Judaism is NOT What You Think

[Music] [Music] Many people today equate modern Judaism with Biblical Judaism. What they often don't know, however, is that Judaism underwent a mass of reformation after the time of Christ. In fact, Judaism wasn't even monolithic at the time of Christ.

There were various factions, which we see in the Gospels, like the Pharisees and the Sadducees, as well as others like the Essenes. The Jews that followed Christ, along with the Gentiles who were also grafted in, were known as Christians, meaning "little Christs. " Initially, Christianity was considered just another Jewish sect before it became clear that these were separate religions.

Practically all of the Jewish groups at the time required sacrifice in the temple. After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, as predicted by Jesus in the Gospels, the Jews could no longer make these sacrifices. The Jews who rejected Jesus were forced to confront this matter, and the factions quarreled amongst themselves.

Eventually, what emerged was effectively a reformed version of the Pharisee party known as Rabbinic Judaism. The Rabbinic Jews developed new doctrines centered around the Old Testament and a collection of rabbinic writings known as the Talmud. Today, there are various Jewish sects, as with Christianity and Islam, but in an effort to address the most pure and ancient form of Judaism that exists, I will focus on Rabbinic Judaism, which was established about 1,500 years ago.

After all, the other branches of Judaism, historically speaking, stem from this one. Speaking of little-known information about Judaism, let's talk about the Talmud. This document was completed around 500 or 550 AD, which, just as a reminder, is over 100 years after the New Testament was canonized.

It is essentially the Jewish response to Christianity. More broadly, the Talmud is considered the oral law of Rabbinic Judaism and is actually given greater weight than the Old Testament. This is a very important piece of information for many modern American Christians to know about Judaism.

Interestingly, the Talmud doesn't actually reject the miracles of Jesus; rather, it claims he performed them through magic or sorcery. It quite explicitly claims that Jesus intentionally led some of the Jews astray by performing magic through idolatry. This is consistent with what the Pharisees claimed in Matthew 9:34 when they said that Jesus "casts out demons by the ruler of the demons" and in Matthew 12:24 when they claimed Jesus "does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of demons.

" Between the time of Jesus's crucifixion and the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, there were a number of miraculous omens that occurred, which the Talmud reports. The eternal fire in the altar refused to remain lit, and the bronze gates to the temple opened on their own. Josephus, a Jewish historian at the time, also adds his own observations.

He claimed there was a bright light in the altar at 3:00 AM, also known as the witching hour, for those who don't know, a cow brought for sacrifice gave birth to a lamb, and apparitions of chariots and armies flew through the sky above the land of Israel. These omens ceased after the destruction of the temple. The contents of the Talmud are quite telling about how the Jews felt about Jesus, his mother, and those who followed him.

The text makes extremely blasphemous claims about Jesus, so listener discretion is advised. The Talmud states that Jesus is burning in a pile of excrement in hell, that all Christians will join him, and that his mother is a whore. It claims Jesus was a bastard child and that he was constantly giving into sexual sins, had orgies, sex cults, etc.

It boasts that the Jews were right to crucify Jesus because, in their view, he deserved it. But that's not all. According to the Talmud, Gentiles, i.

e. , non-Jews, are like animals, should be killed, etc. We are all lesser beings than the superior Jewish master race.

You see, they even have a special term for us: non-Jews are called "Goyim. " This clearly demonstrates that Judaism is an ethnoreligion that looks down upon everyone who is not Jewish. I find it very ironic that we are lectured by historians that it's bad to look upon someone because of their race or religion, and yet these same historians often conveniently overlook the dogmatic, actually bigoted views of Judaism.

If anyone thinks I'm sensationalizing any of this, feel free to review my sources in the description or see the book "Jesus and the Talmud" by Peter Schaefer. It's also important to remember, while discussing these matters, that this text is considered holy to Jews. Now, perhaps this is my Christian bias coming out, but the Talmud almost sounds like demonic propaganda to me.

Perhaps it was the angel of light that appeared in their altar at the witching hour that influenced them. Speculation aside, all of these details are very important, and I wish more modern American Christians would know about them, especially before supporting all of Israel's military escapades. So, the next time someone like Ben Shapiro appeals to Judaic-Christian religion, remember what their holy text says about Christ and his followers.

Hopefully we can see by now that "Judeo-Christian" is a total misnomer. Moving on, let's talk about the continuity between the Second Temple Jewish worship and the early Christian Church. In fact, there is actually no break from the Old Testament to the New.

Orthodoxy is the continuation and fulfillment of what God was doing with Israel in the Old Testament. When properly understood, we see that the Church is Israel. St.

Paul calls the Church "the Israel of God. " Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are our fathers in the faith because we have been grafted in, as St. Paul explains in Romans.

If this sounds foreign or strange, just consider all that we inherit from the Second Temple Jewish period. The early Christians worshiped in the. .

. Synagogue. They only stopped when they were kicked out, but afterward they maintained most of what they already had.

Both Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jews use incense and worship; we both read Psalms in our services. Orthodox Christian chanting is very similar to what one would hear in an Orthodox Jewish synagogue today. Rather than bringing out the Torah, we process with the Gospel book.

Rather than sacrificing an animal, Christ is the Eternal Sacrifice in the Eucharist—a sacrifice of praise, as we say in the Liturgy. The way we build our churches finds its origins in Second Temple Judaism. The book of Hebrews makes no sense without the context of Jewish worship in Christian worship.

Our liturgy has distinct parallels to the visions of heavenly worship revealed to Moses, Ezekiel, Isaiah, and John, and therefore cannot be done away with without doing irreparable damage to our faith. Our priests' vestments even have many parallels to the Priestly vestments of the Old Testament. We also have an unbroken Apostolic succession back to the time of the apostles, who were ordained by Christ, who Himself is of the order of Melchizedek.

It was prophesied in Psalm 110:4 in the Masoretic text that the Christ will be of the order of Melchizedek and will rule at the right hand of the Lord. Where does Jesus go when He ascends to the right hand of the Father, as we recite in the Creed? Therefore, Jesus Himself is the connection to the priesthood of Israel, the Great High Priest, as St.

Paul calls Him in Hebrews. Compare this to rabbinic Judaism, which lacks a temple and therefore lacks a sacrifice. There is also no legitimate claim to the Old Testament priesthood, as the lineage has been broken.

As a sidebar, everything I've mentioned against Jewish worship can also be applied to Protestant Christians, as they have little to no continuity with the worship of those at the time of Christ. If one wants to learn more about the continuity in early Christian worship with the Second Temple Jewish period, I would highly recommend the book "Orthodox Worship" by Benjamin Williams and Harold Anel or see the video I have linked in my sources titled "Christian Worship in the Old Testament. " Now, many Christians today believe that the modern-day nation-state of Israel is equal to and synonymous with the entity called Israel in the Old Testament.

However, Orthodox Christians believe this to simply be a word-concept fallacy built upon Protestant theology that hasn't existed for more than 100 years. This perhaps warrants its own discussion at a future point, but I will briefly address this here, as I believe it is relevant. After all, one's theological position on this has direct pragmatic geopolitical ramifications.

This is why many evangelicals are Zionists, after all. But simply, Israel refers to those who are faithful to God. All throughout the Old Testament, the Jews are struggling to be faithful to God.

They do well for a while, then they fall away and turn to their idols. Then they get back up again. Rinse and repeat.

And I'm not picking on the Jews here; this is not exclusive to them; this is an archetypal problem we all suffer from, too. Okay, nonetheless, there are always individuals throughout these times in the Old Testament that remain faithful to God. These are the true Israel.

Now, fast forward to the time of Christ. In John 14:6, He boldly states, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

" Either what Jesus says is true, or it is not. If what He says is false, then He is a liar and therefore not Lord. See the problem?

God does not make a dual covenant; either people accept the Messiah, or they don't. This is a watershed moment. Jesus tries His best to save the Jews, His people.

His entire earthly ministry was to the Jews. It was only when they rejected Him and finally crucified Him that the Jews sealed their fate and showed their true colors. They rejected Jesus's call to repentance and rather chose to kill Him, their own Messiah.

Recall what the Jews wrote about Jesus in the Talmud. Recall how the Jews ignored the warnings, had their temple destroyed, and priesthood removed. They have no claim to the authentic religion of the Old Testament that was fulfilled in Christ and in the Orthodox Church, which the Talmudic Jews de facto rejected.

Now, I'm not saying all Jews are bad or that they can't repent—for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. After all, the earliest Christians, ethnically speaking, were Jews; so was Jesus Himself. But Jesus also had some choice words for the Pharisees of His time.

He called them a brood of vipers; He drove them from His temple with a whip, even calling them blasphemers and saying that they have become a synagogue of Satan in the Book of Revelation. He calls them that twice. As Father Stephen DeYoung once famously said, Jesus was acting very un-Christlike.

The point is this: those who are faithful to God belong to God. Modern-day Jews reject Jesus, the Messiah; therefore, they are the spirit of Antichrist, as St. John says in his first epistle 2:22: "Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?

He is Antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. " St. Paul calls the Church the Israel of God in Galatians 6:16; therefore, we understand that the Church is Israel.

This is the only coherent way to understand the connection between the Old Testament and the New. Obviously, this could be expanded upon, but I cannot do this topic justice on my own. If anyone would like me to bring on a priest to discuss this further, feel free to let me know.

The comments for now. I've included a link to an article on this in my sources. Now, let's take a look at some of the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament.

There are many prophecies alluding to the coming of the Messiah, also known as the Christ, which simply means "anointed one. " The Psalms contain several Messianic prophecies, as well as prophecies about the Virgin Mary. Psalm 16:10 prophesies that the Messiah would resurrect from the dead: "For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption.

" Recall Jesus's resurrection, as well as his raising of Lazarus prior to his crucifixion. Psalm 118:22-24 states that the Messiah will be rejected by his people: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the Chief Cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.

This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. " According to Jeremiah 31:31, the Messiah will make a New Covenant: "Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. " Micah 5:2 prophesies that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem: "But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of you shall come forth to me the One to be Ruler in Israel, whose goings forth are from old, from everlasting.

" Malachi 3:1 states that a messenger would precede the coming of the Messiah: "Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his Temple, even the messenger of the Covenant in whom you delight. Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. " This is fulfilled in the Annunciation when the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary that she will bear the Messiah.

Zechariah contains multiple prophecies about the Messiah. Zechariah 9:9 prophesies that the Messiah will come riding on a donkey: "Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem!

Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey. " This was fulfilled on Palm Sunday at the triumphal entry of Jesus, just before his crucifixion. Zechariah 11:12 says that the Messiah will be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver: "Then I said to them, 'If it seems good to you, give me my wages; but if not, keep them.

' And they weighed out my wages, thirty pieces of silver. " Judas, the one who notoriously betrayed Jesus, was paid 30 pieces of silver. The book of Isaiah contains many Messianic prophecies.

Isaiah 7:14 claims that the Messiah would be born of a virgin: "Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: Behold, the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. " Isaiah 40:3 prophesies that there will be a forerunner to the Messiah: "The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. '" The voice of the one crying in the wilderness was none other than John the Baptist, who lived in the wilderness and, according to tradition, was raised by angels.

Isaiah 53:3 says that the Messiah will experience suffering and will be rejected by his own people: "He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not. " Two verses later, it specifically details the crucifixion of the Messiah on behalf of mankind: "But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. " This entire chapter is one long Messianic prophecy, but I'm only selecting a few verses for the sake of time.

Verse 12 states that the Messiah will be crucified with criminals: "Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors. " Again, Jesus was crucified between two thieves. Daniel is another book known for Messianic prophecies.

Daniel 7:13-14 states that the Messiah will be called "the Son of Man": "I was watching in the night visions, and behold, one like the Son of Man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He came to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near before him. Then to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.

His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom the one which shall not be destroyed. " Jesus often refers to himself throughout the Gospels as the Son of Man. Daniel 9:26-27 is also very explicit about the manner in which the Messiah will be killed, as well as the timing: "After the sixty-two weeks, the Anointed One (a.

k. a. Christ) shall be put to death; yet there shall be no upright judgment for him; and he shall destroy the city and the sanctuary with the prince who is coming, and they shall be cut off with a flood.

And to the end of the war which will be cut short, he shall appoint the city to desolations. Then he shall confirm a covenant with many for one week, and in the middle of the week my sacrifice and drink offering will be taken away, and there shall be in the temple the abomination of desolations; and to the end of the time an end to the desolation shall be appointed. " This prophesies that the Messiah would be killed before the destruction.

Of the temple in 70 AD, among other historic events, even all the way back in Deuteronomy, there were Messianic prophecies. Deuteronomy 18:15-19 says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear, according to all you desired of the Lord your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, nor let me see this great fire anymore, lest I die.

’” And the Lord said to me, “What they have spoken is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brethren, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it shall be that whoever will not hear my words which he speaks in my name, I will require it of him.

” Despite the quantity of passages I've quoted here, this is actually not an exhaustive list of these prophecies, nor are my explanations of them very thorough. Simply take a look at all the prophecies in the Old Testament that came true in Jesus. I included a list of 47 of them, along with the corresponding New Testament passages which demonstrate their fulfillment.

In my sources, even Josephus, the Jewish historian, said that Jesus “was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. ” I think the average person can look at this and understand that this is all too elaborate to be fabricated, especially when one realizes these texts are written by different authors at wildly different locations and points in time, and all of them point to Jesus as the Messiah. It's one of the strongest cases for Christianity.

But that's not all. Let's take a look at the various theophanies in the Old Testament. There are many instances throughout the Old Testament where God reveals Himself to mankind; these are called theophanies.

A few examples where He reveals Himself include Him walking in the Garden of Eden, the three angels which appeared to Abraham in Genesis (often referred to as the hospitality of Abraham), Moses in the burning bush, the angel of the Lord going to war in 2 Kings 19:35, and the figure standing in the fiery furnace in Daniel. This points to another person of the Godhead and reveals that He is not simply a Unitarian, transcendent deity; rather, He also has the ability to manifest Himself imminently within creation. From the Christian perspective, we would argue that this is the second person of the Godhead, a second hypostasis, as the Fathers would put it.

This second person in the Godhead, a second hypostasis, as the Fathers would put it, is the pre-incarnate Christ. This is made abundantly clear in the opening of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. ” What St.

John is doing here is extending Genesis chapter 1 by interpreting it; he is saying that Jesus, who is the Word of God, was present and took part in the creative act in Genesis 1. This is why in Orthodox iconography, Jesus is present in the Garden of Eden, because, properly understood, this is what the Book of Genesis itself is saying. It very clearly lays the groundwork for the Trinity from the first three verses: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The earth was without form and void; the darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. ” Verse one identifies the Father; verse two identifies the Holy Spirit “hovering over the face of the waters”; verse three identifies the Word of God, Christ, as God spoke creation into existence.

St. John is expanding this idea and applying it to Jesus, identifying Him as God, Christ, and Creator all at once. But it's not simply St.

John making this claim. Jesus Himself provocatively reveals Himself as the Messiah in various ways throughout all four of the Gospel accounts. He even reveals Himself directly as Yahweh.

Just to take one quick example, recall what I shared from my monastic friend on Mount Athos: The Tetragrammaton, Yahweh, is the Hebrew name for God in the Old Testament. What doesn't come across in English translation, however, is that each of those letters stand for something. When fully spelled out, Yahweh means “behold the hand, behold the nail.

” As far as we know from reading the Gospels, it's not immediately apparent to the disciples exactly who Jesus is. When Jesus commands Thomas to put his hand in his side, what he is doing is directly connecting himself to the personal name of God in the Old Testament, Yahweh. Before I wrap up here, the idea of there being multiple persons in the Godhead is not simply something that Christians made up later; rather, it was a pre-existing idea within second temple Jewish thought.

These are what the Old Testament theophanies point to; the Christians got it from the Scriptures. The Trinity was revealed in its fullness at the baptism of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. I would highly recommend Father Steven D.

Young's book, *Religion of the Apostles*, for more on this history. Later on, the Jews would scrub this belief from their religious paradigm entirely in their post-Christian Reformation. Reaction was to simplify God into one singular transcendent being.

What do they do with all these theophanies in the Old Testament? One might ask. Well, this is for the scholars and rabbis to debate.

Of course, as I am coming to a close here, I want to take a moment to highlight the literary genius and beauty portrayed in the biblical narrative. Jesus inverts the curse of the Fall, whereas Eve eats the forbidden fruit from a tree and receives death, causing the fall of mankind. This is contrasted by Jesus, who is hung on a tree, whose body and blood we must consume in order to receive life, and therefore he thus redeems mankind.

Jesus was buried in a tomb in a garden and destroyed death; again, the parallels to Eden are clear. Mary mistook the risen Lord as a gardener, which is a reference to the cherubim who guard Eden. The point is this: Christ inverts the curse and restores humanity to its former glory.

All of this is intentional, and it could not be more clear that he is the Messiah. But the redemption doesn't end there. Pentecost is the inversion of the Tower of Babel.

When man tried to build his way to God, God came down and dispersed mankind and confused their language. By contrast, at Pentecost, God comes down and unifies humanity both linguistically and with the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, let's look back on what has become of Judaism.

What does "Messiah" even mean to modern Jews? Many don't even believe it refers to a literal person at this point. The goal of Judaism is also very limited and narrow; it is primarily an ethnic religion whose aim it is to acquire land for the Jews, where they can work out their salvation, and who knows what happens with everyone else?

Compare this to Christianity, where all are free to accept Christ. Christianity subverts the debased human tendency to exclude others for superficial reasons. The Christian faith cannot be the ethnic religion that Judaism inevitably has become because, as St.

Paul says, “there is neither Jew nor Greek; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. ” All are welcome to be grafted into the Church; that may come at the cost of inconvenience or being outcast by family or the natural struggle in life that is repentance. But in Christianity, all are welcome.

This is why it is such a shame what Judaism has become. It has neutered the faith of Abraham, blasphemed their Messiah, and produced a weak, incoherent conception of God. Clearly, from these prophecies and theophanies, anyone with eyes to see can witness that the scope of Christianity is cosmic, not merely geopolitical.

We don't need to look very far to realize that those masquerading as the Jews of the Old Testament today are simply not who they claim to be. The Talmud clearly displays their outright contempt and hatred of Jesus, his mother, and his followers. The fact that they crucified their Messiah, ignored the omens that followed, had their temple destroyed, priesthood removed, and still doubled down and went their own way just goes to show how blind they became.

They create elaborate alternative explanations for everything in the Old Testament that seems to point to Jesus and perform Olympic-worthy exegetical backflips to simply deny the obvious—that they were wrong. With all this context in mind, I feel confident in saying that Rabbinic Judaism is a demonic religion. The Jews clearly do not worship the same God as the Christians because the Christians worship a Trinitarian God, and the Jews worship a Unitarian God, just like the Muslims.

Some may wonder why I spent so much more time on Judaism than Islam. The reason for this is because Rabbinic Judaism laid the groundwork for Islam. There is no use in picking sides or choosing which religion is worse because the son of Satan is still Satan at the end of the day.

The reason I am being this stern is because I do not tolerate blasphemy of my God. The hubris of the Judaic religion has led them on a path to reject their own Messiah, and it is truly sad. I put all this together not to mock Judaism, but rather to inform people on what Rabbinic Judaism really is, because many Christians and perhaps even some Jews may not know these things.

I pray that Jews today open their hearts and that many of them come to repentance. God does not have an ethnic preference; he loves mankind and desires all to be saved, especially the Jews to whom he came first. The Lord laments what has become of the people he once chose, but he will not force anyone's will; we can only point them to Christ and pray.