A Blot On The Jewish People

The Times Of Israel ^ | Aug. 19, 2014 | Dov Ivry

[idov]

There are lots of famous Jewish atheists from Sigmund Freud to Ayn Rand to Isaac Asimov to Woody Allen.

How do you think the Jewish community would have reacted if what follows had happened?

A Jewish couple, atheists, artists, puts on an exhibit in which they critique five major religions with artworks and commentary. At the end of the first day the gallery owner comes up to them and says, you are attacking Islam and that means you favor the Jews in "Palestine." This is "racism."

They try to explain that they are critiquing five major religions equally, did not single out Islam, did not mention the Palestinian issue, and therefore took no position on it.

Not good enough. The gallery owner continues his tirade and blames the Jews in "Palestine" for all the woes of the Arabs. The woman asks, "What is your reaction when Arabs blow up a bus full of Jewish children?" His response, "So what?"

[idov]

The only thing I tell you is that the name by which this god is known in Hebrew and always has been is Yeshu. This a name of foreign origin and is not related to any Hebrew name. It is also the name by which the god is known by in India. The origin is plainly Hindi.

The Greek name came in as Iesous. That is a direct transliteration of Yeshu. They added an “s” to every name.

The first time we have evidence that the Jews were even aware of the myth was circa 120 when the book arrived in Greek and Meir, the sage, read it because it was supposed to have been set in Israel. He condemned the book.

What happened outside in the empire I have no idea. But the only time there were known Jewish Christians in Israel was in the period between 120 and 135. In the Bar-Kokhbah War against Rome in which 600,000 people died on both sides, the only group that refused to muster were the Christians. As a result Bar-Kokhba accusing them of cowardice and engaging in espionage formally drummed them out of the Jewish people and they have never been allowed back in.

When the persecutions started immediately after the Jews lost the war, the Christian leaders went to Hadrian and proclaimed, “we are not now nor have we ever been members of the Jewish people.” And he let them go.

[redleghunter]

Christos is a nonsense word which if it were made into a noun which come out Rubbie.

I am sure in your research of the NT gospels you noted the authors of the gospels explained christos=mashiach.

[idov]

How the word was applied a few hundred years later would parallel changes in meanings of many words over that period of time.

When the numskulls translated the Torah they confronted the word “anointed” eight times, twice in reference to the patriarchs and six times in reference to the high priest. What they used the first time they just followed suit. The word was then coined then in Greek and what happened later in its development and application is a subject for etymologists.

That translation was regarded by contemporary Jews as a joke book.

[Springfield Reformer]

The nonsense here is your etymological “analysis” of Christos. You know, of course it is derived from the verb chrio, which is simply to smear or annoint. It is used in numerous texts of Scripture having nothing to do with the Messianic title Christos. The act, for example, of Jesus smearing the eyes of the man born blind with mud. Conversion to nounal form simply takes the root and infers a subject to the act of anointing or smearing, oil or some medicinal substance typically implied as part of the process. So not your nonsensical “rubbie,” but rather “[one subjected to] smearing or anointing.” Hence a valid title for Messiah, who is anointed by the Spirit of God. And Christos would be well understood as a direct translation of that title, especially as a noun.

BTW, I am at work now, but if you are open to it, I have a number of lexical resources that I can bring to bear to back up the foregoing assertions. If you are interested, you can look it up for yourself in the Low-Nida lexicon based on semantic domains, which is helpful to overcome the novice error of looking to strict etymology as opposed to analysis of usage in the full range of contemporaneous literature, of which we have much more than we did a century ago. It’s important to stay current with our expanding knowledge in ancient Greek, whether Attic or Koine.

[roamer_1]

[idov:]Christos is a nonsense word which if it were made into a noun which come out Rubbie.

This is technically true - the common/base form of the term is 'to rub' or 'greasy, oily'. That is the point of the title. One is anointed by a pouring or rubbing of oil. One should not confuse the common term with the title.

I am sure in your research of the NT gospels you noted the authors of the gospels explained christos=mashiach.

Moreover, The term 'christos', the Greek form of 'anointed one' was used historically (christos, chrestos, chrest, christ) long before the Hebrew Messiah, in the very same sense - The title having been bestowed upon many titans and gods, to include Apollo (who comes up out of the pit), which case being why I prefer not to use the term - There are many 'christos', but only one Messiah.

Whether my preference or not, the historicity of the title 'christos' leaves idov's statement wanting.

@RLH: thx for the ping... nice to see you : )

[roamer_1]

That translation was regarded by contemporary Jews as a joke book.

You might like to consider that the Protestants and their fellows make little use of the Septuagint - Their Old Testament Scriptures derive from the Masoretic tradition... From the Hebrew.

[redleghunter]

The only thing I tell you is that the name by which this god is known in Hebrew and always has been is Yeshu. This a name of foreign origin and is not related to any Hebrew name. It is also the name by which the god is known by in India. The origin is plainly Hindi.

To draw such conclusions involves using a very imaginative form of theological interpolations. The word or term 'god' or 'God' is very similar in many of the semitic languages. The Philistines and Hebrews and even Egyptians shared many of the same roots. As in the Hebrew scriptures the God of Israel was known by His Name. What we have specifically later is the tetragrammaton of YHWH (Yehovah, Jehovah) or as the observant Orthodox Jewish render Hashem: The Name. It is from the tetragrammaton of YHWH which Yeshua is derived.

On the matter of anointed the two words the Greek 'christos' and the Hebrew 'mashach' there is no difference is usage. Reference 1 Samuel 16 when David is annointed by Samuel a literal pouring or rubbing of oil was involved. The Hebrew scriptures use 'mashach' for this most important event. David became YHWH's annointed king of Israel. Your etymologies, frankly, do not hold up as there were several dialects of Greek in first century AD (CE) however, Koine was used in recording the gospels and epistles. This is because by the time of Jesus' ministry Greek was clearly the lingua franca of that era. The gospels record that at Jesus' crucifixion Jesus' name was inscribed in Hebrew, Greek and Latin (reference John 19).

But the only time there were known Jewish Christians in Israel was in the period between 120 and 135.

Then you throw out a lot of history with the bath water. Frankly this is late 19th cetury revisionist theory which was refuted in the early 20th Century. For example, in the late 19th Century, the historical accounts recorded in the gospel according to Luke, Acts and the epistles of Paul were thought by even some conservative theologians to be 100-300 year accounts by a shadow author. That was the norm in the critical age of the late 19th century. Until a noted archaeologist named Sir William M. Ramsay decided to strike out and investigate.

William Ramsay was known for his careful attention to New Testament events, particularly the Book of Acts and Pauline Epistles. When he first went to Asia Minor, many of the cities mentioned in Acts had no known location and almost nothing was known of their detailed history or politics. The Acts of the Apostles was the only record and Ramsay, skeptical, fully expected his own research to prove the author of Acts hopelessly inaccurate since no man could possibly know the details of Asia Minor more than a hundred years after the event—this is, when Acts was then supposed to have been written. He therefore set out to put the writer of Acts on trial. He devoted his life to unearthing the ancient cities and documents of Asia Minor. After a lifetime of study, however, he concluded: 'Further study . . . showed that the book could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement' (The Bearing of Recent Discovery, p. 85). On page 89 of the same book, Ramsay accounted, 'I set out to look for truth on the borderland where Greece and Asia meet, and found it there [in Acts]. You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian's and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment...'

When Ramsay turned his attention to Paul's letters, most of which the critics dismissed as forgeries, he concluded that all thirteen New Testament letters that claimed to have been written by Paul were authentic.( https://archive.org/details/bearingofrecentd00ramsuoft)

To throw out other historical accounts and somehow hold up a standard of "history did not happen if we don't have the original autographs", then Julius Caesar's writings are fable and myth. If you can't produce the original copy of "The Conquest of Gaul" then according to your reasoning it must never been written or frankly never happened.

I believe you are hedging your historical bets on a few already refuted 19th century sources (see Sir Walter Ramsay's piece above) as a foundation of your belief or lack thereof. Doing so is unwise...as building a house on sand. As it was once said and still true today:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

[redleghunter]

When the numskulls translated the Torah they confronted the word “anointed” eight times, twice in reference to the patriarchs and six times in reference to the high priest. What they used the first time they just followed suit. The word was then coined then in Greek and what happened later in its development and application is a subject for etymologists.

Well there is no difference. David was anointed king of Israel by Samuel and Samuel used a flask of oil and poured it over David. That is how YHWH of the Hebrew scriptures signified His covenant with David as king. So we have no mistranslation of the Greek Jews in the LXX. No misunderstanding of what it MEANT in Jesus' time either. So your point is lost as "they" knew what it meant. And if you really want to do some research on how the Hebrew and Aramaic languages developed from Sinai to the second temple, then study this a bit and let me know where you find 'anointed':

Hebrew Research Center

[redleghunter]

You might like to consider that the Protestants and their fellows make little use of the Septuagint - Their Old Testament Scriptures derive from the Masoretic tradition... From the Hebrew.

Good point I missed earlier. Thanks for bringing that up.

[idov]

Today is a different world and even after the Torah was translated, the rest of the Tanakh as we call it was done by superior translators.

But you have to understand what these guys did. Then as now when someone copies a Torah scroll, one flub can cause the entire Torah to be discarded.

Secondly it goes without saying that any copyist is assumed to be untainted with any kind of moral turpitude and not acting in violation of any Torah law, or he would be summarily dismissed.

These guys were no different from a woman who eats ham sandwiches on Yom Kippur bringing out a kosher cookbook. No one who keeps kosher is going to touch it.

They did this in Egypt and there is a law in the Torah that Jews are not to return to Egypt. Anything they did therefore was automatically proscribed.

There is speculation that the Museum and Court in Alexandria ordered this but if they had, it would have done by professionals. The authorities in Israel did not order it because of the belief that the Torah is written in Hebrew for a Hebrew-speaking people living in one territory. And again if they had ordered it, it would have been done by professionals.

More than that, if the rule was that one flub ruins a Torah, what rules were they following? Anything goes. One horrendous mistake after another.

They even screwed up the first word. It does not say “in the beginning.” There is no suggestion of creation out of nothing. It says “at the beginning of....” and goes on to describe a process. It does not rule out pre-existing universes or other universes.

[roamer_1]

I’m not looking for an argument on religion but I am simply following a 2,000-year-old Jewish tradition regarding the origins of Christianity. Only in Israel and India does Jesus go by a Hindi name, Yeshu, which in Egypt was applied to Krishna.

This is patent nonsense. Yahshua/Yeshua/Y'Shua is the familiar form or contraction of Yehoshua/Joshua (YHWH is our salvation). Yeshua, in Hebrew, literally means 'Salvation'. It means exactly the same thing in Aramiac, and the earliest Aramaic texts (contemporary with the earliest complete Greek, and predating your Talmudic sources) use 'Yeshua' for 'Jesus'. Yeshu/Yaesu/Yashu is simply a further familiar contraction (perhaps corruption) of Yeshua, which is not even evident until hundreds of years after the fact.

Messianic Hebrews use 'Yeshua'.

Aramaic Christians use 'Yeshua'.

[idov]

In the Hebrew language this god was, is, and has only been called Yeshu, the same as he is called in India. The Jews in Israel picked up that up from the Jews in Egypt who knew the myth from there. When the enhanced version of the myth showed in the Greek language they knew exactly who they were referring to.

You are ranging out of the Torah. These guys only translated the Torah. That where they coined “Christos.”

You are trying to tell me about Jewish history? I can tell you the names of the Christian leaders who went to see Hadrian, Quadratus and Aristides.

[Godzilla]

. That where they coined “Christos.”

Well RLH - looks like our friend here is like a scratch record. the tranlators of the torah didn't 'coin' anything - as others here have pointed out/documented the use of the word "Christos" in the context of an annointed person (not rubbed) outside the OT was already well established.

It is further well defined within the context and usage of the NT

In the Hebrew language this god was, is, and has only been called Yeshu, the same as he is called in India.

Again, further evidence of the lack of scholarly and intellectual honesty in trying to apply this myth as truth. This only occurs after 800 AD and is not in the origional Gita.

[redleghunter]

You are trying to tell me about Jewish history? I can tell you the names of the Christian leaders who went to see Hadrian, Quadratus and Aristides.

Considering, by your own standards, since you were not there before Hadrian and do not have the minutes of the meeting with Hadrian in the original autographs, no you truly don't know this specific history. Welcome to your own relativistic model.

What part of the derivation of Yeshua from the tetragrammaton did you miss in mine and other's posts?

The same word 'mashach' used in 1 Samuel 16 is used in Exodus 29 and many other places in the Torah. So what's your point?

[idov]

At that time there were two main language groups in Israel, one spoke Hebrew, the Jews, and one spoke Greek, mainly the non-Jews.

In the Hebrew language this god has only be known as Yeshu, which is a foreign name, transliterated. It has no connection to any Hebrew name. The god has never been called anything but Yeshu. The same is probably true in India.

Aramaic? They spoke that in Syria to the north.

[idov]

What’s your point?

You are trying to me something about Hebrew?

The whole myth came down in Greek. It had nothing to do with Hebrew.

There is not one word in Hebrew about this myth. It’s all in Greek. They got the name “Christos” in Greek from a bunch of numskulls. It went into the Greek world and they made up their tall tales.

[Elsie]

I am what you call a heretic.

From WHICH religion?

[Elsie]

Reformed Egyptian

[idov]

Jewish

[Elsie]

This MUST be some kind of prophecy; for there are 2 wireless computer mice in the first 4 lines!