FAQ Topics

Christians have always hated and persecuted Jews.
Why did G-d allow six million Jews to die in the Holocaust?
What happened to the Jewish Heritage?
Don't Christians believe in three gods and Jews believe in One G-d?
Were all the writers of the New Testament Jewish?

Christians have always hated and persecuted Jews.

Gentiles, in general, have a history of hating and persecuting the Jews.  Haman, for instance, could not have been a Christian because he lived hundreds of years before Jesus.  Yet he truly was a Gentile.  Since the majority of what is known as the “Church” consists of Gentiles and only G-d knows the hearts of those who CLAIM to be “Christians”, yes, it’s going to appear that Christians have always hated and persecuted Jews.  But the New Testament speaks boldly against Anti-Semitism (e.g. Romans 11) and would argue that such an attitude is anti-biblical.  Yet it’s the obligation of a “Christian”, on the contrary, to be Biblical, so one might have a strong case for saying that anti-Biblical “Christians” are not really Christians at all.

History, on the other-hand, has recorded the deeds of myriads of courageous individuals who were undoubtedly Christians who’ve stood up against and even died while opposing the Anti-Semitic activities of the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.  Many, if not most of these people, have felt a kinship with the Jewish people.

In the book, “Conscience and Courage ”, Eva Fogelman (whose father was rescued by Christians) interviewed more than three hundred rescuers, and checked their stories with the Jews they saved and with official records. She wanted to understand what motivated people to risk their lives to help others. She concluded that in many cases the critical motive was religious faith: the conviction that “Christ” would want them to do this.

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Why did G-d allow six million Jews to die in the Holocaust?  

Before I could even think about believing in Jesus, I need an answer to that question.

One might think, at first glance, that a G-d who would allow for such a travesty to occur is either cruel or He doesn’t exist.  But, as painful as these events in history might seem, they were not unpredictable.  If we really studied and knew Torah, we would have been familiar with passages such as Lev. 26:14 and following and Deuteronomy 28:15 and following which foretell of horrible calamities to fall upon our people if we disobey G-d.  The Torah calls us to obedience to God as outlined in the Torah and not usurped by Rabbis.  It’s easy to assume that we are righteous and our enemies are evil.  Indeed our enemies ARE evil but that should not negate the introspection that we should be having towards examination of our own lives.  Do we love the Lord our God with all of our mind, soul and strength as Torah commands us?  And if we do not, but are self-centered instead, what right do we have to say that we are not worthy of the wrath of G-d?

On the other hand, G-d is a G-d of lovingkindness and compassion.  His mercies never fail.  Even as our own prayer books declare, He will raise the dead one day.  And, in spite of the Holocaust, we, as a people, have survived even as the Prophet Jeremiah foretold (Jer. 31:35) and have lived to see the day when we would be restored to the Land promised by G-d to our father, Abraham.  And it is from this land, that the Messiah, Himself, will reign over the whole earth in a time of unprecedented peace.  Do you hope for such a day, or do you look forward to that day?

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Within two generations, the Jewish followers of Jesus (under the influence of Paul) had largely given up their Jewish practices, setting a precedent that has remained the same right up until today:  Jews who become Christians lose all connection to Judaism within two generations.

The early Jewish followers of Jesus identified strongly as Jews.  After the fall of the second temple, with the demise of the sacrificial system, Judaism had to become redefined in Rabbinic and non-biblical terms.  The Jewish believers still identified with the Jewish community as a whole, but they saw the daily sacrifices in the Temple as having been dealt with once and for all through the death of the Messiah.  Historically, the Jewish believers in Jesus have always craved a relationship with their fellow Jews.  Their rejection of their identity became, not so much the product of their own desires as it was the product of ostracism by the rest of the Jewish community.  Many congregations of Jewish believers in Jesus were killed off by the communists of Russia and the Nazis.  Yet, today, in the United States, Israel, Canada and elsewhere in the world, there are Jewish Christians who identify strongly as Jews, and even engage in Jewish religious practices.

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Christians believe in three gods.  Jews believe in One G-d

The G-d of the Bible is one G-d.  But His nature is beyond description and understanding.  Our feeble minds are incapable of articulating what He is like.  On the one hand, the Sh’ma emphatically declares the oneness of G-d.  On the other hand, passages, not only in the Tanach but Torah as a whole, allude to a plurality of persons in the one G-d.  How this could be possible, I don’t know.  I just accept it by faith, knowing that to be emphatic on the issue of the oneness of G-d can also lead to presumption.

Some passages that allude to this plurality include:

Genesis 1:16 – “Let us make man in our image.
Psalm 2:7 – I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
Isaiah 48:16 - "Come near me and listen to this: "From the first announcement I have not spoken in secret; at the time it happens, I am there." And now the Sovereign LORD has sent me, with his Spirit.
Proverbs 30:4 - Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands? Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know!

Other passages tell of appearances of G-d in unexpected, sometimes human form.

In Genesis 18:  Abraham is met by three men who suddenly appear before him.  In verse 10, we are not told which of the three men it is or if it is all of them combined but the single noun LORD is applied to Him or them speaking to Abraham.

In Joshua Chapter 5, Joshua is addressed by a man who is described as the “Captain of the Army of the Lord”.  Joshua is commanded to remove his sandals in reverence of the fact that he is “standing on holy ground”.
Gideon is addressed by the “Angel of the Lord”.

Another argument that addresses this issue is grammatical.  For instance, the Hebrew word, "Elohim", is often translated as "gods" in reference to a plurality of gods when reference is made to idols.  The same word, "Elohim", is often translated as "God" when reference is made to the one God of Israel.  "...im" is always the masculine plural ending of a Hebrew noun.  In Hebrew grammar, however, the verb which reflects the action conducted by the noun has to agree with the noun in its tense.  Hence, when reference is made to idols, the grammatical construction uses third person, masculine, PLURAL verbs. In contrast, whenever "Elohim", the God of Israel, is conducting an action, the plural form of this noun is accompanied by a verb in its third person, masculine SINGULAR form. A brittle understanding of this type of construction can be exemplified, for example, in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 which could easily be translated as "In the beginning, Gods He created the heavens and the earth."

One way in which I like to describe the nature of God is as follows… Suppose you love ants but you know that a bulldozer is going to come and demolish the ant hill and kill all of the ants, all of whom you know by name.  You could hold up a sign and yell “Hey ants, get out of the way” but you know that’s not going to work.  What if, on the other hand, you had the capability of becoming an ant.  If you could choose to do that, you could speak to them more effectively because you could empathize with them, you would know their language and they would be able to understand (to a point... they would not understand your view point as seen from a human persepective.) what you say.  Just maybe, the G-d of the universe, had such compassion for us human “ants” that He would choose to somehow, in some inexplicable way, become like us while still governing the universe.  And in the process, all of us "ants", in one way or another, elected to reject His message and put Him to death.  Rather than seeing it as a defeat, the G-d of the Universe saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate the depth of His love for each of us.  And having given us free will, He allowed us the freedom to accept or reject that love.

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Were all of the writers of the New Testament Jewish?

This question was posited to me by my friend, Fritz.  I really had no interest in pursuing this question.  I was content with an answer that I'd somewhat presumed to be true... that most, if not all, of the writers of the New Testament writers were Jewish. 

To the Jewish mind, all of the writers of the New Testament were Gentiles because, after all, they'd converted to Christianity.  Furthermore, they had Gentile names.  Paul was no longer Saul.  Peter was no longer Simon.  The tiny book of Jude had to have been written by a Gentile.  Just the name, Jude conjures up the image of a monk hidden off, somewhere, in a monastery.  Such is not the case, however, Judes real name was Yehuda which means God is Praised.  This, just so happens to be the same name as the patriarch, Jacobs 4th son who was to be progenitor to the Messiah.  His name had since been anglicized to Judah.  Interestingly, this is the same name as that of the man who'd betrayed Jesus.  However, his name was anglicized to be Judas.  It seems that the church gave Judas and Jude two separate names so as not to confuse them.  Here we see another unwitting subconscious effort on the part of the church to take the Gospel out of its Jewish context.  Yehuda was a common name in first century Judea (Yehudea).  What distinguished these individuals was the names of their respective fathers or the towns from which they came.  One thing I do know for sure, if they were alive today, their names would not be Yehuda McGilicutty or Yehuda Washington.   Their names would be more likely to be something like Yehuda Moskovitz or Levin.

One author that I was willing to relinquish to the Gentiles was Luke.  The church has just about assumed that Luke was a Gentile.  Tom McCall, a nice Gentile boy, affiliated with Zola Levitt Ministries, presents a pretty strong case that Dr. Luke, author of The Gospel According to Luke, and the Book of Acts, was, in fact, probably Jewish.  Dr. McCalls argument is pretty cogent and, if it is indeed true, it further supports the reality that the whole Bible is, from cover to cover, a thoroughly Jewish document.

Thanks for the question, Fritz.

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