It is very very true that both Matthew and John were very anti-Semitic and their writings reflect as much. And the question should be as to why.. It's NOT that the Jewish people and their leaders, the Pharisees, were unrighteous or were "sinners", it is because the Jews under the leadership and erudition of the Pharisees stayed true to both G-d and to the Torah. By the time the Gospels were written, (heavily influenced by Paul's doctrinal infusions), xianity had already established itself as NOT Jewish. Were it not for the Romans/Greeks subscribing to the xian message and later making it the official religion of Rome, this gentile sect would have died off like all the other supposed "sects" of Judaism. Traditionally, even though their adherents may have been Jews, they were not JEWISH.


What's more troubling is that Matthew can't seem to get his facts straight. In making his "son of god" issue the most vilest of tirades against the Pharisees, Matthew challenges his own premise of divine origin of the god's "son" by having his son make a blunder. If jeesus is supposed to be this Torah scholar and the "word" incarnate, then he must have had a relapse of humanity because Jeesus makes three very fatal flaws:


1) If he believed that the Pharisees, as he put it, "sit in the seat of Moses,", then this son of god should have realized based upon Dueteronomy 17: 8-13, that the Sanhedrin is the final word on Jewish Law based upon the teachings of Moses and the unbroken chain of transmission. Furthermore, since Jeesus was NOT a member of the Pharisees nor of the Sanhedrin, to speak of them in the manner in which he was alleged to have done is not only dishonor but also lashon hara (I'll explain later). Not even the Prophet/Teacher Moses used such language and actually was barred from entering the Promised Land for calling the Israelites "rebels" out of a moment of pure frustration. If the Holy One was this exacting with Moses (who was/is the greatest prophet EVER) would not this Jeesus have known this? And I should call that we notice, it's NEVER ever the Saduccees that were called into question, who denied the Oral law and the resurrection of the dead and even a messiah(!).. only the Pharisees are called into question.. an indication that this had nothing to do with spirituality or Jewish law, but personal slurs.


Second, Matthew makes two errors in his diatribe. 1) Jews were not present during the days of Abel and 2) the Zechariah that was killed was NOT the prophet and the Jews had no part in that murder.

Matthew has no clue about Jewish history nor Judaism in general. The actual term "Jew" does not appear in print until the book of Esther, and while it's derived from the nation of Judah (there were many other israelites who would later migrate to Judah and identify themselves as "jews" prior the Northern Kingdom's fall in 721 BCE). The Israelites didn't come into existence until Jacob (from his twelve sons). Any cursory reading of the Genesis story reveal that Cain wasn't Jewish or Israelite. So the "son of god" is a little ignorant of the very torah his followers claim he came to fulfill. He also violated the Torah by bearing false witness against his neighbor.


The next charge is that the Jews were guilty of killing ALL the prophets including the Zechariah listed. This is a blasphemous charge. While some of the Prophets were killed. It wasn't the Jews that did this. Yes, Jeremiah was put to death by one of the Israelite kings, but the Jews were hardly to blame. In addition, no one killed the Prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, Zephaniah, Obediah, Amos. In addition, the Prophet Zechariah was not put to death. In the Tanakh, there were three Zecharias, a king, a prophet and a priest. The prophet whom Matthew mentioned was not killed. Zecharia the son of YEHOYADA, the priest, was the one murdered in a court intrigue.


Ironically, the same charges Matthew levels at the Pharisees are also leveled at them by Paul and is in keeping with the anti-Jewish, anti-Pharisee, anti-Torah diatribes by Paul, Matthew and John. And yet they think nothing of lying, slandering and verbally murdering the Jews; as if these horrible traits are virtues.


Amazingly, if Jeesus was such a great historian and Matthew his servant, why is NOTHING said about the Romans who killed thousands of innocent men and women and crucified thousands of Jews; the crosses on which these poor souls languished were dotted all over Israel? Why is nothing said about the Sadducees, whose leader during the Hasmonean period, massacred hundreds of Pharisees in a political coup to gain control of the Sanhedrin? Yet not a word from the 'son of god" about this nor is any culpability placed upon the real enemies of the Jewish people.


The Truth is, the Pharisees never crucified anyone-- this would be anathema. Matthew took the means by which the Romans killed thousands of Jewish men and woman and made it into a Jewish mode of punishment!! It is just as sick as saying that Jews were responsible for gassing millions of Jews in Auschwitz. The victim is made via the pen, to be the victimizer. Paul would also spew the same rhetoric. How sad and sick and twisted fate of history that the word "pharisee" has been relegated to an insult of hypocrisy, legalism and narrow-mindedness rather than a compliment of mercy, justice and erudition that it was/is! A cursory listening to xian-speak reveals that the ultimate curse to call someone is a "pharisee"!!


The truth is that if it were NOT for the brilliance, luminous, insightful erudition of the Pharisees and their disciples, both Judaism and the Jews would have been absorbed into the Roman-Greco world they were thrown into after the Temple's destruction. Were it not for a Pharisees' view of Torah and Jewish Law, Judaism would never have been able to endure to this day. Were it not for Rabbi Zakkai, there would never have been a transmission of the Torah; it would have been relegated to the same level of the greek works.. the people lost to time and assimilation with only their works to shed light on their former existence. Because of the great work of the Pharisees and later the Tannaim and Amoraim, Judaism and the Jewish people.


The argument that Lady Felix and her co-religionists spew that Jeesus was chastising the 'self-righteous" is hypocritical and downright ignorant and sickening, especially made in the language that Matthew and later John and Paul use in describing the Jews; describing them in terms of human trash unworthy for "redemption". For those who are supposedly "filled with the spirit" it is the xians who are blind to both the hatred and vile putrid virolence that gushes forth from these passages and deaf to the further vile pronouncements made by church fathers from Agustine to Luther to the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Fawell. It's not a large step from Matthew and Paul's pen/quill to the Crusader's and Nazis weapons fashioned to exterminate the Jews. The NT dehumanizes the Jews, leaving the "faithful" to finish the job of eradicating the world of their existence.


In my opinion, any attempt at 'dialogue" between the xian and the Jew is pointless until the xians deal with the reality of the image that the NT paints of the Jew, and takes steps to rectify it before any such dialogue can occur.. otherwise it's just another attempt at revisionism, reconstructionism and denial.

Last Edited By: Sophiee1 Wed, 18-Jun-08 17:46:17. Edited 1 times.