How do you know you are a Jew?
If you say it’s because a Bible tells me so, then (hello!) you are not a Jew. (Not) Sorry (really), no matter how much you pretend, honestly, seeing yourself in a book does not make you an automatic member of a living people. I know that truth hurts, but history really does count!
Likewise, if you say it is because you have faith in a (failed) “Messiah” and do everything a religious Jew does (dress like Jews, sound like Jews, smell like Jews, appropriate everything Jewish to validate your idolic theology), this only makes you a Gentile that is a religious Law-follower (yes, we have a Jewish category for you!) or a Christian (who doesn’t follow Jesus’ faithful observance of Torah law at all, but claims still yet to be a “branch” of the religious members of the Jewish people … typical!).
Jewishness is not about (ethno-)religion itself, nor about a faith in a messiah. Nor is it about devotion to ethno-religious law (- okay, the latter is always argued between Jews!). In true honesty, Jewishness is about the survival of the Jewish people – plain and simple (whether wanna-be-“Jews,” religious or not, are gracious enough to support Jewish survival)! This survival of the people eschatology has been both the secular Jewish and religious Jewish *sole* eschatology for our ethno-religious culture, ever since we Jews started redacting scrolls together and chanting our ethno-national myths. So,…
Who actually is a Jew, then? So says the Jewish people, both religious and secular, together? Is the following statement, made by an apologetic Modern Orthodox Jew on a devoutly evidence-based scholarly Orthodox web site, true? Let’s explore:
“The observation that the Gospel writers of the Christian tradition drew from the Hebrew Bible doesn’t make them “Jewish.” That view assumes that of the two major faiths emerging and taking shape in the world of first millennium Palestine only Rabbinic Judaism was “biblical” and any other tradition – i.e. Christianity – that draws on the biblical material is therefore drawing on “Judaism.” That assumption, though a very common and widespread one, and certainly Rabbinic Judaism’s claim, is not accurate.”
Is not accurate? Okay, let’s explore and answer this belief that Jews and Jewishness is strictly a development within the realm of Rabbinic Judaism’s era, the post-Israel Roman renamed Palaestina era, which corresponds with the rise of Gentile Christianity, shall we?
I shall title this: Jewish History, A Guide For The Perplexed
A long, long time ago, on a land we call the Levant, there once lived a Semitic polytheistic people who wrote stories about their gods and goddesses, who had family gods, and shared temple pantheon beliefs with their Canaanite neighbors. These people of the land of Judah would become world-wide known as the Jews. To the North of them was a set of sister tribes, known as Hebrews/Israelites. Both groups wrote onto scrolls and shared similar stories about their ethno-national origins, and often engaged in political disputes with each other over civil-religious matters. Then came the Assyrians (we’ll get back to them in a moment). These cherished myths that they argued over would be hundreds of years later redacted into one very long, often contradicting, multi-voiced singular narrative (trying to preserve everything) scroll book of the mythic history of these Levant peoples. Who is it that did this preservation and redaction of conflicting beliefs and story lines?
Before the first attempts at redacting together two – actually three – much earlier written writing traditions by Judeans – aka, Jews – (while in captivity in Babylon!), we had Hebrew and Israelites, according to these writings. These were the Northern people of YHWH. They were annihilated as a nationhood/people-hood by the Assyrians, literally assimilated into Assyria as Assyrians, forced transplanted, no ethnic survival for them. The ground, which is studied by skilled archaelogists, tells us what happened. Hence, the Judean lament of the lost tribes of Israel found in our Torahs. Who were these Southern people of YHWH who embraced what is Hebrew and Israelite after their disappearance from the face of the earth? They are the people that redacted together the many different writings from many different time periods into what we know as Torah today. This redaction began around the 7th century BCE and was still being worked on and further redacted by three different groups of Jews clear into CE post-temple times.
This is how we have three Torahs in existence today: The Samaritan Pentateuch, the Masoretic Text, and the Koine Greek Torah. All three are legitimate Torahs that coexisted between three communities that evolved from Judea’s fall to the Roman Empire: The Samaritans, the Jews, and the Christians. The Samaritans and the Jews continued to preserve the ancient ethno-religion of BCE Israel-Judea. The Gentiles that took over budding Christianity turned it into a theology determinate proselytizing pure and, ultimately, conquesting religion. Jews formed the modern ethno-religious “prayer Judaism,” from out of the previous cultic Temple Judaism. The Samaritans did their thang. All three rely on ancient ANE pre-Babylonian exile material for the basis of their religion. But, the Jews and the Christians used different redacted Torahs to accomplish this.
The Christian’s Torah was a Koine Greek interpretation of the Hebrew Torah. The Jewish Torah was a preservation of the Torah redacting process – frozen in time – in the original Hebrew, the Masoretic Text. The Samaritan Torah is more finalized for its community, but is based in slightly different redacting tradition than the Jewish Masoretic Text – one that is similar to the composing tradition that the Greek Septuagint was based upon. … To say that Christians and Jews are equivalents is just not historical so! One’s an ever-evolving very ancient ethno-religious community, and the other is a religion based in a professed belief in the success of a failed Jewish messiah – turned Byzantine white by his Gentile followers that created Christianity – a pure religion that does nothing but constantly interpret their scriptures to fit their needs (rather, than confining oneself to established written tradition, the Jewish way).
Factualy, the people we call Jews today went from being polytheistic to henotheistic (a form of monolatry, but not monotheism), to monotheistic. Jewish monotheism – the belief that there is only one god, that all god names reflect this one god, that this god is all powerful, all knowing, present everywhere, and non-corporeal – would not become a Jewish norm until the European Middle Ages. As well, Christians are Gentiles, not Jews – by their founding teachings which established Roman Byzantine Christianity and, then, forced it upon the unsaved world. Christianity and Islam are not ethno-religions – they are conquest religions, based in a professed belief in their central theology. The Jewish people are a multi-thousand year old, ever evolving, ethno-religious people-hood, who just by being born into or accepted by a legitimate community makes you Jewish. You can be an atheist, and you are still Jewish – and many Jews are. You can subscribe to whatever Jewish wildness of religious tradition you want, believe in direct opposition to other Jews, and Jews are still Jewish.
Walk now over to Europe, we find that Christians have formed many varieties of Christianity, but the one thing they all have in common is a professed belief in a failed messiah (who was Jewish but, in European minds, became Greco-Roman white) who they believe is coming back to life to save the world. To be a Christian, you must profess belief in this! Modern Prayer Judaism (Rabbinic Judaism) is a Middle Ages invention by its fruition. But, aspects of the temple cult rituals, the 2,500 years use of tefilin and synagogues in Israel/Judea and the Diaspora, and the chanting of passages to invoke divine response are all preserved in this modern Jewish ethno-religious form. Most of the Rabbinical claims are invented and, thus, they are historically wrong or partial historically wrong. Especially, their impossible “G-d” claim.
The Torah is very clear that “G-d” has a corporeal body (YHWH has a body that can be seen, Elohim has body that will kill you if you look upon it – so says, Torah!). Further, “G-d” is the most powerful and most knowing, but is not present everywhere at all times. The Torah’s god lives in the firmament abode above in the sky and travels down to his assigned portion of the land, the Levant, which he rules as god-king. This god-king has a body, but his body is so unlike anything in the skies, on the land, and in the waters that it is impossible to see him (thus, idolatry is forbidden). This god is both dictatorial and jealous, fearing that his vassal subjects will turn to other gods and goddesses within his land – thus, weakening his authority over his vassal treaty subjects – the Jewish people and all who live with them in the land.
Internal monalatry while recognizing the existence of other gods (aka, henotheism) is NOT monotheism. And, it is disceptive push the belief that the early CE and ANE BCE periods had any experiences anywhere in monotheistic belief and practice. Monalatry, devotion to one god only among all the gods to choose from, is not monotheism! Monotheism is the belief that there is only ONE god, and all god references refer to this god. This idea called monotheism is not even a 1st-4th century CE invention, it comes later. This is why Church Father Marcion of Sinope made it determinedly clear that the Christian god, Christ, is superior to the Jewish god, YHWH, and not a result of or from the Jewish god, within his very popular writings to Christians. He was influential, and it showed in the writings of later anti-Semitic Christian Church Fathers.
The 1st-2nd century Gospel writers, or at least most of them, were indeed Jews, yes. And Jews of the Jesus sect threw epithets at the Jews and their Gentile followers who reimagined Jesus as defying Torah law observance (when all he was doing was defying Pharisaic Oral Law in favor of *his* law interpretations). … You know, that whole “synagagoue of Satan” rebuke that the 4th century Gentile Church Fathers and modern day Farrakhan like to throw at Jews and Judaism? Well, that was written by a Torah law observant Jew condeming the heretics within the budding Jesus failed messiah movement. This heresy resulted in Christianity. And history world-wide is a result of this!
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Post Script: Why do I write “G-d” at times, as a secular humanistic Jew, when referring to the human-constructed YHWH/Elohim god of Torah? The purpose is to distinguish between this Jewish deity and the Christian’s demi-“God,” when I am not using their names directly. Yes, the word “God” is not a name, but a generic descriptor word for a category of perceived being. Therefore, without a deliberate purpose behind the written act, there is literally no difference between “God” and “G-d” and “god.” But, religious Jews treat this descriptor word as if it were a name, too.
I also understand that, by treating the generic word in the same manner as deeply theistic Jews, this allows them to hear what I have to say – even if they will ultimately disagree with it. The hardest teaching to give to Jews raised in the Western mindset is that there are no “Orthodox” Jews versus “Humanistic” Jews, there are no religious Jews versus secular Jews, there are ONLY Jews. Some Jews are theistic believers and some are non-theistic, but we all inherited together and interact with our written tradition, regardless our varied leanings within this ethno-religious culture.
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