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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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It is notably different, there is no salvation for those to deny Jesus according to the church, except for the Jews, and the reason for that is a "mystery." It's not really a mystery, though.

It is not notably different. You hear very similar language from many Protestant denominations. (Many other Protestant denominations also say very clearly that Jews will go to hell - as have many Catholic theologians historically.) There isn't some special carve-out here somehow engineered by the Elders of Zion.

I meant Jews are regarded differently than the other groups you mentioned, I am aware that is the case across denominations, particularly among evangelicals.

There is a special carve-out, absolutely. And it was engineered by the Elders of Zion, AKA the Prophets of the bible who declared Jews to be God's Chosen people and then convinced the Gentiles to accept that proposition as part of their own religion. So it leads to these contradictions like, Jews knowingly reject Christ but they still go to heaven, obviously Christianity is going to digest that contradiction just fine because the religion itself is basically worshipping the Jews and their tribal god.

Your understanding of the history of Judaism and Christianity seems pretty lacking. Christianity began as a Jewish splinter sect. The "Elders of Zion" didn't "convince" the Gentiles to accept anything; the beliefs of early Christians were obviously informed by the fact that initially they considered themselves Jews who followed the promised Messiah. Since then, the situation has become vastly more complicated, with two thousand years of history and schisms and factions and subfactions, some still holding up Jews as "God's Chosen People" and some condemning them to hell for being Christ-killers.

I know you try to fit your ZOG narrative to everything, but it does not actually fit everything.

Saint Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, was a Jewish Pharisee. And of course Jesus was a Jewish teacher. So according to the Church's own history, the messiah and apostle to the gentiles were indeed "Elders of Zion": a Pharisee and the King of the Jews. They did convince the gentiles to accept the proposition that the only real god is the Jewish tribal god Yahweh, and that all who reject him suffer eternal torture, and that he chose Jews as his Chosen People and made his son born of the Jews.

Paul claims to be a Pharisee, I tend to doubt it because what he actually wrote is wildly different from what the Tanak actually says. There’s really no precedent in the Hebrew Bible for a dying rising god, human sacrifice for sins, or ritual cannibalism. He also gets very basic things wrong. The Passover lamb has nothing to do with a sin offering.

The other thing odd about Paul’s claims is that he’s claiming to have been taught by one of the most famous Rabbis of the era, Gamaliel. This is a really wild claim to make. It would be like some random guy claiming to have learned physics at the feet of Einstein, yet not understand very basic first year physics. The two don’t fit together.

It would be like some random guy claiming to have learned physics at the feet of Einstein

If he was actually a Pharisee then he would have been taught in Jerusalem by the Rabbi there. It's like accusing someone who went to grad school in the University of Chicago in the 80's for economics of pretending they were taught by Milton Friedman or Robert Lucas. Of course they were taught by them, how could they not be?

He specifically claimed to have been taught by Gamaliel. It wasn’t just attending a university.

(https://biblehub.com/acts/22-3.htm) “ I, indeed, am a man, a Jew, having been born in Tarsus of Cilicia, and brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, having been taught according to the exactness of a law of the fathers, being zealous of God, as all you are today.”

That’s not really attending the same school. That’s having someone as your teacher.

In my example it was also having that famous person as your teacher. Your advisor even. I don't see what's absurd about a Pharisee having another Pharisee as a teacher. Some people must have been taught by Gamaliel. Why not Paul?

He gets very basic Jewish theology wrong. There’s absolutely nothing in the Jewish Bible that suggests a human sacrifice for sins. The lambs killed during Passover were not sin offerings. These are pretty basic things to get wrong.

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Like @Amadan says this is not a new take, if anything it is one of the oldest of takes in Christendom and suddenly a bunch of your other posts are making a lot more sense. You were raised and/or educated by Jews weren't you? that's why you've got such a victimhood complex isn't it?

That the rise Christianity was all part of the Pharisee's plan is a lie that a lot of status conscious Jews tell themselves precisely because the alternative is just too terrifying to contemplate.

"Christianity is a Jew religion" is not a new take, I know it's very popular with the neo-Nazi movement, and you're still ignoring the 2000 years of history since. Note that I am neither Christian nor Jewish; I'm just pointing out that you're crafting a narrative to fit your ideology about Da Joos and their sneaky cultural infiltration that ignores a lot of history and what is actually believed by Christians and Jews today.

It's your own ideology that is motivating you to downplay the implications of Gentiles accepting the Torah as divine Truth. You maybe watch something like this on the Glenn Beck show and think "how quaint, that's religion for you!" but your ideology is the one that blinds you to the bigger picture. You accuse me of pathological obsession with Jews but then refuse to acknowledge the actual worship of Jews and Israel by Christians for what it is.

I agree with you that Christianity is obviously in some ways a distinctly Jewish religion (so is Islam), but how much does this really matter for your antisemitism? After all, devout Christians and Muslims have massacred and pogromed and expelled Jews for thousands of years, it's clear that Christianity does not actually 'inoculate' Europeans against antisemitism, and in fact in many cases only enhanced antisemitism by adding the additional charge of killing God to the list of charges put to the Jews.

Jews would be in a much better place if Christianity genuinely led to philosemitism, but it did not and has not in any Christian society. If anything, Christian philosemitism was itself largely a consequence of enlightenment secularism and humanism, Catholic police toward Jews didn't change thoroughly until Vatican II, ie. more than a century after most European countries, including (almost all of) Germany, emancipated the Jews.

After all, devout Christians and Muslims have massacred and pogromed and expelled Jews for thousands of years, it's clear that Christianity does not actually 'inoculate' Europeans against antisemitism

I don't think this is clear at all. Christians allowed Jews to live among them for millennia (a very unusual arrangement, and it's not at all clear Jews would have allowed the same if the situation were reversed), Jews love to complain about their treatment, but a more fair perspective would acknowledge that there's been a peculiar symbiosis from the beginning the seems inexorably linked with Christianity.

Jews would be in a much better place if Christianity genuinely led to philosemitism

Wouldn't you agree that society today is genuinely philosemitic? If so, then Christianity has led here.

But it doesn't matter for "my antisemitism" as much as it matters for the Christian's antisemitism. Christian antisemitism is completely incoherent. You hate Jews but you acknowledge the Jewish covenant and that they are a race of god-creators? There is a deep contradiction there, Christians can never properly understand their position relative to Jews while believing in that religion. This does manifest as philosemitism and as other phenomenon like, "Jews having a favorable of -40 for Evangelical Christians while Evangelical Christians are +39 towards Jews", those Christians are the living embodiment of the "greatest ally" meme, and it's absolutely tied to their religion.

Christianity is a fake opposition to Judaism, it's a controlled opposition even - remember what Jesus said, don't resist evil people and pray for people who persecute you... As much of a veneer of antisemitism as it can present, it cannot escape that fact it worships a Jew as a god and acknowledges the Jews as the earthly representatives of the one true god of the universe. I do think internalizing that mythos has played a significant role in Jewish/Gentile relations.

It's your own ideology that is motivating you to downplay the implications of Gentiles accepting the Torah as divine Truth.

Really? What is my ideology (besides "Nah, I don't think Jews are lizard people")?

Nothing you are saying is unfamiliar or new, I am well-versed in the neo-Nazi "Christians are just simping for Da Joos" rhetoric. Christians aren't actually a monolithic group any more than Jews are.

Really? What is my ideology (besides "Nah, I don't think Jews are lizard people")?

Take your pick, if there's one thing that every mainstream ideology has in common, from Marxism to libertarianism and everything in between, it's that you do not and cannot engage in anthropological analysis that puts Jews under the microscope. To do so makes you mentally deranged at best and evil at worst. That's no coincidence either.

So, for example, if you engage in a sober-headed analysis relating the Jewish origins of Christianity to modern-day relations, in any other terms than endorsement of a "Judeo-Christian" commonality or denunciation of Christian anti-Semitism, then you are going to be hated by absolutely every ideology that is anywhere near the mainstream. The only two groups of people who do that are radical Rightists or radical Jews, although the former engage in that sort of analysis as a criticism and the latter through a triumphalist lens.

It is said that the Aztecs believed the conquistadors were representatives of Quetzalcoatl, which is a claim that often promotes pushback especially today:

It is wise, in general, to be sceptical about stories that represent non-European peoples, in conflicts with Westerners, as superstitious or cowed by the white man’s apparent superiority. Such stories are often attempts to justify conquests and empires by making subject-peoples look feeble-minded or self-condemned to subordination by their own convictions of inferiority.

Those are pretty strong terms, but nobody will bat an eye when a Jew goes on Glenn Beck's show and says "God says [the Jews] are my witnesses on Earth, the promise, you're my witnesses on Earth. Well destroy the witnesses then you don't have God" and nobody bats an eye because his audience believes that.

I find it believable that the Aztecs believed the Spaniards to be envoys of Quetzalcoatl. We know for a fact that billions of Gentiles affirm the Jewish covenant, that Jews are/were the singularly chosen envoys of the one true God, and that can't be chalked up to White Supremacy... It's not only the Far Right that recognizes this, but it is only the far Right that recognizes this fact and provides a measure of criticism for its implications.

This is all to say, you don't have to be ideologically motivated to relate Christianity to the conversion of billions of gentiles to worship the God of Israel, you have to be ideologically motivated to claim there's no "there" there.

Marxism

Are you serious? Marx wrote On the Jewish Question, which is definitely an anthropological analysis that puts Jews under the microscope. And plenty of modern far left organizations seem more concerned with bashing Israel then they do anything else. The BDS movement is far leftist not far rightist.

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Take your pick, if there's one thing that every mainstream ideology has in common, from Marxism to libertarianism and everything in between, it's that you do not and cannot engage in anthropological analysis that puts Jews under the microscope

Sure I can. The problem is, I've read all your theories about why Jews are "special" and should be treated as uniquely inimical. I can do anthropological analysis as well as you can. I find your analyses unconvincing. It's not because I have some mental block put there by Da Joos. It's because I think you're wrong and illogical, and your entire ideology is JewishChinese robbers all the way down.

Those are pretty strong terms, but nobody will bat an eye when a Jew goes on Glenn Beck's show and says "God says [the Jews] are my witnesses on Earth, the promise, you're my witnesses on Earth. Well destroy the witnesses then you don't have God" and nobody bats an eye because his audience believes that.

Why should anyone bat an eye, any more than they bat an eye at "Without Jesus, there is no hope"? Sure, I listen to that speech and roll my eyes. "Religion, how quaint," as you put it. And it's no different than any other zealot spouting off about his religious beliefs.

you have to be ideologically motivated to claim there's no "there" there

No, that's not how it works. You are the one claiming there is a "there" (hostile Jews waging tribal warfare against everyone else since the beginning of time) there. That's your ideology. You're just engaging in your own form of religious weakmanning, like the Christian who claims obviously we all know God is real and Jesus is Lord, and anyone who claims otherwise is just lying to himself and letting Satan whisper lies in his ear. You need to prove your case, not insist it's just obviously obvious and it's only Jew-ideologies keeping us from seeing it.

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Christian Zionism is popular in America, but it is not actually a tenent of Christianity. It is not supported by Catholicism, and it is not supportable from scripture. It's quite pernicious, I'll give you that.