Jewish Christianity

“ We should gain too easy a victory by contrasting Judaism with Christianity on the score of humanity. We might turn to the Bible, that abounds in passages where the humble, the meek, the poor in spirit are put at an elevation unknown to the Gospels. ”

“ Only what springs from this dogma can rise to a proper conception of God, to the heights of true morality, and is capable of promoting the advancement of civilization. Accordingly, having begotten Christianity, Judaism fulfilled its religious mission, and the loss of Jewish national independence occurring almost simultaneously with the rise of Christianity, its spiritual importance was extinguished and its historical progress arrested. ”

“ In the eye of the law they were heretics, to be compelled or converted into Christianity, but to stand distinctly outside of it meanwhile. War was the all but universal profession. Jews might not hold military rank. They might not even be civil guardians of the peace, since ‘no Jew in any cause could be witness against a Christian.’ They might neither aspire to be owners of land, nor leaders of men. ”

“ Such is the way of the world. Furthermore, some of the Jewish country folk, losing faith in the validity of Judaism through the loss of its Temple, were attracted to Christianity with its new scheme of salvation, in which Jesus took the place which had been filled by the altar of sacrifice. In this way many of the Gentile proselytes to Judaism in Alexandria and Asia Minor went over to the new creed. ”

“ We shall take the rabbinical, traditional Judaism that centuries have made, and we think besides that we shall better serve the cause of criticism by thus studying Christianity in all its birth-surroundings, in the teachings and moral philosophy of that time, than by restricting ourselves to an antiquity, whose workings, though unquestionable, could not have been as precise, as evident or as consecutive, as those of Pharisaical Judaism. ”

“ If you want Jewish orthodoxy, the bracing morality of the Old Testament, you will find it, not among the successful Jews, who have Unitarianized their religion to the same extent that the Unitarians have Judaized their Christianity, but among the poor in the side streets who still sacrifice the Saturday business for their Sabbath keeping. ”

“ The governors of Judah can signify no other than the apostles and disciples of our Lord, the first teachers of Christianity, or the founders of the new City. These, when the Jews were no longer willing to hear them, turned their attention to the Gentiles, and directed all their efforts to effect their conversion. As the strength of a city lies in its inhabitants, so the hope of strengthening theirs, from that time, rested in gaining over the Gentiles: “The Governors of Judah say in their hearts, The inhabitants of Jerusalem shall be my strength in the Lord of hosts their God.” ”

“ For the Christian religion has been characterized by frequent changes in its doctrines in every stage of its practical history, as was also the Jewish religion which preceded it, and from which it emanated. Judaism is a perpetual series of changes. It changed even the name of its God from Elohim to Jehovah. Its leader and founder Abram was changed to Abraham, and his grandson and successor from Jacob to Israel. And we have the works of many Christian writers in our possession who prove by their own bible that the Jews made many changes in their religious polity and religious doctrines. ”

“ Because their political existence and their social system was founded on truth, and controlled by religion. The Hebrew nation was the one holy and only true church of those days. And for the same reasons which gave the Jews that supernatural vitality, Christianity is at this day in the van of civilization. Everything we have said of the one applies to the other; the signs which we noticed as such prominent features of Jewish polity—division of orders, fixed occupations, care for agriculture, good faith, property and family laws, individual and federal government—whence have they come to us? ”

“ The reason of the origin of Christianity clearly comes out, and the splendor of those ethereal doctrines that it claims as its own, are traced in detail and with unerring accuracy to their true source—the then setting sun of Judaism. ”

“ Furthermore it became a doctrine of the new religion that the death of Jesus abrogated the Law. Thus, salvation [140] made easy, brought thousands to the fold. The Jewish missionaries had really simplified the task for the Christian missionaries who followed later. They prepared the soil.
This is looking a little further ahead to events yet to be related. By that time the followers of the two religions had become people of two different races: Judaism followed almost exclusively by Jews who were Semites; Christianity by Aryans, Greeks, Romans and other Europeans. ”

“ Here it is positively declared, by a popular Christian writer, whose work is a part of nearly every popular library in Christiandom as a standard authority, that the appearance of God amongst men in the human form, by human birth, was a doctrine of the Jewish religion in some of its branches, especially the Essenian branch—further proof that Christianity originated nothing, and gave utterance to no new doctrine or precepts, and performed no new miracles. ”

“ The prophecy, however, does not declare the destruction of the old Jerusalem, but merely the repeopling of it, in verse 6; and in the spiritual sense it was not destroyed, though merged in the superior splendour and greatness of the New City; for Christianity is built on the foundation of Judaism. ”

“ And this seems a plausible explanation, as these troubles of the Jewish Church followed the birth or promulgation of Christianity forty years.
But the solution is only plausible; for the growth is not the birth; or if it be taken as the birth, then it no longer precedes but follows the labour-pains, for whatever effect the destruction of Judaism had in promoting Christianity, this effect was subsequent and not prior to that event; and thus the solution fails in the main point. ”

“ The truth is, the Jewish founders of Christianity entertained such a low, narrow, contracted, and mean opinion of Deity and the infinite distinction and distance between the divine and the human, that their theology reduced him to a level with man ”

“ Greek Jews would have said, perhaps, that they took broader views of Judaism. They certainly took views broad enough to overlook a good deal, and their wide way of regarding things made them a trifle inexact about ancient landmarks. To Grecianised Jews the rigid practices of Judaism had become a little irksome, and the mystical rites of paganism a little attractive.
5. Birth of Christianity.—Christianity, as a new religion in opposition to Judaism, was founded by Paul of Tarsus, who proclaimed the abolition of the Mosaic code of laws. Paul had not known Jesus. ”

“ Here, as elsewhere, has Christianity taken the most ascetic doctrines of the Jews, those which governed a special sect, a society of meditatists, to make them general rules for human life; here, as elsewhere, has Christianity transferred the doctrines and ethics of the Essenes to the midst of society, of its concerns and needs ”

“ The Jews of the Essenian order, as we have in part shown in a previous chapter, set forth in their creed all the leading doctrines now comprised in the Christian religion hundreds of years before the advent of Christ, not excepting the doctrine of the divine incarnation and its adjuncts, as these concomitants of the present popular faith, we will now prove, were not unknown to the Jewish theology, but constituted a part of the religion of some of the principal Jewish sects. ”

“ The different nations, to which the Jews were successively subjected, had infected them with a multitude of Pagan dogmas. Thus the Jewish religion, Egyptian in its origin, adopted many of the rites and opinions of the people, with whom the Jews conversed. We need not then be surprised, if we see the Jews, and the Christians their successors, filled with notions borrowed of the Phenicians, the Magi or Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. The errors of mankind respecting religion have a general resemblance ”

“ It is not as yet a heresy that has a name, a standard, a history, though it is truly the germ of a heresy. The first historical one that truly bears this name, the oldest example of human reason left to itself in the heart-centre of Christianity, is a grand outburst against morality. ”

“ He shows with a delicate touch of humour that Judaism, in being no proselytising faith, has a claim to be let alone. ‘I am so fortunate as to count amongst my friends many a worthy man who is not of my faith. ”

“ Must the Son of God come down from heaven to die on the cross in order to save you, and can the Jew be saved by morality? Must you have a Saviour to comfort you in your sorrow and in the hour of death, and can the Jew do without Him?
Out of Christ, it is not a question what a man has ”

“ Do you realize the present helplessness of poor Israel? We sometimes hear the Jews spoken of by Christians of a certain stamp, after this manner: "After all, they are not so badly off as the heathen. They are a moral, God-fearing people; they have the Old Testament Scriptures in their possession. They are intelligent, clever, influential, and certainly not so low and degraded as the heathen." ”

“ We say that the Jews were expecting a splendid temporal kingdom, a visible reign of the Messiah in righteousness over a regenerate and exulting world. We say it with a touch of scorn. We may spare our scorn; Christendom is always dreaming of it too. It would be a wonderful thing if the Jews had not nourished some such expectations. All men have not faith. How many Christians understand Christianity better than the Jews understood the Judaism of their times? ”

“ Europe is quarrelling with imperfectly developed Jews; but it long ago lost its heart to the typical Jew, as seen in Vision, though as yet it knows not what it was that it saw. Christ, as he exists in Christian tradition, is not so much the historical Jesus as personified Judaism. The simple manliness of Jewish piety has so dazzled us, that we have invented a whole system of theology to account for its difference from our own more effeminate graces. ”

“ Judaism, as they believed in it, was a Personal Force making for righteousness, a Law which knew no change, the Promise of a period when the earth should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord; and the ‘witnesses’ stuck to this their trust, through good repute and through evil repute, with a simple doggedness which disarms all superficial criticism. ”

“ I would have it most distinctly understood that God's dealings with individual Jews and Gentiles are precisely one and the same. Without repentance, faith in Christ, and holiness of heart, no individual Jew or Gentile shall ever be saved. What I protest against is, the habit of allegorizing plain sayings of the Word of God concerning the future history of the nation Israel, and explaining away the fulness of their contents in order to accommodate them to the Gentile Church. I believe the habit to be unwarranted by anything in Scripture, and to draw after it a long train of evil consequences. ”

“ The truth is that a remiss Christianity always becomes very much a Judaism. Such Christianity assumes that a life of respectable conventions, carried on within sacred institutions, will please God and save our souls. ”

“ Sowing them among the people, on this view will signify the blending together of Jews and Gentiles, by their embracing one common faith; whereby they at length become one race, and all distinction is lost under the common denomination of Christians. This also explains the rapid increase of their numbers here foretold, [pg 090] as well as their return from captivity, and their living again. The increase of numbers arising from the accession of converts; their return from captivity, signifying redemption from the bondage of sin; and their living, the resurrection to eternal life through Christ. ”

“ In short, the redemption of Judaism is altogether from within, because its Word is so too, because its dogma, ethics and worship have no reality or sphere here below, except so far as man seizes, assimilates and realizes in himself the perfections they contain. ”

“ A religion like Paganism, which allowed the unrestrained indulgence of the passions, of pride, avarice, and ambition, was well calculated to seduce; and the Jews, in spite of the continual exhortations of their prophets, in spite of the many signal miracles displayed to them, and wrought in their behalf, had frequently relapsed into idolatry. ”

“ How utterly devoid of reason it is may be gathered from the fact that it is almost entirely confined to nations who worship Jewish prophets and apostles, revere the national literature of the Hebrews as the only inspired message delivered by the deity to mankind, and whose only hope of salvation rests on the precepts and promises of the great teachers of Judah. Yet in the sight of these fanatics the Jews of to-day can do nothing right. If they are rich they are birds of prey. If they are poor they are vermin. ”

“ Likenesses between Islam and Judaism.—There was a kinship of religious thought, as well as of language and of race, between the Arab and the Jew. The Unity of God is the first principle of Islam as it is of Judaism. Abraham and Moses are the heroes of the Koran as of the Pentateuch, and the covenant of Abraham and the dietary laws of Moses are enjoined by Mahomed on his followers.
5. Differences between Islam and Judaism.—But there were differences too, and these of a very vital sort. ‘Allah was God.’ That doctrine of the new faith, the Jews, worshippers of One, might agree with. ”