[Bowing to the concerns of several of my readers, in consideration of the length of this examination, I have divided it into a number of parts, and shall publish a fascicle or two per week. CV]
Part 1—The question and the answer
The question stands: how can a body of writings, the sacred scriptures, written by Jews, devout Jews, come to be used as a weapon against Jews? I wished I were able to supply an answer more profound than the following, but I cannot. The truth is sometimes capable of existing in a very few words. Sacred Scriptures have been used as a weapon against the descendants of its writers out of ignorance—on multiple levels—and xenophobia, at times aided and assisted by wanton greed. For this Christianity and its civilizations must bow their heads in repentance and shame.
I shall not address the issues of xenophobia and greed. I shall leave to psychology and sociology the analysis behind such moral failures, noting only that no one needs a degree in such sciences to discern the wrongness of such acts or their intent, a conscience suffices. I shall, however, use my acquaintance with holy writ to ascertain were knowledge has gone amiss or missing.
It must be plainly stated that Mark, Matthew, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude—the authors of Christianity’s sacred books—were all Jews. They were faithful Jews. The people to whom and for whom they wrote were Jews or gentiles who were attracted to or by Judaism, the “God-fearers”. They believed they had encountered in Jesus the promise made to the Jews, that this Jesus embodied God’s new, final and definitive revelation to the Chosen. They devotedly attended synagogue and Temple. They began without any intention, any thought, of being something other than Jewish. It may be difficult from our coign of vantage two millennia later to understand how that might be, for them there was no problem. I shall try to elucidate the background of their understanding.
I shall begin this emprise with a review of Jewish history from David to Jesus, and make some observations on items and issues of importance for the topic under consideration. I shall next briefly examine how Jesus was viewed by the sundry groups constitutive of the Judaism of his day, and how his disciples reacted to his rejection by Judaism at large, and to their own persecution, excommunication, and ejection from the synagogue.