THE BIBLE IS NOT A JEWISH BOOK
THE statement is commonly made even by those who should know better that “We Christians owe a debt to the Jews, for we got our Bible and our religion from them.” While many people have been deceived into believing this, it is completely false. Part of the mistake comes from the complete confusion in the minds of nearly all people as to just what they mean by “Jew.” Are they referring to people of a certain race? Or people of a certain religion? For the two are not the same. There are in Africa today some pure blooded Negroes who are Jews by religion and there are in China today some pure blooded Mongolians who are Jews by religion. Likewise, there are some people today who are racially of the stock we know as Jews, but who have been converted to other religions.
First, let us consider the claim that we got our Bible and our religion from the Jews, as meaning Jews by religion. It is certain that we didn’t get the New Testament from them, for it condemns the Jewish religion throughout. But did we get the Old Testament from them? No, for several reasons. In the first place, no Jew by religion existed before the return from the Babylonian Captivity, shortly after 536 B.C. Their great historian, Josephus, says “the Jews prepared the word that is the name they are called by from the day that they came up from Babylon.” The only books of the Old Testament that were written after the return from Babylon are: Kings, Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah (all of them historical, rather than doctrinal) and Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. In none of these do the Jews receive anything but rebuke for their wickedness, for the apostasy from the religion of the Old Testament. The late Rabbi Stephen F. Wise, formerly the Chief Rabbi of the United States said, “The return from Babylon and the introduction of the Babylonian Talmud mark the end of Hebrewism and the beginning of Judaism.”
The learned Rabbi was correct in distinguishing the true religion Old Testament as “Hebrewism” for it was the religion of the real Hebrews who were not Jews at all. Judaism, the religion of the Jews, is as the learned Rabbi says, based upon the Babylonian Talmud, which contains the supposed oral law, never reduced to writing as part of the Bible, and which gradually gained greater force among the Jews than the written law in the Bible, with which it often conflicted. In Jesus’ day, the Babylonian Talmud was known as the Tradition of the Elders. This is why Jesus Christ told the Jews:
“Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. How be it in vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the Commandments of men. For laying aside the commandment of God that ye may keep your own tradition, Making the word of God of non effect through your tradition which ye have delivered.”
“Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.” Matthew 22:29
and
“Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law judgment, mercy, and faith.” Mathew 23:23.
This was the religion of the Jews: as the learned Rabbi Stephen F. Wise said, Judaism, as distinguished from Hebrewism, the real religion of the Old Testament. Certainly Christianity took nothing from any Jewish religion for we have never taken any part of Christianity from the Talmud. Naturally, the Jews didn’t give us any part of the New Testament, either, for it completely repudiates and condemns the Jewish religion of the Talmud.
Well then, can it be said that we got our Bible or our religion of Christianity from men of Jewish race? No it cannot. While I have not the time in the remainder of this article to give in detail the Bible evidence and will have to reserve that for a later article, it can be clearly proved, both out of the historical books of the Bible and out of the only thorough history of the times written by one living when the facts were stiIt well known, Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, that the Jews were a people distinct and separate from God’s people Israel, although living among them. The Jews were the Cainite peoples who lived in Palestine before Israel entered the Promised Land, and who were not driven out, but allowed to remain in the land while paying heavy tribute taxes; and the half breed mixture from some intermarriage between the Cainites and the Israelites.
The prophets who wrote the books of the Old Testament on the other hand, were all of pure Israelite stock from one, or another of the 12 Tribes of Israel. Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habakkuk, Haggai and Zechariah were of the Tribe of Levi; Joshua and Samuel were of the Tribe of Ephraim; Isaiah, Zebulun; Hosea was of the
Tribe of Issachar.
When the Assyrians conquered and deported the people of the ten northern Tribes the Bible records that the Assyrians brought other people in from the Assyrian Empire and settled them in Samaria, in place of the Israelites they had deported. But Samaria is only the territory occupied by these ten northern tribes; the northern half was vacant. When the Kingdom of Judah was latter deported to Babylon for their seventy years’ captivity, their land was left with very little population and while they were gone, the Edomites, descendants of Esau, mixed with Cainite people, were forced out of their own land by pressure of invading Arab tribes, and moved westward into the vacant lands of Judah, occupying the southern half of the former Kingdom of Judah. Therefore, when a portion of the two Tribes of Judah and Benjamin returned from the Babylonian captivity they were too few in numbers to drive out the warlike Edomites and had to try to squeeze into the very little territory they had left. It was too small for them, so what was left of the Tribe of Judah took the little territory remaining around Jerusalem, and Benjamin was pushed to the north. They could not move next door, into Samaria, as that was occupied by the people the Assyrians had settled there.
That the Apostles and the majority of Christian converts came, from the Benjamites should not surprise us, for when the kingdom was split in two upon the death of Solomon, God said that He would leave Benjamin with Judah so that the House of David should be light bearers. In the New Testament all of the Apostles were of the Tribe of Benjamin except Judas Iscariot the only Jew among them who came from the village of Kerioth in southern Judea. “Iscariot” is a corruption of Ish Kerioth man of Kerioth. Paul tells us that he (Paul) was of the Tribe of Benjamin; where the Tribe of Benjamin settled after the return from Babylon.
This is, confirmed by Jesus Christ Himself. In Matthew. 15:24, He said, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the House of Israel.” In the 10th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the Jews –
“I am the Good Shepherd, and know My sheep, and am known by Mine …But ye believe not because you are not of My sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them and they follow Me.”
From the Saviour’s own lips we have the proof that the Jews are not of the Tribes of Israel. Note carefully that He does not say that their unbelief keeps them from, being of His sheep. He says the exact opposite, that the reason why they do not believe is that they are not of His sheep the House of Israel.
Christianity and Judaism are completely and irreconcilably inconsistent. Whichever one is right, the other must be wrong, for they mutually repudiate each other. A great part of Jesus Christ’s reported words are his denunciation of the Jews for their religion, which He tells them is not that of the Old Testament. In John 5:46, Jesus told them, “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me: for he wrote of Me.” And in Luke 16:31, Jesus said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” He was, right: He did rise from the dead, but to this day they are not persuaded.
It is clear, therefore, that we did not get either our Bible or our Christian religion, either in whole or in part, from those who were Jews either by religion or by race. We owe them no debt, for they gave us nothing.
