This post from FaceBook really ticked me off.
The history of anti-Semitism arising from Pauline Christianity and the claim that Jesus came to override and replace Judaism is very deep. You can read about it in any book on the history of anti-Semitism. It would be a more positive act if you ask yourselves why you have the need to denigrate any other religion to validate your own? Does the sermon on the mount require that you blame the Jews for David’s whoring?
The word “old testament” itself is hateful. What does this mean? Is there a “new” testament” that overrode, corrected the old? Worse yet, the Christian version confuses what Jews treat as revelation .. the five books of Moses, with an assortment of writings, legends, poems etc. that have never been considered revelation to the Jew. To be sarcastic to the FB crowd, .. you folks need to get over the idea that OUR region predicted yours. The Torah does not mention Jerusalem, much less Jesus or any other magical son of God. In fact, under the laws of the Torah, claiming that God had a Son would be blasphemy, punished by stoning.
Modern biblical scholarship makes this form of bigotry even more painful. A large part of what the Christians call the “Old Testament” was written in Babylon or under Persian influence after the Jews were allowed to return to Jerusalem by the Messiah Cyrus. … ohhh you may not understand but King Cyrus was the first individual identified as a “Christ” by the Jews because he let us return! A huge part of modern Judaism ..and Christianity .. dates from that period including not only messianism but the idea of a devil and a heaven or hell. I do recommend that Christians learn their roots in the Hymns of Zarathustra.
The history of this abuse of Judaism has deep roots. From the assembly of your bible by Constantine on, Judaism was considered a heresy. In an extension of the Roman horrors before Christianity, Jews were banned from Byzantine Jerusalem until that city was liberated by the Caliph Umar. Given all the prejudice against Islam today, we remember that Caliph with gratitude! Even without the holocaust, Jews have died in the millions .. the pogroms, the expulsions from Spain and England, forced conversions under Pious IX, the crusades ??? Here in the new world, hidden Jews were burned at the stake and it is still not at all unusual to find “Christian” families in the US Southwest with traditions of avoiding pork and lighting the Shabbat candles. As for Hitler, leaving the man himself aside he built his ideas on a platform rooted in Martin Luther’s anti Semitism.