Of course what Christians don’t get is the gap is much larger than they think…

First, Judaism is built on the idea of one God and one God only, and the Torah goes to great lengths to inoculate against interlopers:

• Exodus 20:3 – “Thou shall have no god before me”
• Deuteronomy 6:14 – “You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you”
• Kings 17:35 – “You shall not fear other gods, nor bow down yourselves to them nor serve them nor sacrifice to them”
• Jeremiah 25:6 – “and do not go after other gods to serve them and to worship them”

and the list goes on…

In fact one could say much of the basis of Judaism revolves around just such exclusiveness -  “the Covenant”, where in return for the  singular worship of the one god YAHWEH, he will make them his chosen people.

However, now comes along a second deity, Jesus, who is to share the pantheon and of course, what do they do? Exactly what God told them to do – they reject him.

Now I know you may argue that he (Jesus) isn’t a second god, however all the Trinity “consubstantiality” mumbo-jumbo aside, for anyone looking objectively from the outside he is a second deity. He is the “Son of God” (a new being) , “is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (again a separate entity), and now requires worship as, “No one comes to the Father except through me”.

In short, contrary to scripture, he was a new deity to “bow down to” and it would be hard to argue, from a Jewish perspective he would appear otherwise (and certainly anyone looking from the outside watching Christians would have difficulty saying that Jesus hadn’t usurped the father in regards to worship as it were). Thus, again, it is no surprise that they rejected him – that’s what they were taught by God to do.

Secondly, the Jews had very strict laws about ritual purity and dietary requirements and along comes this new kid on the block and he changes everything in an extremely radical way. Moreover he challenges church authority and breaks the rules of the Sabbath.

Now he may have a compelling message and a silver tongue, but the impulse of faithful Jews would likely be to reject such an heretical interloper. It is the logical thing to do. Just as if a new Judeo-Christian sect were to say tomorrow, “It is not necessary to remain monogamous because the Lord told me,” it is likely that most would reject such a change and the religion that goes with it. It is similarly just too radical.

Third, Christians assume that there were all these miracles going on in real time during Jesus’ life, therefor the Jews should have seen the clear signs of God. However the Gospels were written at a minimum of 40 years after Jesus’ ministry. It is difficult to know if the miracles were not exaggerated or even pulled from whole cloth afterward. The entire interaction with the Jews in the Gospels (which to note,  is not consistent) could have represented a proxy for interactions between Jews and Christians at the time of writing of the Gospels. That is, current scores were being settled in the guise of prior history.

Certainly 40 years after the fact, when Christians were gaining numbers and still living within Jewish territories, there must of been a lot of conflict. Since undoubtedly Jews still outnumbered Christians, there may well have been considerable persecution of Christians by Jews and even martyrdom. Certainly if nothing else there was a lot of frustration then, just like now – why don’t the Jews get it? These frustrations may have been reflected, back dated as it were, into the Gospel texts.

Fourth, if we are to take the New Testament at face value, God “hardened their hearts” toward Jesus. So it would seem odd to blame them for the sin that God inflicted on them, however of course, despite reading various apologies to this fact, I really don’t get the point of God doing so (not from lack of trying) so I’ll leave that question to the more informed reader.

Fifth, because a few powerful Jews with significant investment in maintaining the status-quo rejected Jesus, is hardly the reason to blame an entire culture. It wasn’t like Jesus visited every Jew in the entire nation of Israel, not by a long shot. Thus condemning as a people over the mistakes of the few seems rather cruel (a “collective punishment” as it were – unfortunately far too common in the Bible). For that matter since a millennium or two has passed, continuing to punish them either literally or figuratively for “the sins of the father” seems remarkably cruel.

Sixth (and you know you’ve gone to far if you’ve gotten to “sixth”), while I have little doubt Jesus existed, he may neither have been the Son of God (there may of course be no God), nor even divinely inspired (even if he was certainly a Rabbi of sorts). In which case the persecution of the Jews would seem a sick joke based on fiction, one that if Jesus ever did exist, being a Jew himself, I’m sure he would have been enormously saddened by.

Finally, if there is a God, I know by the conscience that he must have endowed me with, that the blame and persecution of Jews is just plain wrong and always was. It is something I need no scripture to tell me and I reject any claim otherwise. There is morality that goes beyond the any interpretation of the Bible and those who would use the Bible to justify injustice show not the word of God, but the sickness of their hearts.

UPDATE:

First of all this post went on too far – my original point was really that God commanded that the Jews remain faithful to him and him alone, thus for the Jews in the bible to reject Jesus makes entire sense – what else would they do if they were faithful? Unfortunately I kept writing.

Second, I don’t even feel comfortable saying “the Jews”. In the text above I mean the phrase in a biblical context as implied at the time of the writing of the Gospels, however like any culture, people who are “Jewish” represent such a wide variety of perspectives and viewpoints that to lump them together under “the Jews” feels frankly racist. People who might fall under the name “Jew” are just so diverse, even so far as to not believe in God in some cases, that to try to say “Jews are X”, “Jews do Y”, “Jews believe Z”, etc. is iffy at best.

Finally, I am not a Jew, nor a Christian for that matter, so I have no right to speak for them. I am just extrapolating from what little I know of Jewish faith and biblical history. In the end, it is only those who would choose to call themselves Jews who have the right to speak for themselves and I ultimately must defer to their take here.

From the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a succession of bishops, of saints, of martyrs, and of miracles, is continued without interruption; and the progress of superstition was so gradual, and almost imperceptible, that we know not in what particular link we should break the chain of tradition. Every age bears testimony to the wonderful events by which it was distinguished, and its testimony appears no less weighty and respectable than that of the preceding generation, till we are insensibly led on to accuse our own inconsistency, if in the eighth or in the twelfth century we deny to the venerable Bede, or to the holy Bernard, the same degree of confidence which, in the second century, we had so liberally granted to Justin or to Irenaeus. If the truth of any of those miracles is appreciated by their apparent use and propriety, every age had unbelievers to convince, heretics to confute, and idolatrous nations to convert; and sufficient motives might always be produced to justify the interposition of Heaven. And yet, since every friend to revelation is persuaded of the reality, and every reasonable man is convinced of the cessation, of miraculous powers, it is evident that there must have been some period in which they were either suddenly or gradually withdrawn from the Christian church.

It is amazing the snarkiness of tone you find regarding religion by 18th century writers – it certainly was “The Enlightenment”. I have to say it gives me a chuckle – clearly they were enjoying their new found freedom, albeit carefully masked in the “plausible deniability” of ambivalent sarcasm.

In any case, I love his point – when (and why) did we go from an age of miracles to one that is virtually miracle free (as in the “supernatural” form)? What changed?

I think the answer is self evident – nothing has probably changed except our ability to believe in fairy tales. Much of what was considered acceptable evidence in the early years of the Church would now be frankly considered a joke. As scientific method increased and people subsequently became more skeptical, those generating “miracles” found themselves under new scrutiny, eventually leading those inclined to the practice to give up altogether (or to be diagnosed as was probably often the case – as being insane).

That’s not to say that there were absolutely no miracles and could absolutely be no miracles, but the fact that we find ourselves in an age where there are essentially none occurring now must give one pause to those ascribed to prior history. Certainly one has to admit they were a dime a dozen in early Christianity, with little or no verification. Subsequently one has to wonder if they are any more reliable than the average politician’s claim to honesty.

The comments above of course mostly pertain to the early history of the church where just about anyone could (and did) claim authority, but what of the events of the actual Gospels? Does one have similar reason to doubt the miracles there?

Of course – without doubt. The bar of miraculous evidence was not any higher for Gospels (and frankly the Gospels were written in the early years of the Church)(ie: by the same people spitting out miracles like so much candy). Why wouldn’t the New Testament miracles themselves be just as questionable?

Let’s take a simple example – exorcisms.

Jesus, and for that matter the Apostles, regularly cast out “unclean spirits”. Now while the Catholic church might still enjoy a good exorcism now and then, those are pretty far and few between as opposed to the rather common practice as displayed in the Gospels.

Today of course pretty much every case of “unclean spirits” is correctly diagnosed for what it is – mental illness and I think it’s pretty hard to argue that what Jesus et al were “casting out” was anything but that. I say this  because first we know in those times that mental illness was ascribed to possession, and second because the need for exorcisms also  curiously disappeared as science progressed (or rather as the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness progressed).

Add to the fact that once exorcised, the “unclean spirits” were able to leave their host and say, enter pigs (or even be entered into conversation with), then one has to wonder if the miracle of “casting out of spirits” was made up from whole cloth. Clearly we know mental illness does not speak separately for itself nor can it traverse beings.

I suppose as a Christian apologist you could answer with two rebutals:

1. That Jesus was actually curing mental illness and for the understanding of the time, the theatrics were necessary to impart the miracle, which it would still be, to the faithless masses (why explaining mental illness instead would be more difficult is another question).
2. That there were a lot more demons floating around to infiltrate the unsuspecting and thanks to the excellent work of Jesus and those who followed, well, we live in a nice demon free world today.

Neither of these seem very compelling, and following Occam’s Razor, the far more likely explanation is these miracles were, well, false, made up, delusions, fictions, whatever.

And of course if the exorcisms were fiction, well, how many more of the so called “miracles” were also fiction? Certainly if the description of “casting out of spirits” is false, one has to doubt the reliability of the witnesses in general.