by
Steven Shamrak.
Not long ago, a
non-Jewish friend of mine asked me to view “Passion of Christ” movie and send
him my comments, from Jewish prospective. While I was watching the movie, I was
amazed by enormous disrespect toward not only Jewish traditions, but for the
writings of the Christian Bible as well. Mel Gibson’s ‘directors creativity’
had brought to my mind words like falsification, forgery, distortion and
contempt.
While writing
the comments for my friend, I took out the book of New Testament, just to make
sure that I was not mistaken about the inaccuracies that I had noticed in the
movie. In the process of this review, I stumbled upon John chapter 13 which
proves that throughout the history of Christianity, Judas, and as result all
Jews, have been suffering the false accusation of treason:
18. I know so
well each one of you I chose... “One who eats supper with me will betray me,
and this will soon come true. I tell you this now so that when it happens, you
will believe in me. (Why would they need additional proof,
in order to believe in him?)
21. "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to
betray me." (Several times
in the Christian Bible Jesus predicted his demise!)
26. "It is the one to whom I honour by giving the bread
when I dipped in the sauce." Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it
to Judas Iscariot, son of Simon…
27. Then Jesus told him, “Hurry – do it now” (He had chosen the most trusted of his
disciples to perform this daunting task and commanded Judas to go to the Temple
authorities immediately.)
28. None of the others at the table knew what Jesus meant. (Another reason why Jesus had chosen Judas)
29. Some thought that since Judas was their treasure (the most trusted member), Jesus was telling him to go and pay for the food or give
some money to the poor. (None
of them had understood their teacher’s plan of self-fulfilling prophecy!)
At the same time
it was Peter who denounced his teacher three times. Little wonder, that after
he later became the first Christian Pope, he needed to find a scapegoat so that
people would not scrutinize his own actions!
Thus, this
chapter supports the ideas expressed in the recently published Gospels
according to Judah, which the Church excluded from the New Testament, along
with the gospels of Thomas and hundreds of other writings. Many questions came
to mind: Do most Christians actually read and study their own Bible? If they
do, why have they been fostering the hatred of Jews for centuries; the hatred,
which is based on a false accusation against one out of twelve Jewish disciples
of the Jewish teacher!