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| Pâ•qidꞋ Yi•rᵊmᵊyâhꞋ u |
2004.02.25 — Mr. O'Reilly, you're usually a stand-up and reasonably well-informed guy; not "in the tank with" anyone, as you put it. And I respect that. I even feel a kinship. But your statement to Mr. Cavuto laughingly intimating an obvious ridiculousness concerning the possibility that the Gospels could be miso-Judaic (your term was "anti-Semitic") was logically sloppy and gave the impression that you are in the tank with Christians in assuming the Gospels are Bible, "Jewish" and, therefore, couldn't possibly be miso-Judaic.
I've walked in your shoes as a thinking Christian, Mr. O'Reilly. I think I can probably be considered a reasonably serious and well-informed former Christian. For decades, I've challenged the knowledge of any seminarian in the world. I was a witnessing, church-going, church organist Christian since high school in the 60s when I attended Hampden DuBose Academy (the Christian boarding school to which Billy Graham sent his daughter) and later became a Baptist preacher. I'm a Mensan who has translated the entire New Testament from the original language of all of earliest extant source documents up through the fourth century C.E. I compared and contrasted the various readings and the thousands of redactions -- that are documented even in "The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible." I once assumed the Christian perspective too, until mounting contradictions in the Christian Bible forced me to do some serious historical research to unravel and resolve them.
No one can speak knowledgeably about miso-Judaism (anti-Semitism), Mr. O'Reilly, without having read the definitive classic on antisemitism by the late Oxford historian, James Parkes (The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, A Study in the Origins of Anti-Semitism). It will shatter your assumptions. It's out of print and copyright, and there are copies accessible from many sources. It will rouse you from the intellectual tunnel vision with which this particular issue seems uniquely able to blinker you, and it will inform you about the perspectives of the miso-Judaic Roman Christians of the 2nd-4th centuries who heavily redacted the earliest extant sources of today's "Gospels." Parkes showed that the earliest (post-135 C.E.) form of the nascent religion, that was genuinely Christian rather than Judaic, was necessarily a displacement theology – and miso-Judaic!
Christian seminarians don't even bother to examine the miso-Judaic nature and trend of the thousands of subsequent redactions in the Διαθηκη Καινη (NT) that are indisputably documented, nor the miso-Judaic nature of their Hellenist Roman authors who had twice massacred the Jews (70 & 135 C.E.). I venture that most seminarians aren't even aware that there are thousands of redactions in the earliest extant sources from which the Διαθηκη Καινη (NT) (New Testament) is derived — and, I venture, don't even know what the Διαθηκη Καινη (NT) is!!! The few who become aware of them are forced by their religious beliefs to attempt to portray the sources as only an isolated redaction here or there rather than acknowledge the many thousands that are documented, or they are forced to belittle the importance of the miso-Judaic redactions that form the foundation of the Διαθηκη Καινη (NT).
Compounding the problem, 2,000 years of experience has amply demonstrated the obvious: that rabbis know even less about Διαθηκη Καινη (NT) issues than Christians. Rabbis can no more define Christians and Christianity than Christians can define Jews and
Worse, both rabbis and Christian clerics have all of their vested interests in keeping this Pandora's Box closed because it illuminates the original events between them that threaten some fervently-held doctrines (and, therefore, threatens the clerics too) on both sides. Documented history collides with religious traditions of both sides, and scares both sides into desperate opposition against any serious investigation in this area.
From the Christian side, you can learn from the earliest Church historian, Eusebius, that the original Jewish followers of
After reading Parkes, read the
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