david f,
Thanks for your corrections. I appreciate the personal perspective you’ve given along with being able to gain deeper understanding of the Judaic faith. Your comment, “Bigotry is not limited to religion”, is not usually appreciated on this forum, instead, it is cited as the usual and main source of bigotry. I see the next major conflict arising from a purely secular motif and falsely cloaked in religious zeal. True religion is always peaceful, and the Hebrew word “Shalom”, where nothing is missing or broken but rather, it is “whole”, is the only real embodiment for peace.

Sancho,
Strictly speaking, if I were writing an academic paper or journal article, I’d not only use quotation marks but also indicate, via Harvard style referencing etc., my exact source; in not doing so I’d be quite rightly accused of academic dishonesty, and if I am to take kudos or receive reward, yes, I’d agree to being dishonest. I write here simply for its enjoyment and make no apology for my literary approach or style – I suspect many others here do something similar, and I’ve no problem with that.

As far as Gaia is concerned, I’m aware of the theory and have also heard Tim Flannery espousing it recently on T.V. The Gaia comment was made with reference to david f and ‘self-organisation’ and so was quite relevant, along with my referring to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who abandoned the traditional interpretation of creation in the Book of Genesis. His less strict interpretation displeased some of the Roman Curia, who thought that it undermined the doctrine of original sin as developed by Saint Augustine. So, far from being a ‘hippie type’ idea, a Roman Catholic theologian has given it a far deeper perspective.

Lovelock is upset by what civilisation has done to our planet and is pessimistic about our chances of recovering from it - he likens the present situation to that of an addicted smoker, where chronic damage has already been done. Now, more than ever, we need a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin type of optimism.

relda,
Most of what you wrote are facts I cannot disagree with, although I fail to see their relevance to my question “Why should (ethnic) Jews who recognize Jesus as the Messiah (like most of the early Christians) ... be not acceptable TO CHRISTIANS ... ?“ I think the misunderstandings are caused by the ambiguity of the term “Jews”, and the following confusion of anti-judaism with anti-semitism. For instance, in Czech (and some other Slavic languages) you write ethnic or national but not religious adherence with a capital initial letter (so “English” but “protestant, catholic”). In those languages a “christian“ can then be “Jewish“ but not “jewish” so the above distinction is self-explanatory.

Nevertheless, one has to accept that many Jews do not want to make this distinction between their religion and ethnicity or race. I know of Jews who do not like to have their ethnicity (only their religion) seen as being separate from the ethnicity of those they live among, and others who insist that also their ethnicity is different. So in practice one just has to respect the wish of the particular individual.

Also, “Jews for Jesus“, as I understand them, is not a slogan, but a religious orientation, although I have perhaps confused them with adherents of Messianic Judaism (see e.g. http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2006-6.pdf). Within or without Judaism, it depends on how you look at it whether it “strips the integrity from Judaism“: Luther created an orientation that “stripped the integrity“ of Catholicism but not of Christianity, and Lutherans rightly see themselves as the successors of early Christians, the same as Catholics do.

I do not see in what sense and by whom is Messianic Judaism “a contrived and therefore implausible message ... foisted on a people with sufficient ‘good faith’ who do not need ‘saving’“. Also, “atheistic Christian” is a contradictio in se, since belief in God is part of the definition of Christianity, whereas I did not think - but there you are a better specialist - that rejection of Yeshua as the Messiah was part of the definition of Judaism.

Dear Relda,

Thank you for your remarks about Jews for Jesus.

‘Jews for Jesus’ usually target Jews who know little about Judaism. Jews who have come from Russia and know little about their tradition except for suffering prejudice from it are typical targets.

The same might be said about Lustiger. He came from non-observant parents and was a child in a society where Jews had to fear for their lives. He might have done something else with his life instead of becoming a cardinal and writing a book extending the nasty idea of a Chosen People to Christianity. If he had known anything much about his tradition he might have continued it.

I was friendly with a Lutheran pastor who was most open to discussion. He had been to St. Olaf’s in the US where there was a rigorous examination of their faith. When I asked him if he discussed any of these ideas with his parishioners he told me he wouldn’t want to disturb their ‘simple faith’. He eventually left the church and never disturbed anybody’s faith. Unfortunately the Lutheran churches like many other religious groups are schizoid and divided into the knowledgeable few and the ‘faithful’ many. Another Lutheran pastor denied the Holocaust and knew nothing of Jew hating statements by Martin Luther.

I have several books from Fortress Press, a Lutheran press in Philadelphia. They have examined the history of Lutheranism. “The Roots of Anti-Semitism” by Heiko Oberman and translated from German deals with the furthering of Jew hatred in the Renaissance and Reformation. Possibly most Lutherans are unaware of that and the great Lutheran intellectual tradition.

Some religions see the worth of doubt. Buddha advocated that all words should be doubted, even his. He recognised that his words were a product of his time, place and society and might not be applicable to other milieus. Maimonides was asked how one could worship an invisible God with no human attributes. He suggested using one’s mind given to us by God to ask questions.

To the best of my knowledge that attitude is rare in Christianity and Islam.

Still all banging on about fantasy. When will they ever learn? Answer? Never.

Think of all the time and energy these people, including myself, have wasted arguing about something that doesn't exist.

Could have been used doing something productive couldn't it? Like dressing up as Santa ready for Xmas. Another fantasy but real for those that matter. Children. Just as religion was meant. To comfort children.

Dear Relda,

‘True religion’ to me refers to the religion that you would like to see.

I don’t make a hard differentiation between secular ideology and religion. Ideology has a shorter shelf time than religion. Religions and ideologies are both syncretic.

Joachim of Fiore (c.1145-c.1202) was a Calabrian monk who saw a three stage history, the period of the father extending from creation to the birth of Jesus with the Jewish Bible as the related book, the period of the son extending from the birth of Jesus to 1260 with the New Testament as the related book and the period of the Holy Spirit extending from 1260 onward with a testament yet to be written. Later theorists saw a primordial Eden followed by the struggle of contending faiths and culminating in the millennium with the triumph of the ‘true’ faith.

Three-stage history took many forms. Orthodox Christianity’s view of Moscow as the third Rome is a descendent as is the Nazi Third Reich. Mazzini saw the Risorgimento as the third Rome. Marx saw a three-stage history with mankind living in primitive communism at first. With the advent of private property humanity entered the period of class struggle. The final stage will come when humanity eliminates private property and lives in advanced communism.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joachim and Karl Marx were all system makers envisioning grand patterns. Gaia is also a system. System making tries to give meaning to a meaningless world. Stuart Kauffman and Charles Darwin are not system makers. They proposed processes that can be tested by experiment and observation. Darwin proposed natural selection. Stuart Kauffman proposed self organisation of matter. I accept natural selection but have not examined Kauffman enough to make up my mind.

Dear George,

Christianity stopped being a Jewish sect about 1900 years ago. The religions are distinct and contradictory. In Judaism no humans are divine, God is indivisible and the messiah ushers in a messianic age. Therefore Jesus is merely another item on the long list of false messiahs, and members of Jews for Jesus are not Jews but Christians.

George,
I only question the "hybrid religion" in the moses.creighton article. ‘Christ’ as the messiah is certainly powerfully symbolic, and this symbol represents, on a certain level, an ‘out’ in which a Jew can vent their frustration from the preceding “unquestioning stance of their parents to all things Jewish” – precariously, it is the ‘sword which divides’.

The “existential vacuum.” existing in many Jewish lives, as cited, where the ritual observance of tradition leaves many feeling of empty, with little understanding of its relevance for modern Jews in a contemporary world, is certainly not unique – traditional mainline Christian Churches have exactly the same expressed dissatisfaction from not only its youth but also the older, and much more wearied traveler.

The problem I find, and as david f points out is, “Jews for Jesus’ usually target Jews who know little about Judaism” (43% of the Israeli’s describethemsleves as non-religious – i.e. secular). What is filling this vacuum may appear as superficially benign – a second glance, however, reveals the danger of an old myth revisited. If ‘Jews for Jesus’ is genuinely a “phenomenon that has its roots in the growth of the rights of the individual to determine what is truth and falsehood”, then it is not to be feared. But when David Brickner , the Executive Director of ‘Jews for Jesus’, spouts this, ‘…But what we see in Israel, the conflict that is spilled out throughout the Middle East, really which is all about Jerusalem, is an ongoing reflection of the fact that there is judgment. There is judgment that is going on in the land… When Jesus was standing in that temple, He spoke that that judgment was coming, that there’s a reality to the judgment of unbelief. He said, “I long to gather you, but... what? You were unwilling…”’ – a Jewish camouflage, here, appears to wear a little thin. If we about defining a truly “hybrid” religion, then ‘Jews for Jesus’ will fail in this regard. This ‘movement’ is exclusively and basically ‘Christian’ and therefore should also be perfectly acceptable, by definition, to any Christian.