By BENAMMI (in the London "Jewish Chronicle”)
My Dear Cousin,—
At my last meeting with the Vicar he put a poser to me. We had got on to talk of Christianity, and he asked me to tell him what Jews thought of the religion of which he was so distinguished and earnest a teacher. I confessed to him that I really could not say what Jews as a body thought of Christianity. But if he cared to hear my own personal views, I should be glad to inform him. He begged of me to do so, and as I think you, too, may be interested, I shall repeat the gist of my talk to the Vicar.
I pointed out that in order to understand Christianity, it is necessary to recall the condition of Jewry in the century before Jesus was born. The Jews were split into three great parties, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes. Of the first it need only be said that they were worldly in outlook, ever ready to make the best of the existing political conditions. They were the trimmers of their day. The Pharisees, tired and troubled by the uncertainties and the sufferings of the world around them, tired also of the intolerable yoke of Rome, looked for comfort to a new World to Come. “This World,” said one of their early teachers, “is like a vestibule before the World to Come. Prepare thyself therefore in the vestibule that thou mayest enter the hall.” It is not easy to picture to one’s mind the nature of this World to Come. It would seem to have been visualised as life after death, without sin or suffering. The Essenes went further still in their contemplation. They dreamed mystically of a new world in heaven, which they regarded as the Kingdom of God, and in order to prepare themselves for this state of bliss they withdrew from the world, lived lonely lives in deserts and waste places, eschewed property, marriage, and all social institutions.
The Essenes went about preaching the new Kingdom, and found a following in Galilee, a district of Palestine which admittedly was inhabited by the least cultured of the population. These men of toil felt the heavy burden of oppression, of taxation, and of hopelessness. Capable of intense feeling as they were, they were only too ready to listen to good news of a better time coming, and of a Redeemer who should liberate Israel from all his troubles. This expectation of a Redeemer was deeply rooted among the suffering Jewish masses, and when Jesus appeared in their midst as one of the itinerant Essenes, it was not long before he was hailed as the expected Messiah. But he was not the only one who was so regarded. Many other preachers of that age who came to call men to repentance were, as Josephus states, also looked upon as God’s annointed. The case of Jesus grew into a cause celebre because he became entangled in the political machine, and the State authorities were responsible for his death.
The legends grew thick and fast around his memory. A study of the mushroom-like development of legends is not only fascinating because of the kaleidescopic tendency of human imagination, but is also instructive as showing how in all lands and in all times the human mind is prone to this weakness. Are we altogether free from legends in these days ? How easy therefore to conceive of the legends that grew around the name of Jesus. Men told each other that he had risen from the dead, that he was the Son of God, that he had been miraculously born, that his death was to be an atonement for the sins of his people. The stories found currency, and before long verses in the Bible were discovered which pointed to his career. “Out of Egypt did I call my son,” says the prophet Hosea in one place, clearly referring to the early history of the Jews. But an incident in the life of Jesus was invented to fit in with this passage in the Book of Hosea. Others, too, were similarly invented. But there was nothing strange or new in this. It was just the Midrashic method of dealing with the Bible text, and the Gospels are nothing but Midrashim.
A body of doctrine also gradually accumulated round the name of Jesus, in part Jewish, in part heathen. The earliest followers of the teacher of Nazareth, like himself, were Jews, living the Jewish life, practising the Jewish customs. They differed from their fellow Jews in that they believed, rightly or wrongly, that the long expected Messiah had already come. But slowly non-Jews joined the fraternity. Then Paul appeared on the scene. If Jesus may be described as possessing an Haggadist mind, Paul’s mind was certainly Halachic. Jesus appealed to the emotions; he pitied the poor and oppressed; he loved little children. Paul was a legalist; he loved system, and he built up a structure out of the materials that had accumulated. Who can say how opinions and beliefs grow up ? But there they were, a mosaic of Jewish and heathen beliefs, doctrines, practices, traditions. It did not take long before the new community severed itself from the Jews. Retaining many of the Jewish practices, the new sect changed their setting. They took over the Sabbath but fixed it on Sunday. They kept the Jewish Holy days—Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, for example—but gave them a somewhat different date. And they did more. They adopted distinctly heathen doctrines. They incorporated the idea of the Trinity; they taught the Incarnation, the virgin birth, and original sin.
On the whole it may be said that Christianity adopted the Ethics of Judaism and the dogmas of Heathendom. There would not perhaps have been so much harm done if the two had been kept apart and the second made subservient to the first. But the two were intertwined; nay, the second became the predominating element. Men might live righteous lives, fulfilling all God’s commands, but if they did not subscribe to articles of faith, if they denied the virgin birth or the Trinity, or that bread and wine on the altar became flesh and blood, they were punished as heretics, more often than not at the stake. The heathen strain in Christianity poisoned the whole system; and the political policy of the Catholic Church but heightened the disease to madness. The history of Europe in the first sixteen centuries of our era is one long illustration of this fact. Protestantism was the first attempt to purge the diseased body. But good as was the purge, it was not effective enough. Gradually, however, the non-Jewish elements in Christianity are losing their hold on men’s minds. They are the dead branches on the ancient tree.
I asked the Vicar frankly whether professing Christians still “believed” in the Trinity or in the Incarnation. He confessed that many people did not bother about these dogmas. They have lost interest in them, and the insistence of the Church on their retention is one reason why churches are so empty. Men and women, the Vicar continued, care far more for righteousness, for social justice, for clean living, for unselfish service.
I pointed out to him that these were the Jewish elements in Christianity, and that it was a sign of the times that while the heathen lumber was decaying, the Jewish strain in Christianity was becoming more and more alive. Perhaps Christian teachers will begin to realise before long that if Christianity is to develop along healthy lines, it will have to approach Judaism more and more closely. After all, it will only be going back to the pure Gospel teaching. The best authorities on Christianity are agreed that that teaching is Jewish through and through. Even so accepted a leader of Christian thought as Harnack has to admit this, despite his fling at the Pharisees.
The Vicar sat thoughtfully silent for a while. He then asked where I had found a succinct account of the Heathen excrescences of Christianity. I replied by referring him to the interesting work by Draper, “The History of the Conflict between Religion and Science,” a book which has always fascinated me. Might Jews read the New Testament ? he next enquired. I answered him not only that they might, but that they do. Books that have so greatly influenced the thought of the world ought surely not to be taboo to thinking people. Then, he continued, you admit that the Gospels and the Epistles have been an influence in the world. “Of course,” I replied. It must be readily admitted that Christianity has served Judaism by spreading Jewish teachings among the Gentiles. When the Goths and the Huns adopted Christianity, they thereby imbibed Jewish Ethics. The pity of it is that while Christianity taught Jewish Ethics, it did not practise them. Christianity taught the love of neighbour; yet Christians, even those who occupied the highest position in the organised church, killed each other for differences of opinion. Christians professed to follow the example of Jesus who loved little children. But history records that Jewish children and tender women were mercilessly done to death by Christian hate. Nor is the discrepancy between doctrine and practice limited to the past; unfortunately it holds good to-day. The professions of Christianity and the practice of Christians are sadly at variance still. I reminded the Vicar of the late Mr. Stead’s booklet, entitled “If Christ Came to Chicago,” and I asked him to visualise the possibility of Christ coming to London. What would he think of the conduct of many of his followers ? “By their fruits shall ye know them !” His own text was not an unfair one. But judged by this text, what would the verdict have to be ?
Again the Vicar was silent. My own view is, I said, breaking the silence, that in the near future the daughter religion will come to realise whence it has sprung, and will have more respect for Judaism, its mother. When that occurs, we shall be nearer the day when the Lord shall be One, and His name One, and when the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.
The Vicar’s eyes shone approbation as I said this.—
Your loving cousin,
BENAMMI.
Australian Jewish Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1920 - 1933), Friday 9 December 1921, page 20
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