Woke Jews do not reject the phrase on theological grounds. Rather, they reject it because they adopt the Woke position that Christianity is uncool, and they want to be as far removed from Christianity’s uncoolness as possible.
Perhaps the height of this attitude was reached by actress Sandra Bernhard in 2008, when she, during a performance at Washington DC’s Theater J, criticized then-vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. Palin was a punching bag for the Left. Obscene and misogynist language was used to denigrate Palin’s speech, her appearance, and her children, including a mentally retarded child. Bernhard’s anti-Palin rant was perhaps the most extreme example of anti-Palin rhetoric. Bernard said, “Sarah Palin jumps on the s— and points her fingers at other women. Turncoat b—-! Don’t you f—— reference Old Testament, b—-! … You stay with your new Goyisha crappy shiksa funky bulls—! Don’t you touch my Old Testament, you b—-! … You whore in your cheap fuckin’ New Vision cheap-ass plastic glasses!”
Bernhard insisted that a Christian woman, Sarah Palin, had no right to “my Old Testament.” Many Jews in ancestral shtetls would not certify Bernhard as a scriptural scholar. She is a lesbian, and her public behavior is often controversial. She posed nude for Playboy. In 1995, on TV, in she spat in the face of Christian and conservative Republican John Lofton saying to him, “If I had you, you’d be an abortion.”
A more recent, less controversial, but equally Woke rejection of the phrase “Judeo-Christian tradition” comes from James Loeffler, the Jay Berkowitz Professor of Jewish History at the University of Virginia. In an August, 2020 piece for The Atlantic, Loeffler objected to “conservative Christian” readings of the concept of human rights, as voiced by Mike Pompeo. Loeffler quotes Pompeo as saying that “America’s understanding of human rights” emerges from “fundamental moorings of the Judeo-Christian tradition on which this country was founded.” Loeffler scoffs. “That tradition never existed”! Loeffler insists. It’s “mythical.” It’s just a “political invention”! “An ecumenical marketing meme for combatting godless communism.” What appears to be so embracing, so tolerant, is in fact just another big, fat, American scam! It is really wickedly exclusive not Woke and inclusive. “Muslims, Native Americans, and other non-Western religious communities, but also atheists and secularists of all persuasions” are all left out in the cold, bitter air of American intolerance, preceded by “centuries of Christian anti-Semitic persecution,” and later in the same article, “thousands of years of persecution.” Oh, yeah, and what about “America’s postwar quest for global primacy in a decolonizing world.”
“American Jews viewed their ‘Judeo’ hyphen as little more than a fig leaf masking an unabashedly Christianist agenda,” Loeffler writes. Loeffler chooses to use “Christianist” instead of “Christian.” If being a “Christian” is bad, being a “Christianist” is even worse. Worse yet is an “unabashed Christianist.” “Judeo-Christian” which seems to imply brotherhood, is really anti-Semitic. And not just. “The phrase appears with regularity in rhetorical attacks on Islam.” The “Christian” part of “Judeo-Christian” is really the problem. “The catchphrase has failed to shed its Christian religious residue. Living through an unprecedented era of anti-Semitism, American Jews no longer wish to play the role of guest stars in someone else’s theological drama.”
To Loeffler, The Atlantic, and its elite readers, the “Christian religion” is a bad thing that, like a stain on underwear, leaves an undesirable “residue.” And Loeffler attributes todays’ “unprecedented” “anti-Semitism” to Christians. This is false; the anti-Semitism in Europe is largely a product of recent Muslim immigration. Violent and sometimes deadly anti-Semitism in the US is disproportionately a product of socioeconomic and race-related factors; for example see the 2019 Jersey City terror attack that left six dead. The assailants were believers in the Black Hebrew Israelite myth. According to this ideology, America’s blacks are the real Jews. Those who identify as Jewish today “stole” Jewishness from black people. Black Muslim Louis Farrakhan is a major proponent of this anti-Semitic ideology.
The idealogues who object to “Judeo-Christian” because it is not Woke are anti-Western. In the past, they would have been the relativists who said, “All cultures are equally worthy. The West should not be chauvinist.” They have since jettisoned that relatively anodyne position. They’ve adopted a newer, more toxic stance. The West is just plain bad and BIPOC, who, in this version, are ahistorically excluded from the West, are superior. BIPOC stands for “black, indigenous, people of color.” The same people who reject “Judeo-Christian” will tell you that the Enlightenment was nothing special, or, worse, that it oppressed BIPOC. In 2018, Jamelle Bouie, now a New York Times columnist, insisted that colonialism, slavery, imperialism, and racism can all be blamed on the Enlightenment. He cited major scholars in his indictment. They will also tell you that the Ancient Greeks didn’t originate anything that hadn’t already happened in Africa. These folks don’t object to “Judeo-Christian” because it’s too Christian or somehow, in some hidden way, secretly an anti-Semitic dog whistle. They hate the phrase because they want to end Western Civilization and replace it with a Marxist Utopia.
I use the phrase “Judeo-Christian tradition” because it is an accurate phrase that refers to a real phenomenon. To those like Sandra Bernhard who insist that a Jewish person like herself has nothing in common with a “goyisha Shiksa” like myself, I must say, sorry, you are wrong. Of course there are obvious differences between Bernhard and Palin, or Woody Allen and Matt Walsh. But when we use the phrase “Judeo-Christian” we aren’t comparing Bernhard and Palin, Allen and Walsh. Rather, we are talking about vast world cultures and their impact on human perceptions and behavior over the course of thousands of years.
Christianity accepts Jewish scripture. From the Vatican: “The sacred scriptures of the Jewish people are a fundamental part of the Christian bible … A perennial manifestation of this link [between Christians and Jews] to their beginnings is the acceptance by Christians of the Sacred Scriptures of the Jewish people as the Word of God addressed to themselves as well. Indeed, the Church has accepted as inspired by God all the writings contained in the Hebrew Bible.” This complete acceptance of another faith’s scripture is remarkable. It isn’t reflected in other world religions. Hinduism does not accept the Qur’an. Buddhism doesn’t accept the Bible. Islam does not accept the Rig Veda.
Sarah Palin inherited the Old Testament from Jews, who passed it on to non-Jewish converts, over the course of two thousand years. Christians believe in the truth of the Old Testament. Christians feel themselves to be bound by the Ten Commandments. Jesus was a Jew. His followers were Jews. The authors of the New Testament were Jews, with the possible exception of Luke, who may or may not have been a Hellenized Jew. The New Testament authors wrote in the tradition of the Old Testament. The New American Bible, like other Bibles, is replete with footnotes connecting New Testament texts with parallels in the Old Testament. See, for example, Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount, a central Christian text. Footnotes refer the reader to parallel texts in the Old Testament books of Psalms, Isaiah, Exodus, and Deuteronomy. The final New Testament book, Revelation, is notoriously difficult to understand. That is because it, line by line, word by word, cites material from the Old Testament, predominantly the book of Daniel, but also Ezekial, Psalms, and Isaiah. Without an understanding of those works, the Book of Revelation is incomprehensible.
As I wrote the above paragraph, I could hear my friend Alex objecting. Don’t call the Hebrew Bible the “Old Testament,” Alex will say. But that’s the conventional term for the material and any use of a different name will obscure more than it clarifies, I respond. Alex will then go on to point out that the sharing of material has not prevented Christians from persecuting Jews. I never said it did, I insist to Alex, who is present, right now, only in my imagination, but who will surely raise all these objections if this piece is published. To Alex I say, yes, Alex, Christians have persecuted Jews. We acknowledge that, we repent, and we are doing everything we can to prevent persecution’s recurrence. There have been Christians working, for millennia, against persecution of Jews, from Gregory the Great to Bishop Cosmas to Wiktoria Ulma. Further, to Alex, and to anyone else who argues that persecution erases any shared cultural heritage, I submit the following analogies. Americans and Englishmen fought a bloody war and committed atrocities against each other. The violence of the Revolution did nothing to change the fact that both spoke English. Anyone studying the history of English would not rule out British or American English because of violence between the two populations. Protestants and Catholics managed to kill between four and twelve million people during the Thirty Years War. That slaughter does not change the fact that Protestants and Catholics share significant portions of their cultural heritage. To subsume Protestants and Catholics under the one word “Christian” is no attempt to rewrite history, to sweep historic wrongs under the carpet, to turn Protestants into Papists or to wrest rosaries from Catholics. It is merely culturally accurate.
Christians and Jews share Genesis. Given that Genesis is so well known, it may be assumed to be a standard creation text, similar to other creation texts around the world. Cultural relativists insist on this; Genesis is just like various Pagan creation stories. This is nonsense. Genesis is unique, argued the late Bible scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann. Kaufmann pointed out that Pagan creation stories include a feature that is absent from Genesis, that is, “a realm of being prior to the gods and above them, upon which the gods depend, and whose decrees they must obey.” Genesis gives us something found in no other creation myth: an omnipotent, omniscient, all-loving God who creates everything that exists ex nihilo and declares his creation “good.” This God creates the ancestors of all human life on earth. Jewish commentators on the Adam and Eve story insist that it renders all humans equally dignified. Nathan Ausubel paraphrases that interpretation thus,
“Why did God create only one Adam and not many at a time? He did this to demonstrate that one man in himself is an entire universe. Also He wished to teach mankind that he who kills one human being is as guilty as if he had destroyed the entire world. Similarly, he who saves the life of one single human being is as worthy as if he had saved all of humanity. God created only one man so that people should not try to feel superior to one another and boast of their lineage in this wise: ‘I am descended from a more distinguished Adam than you.’ He also did this so that the heathen should not be able to say that, since many men had been created at the same time, it was conclusive proof that there was more than one God. Lastly, He did this in order to establish His own power and glory. When a maker of coins does his work he uses only one mould and all the coins emerge alike. But the King of Kings, blessed be His name, has created all mankind in the mould of Adam, and even so no man is identical to another. For this reason each person must respect himself and say with dignity: ‘God created the world on my account. Therefore let me not lose eternal life because of some vain passion!'”
Further, God, alone among all his creations, created the human being in His own image. Genesis gives us the roots of individuality and human rights. The rest of the Old Testament reflects this emphasis on the value of each individual human person, as a unique individual, not merely a resource for his or her tribe, or a representative of an archetype. There is no other ancient literature that so consistently respects and captures the lives of named, average men and women. Greek literature gives us individuals, but they tend to be beautiful, powerful royalty. In the Old Testament, even a slave woman, Hagar, has a name and a personality, as does a starving widow, Ruth, and a mother, Hannah, who misses her absent son and makes him a little garment every year, guessing what size will fit him as he grows out of her sight. As a woman I am especially amazed by Leah, a woman less attractive than her sister, who is identified as the first person in history to praise and thank God. These are average women, and they have names and personalities. In other ancient material, women are archetypes, like Corn Mother, or royalty, like Sita from the Ramayana.
If you turn back the clock and erase the Old Testament, Western Civilization never develops. What would replace it? Myths like the foundational creation myth of Hinduism. In the Rig Veda, Parusha, the Primal Man, is sacrificed. From his mouth, the Brahman is created. From his arms, the warrior caste. From his thighs, the merchants. From his feet, the servants. Untouchables did not emerge from this body; they are outside of the human moral universe, and are subjected to uncounted abuses.
The individualism so typical of the West is not a feature of Hinduism or Buddhism. In those beliefs, individualism is an illusion and the goal is to overcome that illusion and to lose the self as a droplet loses its individuality when it enters the ocean. In Hinduism, the route to that liberation is dharma, carrying out the tasks assigned to a given caste. In Buddhism, the route is meditation. In simple language, the Judeo-Christian tradition is different from the Hindu-Buddhist tradition.
Anyone objecting to the term “Judeo-Christian tradition” would benefit from reading the Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars. Confucian-influenced tales prize the self-sacrifice of children to their parents, including abusive step-parents. A naked boy lays on a frozen river to melt the ice and acquire carp to feed an abusive step-parent. This is virtue. A man quits his job, travels to his birthplace, and consumes his father’s excrement as part of health care for his ill father. He prays to the gods, offering to die in his father’s place. This is virtue. Other children slice off bits of their own flesh and feed it to their parents to improve their parents’ health. This is called gegu and in Confucian literature it is virtuous. Confucian values contribute to ordered, law-abiding societies in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Confucianism is very different from the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Some advance the term “Abrahamic” as a Woke-approved replacement for “Judeo-Christian.” They like it because it is “inclusive.” Note that they do not like it because it is accurate, because it is not. In response to a question from me, Islam expert Robert Spencer wrote to me in July, 2023, “‘Abrahamic’ is misleading and useless as a classification for Judaism, Christianity and Islam because Islam lays claim to exclusivity and claims that the teachings of Judaism and Christianity constitute twisting and adulteration of the original faith of Abraham. In the Qur’an (60:4), Abraham says that there will be enmity and hatred between him and his people forever until they worship Allah alone. This enmity applies to the Jews and Christians who fondly assume they can achieve some accord with Muslims based on their shared Abrahamic origins.”
Again, the New Testament was written by Jews (with the possible exception of Luke). It was written in the land of Israel. It makes constant reference to the Old Testament; in fact it is incomprehensible without the Old Testament as key. Its main character, Jesus, was an observant Jew, descended from King David.
Nothing like the above can be said about Islam or the Qur’an. The Qur’an we know is in Arabic; there is debate about the language of the original material from which the Qur’an was compiled. The Qur’an was initially embraced by Arabs who had little cultural or genetic relationship to Jews of the land of Israel. The Qur’an is unstinting in its condemnation of Jews and Christians. The Qur’an takes bits and pieces of pre-existing Jewish, Christian, and Pagan material, garbles that material, and uses it to support a new religion, Islam. This new religion is very different from Judaism or Christianity. One must read the entire Qur’an to understand how completely it diverges from the Old and New Testaments. It is not, by any stretch, in the same category. Muslims recognize this. Modern Muslims condemn the entire Bible. Mere possession of a Bible is against the law, or at least highly dangerous in several Muslim countries.
One way to illustrate how a tradition impacts a population is to look at rates of female survival, as shown in sex ratio, and rates of female genital mutilation, child marriage, female literacy, honor killing, and fertility rates. On these objective measures, Muslim countries score poorly. They are frequently named among the worst countries on earth for women. Features other than Islam may not link these “worst” countries. Afghanistan is an arid, landlocked, and mountainous country in Central Asia. Sudan is on a coast in Africa. Yemen is on the Arabian peninsula. Malaysia, a humid island nation where female genital mutilation is increasing rather than decreasing, is in Southeast Asia. The feature that links these diverse countries is not language or history or terrain. It is Islam. By objective measures, Islam damages the lives of women and girls in a way that the Judeo-Christian tradition does not. The phrase “Abrahamic” should not be used to sweep the ugliness of gender apartheid under the rug. Further, largely Hindu and Muslim India, and Confucian-influenced China have “lost” one hundred million females to various culling methods like sex-selective abortions. There are no comparable statistics from nations influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition.
“Judeo-Christian” means something. It doesn’t mean that one is an anti-Semite or a philo-Semite. It doesn’t mean that one is a xenophobe, an Islamophobe, or a fascist. “Judeo-Christian” is an accurate term that reflects a significant cultural trend that has existed for millennia. The term doesn’t even convey that that cultural trend is superior, or inferior to any other cultural trend. Woke “problematizes” that which it hopes to erase and replace with Marxist Utopia. We don’t have to knuckle under to that. To do so would be to abandon the best features of our shared Judeo-Christian tradition.
Danusha Goska is the author of God Through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery.
Brilliant. For yet I also have described myself and my cultural roots as Judeochristian for the simple reason it is true.
It is amazing to read such a lengthy, informative, inspirational essay only to discover at the end there are as of yet no comments.
What can I, as an ordinary historical, orthodox Christian, say other than “Thank you.”
“By their fruits you will know them.” What we loosely recognize and refer to as “woke” seems simply Satanic to me. “Woke” is endlessly negative, arrogant, prideful. It takes everything I as a Christian consider truthful and good and slanders it, reduces it, into being nothing other than willful, purposeful evil.
It is not a mistake to attach the Marxism label to it. For like Marxism, it simply divides humans into two camps: oppressor, and oppressed.
You would think after being subjected to all manner of ugly variations of this theme, since the start of the early 20th century till today, the world would be crying, “Never again!”
Did not all the millions mindlessly massacred by Yosef Stalin and “Chairman” Mao teach the world ANYTHING?? 70+ years of endless, hideous insanity inside Soviet Russia drove home no collective lessons??
Apparently not. China, and now many in America, insist otherwise.
God help us all.
I use it because it’s both accurate and truthful. And for no other reason than the truth p’s off the right (wrong) people.
Christianity is the largest Sect of Judaism!
There are definite moral values in Judaism and Christianity .This excellent article while noting the woke threat to both Judaism and Christianity should have distinguished between Orthodox Jews who are committed to Torah observance and study and heterodox Jews who worship the false gods of the woke on issues of race gender and climate You will never see heterodox Jews fill football stadiums to celebrate the study of the Talmud which is one of the basic texts of Judaism
Yes, exactly. And not all non-Orthodox Jews are woke. it gets old hearing repeated condemnation of American assimilated Jews as all leftwing. Thats just not the case, no matter what the msm tells you about voting habits. Why would they tell the truth about that and nothing else? Most Jews I know are politically conservative no matter how religiously observant or not.
I don’t mind the term Judeo-Christian as it applies tom America’s founding and some shared beliefs. I do not care for “old testament.” as it isn’t old to me and so it leaves me out of any discussion using that term. But hey, I probably wasn’t invited to that discussion and don’t care to be.
I see some Christians as allies. Others as nasty and having conquest based intent toward me and my children. One popular FOX news personality stated on radio “Jews are incomplete human beings.” I am quite complete and don’t personally need Christianity for anything. I do recognize that America has been predominantly Christian and I live here. I intend to be a good neighbor, if respected and not proselytized.
Whatever the science, I do consider myself racially apart from European Christians. But that’s a discussion for another time.
Wonderful writing, thoughtful conclusions and relevant to today’s world.
Thank you.
Those on the left who criticise religion for the sins of the past also tend to criticise western nations for the sins of the past.
Those on the right who criticise religion’s past, do not wish to criticise secular sins of the past.
All thinking people should recognise that our wisdom stems from our past, we learn from it and make sure we don’t repeat it.
The phrase, of course, emphasizes that Christianity grew out of Judaism. It is incorrectly used to imply that Judaism is acceptable to Christians, which is nonsense as Christians don’t believe that Jesus is optional.
There is no Judeo-Christian religion. The term is of limited use and a poor substituted for “Western” as that also includes the Greco-Roman influence.
Very well and succinctly said.
Because Judeo-Christianity is NOT a religion, and Jesus is non-negotiable, the phrase implies nothing of the sort.
It would be better to think it is a wrong assumption on the part of the hearer or speaker.
Judaism and Christianity have a shared history and theological roots. Yes, there are some major theological differences, but, there is also theological commonality.
I don’t take as dim a view of the phrase “Judeo-Christian,” if it is being used in the proper context. And, I do think it’s beneficial for Christians at-large — especially those who may possess anti-Semitic views — to be reminded of where their religion comes from, because that fact is often ignored and/or downplayed.
Well Jason P, since religion is based on unreason (faith) in a supernatural fantasy, the details of the fantasy can always bend to the will of the mystical consensus (usually after much violence). They call it syncretism.
That’s how the details of the fantasy of the Nicene Creed were agreed upon.
Since consistency is a requirement of reason and reality (because reality is immutable and never can change like a fantasy) and not of faith, inconsistency and contradiction are unavoidable in the details of a supernatural fantasy.
In the future, if reason once again collapses and the West enters a new religious Dark Age, syncretism could result in a whole new religion called Judeo-Christianity.
A new Council will be called to order, after much violence of course, and the Nicene Creed will be amended, to reconcile Judaism with Christianity.
“I am not fighting against religion — I am fighting for reason. When faith and reason clash, it is up to the religious people to decide how they choose to reconcile the conflict. As far as I am concerned, I have no terms of communication and no means to deal with people, except through reason.” – Ayn Rand
One would think that, after the shellacking you took yesterday in these pages you would take a break to regroup and maybe come up with something original . But no.
Seeing the term ‘Judeo Christian’ is like having the bell rung by Pavlov and, like the dog, you start salivating.
Bottom line. your version of reason has already collapsed. Objectivism is an empty shell.
Fortunately for us, actual reason hasn’t collapsed and there will be no religious dark age with a new religion called Judeo-Christianity. You sound, as always, like a paranoid freak. We will just keep moving ahead with our lives. You will stay stuck in the Objectivist muck, accomplishing nothing.
As for your post it is the usual garbage you dish out. Completely predictable and repetitive. A normal person would know when to quit. But you don’t know when to quit. You are anything but normal.
There seems to be a fantasy that after 2000 years of religious strife and slaughter, conservatives can create a new synthesis that relegates progressive Christians (and Jews and Pope Francis) to non-existence religiously speaking. A new Nicene Creed that creates a new Orthodoxy while expelling the heresies to oblivion!
The term Jud(a)eo-Christian is not a creation of progressive jargon.
Demonstrate one instance of Christian faith in contravention of reason. Just one. From scripture.
Demonstrate why the supernatural in Christianity contravenes reason.
If you cannot do this, then your constant evidence-less vitriol is nothing more than sound and fury, signifying your cultish slavery and inability to make rational arguments from your gnostic suppositions.
The Resurrection of Jesus.
According to Scripture he died on Friday afternoon and resurrected Sunday morning. Such a resurrection from death cannot happen naturally or scientifically. Indeed, if it did happen naturally and scientifically it could not by definition be called a supernatural miracle. A supernatural miracle by definition violates the laws of reality. Therefore, it violates reality, reason, logic, and science.
Reason, logic, and science are wholly dependent upon an independently, existing, immutable reality. A reality whose natural laws are the Law of Identity and the Law of Causality. A metaphysical reality that cannot be created or altered by any consciousness, natural or otherwise.
Consciousness is an attribute of certain biological organisms which perceives reality, it does not create reality. To suggest that there exists a super consciousness that creates reality is to contradict the rational definition of consciousness. Whatever it is you designate as super consciousness is no consciousness at all. You are literally STEALING a legitimate concept that identifies an existent in reality and applying it to a mystical unreality, to nothing at all. Super consciousness identifies no consciousness at all. It actually contradicts the real definition of consciousness and reason.
You can CHOOSE to believe in the Resurrection, you have the free will to choose the irrational, that which is not based on reason, if that is your desire.
But in REASON you do NOT have the RIGHT to claim your choice is based on reason and therefore rational.
I will not interfere with an irrational, faith based, choice. But when a religionist, of any religion, has the impudence to STEAL the concept of reason, to dishonestly deceive herself and others that religion is rational, I’m not going to stand by and let the religionist get away with that intellectual THEFT.
“The “stolen concept” fallacy, first identified by Ayn Rand, is the fallacy of using a concept while denying the validity of its genetic roots, i.e., of an earlier concept(s) on which it logically depends.” – Leonard Peikoff
THX: “[The} resurrection from death cannot happen naturally or scientifically.”
KH: Agreed. Resurrection from death is supernatural.
THX: ” … if [the resurrection] did happen naturally and scientifically it could not by definition be called a supernatural miracle.
KH: Agreed. But I don’t think there is any such thing as a natural resurrection or a scientific miracle.
THX: “A supernatural miracle by definition violates the laws of reality.”
KH: Disagree. The supernatural does not violate any so-called “law of reality.”
THX: “Therefore, it violates reality, reason, logic, and science.”
My reasoning and evidence follow:
KH: The supernatural does not violate REALITY / nature because it is above nature. That is what “supernatural” means. There can be no natural without a supernatural. The universe had a beginning.
KH (cont.) The resurrection does not violate REASON, but demonstrates itself to be different from what reason and experience would expect. That does not mean reason has been violated. It means natural explanations are insufficient.
KH (cont.) The resurrection does not violate LOGIC. Natural men die and stay dead. Jesus died and did not stay dead. Logically, Jesus possesses some power natural men do not.
KH (cont.) It does not violate SCIENCE. Science is a tool for exploring the natural world and cosmos. Only scientism makes the claim that science has god-like powers to define reality. That is scientific gnosticism. Think Anthony Fauci.
Your problem is that you have no beliefs beyond your own navel and what you can experience with your 5 senses. This is why your religion has no transcendence, no beauty, no truth, no goodness, no unity. It is wretched, ugly and irrational.
Kynarion Hellenis claims, “There can be no natural without a supernatural. The universe had a beginning.”
Dear Kynarion, the universe may or may not have a recurring cycle of explosion and implosion but not existence. Existence exists by the grace of natural existence. Existence is self-sufficient. If you refuse to believe that existence is self-sufficient and requires the existence of an antecedent super consciousness to wish existence into existing, then you must by the logic of that premise accept that the existence of this super consciousness cannot be self-sufficient either because it exists and this super consciousness, in order to exist, must have had another previous, antecedent super-super-creator to wish him into existence too — and ad infinitum. The super-super-antecedent creator by the logic of your premise would require a super-super-super-antecedent creator — ad infinitum. An infinite regress cannot exist, it is logically impossible. And if it did exist your monotheism would be impossible, it would be gods, gods, gods, and more gods all the way up infinitely.
But if you argue that God is self-sufficient and eternal then you have conceded the point that some thing can be and must be self-sufficient and eternal, you have conceded the point that there does exist an irreducible starting point for the universe. And therefore you cannot claim that this irreducible starting point cannot be matter and energy themselves. We know matter and energy to exist, we can point to matter and energy, we perceive them and manipulate them. We know natural consciousness exists, we experience natural consciousness first hand, this discussion could not take place if consciousness did not exist.
Therefore to argue for the necessary existence of the supernatural to make natural existence possible is simply unwarranted. It is not an argument from reason but from mysticism, from emotion, from a desire to jump out of existence into non-existence. You’re essentially saying “This world is not enough to satisfy me, I refuse to accept it’s conditions, it makes me unhappy, there must be more than this!”
THX numbered statements, followed by KH commentary.
1. “…the universe may or may not have a recurring cycle of explosion and implosion but not existence…”
KH: So, in your faith, non-existence became existence at some point. Further, it may have exploded or imploded. How does nothing become something? How does nothing explode or implode?
2. “Existence exists by the grace of natural existence. Existence is self-sufficient.”
Existence exists…by existence. There’s logic for you.
If existence is “natural,” then it has a non-supernatural composition – matter.
3. “[If KH refuses] to believe that existence is self sufficient…”
KH: Incorrect. We Christians DO believe Existence is Self-sufficient. No straw men, please.
3a “…and requires …an antecedent super consciousness….”
KH: Incorrect. If Existence is “self-sufficient,” then LOGICALLY, it has no need of antecedent. No straw men, please.
The atheist has the problem of the infinite regress. He must believe against science that matter and or energy are eternal. Matter has half life, so it can’t be eternal. Rocks have no intelligence. Neither has science discovered rock I.Q.
The Christian has no infinite regress. The regression is eliminated by Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning [time], God created [energy] the heavens [space] and the earth [matter].”
No infinite regress.
THX: “But if you argue that God is self-sufficient and eternal then you have conceded the point that some thing can be and must be self-sufficient and eternal, you have conceded the point that there does exist an irreducible starting point for the universe….”
KH: Yes. I concede.
THX: “And therefore you cannot claim that this irreducible starting point cannot be matter and energy themselves.”
KH: Why not? Why must the “irreducible starting point” be matter and energy?
Is that what you believe? If so, why?
Kynarion Hellenis says, “Why not? Why must the “irreducible starting point” be matter and energy? Is that what you believe? If so, why?”
This philosophical issue is called the “primacy of existence versus the primacy of consciousness.” Which NECESSARILY comes first? Which is dependent upon the other?
A rational claim has to begin with the evidence of the senses, “Man’s senses are his only direct cognitive contact with reality and, therefore, his only [direct] source of information [about reality].” – Ayn Rand
A rational claim has to be a logical claim. A logical claim identifies a fact or facts of reality with absolutely NO contradictions at every step of the logical chain of the argument. Logic requires absolute consistency, coherency, integrity. And that chain of logic begins with the evidence of the senses.
What do the senses indicate about the relationship between consciousness and existence? They indicate that consciousness is a biological development, a biological attribute, of certain living organisms, that develops as a response to stimuli from antecedent, pre-existing existence. Were no thing to exist, no consciousness could develop. Consciousness being the attribute of certain living organisms that develops is response to the stimuli of existence.
Therefore, the senses indicate that consciousness does not and cannot create existence but is a dependent of and a result of existence. Existence came first, consciousness came second. No, antecedent-to-existence, consciousness is possible.
A super consciousness creating existence is a contradiction of consciousness. Such a contradictory claim cannot and is not based on reason and logic but on a rejection of reason and logic. And can only be based on mysticism and faith, on faith in the unprovable and the unreal.
Oh no, not the “stolen concept” fallacy. Makes about as much sense as the “law of Identity” and the “law of causality”
How about the “law of word salad” to describe everything while saying nothing.
You fail to answer my question: Why must your “irreducible starting point” be matter and energy?
Ok. I can be flexible. You know enough to understand that matter and energy CANNOT be eternal, right? That is why you avoided my question, most likely. Even though all your reasoning assumes it (against modern scientific discoveries and extrapolations).
Let’s do it your way. Your reasoning is swerving away from the eternality of matter and energy to existence and consciousness. What comes first? Consciousness or existence?
Consciousness is possessed by someone having self awareness.. By definition, consciousness CANNOT be first because it is an attribute. An attribute is a thing.
Existence must come before anything else. Without existence, there is no thing. There is nothing. Including attributes like consciousness..
You affirm Genesis 1:1, THX. God created all that exists ex nihilo – from nothing.
God’s very name is “I AM WHO I AM.” He is the very definition of existence. He is the Self-existing One. Superconsciousness. Supernatural.
“Super consciousness”, i.e., a consciousness that creates existence, instead of perceiving existence, is an empty term, it not only does not identify an existent in reality, but it is also a corruption of the legitimate concept of consciousness. It is like saying the Pegasus is a super horse that creates the horse, but there is no Pegasus in reality. It is like saying “It’s impossible for a horse to exist just naturally, a horse requires the super horse Pegasus to make it exist”.
Nothing cannot create something. Creation out of nothing is impossible. We KNOW that consciousness cannot and does not create existence therefore to declare “But super consciousness does!” is to say nothing at all in reality, you’re actually taking a real concept with a real referent in reality and totally corrupting the legitimate concept of consciousness. It’s MAGICAL THINKING.
To claim that “God is super consciousness which creates existence” is to claim that nothing created something because the term “super consciousness” is an empty construct which not only does not IDENTIFY an existent in reality but it also is derived from the legitimate concept of “consciousness” and turns it upside down, inside out, wiping out what consciousness really is in reality.
If you cannot accept that existence is eternal, that matter and energy are eternal, that existence is the irreducible starting point and consciousness is dependent on pre-existing existence to come into existence, and that the nature of consciousness cannot be reversed, consciousness can never go from the perceiver of existence to the creator of existence, there is nothing I can do but walk away and leave you to your MAGICAL THINKING.
THX, you are misquoting me.
We both agree:
1. Matter and Energy are NOT eternal. You say matter and energy ARE eternal, but you know that scientific exploration of these things strongly indicates they are NOT. Your studied avoidance of this issue betrays your weakness and gives you insurmountable problems of evidence, reason and logic – pointing to a religious faith, zealously defended, against and without evidence. So, unless you can show otherwise, I am going to assume you concede my point. Produce evidence that matter is eternal, or admit your faith is without evidence, scientific or otherwise. If you hang on to the eternality of matter, you suffer the irrationality of the “infinite regress.”
2. Existence is first before consciousness. AGREED. I believe in Super Existence, NOT super consciousness (as you falsely claim).
I believe Super Existence made His Name known thousands of years ago to a Jew named Moses. That name could be translated as “Super Existence.”
3. We agree that nothing cannot create something.
Agreed. Super Existence is something. It is not no thing / nothing.
And now we get to the crux of your thinking:
4. THX: “If you cannot accept that existence is eternal….
KH: Existence IS Eternal. I believe Existence reveal His name as “I AM” which means “Super Existence.”
THX (cont.): ” ….that matter and energy are eternal…
KH: These are faith claims held in contravention of reason and truth. They ignore what modern science has been able to discover, as well as the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
THX: “…that existence is the irreducible starting point and consciousness is dependent on pre-existing existence to come into existence….”
KH: AGREED.
So we are back to your claims of the eternality of matter and energy and the necessary irrational infinite regress argument that you MUST make to hold your religion together.
Meredith ‘Land Back’ Warren is obviously an insane Leftist. But this isn’t really about us white folk giving back our possessions and and reversing the Industrial Revolution. Setting up teepees on every inch of America is just the excuse so Warren can indulge her rampant British anti-semitism.
“And there’s more. The phrase “settler” is used to justify a genocidal approach to Jews living in Israel. Both history and genetics reveal that Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel for millennia. The Woke ignore that reality, and insist that Jews are “settlers” and Muslims are “indigenous.””
Perhaps ‘Land Back’ Warren should take an ad hoc position at the BBC so she can further indulge her “Jew Hatred”. God knows the damage she is doing at the University of Sheffield.
If Abraham had not sinned and heeded the unbelieving voice of Sarah, we would not now have the curse of Muslims.
Amen. Well said. If our politicians would actually grow a pair, we would not now have the curse of the Muslims infiltrating the West
i use the term all the time and as an Orthodox Jew , I can say that shiksa Warren has no business telling me about what is good for the Jews
Christianity arose out of Judaism. That’s the historical and theological reality. The phrase “Judeo-Christian” has a legitimate meaning and it isn’t controversial at all, or, it shouldn’t be, ideally.
I won’t address the wretched ideology of “Submission,” which represents a brazen, warped and base exploitation of those two aforementioned faiths, for its own evil, belligerent and supremacist ends.
Islam is a religion. Muslim ideology is derived from the metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics of the religion of Islam.
The history of Christianity is the history of a brutal, violent, submission ideology of theocracy, just like Islam. Christianity is no more a religion of peace than Islam is. During the Christian Dark Age there was “peace” and “mercy” offered to you if you submitted to the Christian ideology, if not you were burned at the stake, imprisoned, tortured, and ex-communicated.
It is because the Aristotelian Renaissance (the rebirth of reason and the erosion of faith) and the Aristotelian Age of Enlightenment broke the back of serious belief in Christianity that today’s Christians no longer burn each other at the stake.
One would think that, after the shellacking you took yesterday in these pages you would take a break to regroup and maybe come up with something original . But no.
Seeing the term ‘Judeo Christian’ is like having the bell rung by Pavlov and, like the dog, you start salivating.
Bottom line. your version of reason has already collapsed. Objectivism is an empty shell.
There was no Christian Dark Age except in your fevered mind. Just more of your religious bigotry.
Greek philosophy, your foundation and bedrock of the rational and scientific beginnings and aspects of Western Civilization, folded like a cheap suit in the face of the spread of Christianity, which absorbed the teachings of your pagan heroes. Without Christianity no one would remember or care about the Greeks.
As for your post it is the usual garbage you dish out. Completely predictable and repetitive. A normal person would know when to quit. But you don’t know when to quit. You are anything but normal.
“I am not fighting against religion — I am fighting for reason. When faith and reason clash, it is up to the religious people to decide how they choose to reconcile the conflict. As far as I am concerned, I have no terms of communication and no means to deal with people, except through reason.” – Ayn Rand
Maybe you should take your goddess’ advice. You mindlessly spend your time doing nothing but fighting against religion. You have no terms of communication and no means to deal with people…….period. You are simply an angry, unhinged, jealous freak.
Religious Jews and Christians differ in key areas but hold certain values in common that are necessary to sustain our Republic and civilization itself. For that reason, the radical elites now in charge are doing everything in their power to uproot these values.
Flash back to the communist-inspired cadre in the American folk song movement (Pete Seeger and the rest). Their whole point was to convince the young that communist values were the true, traditional American values.
Read Howard Husock’s online article (from 2005) in City Journal, “Pete Seeger: America’s Most Successful Communist”.
Judaism and Christianity are NOT Western in the crucial PHILOSOPHICAL sense of “Western”, they are not based on reason and rational philosophy. Neither are they western in the geographical sense of the word.
The term “Western” in its philosophical sense means based on demonstrable, provable, observation-based, reality through the use of reason and logic to identify and understand reality. There is nothing rational or logical about Mana Falling From Heaven, the Parting of the Red Sea, an Immaculate Conception, Virgin Birth, Resurrection, or 72 Virgins In Paradise. All these religious claims are based on FAITH not on REASON. They are Oriental mysticism not Western rationality.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are IRRATIONAL, faith based, belief systems from the Orient. The three irrational belief systems are Oriental invaders of the Greco-Roman west, both in the philosophical sense and the geographical sense.
Judaism prepared the ground for Christianity, and both, prepared the ground for Islam and Marxism. Marxism is religion pretending to be rational science. Marxism is a crypto religion, religion in a hidden form.
“Christianity prepared the ground for modern totalitarianism by entrenching three philosophical fundamentals in the Western mind, in metaphysics the worship of the supernatural [that which is beyond perception and reason to understand], in epistemology the reliance on faith [belief in opposition to and contradiction to reality and reason], and in ethics a reverence for self-sacrifice [the reverence for mind-sacrifice, God and his representative on earth know better than I do or ever can, my mind is limited, so it is right and moral to obey no matter what is asked of me]” – Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff
Religion, mysticism, faith, and any form of secular unreason or secular irrationality are ALL philosophical enemies of freedom, liberty, and capitalism, in other words, enemies of the personal, individual, pursuit of happiness on earth, in other words enemies of the American way of life.
“Religion versus America” – Leonard Peikoff
One would think that, after the shellacking you took yesterday in these pages you would take a break to regroup and maybe come up with something original . But no.
There’s not much left to respond to for this, another insulting, childish, unhinged rant. The same anti-Christian garbage repeated ad infinitum.
I wonder, where are the great works of music and art based on the teaching of Ayn Rand? Without Christianity there would no “Messiah” by Handel, no Passion Oratorios by Bach, no Mass settings by Palestrina, Tallis, Byrd and hundreds of other Renaissance and Medieval composers. It would be a pretty empty world bereft of art and music.
An Objectivist Mass based Rand’s Tiddlywink Music? Please.
No, dear Lutheran, without Aristotle there would be no Renaissance and Christian music would have remained at the level of Gregorian Chant. Christian art would have remained at the level of portraying demons, devils, and gargoyles.
An Objectivist “Mass”? I simply don’t know if common-mass-rituals are something an Objectivist community or society would develop. Objectivism does not concern itself with anthropological rituals. Objectivism is not for them or against them, so long as they are rational, and the rights of the individual are respected and not violated.
Objectivism concerns itself with the fundamental principles of achieving individual virtue and personal happiness, in this life, on earth.
“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing. To seek joy in meeting halls. We haven’t even got a word for the quality I mean–for the self-sufficiency of man’s spirit. It’s difficult to call it selfishness or egotism, the words have been perverted, they’ve come to mean Peter Keating. Gail, I think the only cardinal evil on earth is that of placing your prime concern within other men. I’ve always demanded a certain quality in the people I liked. I’ve always recognized it at once–and it’s the only quality I respect in men. I chose my friends by that. Now I know what it is. A self-sufficient ego. Nothing else matters.” – Howard Roark in “The Fountainhead”
So Christians need to atone for their past but rational communists don’t?
That’s COLLECTIVISM. Collectivist guilt. Collectivist virtue. Original Sin or Original Virtue — collectivist nonsense.
Only individuals actually exist in reality. Individuals with free will, individual character, and individual evil or individual virtue. Just because you’re a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist does not mean you’re guilty of an actual evil, or an actual virtue.
For all I know there may have been Germans who pretended to be Nazis in order to survive but actually helped Jews escape and did not willingly commit actual evils. Do you happen to know of any?
Communism is NOT rational, communism is irrational. Marxism is a crypto religion, religion in hidden form, the irrational impudently pretending to be rational.
Communism is intellectually dead; its brutal history has discredited it. The persisting evil is that ALTRUISM, the moral basis for collectivism, is still viewed by 99% of all people as the highest moral ideal and duty of man.
So long as altruism is seen as the highest moral ideal and duty you cannot defeat collectivism or socialism. Or Medicare for All, or government education at government schools.
And so long as rational self-interest is seen as evil, morally tainted, or inferior to altruism freedom, liberty, capitalism and the personal pursuit of happiness cannot be morally defended and championed.
Wrong again egghead loser. By the time of Bach and Handel the precepts of Baroque high art in music were firmly ensconced on their own, and had nothing to do with a philosopher from 1700 years previous. The great musical and artistic works of the Baroque in central Europe came from Lutherans.
Your oversized bloated non-self-sufficient ego and arrogance is astonishing. As if music could not possibly have evolved beyond 11 C. Chant through Medieval Europe and into the Renaissance and the Baroque without the help of a long dead Greek philosopher. I can guarantee you Bach and Handel were not reading the writings of old Aristotle. They were listening to the other composers of their day and incorporating the music of Palestrina and Tallis as well. What you know of actual music or art couldn’t fill a thimble.
But you are right about an Objectivist mass. Your belief system is as dry as a bone in the desert. Lifeless. A belief system that doesn’t generate the beautiful is pretty much a dead end. I think that is what pisses you off the most. Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque artists and musicians did not need Aristotle in the slightest
As if I am going to take artistic direction from someone who never existed except in the pages of a mediocre book.
I’m still waiting for that great American Objectivist Mass. Maybe you could write the Tiddlywink Mass
And so long as rational self-interest is seen as evil, morally tainted, or inferior to altruism freedom, liberty, capitalism and the personal pursuit of happiness cannot be morally defended and championed.
BTW what makes you think Objectivism is rational? You always sound irrational to me. You always sound like an evil, small minded very angry person.
Personally I will always take altruism, freedom, liberty and capitalism over your contrived, fraudulent philosophical strait jacket which you have cloaked yourself in.
“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing.”
Sorry, but every time I read this, I think “masturbation.”
Every time I think of virginal, lifelong-celibate Jesus, an Immaculate Conception, and a Virgin Birth I think of an anti-life, anti-pleasure, anti-sex, anti-man religion.
“The doctrine that man’s sexual capacity belongs to a lower or animal part of his nature . . . is the necessary consequence of the doctrine that man is not an integrated entity, but a being torn apart by two opposite, antagonistic, irreconcilable elements: his body, which is of this earth, and his soul, which is of another, supernatural realm. According to that doctrine, man’s sexual capacity—regardless of how it is exercised or motivated, not merely its abuses, not unfastidious indulgence or promiscuity, but the capacity as such—is sinful or depraved.” – Ayn Rand
We also don’t share the sex partner/spouse we love, or do you?
Gee T. I’ll settle for an Objectivist Symphony, if anthropological rituals are not your thing. It appears Objectivism does not concern itself with anything beautiful……ever.
You are exhibit no. 1
Is the phrase “Athens and Jerusalem” problematic to the illiterate and the insane?
The phrase “Athens and Jerusalem” is a contradiction, it is actually “Athens versus Jerusalem”. When push comes to shove a devout Christian or Jew will have to reject Athens and embrace Jerusalem.
“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the academy and the church? What between heretics and Christians?” – Church Father Tertullian
“Writes [Paul] Johnson: “Many of the better-educated Jews found Greek culture profoundly attractive. [Some were] torn between new foreign ideas and . . . inherited piety, between the critical spirit and conservatism.” Predictably, orthodox Jews railed against apostasy, against educated Jews adopting a rationally critical method and rejecting faith-based beliefs. The pious regarded the Greek philosophers “with more alarm” than they did the Greek’s liberal sexuality. States Jewish historian Max Dimont: “The latter could corrupt only the body, while the former corrupted the mind.” Aristotle, the orthodox Jews understood, was vastly more dangerous to religion than was promiscuity….
To understand this complex conflict [Athens versus Jerusalem, the Maccabees versus Hellenization], bear in mind that the king, Antiochus Epiphanes, although undoubtedly a tyrant, was significantly less tyrannical than were his zealous foes. One is reminded of the 20th-century struggle between the Shah of Iran—a foreign-backed brutal secular dictator—and the indigenous, fanatical supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini, a dictator vastly more brutal and totalitarian. Perhaps more to the point, the Maccabees were the Taliban of their day—slaughtering their more secular coreligionists as apostates and tolerating nothing but a strict adherence to fundamentalist religion.” – Andrew Bernstein
Wow T, six more down votes. I think you are hitting a record today.
Wow T, 4 more down votes. That makes 10 for just one article. I think you are hitting a record today.
The idea behind, and creation of, the term linking “Judeo” to “Christian” is of grammatical and etymological interest to me.
Through this grammatical and etymological lens, I’ll point out what seems to me to be a certain prejudice towards Judaism, a down grading of Judaism, which is counter intuitive to the attitude of Americans who want to believe in a shared divine ethic of what is good and moral, with no friction of belief in practice and in history, between the two.
The word “Judeo” doesn’t exist in English. “Judaic” or “Jewish” does. The suffix “eo” is from ancient Greek and turns a noun into an adjective. “Christian”, both noun and adjective in English, completely derives from ancient Greek, then Latin, and means messiah. The etymology of being Jewish” goes back much further than this Greek twist.
In the Biblical Hebrew language of the Torah, “Judaic” or “Jewish” is “Yehudi” in Hebrew, both noun and adjective, and means “one who thanks God”, from the verb “lehodot”, to thank.
This Greek infused etymology of an English word that is meaningless without understanding its Hebrew meaning, creates a false “equity” and fosters false assumptions due to ignorance.
The definitions of both words from their true etymological sources reveal the fundamental difference between Judaism, which puts God at its center, and Christianity, which puts its messiah at its heart.
It’s problematic.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and research. You make an excellent point.
There is no Jewish-Christian religion. Christians are wild, unnatural branches grafted into the Jewish tree. See Romans 11.
The Jews who believe Jesus is Messiah identify themselves as both Jews and Christians. Christians agree with them, because Jews are the natural branches of their own tree – not grafted in as we are. But I understand this choice is a very costly one for a Jew who is often shunned by his family and community.
The Christians who become Jews must give up their Christian identity and renounce their Messiah. I think this does not carry the same cultural opprobrium.
Christians who think we replace Jews as God’s people, or who think that God is finished with His people, the Jews, are seriously wrong and ignorant of the Word of God.
Judaism, Christianity, or a combination of both? Or Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, or Marxism? But what is the question?
If (and that’s a big “if”) an individual is seeking the answer to the question “How do I live my life on earth morally, virtuously, successfully, how do I pursue and achieve my rational happiness on earth?” None of those belief-systems can offer the individual a rational, logical, non-contradictory, and consistent answer.
Try Objectivism, Danusha Goska, try Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophy for living on earth.
But you won’t try it Danusha Goska, you’re too old and alone now, and I understand that. You need the solace and comfort of a belief in an eternal after-life, where all sins are forgiven and repaired, where we are together once again with our dear, precious, and cherished loved ones who have died, once again and forever. A supernatural God that will help you through your fears, pain, and suffering, and eventual death and dying.
I understand that Danusha, I often yearn with all my might and tears that such a mystical world were true. But it isn’t. And in yearning for the impossible mankind ruins and wrecks the possible.
By not taking this life SERIOUSLY, at every moment and in every respect, as the only life there is, ever will be, ever could be, and our only chance at virtue and happiness, we discount it and it passes us by because we delude ourselves that there will be another life after this one. We don’t take our sins seriously enough because we delude ourselves that, ultimately and magically, in the hereafter, our sins will be magically forgiven and repaired.
Oooo bitter table for one.
Way to go. Ridicule and revile the object of your earthly desires. That’s how get the girl.
Calling her old and alone (how do you know she is alone?). I would bet she has a significant other or many friends, unlike you. She still won’t date you.
I am sure you are alone….really alone, except for your long gone girlfriend/goddess. After all, she and Peikoff are all you have to hold on to. That and Aristotle and your obsessive hatred of happy people who believe in God.
“I often yearn with all my might and tears that such a mystical world were true.” Please, cut the crap. It is not for us on this earthly plane to know if it is true. You have to at least be a decent human being, show kindness and believe in God. It is your stupid pride that keeps you in your self-imposed prison.
Nice life you have carved out for yourself. C’mon tough guy. Stop downvoting me and show me who’s boss, tough guy.
Randism, rationalism, you seem to treat them just like religious fanatics treat their beliefs.
It’s called Objectivism and not Randism for a good reason. Objectivism does not follow Ayn Rand, it follows the observation of reality and reasoning upon the observed facts of reality. Objectivism is not rationalism nor empiricism, but reason applied to observation.
Philosophically speaking, rationalism is abstraction divorced from facts. And empiricism is observation divorced from reason.
It is true however that mystics have given consistency an unsavory reputation.
“[Philosophers came to be divided] into two camps: those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge of the world by deducing it exclusively from concepts, which come from inside his head and are not derived from the perception of physical facts (the Rationalists)—and those who claimed that man obtains his knowledge from experience, which was held to mean: by direct perception of immediate facts, with no recourse to concepts (the Empiricists). To put it more simply: those who joined the [mystics] by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind.” – Ayn Rand
Objectivism. Randism. They are inextricably linked so stop lying. You can’t separate one from the other.
Ayn won’t be happy that you gave her the boot when you meet her where it’s very warm.
I think a jury would find your insistence that objective truth is objectivism is evidence that you personally consider it the same way religious fanatics consider their beliefs.
Want to be a missionary with that missionary zeal? wanna have someone tell you how to live your life?
I’m not forcing anyone to convert to Objectivism, force and reason are opposites. A mind cannot be forced to think or to accept the facts of reality.
Furthermore, Objectivism provides moral PRINCIPLES to think about and apply to your particular circumstances. It’s up to you to accept or reject those principles and it’s up to you to figure out how to apply those principles to your specific situation. You can ask for help from other Objectivists or non-Objectivists in figuring out how to apply those principles but ultimately, with or without help, it is your choice and responsibility to think, digest, and understand those principles and how to apply them to your specific situation.
Objectivism does NOT provide commandments, nor does it demand obedience.
We are, all of us, according to Objectivism, in a fundamental metaphysical and intellectual sense, on our own, independent of each other, living within our own bodies and our own minds. No man, according to Objectivism, can breathe for another, digest food for another, live through another, or think for another.
“No knowledge, moral or otherwise, can be implanted by the instruments of coercion. “Force and mind,” in Ayn Rand’s memorable words, “are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins.”
Observe that the need of a mind to be free in order to reach knowledge implies that it has the right to make mistakes.” – Objectivist philosopher Onkar Ghate
The Good News, the Gospel was given first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. There will always be that connection from Jesus. The UN is always attemptiing to invalidate the memories, traditions, and history of millions of Jewish people. By stripping Jerusalem of its Jewish identity, the UN also stripped away Christian history and practice. The lies that rewrite history are trying to rob the Jewish people of 4000 years of their history and erase 2000 years of Christian history.
The narratives in the Gospels, 600 years before the birth of Islam, focus on the Jewish-God-man, Jesus, who interacted with other Jewish people while visiting Jewish places and celebrating Jewish feasts. By eradicating Israel’s Jewish identity, the muslim world is trying to create the ilusion that Islam is the only legitimate religion in the entire Middle East.
The UN bows to the dictators that pay it the most, currently that’s China and Islamic dictators.
Yes, UN is totally bought off by people who hate Israel and America.
What a lot of pilpul! I use the same ‘Judeo Christian’ phrase to reflect a fact. Both religions are unseparable, one sprang from the other.
Judaism is not the religion of the Old Testament Israelites.
Judaism claims that Jesus is in a cauldron of boiling manure. Some say that is a joke, but if so, what kind of sick person makes such a joke?
Islam claims Jesus is a holy prophet.
Christianity claims Jesus is the Son of God.
In its essential point, Islam is closer to Christianity than Modern Judaism.
Jesus told the religious leaders of His day that the Law and the Prophets pointed to Him. He told them they had substituted the teachings of men for those of God. And both statements are still true today. The OT points to Jesus as it always did. And Modern Judaism is not of God.
We are not a Judaeo-Christian nation. We are a Christian nation.
What kind of Christian nation is America supposed to be? Protestant or Catholic? If Protestant, Anglican or Puritan? How about the Christian heretics and the Christian blasphemers, the ones that don’t go along with YOUR personal interpretation of Scripture, what will you do with those Christians, burn them at the stake, put them in prison, put them on a ship to the 13 colonies or Australia?
That the best you got? Try harder, dude.
Still racking up the down votes I see.
How about us Christians who don’t go along with your interpretation of Objective scripture. What will you do with us? Make us read Atlas Shrugged in a locked room forever?
You are on a doomed Objective ghost ship.
Agree 100%. The coming of Christ split the Jewish community into two camps: those who accepted Him and those who rejected Him. Those who accepted Him became Christians, and Christ united them with the Gentiles in the universal Church. Those who rejected Him wanted an earthly messiah who would set up an earthly utopia. Modern Jewish identity is therefore based on the explicit rejection of Christ and teleologically oriented towards secular utopianism. As the great Catholic historian William Thomas Walsh says,
“It was [the Jews’] great tragedy that, having failed to understand Who Christ was, they could not get rid of the messianic consciousness for which they had been chosen and consecrated. Finding closed to them the only spiritual door to salvation, they were constantly driven to seek redemption in the here and now, in the resources of matter, in gold and power, in anything, anywhere but Christ. When all their kingdom had turned to dust in their patient hands, and the inevitable scourge of persecution came to scatter them again and again, they still followed leaders who kept them blind, and remained missionaries of what Saint John called ‘the spirit that dissolves Christ.'” – William Thomas Walsh, from “Philip II,” p. 244-245.
As long as the Jews continue to reject Christ, they will continue to pursue this secular utopian messianism and provoke hostility towards themselves in the process. If we truly love the Jews then, we must continue to preach the Gospel to them so that they will accept Christ and receive the true peace of soul that has so long eluded them.
I love the Jewish people, but the secularism, persecution, meltdown of Godly values diminished when they rejected Jesus as the true Messiah. Instead, some, including the Pharisees wanted a visible King. They were all about the law, they looked perfect on the inside, but had major problems with the Spiritual inside. Nichodemus was one who understood, after being told by Jesus that you have to be Born Again. John 3: 1-13. John 5… I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and Spirit. Now, in today’s world, we see how important TRUTH is to survival.
The Pharisees were the rank and file devout Jews. The Sadducees who were the leaders of the religion and collaborators with Roman rule. First century Christian writers blamed the Pharisees for Jewish rebellions against Rome in order to portray themselves as not being political, just religious. The issue of rebellion was denoted on the cross as “INRI,” Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Crosses bore the charges of those crucified. Were the early Christian writings denying Jesus was the messiah or hiding the messiah’s political content?
What an erudite treatment and, at the same time, a valiant defense of truth and Western Civilization!
Thank you, Professor Goska.
Further thought: Speaking of America in his worthy book “The Secret Knowledge,” (2012) page 221, David Mamet says
“The result of a 230-year-long experiment is the triumph of Judaeo-Christian values. We have created peace and plenty for more citizens over a greater period of time than that enjoyed by any other group in history.
“This triumph is not due to altruism, nor to empathy, nor to compassion, but to adherence to those practicable, rational rules for successful human interaction set out in the Bible.”
The reality is without Judaism would be no Christianity or Islam.. Both Christianity and Islam took parts of Judaism that fit their world view.. And made them their own.. In some aspects Judaism has more in common with Islam than Christianity and another more with Christianity than Islam. But Christianity has no moral or traditional commonality with Islam.. That’s why Christians associate themselves with Jewish tradition than with Islam.
Without Jesus Christ, the Savior promised to all mankind after the Fall, there would be no Jewish people, because the Jewish people was chosen so that some small sliver of mankind would be prepared for His coming. “God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the ages” (Hebrews 1: 1-2). When the righteous Jew Simeon called Christ “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel (Luke 2: 32), he was implying that Israel has no glory apart from Christ. By rejecting Christ, the Jews rejected the very purpose of their existence as a people. This makes modern rabbinic Judaism an entirely different religion from the Old Testament faith that was meant to prepare a nation for Christ. Christ did not “take parts of Judaism.” He fulfilled the entire Old Testament and applied to all mankind the promises made to Abraham.
This article needs a TL;DR.
This is like “Christian Nat ionalist” , Is it additive or a tertium quid mix? IF i am Christian and a Nationalist, I am not for most people’s understanding a CN !!! Same with Judeo-Christian. That is what the Bible is, Jewish and Christian and insofar as both embody Natural Law (and more) there can be no argument that it has a settled meaning that subsumes both under it.
Hence John Adams can say BOTH of these things
have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.5
5. John Adams, Works, Vol. X, p. 85, to Thomas Jefferson on December 25, 1813.
AND
“I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations …
They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.”
– John Adams, Second President of the United States
(From a letter to F. A. Van der Kemp [Feb. 16, 1808] Pennsylvania Historical Society)
It seems to me that “Jude’s-Christian” is a threat to the woke diversity crowd. How could Christianity exist without the practicing Jew named Jesus? After 12 years in Catholic schools, I learned that the Jews are still God’s “chosen people”, even though Christ said, “I am the way, the truth and the Life; no one comes to the Father except though Me”. I still don’t think Christ ever rejected His faith.
And what does that make of Mohammad’s rise 600 years after Christ died on the cross? Was Jesus a liar? Is not Judaism still valid after Genesis, Abraham, Isaac, Exodus, etc? Jews and Christians all share the same faith heritage, often fouled only by flawed human beings.
They were also opposing the Jewish establishment. In the end they blamed unrepentant Jews for Jesus’ death. Jews who did not convert have been persecuted for 2000 years. Let’s not overlook that.
Unrepentant Jews were indeed the primary force behind the decision to put Christ to death. It was the Jewish Sanhedrin that arrested Christ and resolved that He should be killed for “blasphemy.” It was a Jewish crowd, egged on by the Sanhedrin, that shouted “Crucify Him,” demanding a reluctant Pilate to put Him to death. By rejecting Christ and believing that He deserved to be killed, these Jews rejected the purpose for which they had been chosen and therefore renounced their chosen status. Only the Jews who accepted Christ remained God’s chosen people and Christ united them with those Gentiles who accepted Christ into the universal Church. It is therefore this Church that constitutes God’s chosen people and nobody, not even a Jew, can be part of it unless he accepts Christ.
The historic tension between Christians and non-Christian Jews is therefore largely the result of the latter’s stubborn refusal to accept Christ and assimilate into Christian societies. It was these Jews in fact, who initiated this tension by persecuting the apostles. Although these Jews have always hated the Church, the Church always strove to protect them and prevent secular rulers from responding to this hatred with hatred of their own. The papal bull “Sicut Judaeis” is proof of this.
The Sadducees collaborated with Roman rule. The Romans executed Jesus. The people in the street were Pharisees and called for the release of Jesus, which was hidden by writers saying that person was Jesus Barabbas. The second name means son of the father and was Jesus, not another “criminal” locked up by Rome.
If it offends the Left, then it must be true. That’s the reality for veracity.
Anyone who knows the true history of our country, knows that America is built on a Judeo/Christian foundation. The founding fathers had a deep and profound connection with the Bible and even considered making Moses a national emblem,
For anyone offended by the phrase Judeo/Christian, you don’t belong in this country. If you can’t accept and respect the country you exist in, then you need to leave.
I noticed the term “scientific racism.” I understand the context you used it in, but I am using it in a different context. It reminded me of how many times ‘science’ is invoked to make a political point. Scientific studies will not answer the question about what ‘Judeo-Christian’ means any more than what ‘love’ means. Human beings will determine this. Only a vigorous unflinching public conversation will shed light on why the term ‘Judeo-Christian’ is under attack. Meredith Warren has an ax to grind, and her vocation as a scholar is somewhat tarnished because she is using it as a fig leaf, and it’s not up to the task.
This is a good article, and it deserves more attention, like most of what you write. I hope it ignites that conversation I mentioned.
The truth is that all the violence, lawlessness, and anti-semetism is not being perpetrated by Christians or Jews, but by those who want to divide the human race and cause wars on this earth. The Leftist agenda fuels the boiling pot, and descends from rationality and civility into paganism.
The Sanhedrin was a powerful religious body. The High Priest Caiaphas was the ruling High priest during Jesus ministry. Caiaphas was known for cooperating with the Romans. He was the first to recommend that Jesus should be crucified to save the nation. John 11:49, 50.
The Pharisees falsely accused Jesus of blasphemy, befriending outcasts by eating with beggars, or the poor, or even prostitutes whom he guided to changing their lifestyle, impiety, and serving Satan. Jesus was maligned by the groups who should have received him gladly on the truth of the scriptures.
Jesus truth of the gospel weakened their control over the people. Matthew 9:34. He exposed their insincere motives. They feared Jesus power to lead the people into truth. Their skepticism was based not on insufficient evidence, but on jealousy of Jesus popularity.
People were healed and lives changed for the good by Jesus miracles right before the eyes of the Pharisees.
The events of today beg for explanation. The world as man knows it and runs it will come to an end. Man has run amuck, and eventually Jesus will come back to take over and run HIS Kingdom in truth, righteousness, peace, justice, and lawfulness.
How many times to we see these kind of things happen with man and his lust for power and control even in today’s world!
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