Most evangelical Christians today believe that the “Jews” are the true ”children of God” and that they hold a distinct place in “God’s eyes” from that of the Church, despite their rejection of the Messiah (Jesus) and His Gospel – and subsequently, their rejection of traditional and Scriptural “Judaism” or the religion of the ancient Hebrew people (as taught by the “old testament” Scriptures). In other words, the Church is just a bump on the log of redemptive history, and the “main event” revolves around the Jewish people.

To even begin to dive into this subject (which is extremely controversial in the present day, especially among American, evangelical sects of Christianity), it is necessary to take a giant leap backwards and consider many ideas and concepts individually, in order to do this overview any justice whatsoever. While these viewpoints are a drastic minority in both present day Christianity and in Church history, they represent an extremely influential viewpoint among protestants in the United States (but this has been the case only since the mid-19th century).

For example:

Who are the Jews, and what makes one “Jewish?”

What promises did God make to the Hebrews regarding the land of Israel, and how does that correlate to the modern nation-state of Israel in the middle east today?

What do the Scriptures say regarding Israel and how the Hebrew people are to be considered in relation to the Christian Church?

It is along these three questions that I will attempt to give an extremely brief and broad-reaching analysis of Israel as the “people of God.”

One of the biggest problems when discussing Israel, Judaism and the Church is that even saying words like “Jews” or “Israel” begs the question and is non-specific while being variously and contrarily viewed by many, many people (even among the Jews). “Jewish” is viewed as both a religion and an ethnicity, both together and separately by various people, and “Israel” is associated with a nation-state of the present day as well as a nation and people of God in the old testament Scriptures.

Firstly, the question of “who is a Jew?” is not an offensive or “racist” (in the pejorative sense of the term) question to pose, as the “Jews” themselves pose this question and have written and expended a great deal of energy on this very inquiry.

All traditional Jewish sects today agree (according to the halakha) that one is a Jew either by birth (following the mother’s line of descent, or “matrilineally,” with ultra-conservatives saying both parents must be Jewish) or by conversion to Judaism (the religion, obviously, since one cannot “convert” to another ethnicity).

Already, one is faced with a great number of serious issues and controversies.

For starters, due to the diaspora, the emergence of Christianity in first century AD and mass conversions, the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 and the inter-marrying of Jewish people with non-Jewish people over the last two-thousand years, the likelihood of very many “Jews” (according to their own definition) remaining in existence – at least according to the matrilineal birth definition – is slim to none. In other words, from an “ethnic” standpoint (which begs the question that Jews or the people of Israel had the same ethnic heritage to begin with – they did not), there are likely very few Jewish people in the world – at least, in a “pure” and ethnic/genetic sense of the word (and according to their own definitions).

This only leaves the existence of “religious” Jews, in my opinion, since most Jewish people today are of various ethnic and national descent (and the overwhelming majority live in the United States, and not in Israel or the middle east). In fact, the Arabs (including millions of Arab Christians) are more “purely” Semitic people than any Jewish people in the world today, from a strictly genetic viewpoint. The genetics of Arabs and Jewish people in the middle east are closely related (with Arabs having a greater percentage of J1 Y-chromosomes than Jews), most likely due to the conquest of Palestine by the Muslims in the seventh century AD. Jewish genetics (in the middle east) also show a close connection with that of the Kurds. So really, when one speaks of being descended from a “Jewish” mother, the identity of “Jew” is only meaningful when considering the religious and pseudo-religious heritage of the Jewish people – not genetics. It just gets far too complicated, and without DNA history spanning the centuries, there’s really no way to tell for certain.

Furthermore, the Scriptures fail to indicate that being a “Jew” or child of God / child of Israel had anything to do with ethnicity. Rather, the people of Israel were a religious people who had been delivered (“saved,” if you will) from Egypt by the mighty power of God through His prophet Moses, and who then paid homage to this deliverance and offered worship to their God in each successive generation through a variety of rites or traditions (e.g. the tabernacle/temple and sacrificial system of worship), prayers, hymns, etc. A “mixed multitude” (Exodus 12:38) of people enjoyed the deliverance of God from the hands of Egypt, and Israel remained a mixed multitude through the various exiles and dispersion down to the days of Christ.

The prohibitions against inter-marriage as found in the Torah (which, by the way, never mentions the importance of matrilineal descent – this is a tradition of post-Christian Talmudic Judaism) were not for the purposes of preserving a genetic lineage; rather, it was for the preserving of the religion of Israel: “Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to his son, nor take his daughter for your son. For she will turn your son away from Me, and he will serve other gods …” (Deuteronomy 7:3-4 LXX). This is the same reason Saint Paul exhorts the first Christians to not be “unequally yoked” with the non-faithful (2 Corinthians 6:14).

If the identity of the Jewish people, therefore, is marked by their religious beliefs and practices, there are a number of problems to consider.

For example, the Judaism seen in the old testament Scriptures and as practiced by various Jewish sects at the time of Christ is no longer in existence, nor is it practiced or believed by any Jewish people in the world today. To identify modern-day Jewish people with the Israelites of the old testament would be tantamount to calling people that gather to pray to Jesus but don’t believe in the Trinity and don’t perform Baptism or celebrate the Eucharist (or “Lord’s Supper”) “Christians.” Of course, in our pluralistic culture, such nonsense is rather possible.

This, of course, all revolves around the destruction of the second Temple in AD 70 by the Roman army and the fact that it has never been rebuilt. Not only this, but also the mass conversion of the Jewish sects to Christianity in the first century (both before and after the sacking of Jerusalem by Rome) left very few Jewish people (speaking of the religion, of course) in the world at all. Before and during Christ’s life, there were the sects of the Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and the Pharisees. Following AD 70, these sects and distinctions vanished, and there was only left “rabbinical Judaism” (similar to the Pharisees) with a mixture of various non-traditional people (post-Sadducees, if you will, who reject everything but the Torah as divinely inspired).

The idea that there was one Jewish religion is a falsity and especially so in the days of Second Temple Judaism – the identification of Jewish people by their religious beliefs becomes a game of “pick and choose” where one must discern which sect is the correct one while sorting out their varied and contradictory beliefs and traditions. Complicating matters worse, there are a great number of “Jewish” people today that are atheists or reject any semblance of traditional Judaism altogether, and yet they are still considered and referred to as “Jews,” even by the most strict of traditional Jewish people! In fact, the number of atheists among the self-identified Jewish people has been drastically on the rise over the last century or so, and people such as Karl Marx – the author of Marxism and forerunner for communism, a radically atheistic political system and worldview – were prime examples of this type of “Jew.” Karl Marx isn’t exactly Moses.

In today’s world, there are a new group of sects under the banner of “Judaism,” such as the Orthodox (the majority and heirs of rabbinical Judaism), Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. Among these groups (especially in Orthodox Judaism) and outside of them is a markedly non-Christian, esoteric tradition that has no support or inspiration from the Torah or other writings of the old testament Scriptures (e.g. Kabbalah, which has gained popularity in our day through its promotion by new age, non-religious and atheistic followers, both Jewish and non-Jewish, religiously speaking).

The beliefs of the largest sect of modern-day Judaism – the Orthodox Jews – are centered around the Oral Law of Moses or the Talmud, which was codified in the Mishnah (AD 200) and the Gemara (AD 500) by the remnants of post-Christian rabbinical Jews. These writings are believed to be the divinely-inspired “commentary” or “interpretation” of the Books of Moses, which they believe was also given to Moses at the same time he received the rest of the Torah from God (although not committed to writing until many centuries later, as found in the Talmud).

What should concern Christians most when it comes to the Talmud is the radically anti-Christian and anti-Gentile (Goim) viewpoints it espouses, replete with the worst of racism and even non-Theistic beliefs. Given that Talmudic Judaism is the predominant form of Judaism in the world today, it should be given the most attention as representative of the Judaism as passed down from the remnants of the first century (Second Temple Judaism, as seen in the days of Christ and the early Church) to the present day.

While many evangelical Christians likely have a notion that Judaism has a strong affinity for the old testament Scriptures (straining to identify present-day Jewish people with the people of Israel in their old testament), this is not the case.

The Talmud actually teaches that the Talmud itself is more important than the Scriptures:

“Those who devote themselves to reading the Bible exercise a certain virtue, but not very much; those who study the Mischnah exercise virtue for which they will receive a reward; those, however, who take upon themselves to study the Gemarah exercise the highest virtue.”
Babha Metsia, fol. 33a

“The Sacred Scripture is like water, the Mischnah wine, and the Gemarah aromatic wine.”
Sopherim XV, 7, fol. 13b

“My son, give heed to the words of the scribes rather than to the words of the law.”
Erubhin, fol. 21b

“He who transgresses the words of the scribes sins more gravely than the transgressors of the words of the law.”
Sanhedrin X, 3, fol. 88b

Along with an extremely low view of the old testament Scriptures (incidentally, most Jews today only believe the five Books of Moses or Torah were divinely-inspired – not the whole of the old testament), the Talmud and mainstream Judaism promotes extremist and offensive anti-Christian viewpoints.

For example, the Talmud refers to Jesus as Jeschu, rather than the proper Hebrew name Jeschua (which means “savior”). The name Jeschu is an anagram for the phrase in Hebrew “May his name and memory be blotted out.” Other references to Christ in the Talmud include the phrases “that man,” “a certain one,” “the carpenter’s son” and “the one who was hanged.” In various places, the Talmud and rabbinical Jews teach that Jesus was a bastard conceived during a menstrual cycle (cf. Kallah, fol. 1b/18b; the menstrual cycle reference being a reference to uncleanness in Judaism); that he had “the soul of Esau”; that he was a fool (Schabbath, fol. 104b), a conjurer/magician (Toldoth Jeschu), an idolater (Sanhedrin fol. 103a) and a seducer (Sanhedrin fol. 107b); and that he was buried in Gehenna (translated as “hell” in modern-day English Bibles) and worshiped as an “idol” and false god by his disciples (Zohar, III, 282; cf. Maimonides, Hilkoth Akum and Hilkoth Melahkim).

The Talmud also makes reference in numerous places to the necessity and nobility of showing cruelty towards Christians/Gentiles as well as deceiving them, hindering their success in the world and even murdering them.

Sufficed to say, the Judaism of the rabbinical tradition has little to do with the people of Israel in the old testament and their faith in God as their deliverer and salvation. The destruction of their Temple (and therefore, religion) in AD 70 and the rapid expansion of Christianity following the conversion of Saint Constantine the Great in the fourth century AD led to the need to re-define, re-imagine and re-examine Judaism in a post-resurrection, Christian world.

While this has been extremely brief, abbreviated and broad, I hope this overview of the Jewish people serves as a helpful starting point for one’s own studies and investigations regarding their history and beliefs.

Again, in order to avoid any confusion, I’m not making judgments against a certain “race” of people or being anti-Semitic by bringing up these points (in fact, the Church I belong to is Semitic, hailing from Damascus in Syria, and I have a great love for the Semitic peoples) – my reference to the “Jews” is to a generally associated religious people as most clearly and traditionally expressed by the Orthodox, rabbinical Jews of the present day.

To be truthful, the evangelical Christians and even secularists who treat all Arab people indiscriminately with disdain and suspicion (no doubt due to the current “war on terror”) are far more anti-Semitic than anyone else in the world today. The tragic irony, of course, is that by showing mis-placed and un-Biblical favoritism to the modern nation-state of Israel, many Christians are supporting the persecution of Arab Christians and their isolation and dispersion throughout the middle east and the rest of the world.

As a Christian, I have no respect or love for the religion of Judaism – it is anti-Christian, it rejects the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it promotes violence and hatred towards non-Jewish people and it has created a troubling and volatile political situation in the middle east that will never be solved so long as mis-guided Christians in America show the people of the (modern) nation of Israel unwavering support. However, I also strongly believe that God loves the Jewish people (as He does all people), that they are in need of salvation from sin and death through Jesus Christ (as am I), and that they should be prayed for and shown love by all Christians (even amidst persecution and injustice).

We should not hide the truth of the Gospel from them (more on this in my third post) because we think they are the “children of God” by ethnicity, for all are in need of union with Jesus Christ and the transformation of our soul and body through the Grace of the Holy Spirit and by eating the true body and blood of Jesus. The true children of Abraham are children by faith and through union with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – not blood or genetics.

In my next post, I will give another brief and broad overview of the promises God made to the people of Israel regarding their “holy land” and what these promises entail for both Christians and Jewish people living in the world today.