A recent New York Times article which echoes Ilhan Omar’s recent contention that Jesus “was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin” is generating a fierce push-back from the Jewish community:
The executive director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, Jeremy Burton, tweeted, “Important to point out that no, Jesus did not identify as Palestinian. He was a Judean Jew and for him, the term Palestine was that of the Roman occupier.”
A professor of Jewish history at Yeshiva University, Steven Fine, responded on the Times comments page that “for sure” Jesus “was a youngish Jewish man” who “looked like other Jews of his place and time.”
Another Jewish Times reader responded in the comments section, “I am amazed that the author of this article cannot simply state that Jesus was a Jew. He uses the anachronistic term ‘Palestinian.’ During Jesus’ lifetime the Romans called the province which they controlled ‘Judea.’ Later they renamed it ‘Syria Palestina.’ Referring to Jesus as ‘Palestinian’ is simply misleading in the context of his era.”
The editorial director of the Times reader center, Hanna Ingber, responded to the complaint: “You are of course right that Jesus was Jewish. We never intended to imply that he wasn’t, and we didn’t leave that detail out to make a point, as some readers wondered. The article was focused on what he physically looked like. But again, we do hear your concern.”
A journalist with the Jewish Chronicle in London, Daniel Sugarman, has described the “Jesus was a Palestinian” claim as “idiocy” and “deliberate historical revisionism designed to deny the Jewish connection to the Holy Land.”
An official at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, told The Jewish Journal newspaper that the claim Jesus was a Palestinian is a “grotesque insult.” The Journal observed this claim is being made not only by the Times but by a Muslim-American Democratic congresswoman who supports the movement to boycott, divest from, and impose economic sanctions on Israel — Ilhan Omar.
…Personally, I’m tempted to quip that if the Palestinians want him, they can have him. It’s a little unseemly, or at least somewhat ironic, for Jews to be scrambling to claim credit for the founder of a non-Jewish religion. So far as the story can be discerned, though, he does appear to have started out as a Jew. As time went on, at least as told in the Christian Bible, though, he seems to have been doing more of his own thing. His followers turned it into something definitively different from Judaism.
Of course, Jesus was neither a Palestinian nor a Jew, so this entire article is arguing over two false choices. As the jewish writer of this article admits, on one level he, as a Jew, has no interest in the ethnicity of Christ except if it bolsters Israel’s right to exist, and if insisting Jesus was a Jew helps legitimate the Jews’ right to take the land of Israel from the Palestinian arabs, then so be it. They will continue to give lip service to Jesus being a Jew until the Palestinians are no longer a presence in the disputed territories, and the useful idiot evangelical Christian zionists no longer need to be placated.
But there is an obvious advantage for the Jews to go along with the claim that Jesus was a Palestinian. After all, if Jesus was a Palestinian and not a Jew then their jewish ancestors were entirely justified in rejecting Christ as their messiah and calling for his murder even. So as long as they maintain that Jesus was a Jew, they are going to have to continue falsely believing that Jesus started out as a “good Jew” who “went rogue” and needed to be “corrected” for his transgressions. But as long as Christians continue to believe this “Jesus was a Jew” canard, the whole world will continue to be deceived.
White people seriously need to stop worshiping Jews. It’s a disease. Jews are the chosen people of Satan, it’s so obvious. This insanity of Christians who believe that the only way through God is through Christ but foolishly worship the people who think Christ is a fraud, the jews, is the most illogical conspiracy in the world.
Jesus, of course, was not a jew or even a Judean, nor was he a resident of Judea. Jesus of Nazareth was a Galilean or a resident of Galilee (Matthew 26:69; John 7:41). Again, Jesus was not a jew, he was a Judahite, which is not a jew, and has nothing to do with those Talmudists who call themselves jews today. The word merely sounds similar, and jews have used that deception to claim they are Judahites, which again, they are not. They are Edomites, which are decendants of Jacob’s brother, Esau. A Judahite is simply a descendent of the Tribe of Judah and Judah was one of the twelve sons of Jacob (also named Israel), each of which was the patriarch of their own tribe, hence, the 12 TRIBES *ISRAEL meaning the 12 Tribes of *Jacob. This very same patriarch, Jacob, was renamed Israel.
Take note that the Bible refers to Jacob as both Jacob and Israel even after his renaming most of the time. Hence, when Jesus was quoted in the Bible as saying, “I was only sent to the lost sheep of the House of Israel” (Matthew 15:24), he wasn’t talking about either the jews of today, or the Pharisaic priests of his day, or the modern day country of Israel. He was talking about the descendants of Jacob / Israel, the twelve tribes. So this is another term, “Israel”, the deceptive jews have taken and changed the modern meaning of to refer to themselves, when it does not — thus due to indoctrination and the willful ignorance of today’s Christians and their leaders, confusion reigns. Now we understand why the decendants of Khazars chose the deception to call themselves “jews” and to further deceive Christians, to call their nerve center of evil, “Israel”.
Jesus was not a Jew, nor “Israelite”, nor “Hebrew”, nor any human tribe! It is blasphemous to make such a claim, because Jesus existed long before the Jews, long before humanity, long before the Earth. He merely chose to take human form among them for a time, perhaps because they are the most evil humans on the planet, and therefore the most in need of salvation.
Protestant, did you miss the genealogies of Christ that were given in the New Testament? First chapter of Matthew and in Luke? What do you think the purpose of those genealogies is? They prove that Christ was a legitimate, full-blooded Israelite of the tribe of Judah, and descendant of David, as a ruler of the Israelites, for whom He came to redeem exclusively (Matthew 15:24). Yes, Christ was there from the beginning, and that is why he’s called both the root and the offspring of Jesse (Rev 22:16), which firmly establishes his lineage and tribal affinity.
I am just going to copy and paste the last sentence of my first comment on this article.
“I’m still trying to figure out when the word of a jew began to supercede common sense, reason, and good old fashioned research…”
Unfortunately, everything most people think they know about Christianity obviously came from the jews.
Didn’t Jesus actually live in Judea during at least part of His earthly ministry? That would make Him a Judean in that respect.
Just because I lived in Orlando for a time doesn’t make me a Floridian, so no, that doesn’t make Jesus a Judaean in that respect. Besides, I’m don’t think Christ ever ‘lived’ in Judaea anyway. I never got that understanding from the Scriptures…
Exactly ottify.
Burton is ignorant. Jesus was not even a Judean. Judea was a political identifier used by the Romans. You could be a pagan elephant worshipper from Africa, and the Romans would describe you as a Judean if you lived there (in Judea).
Jesus is clearly identified as a Galilean, a different place altogether.
I do not have the scholarship to prove it, but my theory is that the Edomites and the followers of the Oral Law had completely taken over the Temple.
Genuine Israelites (Hebrews) still lived in places like Galilea and Samaria, a remnant who had survived the Babylonian Captivity. The Babylonians never took everyone. They let some Hebrews remain to work and farm in the outer areas.
Essentially I believe that Jesus was trying to recapture the Temple from a mixture of Edomites and heretical Hebrews who brought back the Babylonian mystery religion when allowed to return.
Of course no one cares that true Christians know for a fact that Christ is neither jewish nor Palestinian, and that the claim to a ‘jewish jebus’ is not only “idiocy”, but a “grotesque insult”. Christ is an Israelite of the tribe of Judah, born in Nazareth, and called Galilee home. Nothing about that says either ‘jew’ or ‘Palestinian’. I’m still trying to figure out when the word of a jew began to supercede common sense, reason, and good old fashioned research…