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Christianity, for those unaware of its roots, is a franchise extension of Judaism; as is Islam by the way. The same cast of characters in many places turn up at the heart of these stories. Yes, Christianity is a franchise extension of Judaism. And they are stories, folks, because I spent many years studying ancient history and the actual evidence for much of their claims is slight to none. Collective narratives, however, can be mighty powerful things. Judaism predates Christianity by some 1500 years, so that story was very well established within its geographical region. It makes logical sense when you are inventing something new, like Christianity, to establish credibility by tacking it onto a well known backstory like the Jewish faith.
Judaism & Its Role In The Inventions Of Christianity & Islam
There have been various attempts at explaining the motivation of those responsible for inventing Christianity and Islam. One basic explanation, which rings true for me, is that if you are around a people who have this strong belief at their cultural core regarding foundational stories and your people don’t have this, the lack would be experienced acutely, especially by the state leaders or tribal elite. The onus would be on them or their priestly cast to come up with their own foundational narratives to fill that hole. Creating a story with familiar characters out of the Jewish story would be a segue way for your own people to buy into this narrative on this basis. Shared prophets like Abraham, Moses, Noah, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Joseph, David and Solomon are all included in the 3 monotheistic religions. Christianity is a franchise extension of Judaism.
Religions Are Made By Human Beings
My understanding of these vast and far reaching cultural phenomena’s is that they are all made by human beings. Many believers would interject here to say but they are inspired by God. The reticence of this invisible supernatural entity to reveal itself, by any objectively scientifically measure, makes this a moot point. It is human beings who have written down these stories, preached them, believed them and in many cases died for them. Do not underestimate the power of stories, whether they be fictions in the actual historiographical sense.
Humanity’s Recent Affair With Scientific Truth
They say, today, that we live in a post-truth world. The President of the United States is a compulsive liar who shares untruths, as often as he breathes. Personally, I think it is a dangerous world, when you cannot trust what your leaders say. The deeper reality is, however, that all of our religions, from east to west, are based on stories which are largely fictions in the historical and literal senses. Humanity has a fairly recent appetite for actual truths in the measurable scientific understanding of factual truths. Our relationship with science has been a difficult one at times and seems to be under attack at this moment in time. Coming to terms with big picture stuff like climate science is no easy task. Temporally, we do not have the perspective, as we live relatively short life spans.
Antisemitism? Zionism? Judaism?
I am writing this piece because the concepts of Jewishness, antisemitism and Zionism are all in the news. I thought that it might be constructive to drill down a bit deeper into what these things actually are. Plus, I am writing this around Christmas and people’s thoughts turn to these religious narratives once more. Christianity is a franchise extension of Judaism. We all make up stories by which to live by. We may borrow aspects of older stories embedded in our cultural identities. Our moral codes are often influenced by upbringings and familial religious proscriptions. Religions in the past, especially in ancient and medieval times, were not really voluntary associations. One of the main reasons why so many people were active members of these faiths is that it was required. Every village had a vestry committee and this was responsible for every person, every record of them and ensuring they attended services. You would be shunned and driven out of the community if you did not comply with all religious requirements. Christianity and these other world religions did not become popular, merely, because they were appreciated, rather, they were mandated by those in power for universal worship by the entirety of subject populations. Authoritarianism and state religions go hand in hand, if you do some research into their histories this will be revealed. We see religions, in the west today, as oftentimes quaint reminders of our past. What we miss, however, is the sting that was in the tail of the reality back then – these were not quaint ritualistic practises accompanied by moving music, as we tend to see them at Christmas time through the rear view mirror of millennia ago. Don’t be fooled by the incense and the stained glass windows. We can never really know what the past was like, no matter how much we think we might know about it.
It’s All About Power
Since time began, human beings who seek power over others have dressed up their power and land grabs in divine clothing. They have sought to justify their greed in some type of divinity. This is how all the state religions have come into being. Of course, this has been masked with fictions about miracles and other outlandish tales. All religions are marked by these supernatural occurrences, which never happen again and are never scientifically proven. The majority of us recognise these fairy tale qualities and many of us are content to file this stuff away in the quaint but not true file. This grey area file is pretty large, as it has to contain a lot of religious balderdash. Even today, there are a small number of human beings going around committing crimes against humanity in the name of their concept of religion or belief in some supernatural entity. This is more BS or a smokescreen for the true nature of their motivation. It is always about power or land. ISIS may cloak their violent activities in Islamic garb but it is really about power and land. Far Right Christian terrorists may say stuff about their idea of God but in truth their actions are about hurting others in defiance of their perceived powerlessness. Zionist Israelis are killing Palestinians over land and power. Everywhere it is human beings hurting and killing other human beings, invariably over land and power issues. It may involve stealing the land of those that were there before, as colonialism did in the new world. Indigenous peoples have been stripped of their homes, lands, enslaved and murdered in the process. This is the true reading of events, the talk about God is a deflection and distraction – it is missing the point.
“Another anti-Jewish story surrounded the origins of the Black Death in 1349. This bubonic plague devastated Europe in the fourteenth century, killing an estimated 25-50 million people. As medical knowledge in the medieval period was extremely limited, people offered religious explanations for the catastrophe . The most popular explanations provided were of God punishing those who had sinned, or the Devil working to destroy Christianity.
One popular anti-Jewish story suggested Jews had been recruited by the Devil to carry out this work. According to this slander , Jews had enthusiastically agreed, poisoning water wells to infect Christians with the disease. Despite the fact that Jews were also dying from the plague, people widely believed the story.
Thousands of Jews were massacred as a result, and whole communities were wiped out across Europe.”
Antisemitism, real antisemitism, was a European phenomenon. Again, however, in reality, it was scapegoating Jewish people and communities to steal their land, wealth and power. It happened again and again in pogroms across east to west in violent terrible actions by ‘so-called’ Christians and by Muslims on occasions too. Indeed, the Crusaders on their way to the Middle East in the 11C and 12C began their killing fest with Jews in Europe. Antisemitism, perhaps, reached its apogee with Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust during and just prior to WW2. The Zionist state of Israel was finally formed in 1948 on the back of huge global guilt and shame at the treatment of European Jews. Recognition of Israel and the acknowledgement of antisemitism have gone hand in hand ever since, really.
“Although the United States supported the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which favored the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had assured the Arabs in 1945 that the United States would not intervene without consulting both the Jews and the Arabs in that region. The British, who held a colonial mandate for Palestine until May 1948, opposed both the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in Palestine as well as unlimited immigration of Jewish refugees to the region. Great Britain wanted to preserve good relations with the Arabs to protect its vital political and economic interests in Palestine.”
Many commentators have since said that Palestinians have had to bear the brunt of Holocaust shame, despite not being the instigators of this despicable genocide. The world powers saw fit, in the end, to sacrifice Palestinians on the altar of guilt to officially recognise the state of Israel.
Statelessness Is A Death Sentence
Prof. Timothy Snyder, a Holocaust and Eastern European history expert, has repeatedly made mention of the fact that statelessness was the crucial trigger for genocide in the Holocaust. Because without the rights of citizenship, human beings can be tossed upon the garbage heap by extremist state powers. Jews were stripped of their citizenship and state rights by the Nazis and their proxies in Eastern Europe, where the bulk of the 6 million Jews were murdered. Palestinians in and around Israel are suffering the same fate, as we speak. The Far Right regime of Benjamin Netanyahu has already been responsible for the destruction of an entire city, Gaza, and the murder of more than 70, 000 men, women and children. The world has looked on, largely with indifference upon the fate of Palestinians for years. This has occurred in large part because Zionists have bought political influence in the United States and in other western states. Indeed, pro-Israel support in the media and in Congress has been purchased with billions of dollars over decades to ensure the world sees things their way.
“ ‘Very Bad Sign for Democracy’: AIPAC Has Spent Over $100 Million on 2024 Elections. AIPAC’s billionaire-funded super PAC has helped defeat two of the most vocal opponents of Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.”
Aug 28, 2024 – (https://www.commondreams.org/news/aipac-100-million)
“On a recent livestream, Grayzone Editor-in-Chief Max Blumenthal suggested the United States has been captured not only by foreign interests, but by one in particular. “I used to think Zionist Occupied Government was an antisemitic term,” Blumenthal opined. “Now I’m forced to see it as a pretty accurate description of the reality we live in as one nation under ZOG.” Blumenthal’s comments came amid the very public role the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), one of the largest and most influential pro-Israel lobby groups, played in defeating progressive (and pro-Palestine) Democratic Reps. Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.”
90% of the legacy media is controlled by just 5 companies in America. The consolidation of ownership controlling multiple media platforms is undemocratic and heavily oligarchic. The views, news and opinions that Americans receive are filtered through big money approvals. The bullshit about Tik Tok being a national security threat because of its Chinese parentage has seen it to fall to a big tech oligarch in the Oracle octogenarian. The powers that be, pro-Israel as they are, were worried that young Americans were able to access unfettered media reports via Tik Tok, especially about the genocide being committed in Gaza. America is not the land of the free press, that is a bad joke.
Antisemitism, to return to a theme, is not about holding an opinion that is contrary to the Zionist Israeli state. Right wing politicians around the globe, however, are keen to make this so. It has become a rallying attack for Far Right agenda setters. In Australia, the misused condemnation of ‘antisemitism’ is being used by right wing politicians to wedge their opponents. It has become the ‘witch’ cry of yesteryear. Antisemitism was, in the recent past, a means of excluding individuals of that religion from the halls of power and influence. Jews were denied access to clubs, where the powerful socialised. Few Jews, in the past, were appointed to the top jobs. Now, cries of antisemitism invoke a witch hunt and infer links to Islamic terrorists. Those protesting in the streets at the mass murder committed in Gaza are not overly concerned at the religious faith of those dropping the bombs. Most of them just want it to stop.
It’s Always About Power
Christianity is a franchise extension of Judaism. This fact from the origin story of Christianity is oft overlooked by the faithful. The shared roots in the fiction that is religion in the monotheistic realm should be pause for thought. My advice would be to look beyond the spectre of God, when examining the doings of men. And it is men doing the killing, in the main. Men are eternally seeking power over other men, it seems apparent from the available evidence before us. Restless, power hungry men, like Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu, Trump and their ilk. Men willing to sacrifice the lives of millions around them to satisfy their greed for more, land, more wealth and more power.
It is never about God, it is always about power.
“Authoritarians and their regimes like to spell shit out for their subjects. Some of you older folk may remember that the USSR had a news organisation/newspaper called Pravda. This was the official platform of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pravda meant truth and many of us in the west used to roll our eyes at what passed for truth and facts over there. Now, we have Truth Social and Donald Trump in America. The parallels are pretty frightening in this post-truth world. The thing is that people are getting dumber and that naming something like this is enough for the unquestioning among us. Irony is a rare commodity in the United States in the 21C, perhaps more so than these rare earths the Donald goes on about so often. Propaganda folks! “
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of What Price Life?; America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump; and other titles. NOW AVAILABLE AT APPLE BOOKS & GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS. Google Play Books AUDIOBOOK
©MidasWord
