Eternity Book Series
Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity

Eternity Book Series: 4 Books – 8 Parts
Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity
(Book 2: Semitic Religions)
Anwar Shaikh
1st Edition: September 20, 2014
2nd Edition: August 28, 2016

Eternity

Eternity Book 2: Semitic Religions
______________________
Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity
Introduction
Chapter 6: Judaism
Chapter 7: Christianity
Part 3 – Islam and Fundamentalism
Chapter 8: Islam
Chapter 9: Horrors of Fundamentalism

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Part 2 – Judaism and Christianity

Introduction

The Semitic religions i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are based on revelation which asserts that God reveals himself through the agency of man variously known as a prophet, messenger or messiah. These men, who project themselves as holy, claim that unless people seek God through their agency, they will never find Him.

If God is the Father of mankind, then all of His children should have direct access to Him. What kind of God is He who needs an agent to approach Him? In fact, it is not God who requires an agent; it is these self-appointed messengers and messiahs who have imposed their agency on God. Why? Because they want to be treated as God in the disguise of God's agent.

Why do they want to be treated as God? It is because they suffer from the most acute dominance-urge which impels a person to assert his superiority for establishing his right to rule and worship. Revelation is the most effective device to achieve this goal. A revelationist pretends that he asserts and does only what God tells him, to assure people that he has no axe to grind in it. Thus people fall for him more easily.

When we critically examine the teachings and lives of Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, we realise that they were human but urgently wanted to be acknowledged as God through the device of revelation. Judaism, Christianity and Islam have not served the purpose of mankind, but of their founders who enjoy divine status at the expense of human dignity. In fact, these religions are a continuance of the Middle Eastern mythology in varying forms which came into being for replacing the old gods with new ones.

How has this happened? It is caused by the fact that each revelationist, that is, messenger or messiah, demands total belief in his self at the exclusion of others and thus becomes the sole saviour of his followers. This leads to fundamentalism which represents a condition of complete brainwashing turning the believer into a robot which loses the dignity of conscious behaviour. Fundamentalism is the chief source of human hatred, disunity and indignity. It clearly shows that revelation is the source of misguidance. Man has lost his way and is treading the oath which leads him in the opposite direction to his destination.

Chapter 6: Judaism

Judaism may be treated as the fountain of both Christianity and Islam because the former is thought of as a Jewish heresy and the latter is claimed to be the reformed version of the Jewish doctrine which was supposed to have suffered the indignity of corruption over a period of centuries. Since all these faiths are rooted in the sands of Arabia, they qualify as the Semitic religions and naturally express a basic unity of purpose, display a common strand of thinking and employ methods of securing the goal which may look different on the surface but at the bottom are very similar.

Mythology and faith-founders

Concerned as the architects of these faiths might have been with the amelioration of mankind, principally, they were driven by the urge of dominance and sought Godhead through the activation of human instincts of fear and favour. Essence of their fundamental precepts, rituals, modes of action and magnitude of hope and despair, is firmly established in the mythological traditions of the Middle East which I have narrated in the previous Chapter and must be borne in mind by the reader for future reference. The Semitic Reformers, if I may so call the founders of these religions, as a mark of respect to their followers, though human, sought to replace the existing gods and infuse the then current mythology with their own divinity embellished with the fascination of superstition and poetic verve.

This theory represents a new point of view and may not be palatable unless the reader is prepared to weigh the argument with a cool and rational mind which the magnitude of this discussion deserves. I shall start with the analysis of Judaism, the root of all Semitic religions.

What is Judaism?

Primarily, it refers to Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament, i.e. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, traditionally ascribed to Moses but in practice it is based on Torah (Law or Teaching) which included the sacred Scriptures as well as oral traditions, theological assertions, ethical proclamations' historical recollections and even the rabbinic interpretations. Thus the boundaries of Judaism have been made infinite to prove or disprove anything to suit the convenience of the interpreter.

Pedigree and training of Moses

Judaism, is also loosely called Mosaism after its founder, Moses, whose parents belonged to the tribe of Levi which was one of the Jewish groups settled in Egypt. Moses, the son of Amram and Jochebed, by a quirk of history ended up on the lap of Pharaoh's daughter and was brought up in the Egyptian court as a prince. He was trained in the noble arts of Egypt such as law-making, scribing, religion, civil administration and warfare. Moreover, as Egypt ruled Palestine and a part of Syria, he knew the history and geography of these countries from the court records.

The biblical Hebrews led by Moses (Moshe) were variously known as Habiru or Hapiru. They lived in the Goshen district, near the north-eastern part of the Egyptian delta. Who were these Hebrews or Habirus?

Origins of the Hebrews

When Jacob, the Israel, entered Egypt, his company consisted of "'seventy souls" but when they were delivered from this land after 2 four hundred and thirty years, there were 3 about six hundred thousand men on foot excluding women and children. Estimating the number of wives and children, the size of the exodus has been put as high as 2,000,000 though scholarly criticism has reduced it to 15,000.

Hebrews, it is claimed, did not constitute an ethnic group; the word refers to people who were stateless; they were considered bandits and vagabonds, and made their living by hiring themselves out for menial tasks. Like their numbers, this definition of the word "Hebrew" is by no means universally accepted.

I am inclined to think that the numbers of the exodus approached half a million souls but they could not call themselves Jews or Israelites. There are good reasons for this assumption:

1. Firstly, there is no mention of Israel in the Egyptian records.

2. Secondly, it is not possible for seventy one people (including Joseph who was already in Egypt) to multiply into such a large multitude under conditions of severe slavery: their rate of death would have been abnormally high owing to the hard labour, malnutrition, disease and the genocidal policy of the Egyptian government.

3. Thirdly, as the history of negro slaves shows, the white Americans frequently seduced their slave women. Thus, modern American Blacks are black in name only; they are a mixed race. This is even more true of the Jews who suffered far worse conditions of bondage in a period when the moral conscience of mankind was still infant.

Promised Land

4. Finally, the members of the exodus had ceased to be Jewish because they descended from the various ethnic groups of slaves which the Egyptian pharaohs brought with them from the conquered territories of Canaan (Palestine) and Syria; the number of prisoners of war that Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.) took during his nine-year campaign alone, stood at 89,600. This explains the unusual increase in the numbers of slaves who eventually came to be known as Jews or Hebrews.

They were badly needed in Egypt for building-work. The significance of slave labour becomes evident when we realise that an average Egyptian temple involved the transporting' hewing and laying of 2,300,000 blocks, weighing on average two and a half tons each. This was one of the causes of the Egyptian military expeditions However, these slaves or Hebrews remained Semitic for originating from Palestine and Syria. Therefore, Canaan, projected as the "Promised Land" was not a new country but the original homeland of the Jews, and their return amounted to home-coming in the same sense as it has happened in the 20th Century after a "wandering" of 1,800 years.

Egyptian attitude towards Jews

Without further harping back on their past, now I may call them Jews or Israelites for the sake of clarity. Much to the consternation of the Jews, as it may seem, the Old Testament makes it clear ' that they were not trusted by the Egyptians who thought of them as a threat to their national security for having no loyalty to the land of their sojourn.

Mosaic miracle

Emergence of the Jews into a tenacious, fruitful and self-confident race, is more attributable to the genius of Moses and less to their own contrivance. The Mosaic miracle lies in the psychological and intellectual understanding of his people and prescribing the remedy for converting their weakness into strength, capriciousness into resoluteness and stubbornest into willingness.

Moses knew that his people had been toughened by the hard labour and perpetual cruelty of their Egyptian masters; tenderness was neither a part of their culture nor theyyearned after it. Survival was their natural concern as it would be of anyone else's, constantly subjected to fear and rape, murder and cruelty. They had no intrinsic regard for discipline which was imposed upon them from without and whose only purpose was exploitation, and provision of sadistic enjoyment to the persecutors. Unity of purpose or social cohesion that springs from conscience or pursuit of a noble common goal, was alien to them. Yet they possessed a loose sense of social belonging rooted in helplessness and servitude, and a desire to be free, happy and human. This understanding must have been assisted by the common ambition to escape and the fact that they all had originally come from the lands of Palestine and Syria. Over the long period of their sojourn they had probably evolved a communal language and a common culture based on inferior values compatible with the traditions of servility. It leads to a startling conclusion, that is, the Jews are the original Palestinians who had lost their identity and were forced to conquer their land of origin!

Jewish character and potential

Curiosity, search for the beautiful, and will to engage in a struggle to secure the best, made no part of their mental make-up. They needed the cover of ignorance to protect themselves against the harshness of reality and shunned the realm of thought and enquiry. Intellectually, they ranked no more than a pigmy who naively feels ten foot tall, and mistakes vice for virtue, peevishness for perseverance and silliness for sagacity. This attitude of the mind emanated from lack of education and absence of a firm belief in the values of righteousness, ascendancy and self-respect. Yet this weakness of the mind verged on the virtue of potential docility and adaptability that had resided in their "stiff necks" for a long time. Constant and habitual suffering, having become an integral part of their daily lives, had assumed the role of a protective shield which acts as a barrier against timidness and may stir one's dormant spirit to protest or even challenge the oppressor.

The audacity of a hebrew who questioned the authority of Moses (Ex. 2:14) must have assured him that underneath the Jewish ashes of servitude, gleeds of freedom impatiently glowed to become a bonfire.
The wisdom of great Moses spotted the infirmities of his people, which he knew possessed the potential for greatness. How? He knew that being stateless and idolatrous, they owed no allegiance to Egypt or any particular deity; their minds were blank and flexible; their ignorance desperately needed a code of conduct based on faith which allows no rational enquiry and loves the varnish of superstition, made fascinating by never-ending tales of miracles and supernatural deeds.

Mosaic intentions

What was in it for Moses?

Of course, he was already a prince, but he was a prince of unknown origin, without any portfolio. His immense talents, stupendous ego and colossal will looked for a venture that was way beyond the reach of ordinary princes. Such a dream could be realised only by fathering an ambitious, tenacious and upward-looking nation. So he adopted the Mesopotamian theory of viceroyalty. It was not quite original because its elements were practiced in various degrees in the Middle East, but the emphasis he laid upon it and the spirit of collectivity he breathed into it, were original.

Mesopotamian theory of viceroyalty

The Mesopotamian faith held that the king is not a god but his viceroy; it is the former who makes law and the latter who enforces them. King is god's vicar and possesses no authority of his own. The famous Hammurabi received his laws from Marduk, the Chief City God. Power belonged to god in theory only because it was the ruler who wielded it and could forge any law in the name of the deity.

Choosing doctrine of viceroyalty for the Hebrews was an act of extraordinary vision on the part of Moses because it suited their psychological make up; they would have shown no reverence to a god-king like the pharaoh who was above law, and had been the source of affliction to them for centuries. A viceroy like Moses who was one of God's subjects as they were, and equally bound by the divine law, was quite acceptable. Neither they had the gumption to enquire into the process of law-making nor did they have any cause to question the integrity of Moses.

In fact, the device of viceroyalty suited Moses quite well: it gave him the divine powers to make law and rule them without having the responsibility to face the consequences of hard luck or bad management. If anything went wrong, it was God's fault; he himself acted as God without being called so.

Mosaic skill lay in exploiting the superstitious minds of the Hebrews. He narrated the episode of the burning bush which suffered no consumption at all. It was the genius of Moses which realised that the introduction of a new god, who professed to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, should be accompanied by such an uncanny event. Yet God observing the prevailing Hittite manners, does not reveal his name and declares: "I AM THAT I AM".

Quite sagaciously, he did not forget to express the usual apparent reluctance of the dominant for assuming the reins of power. Moses told God that he was not willing to act as the divine viceroy owing to his stammer and lack of eloquence. He agreed to carry the yoke of authority only because his attitude infuriated the Lord! Thus Moses had no choice but to become God's viceroy who must announce that God sent him to His people!

The sweetest sound that the stateless Hebrews ever heard was the offer of a national home - the Promised Land. It was nothing like Egypt which had caused them untold misery, it was "a land flowing with milk and honey".

Psychological skillof Moses

When Moses declared that God had chosen the Children of Israel as his own people, it inflated their most miserably deflated egos. All of a sudden their sense of.inferiority turned into a complex of superiority and they felt the urge to stand on their own feet to gain self-respect. Nobody questioned Moses: why had God preferred a rabble of tattered, tortured and tasteless slaves to the rest of mankind, and how such a one-sided, bigoted and unfair God, who ignored all his other children to adore a handful of Jews, could be trusted or genuinely respected? They loved this celestial opium and pretended their choice to be the pure gift of God which admitted no ifs or buts.

Jews, the superior race

The chosen people, being the superior race, expected their chooser to deliver them from Egypt miraculously. So to lead them personally, the Lord went before them in a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of light at night (Ex. 13: 21-22).

Contest between Yahwe and Pharaoh

Yahwe, the Jewish God, entered a stern contest of miracles with Pharaoh, the Egyptian god-king, to demonstrate His might both to the Pharaoh and His newly-adopted children of Israel! For displaying a lot of supernatural acts, He deliberately hardened Pharaoh's heart1 so that he should not allow the Children of Israel to leave! To multiply His miraculous signs:

a. He turned Aaron's rod into a serpent;
b. He turned all Egyptian water into blood; the fish died and rivers stank;
c. He filled the land of Egypt with frogs;
d. He turned dust into lice and both man and beast became infested with them;
e. He sent a swarm of flies upon Pharaoh, his servants, his people and the houses of all the Egyptians;
He killed all the cattle of the Egyptians such as horses, asses, camels, oxen, sheep, etc;
g. He turned the ashes of the Egyptian furnaces into brains which affected all magicians and Egyptians;
h. He sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran upon the ground and heavy rain caused dreadful flood everywhere except where the Children of Israel were!
i. He then sent heavy swarms of devastating locusts against the Egyptians.
j. He inflicted a thick blanket of darkness on all Egypt except where the Jews dwelt, and this phenomenon lasted for three days.

False interpretations

To believe in such fairy tales, one has to be either imbecile or totally brainwashed. Moslems have also invented similar miracles about the Prophet Muhammad. The Jews dismiss them as irrational, but when it comes to Moses they believe in their veracity literally. It shows that their faculties of reason are programmed right from the cradle through a highly biased system of nurture. Even the Jews trained in physics and chemistry do not seem to be able to escape from the golden cage of superstition, and insist that these biblical events are historically true. For example, they say that the mention of rivers of blood and destruction of fish refers to the period when heavily excessive rains in Etheopia caused erosion of the deep-red soil. It affected the colour of the river whose dashing currents also happened to carry flagellates i.e. red algae.

What a pity! The Old Testament does not refer to red water and flagellates but real blood and real fish. One also wonders why it was necessary for Yahwe to indulge in such a drama when he claims to be All-powerful and possesses the ability to manipulate natural events. Instead of repeatedly asking Pharaoh to let his people go, it would have been a lot more dignified to strike Pharaoh and his armies dead to deliver the chosen people. What a shame that they had to escape like thieves. Giving them the courage to fight their way out of Egypt, would have been far more honourable. Above all, the fact that Yahwe deliberately 2 hardened the heart of Pharaoh so that he should violently resist the release of Israelites, makes the whole episode a gigantic farce.

Mosaic skill and Jewish nationality

It was traditional for almost every community in the Near East to stabilise communal life around a particular deity by establishing a special relationship with it through their Chief or ancestor. Moses realised that his disunited people most urgently needed a common bond of unity which could be provided by an exclusive God who should care more about them than anybody else because this was the only way to give them the feeling of being chosen. Yahwe's claim to be the creator of all mankind sounds hollow in view of his special leanings towards the Jews. Moses chose Him as the God of Israel for His truculency to give his people military qualities so that they could conquer the "Promised Land". The so-called "Song of the Sea" in Ex 15:1-8 and the "Song of Deborah" in Judges 5, praise Yahwe, the divine warrior. Realising the slavish mentality of the Hebrews who had learnt to obey the person of the commander without scrutinising the quality of his commands, Moses founded Judaism on the superstition of Yahwe to create a similar relationship between him and the Children of Israel as exists between a lord and vassal. Blood ties did not originally form a part of the Jewish nationhood; it developed much later through the exclusivity of divine bigotry. Scholars have remarked that such a prototype was present in the treaties made between the Hittite kings and their vassals during 1450 - 1200 B.C.

Mosaic urge of dominance

Of course, we read in the Old Testament that Yahwe spoke to Moses face to face as friends talk to each other, and we also note that the Jewish people had seen Him when He visited them in the wilderness. It makes Him a physical and visible entity. If this is the case, why can't He be contacted in person now when He is most desperately needed by mankind, including the Jews? The truth is that He was an invisible nonentity then as He is now. Moses deliberately founded Judaism on the abstract doctrine of divinity to appoint himself as the Lord's viceroy to create and rule the Jewish nation through the mechanism of fear and favour.

The Covenant

Setting himself up as the mediator, the great Moses suggested a contractual relationship between God and man and called it a "Covenant". And to make sure that nobody challenged his innovation, he declared that such a covenant had always existed between Yahwe and the Jewish patriarchs such as Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In fact, he portrayed it as a continuation of the old Covenant which emphasised a two way obligation - one side is based on fear and the other on favour. In plain language, it means that God will favour the Children of Israel if they fear Him, through exclusive worship by crying, cringing and crawling before Him.

What is worship?

Worship means obeying Yahwe's laws which are eternal and seek to control all man's aspects of life such as what to believe in, how to think, walk, talk, sleep, wear, eat, drink, deal with other people, and so on. These are the characteristics of slavery and the ingredients of brainwashing for turning people into robots which can be operated by the flick of a switch.

The Covenant and mechanism of fear and favour

Now let us see how the Covenant exploits fear and favour mechanism of mankind:

a. To activate fear, the Covenant stipulates:
A Jew shall love Yahwe from the bottom of his heart and instill His love in the hearts of his children.
Moses tells his people that the Lord God is "a consuming fire, and even a jealous God" who wants blind and total obedience from the Children of Israel. If they swerve a bit, He promises to lay an utter and most agonising curse upon them by way of lethal diseases, physical destruction, slavery, homelessness, foreign domination, and all the humiliation and torture one can think of. Further, Yahwe shall carry out complete destruction of the disobedient Jews, gleefully.

b. The Covenant quite aptly remembers the human quest for favours:
If Jews obey Yahwe in the prescribed manner, He will lay all these curses on the enemies of the Jews and hate them.
Further, to strengthen the Covenant and to make it workable, Yahwe adds some sweetest clauses to it and tells His loyal children what favours they can expect of Him:

1. He assures them that he is a faithful God and shall keep His covenant with a thousand generations of the loyal Jews who shall be "blessed above all people" and there will be no barrenness amongst them or their cattle because they are holy to God who has chosen them to be a special people.
2. They shall be loaded with earthly riches.
3. God s promises that the Jewish race shall multiply immensely.
4. Yahwe shall make the Jews reign over many nations but they shall not be reigned-over by the foreigners. He will enable Jews to subdue all antagonistic nations, and shall deliver them to his chosen people for total destruction: this process shall continue until no man is left to be able to stand up to them. Further, Yahwe promises to make them the head and not the tail.

Nature of the Jewish Covenant

One should note that in this covenant there is no reference to humanity, moral virtue or life after death. It is simply a secular contract founded on materialism! It clearly follows that whatever makes a Jew rich and powerful, is proper.

Moses and Yahwe

While Jacob is the father of the "Children of Israel", Moses is the founder of the Jewish nation. His sincerity as the national father is beyond doubt. But his fervent desire to be obeyed and adored has been overlooked. He did not declare himself to be God; he presented himself as God's servant but in such a way that God can be approached only through his medium. It is the Moses-made laws that have come to be known as God's laws and there are several biblical accounts which show that Moses was wiser, and better tempered than God and could rebuke Him and prevail upon Him. I have no doubt that this apparent viceroy was Yahwe himself. How?

Coming of Yahwe

a. As the story goes, Moses acts as a medium between God and his people at their request, and not that he wants power!

When people noticed the glorious coming of Yahwe through thunder, lightning, musical noise and mountain-smoking, they promised to listen to Moses but he should not let God speak to them because it might lead to their death.

It is obvious that Moses was made of different materials from the rest of the people; he could withstand God's majesty without coming to harm but the folks were sure to suffer death by Yahwe's contact. Again, Moses had the power to dissuade God from talking to people.

Contest between Moses and Yahwe

b. Worship of the molten calf by the Jews kindles God's jealousy which far excells the possessive attitude of a petty lover, afraid of losing to his rival. Quite cleverly, Moses uses this event to demonstrate that Jews are his people and not Yahwe's:

God angrily commands Moses to get out of His sight. In a temper, He disowns Jews and calls them "Moses' people" whom he had brought out of Egypt and who had corrupted themselves (Ex. 32:7).
However, the sagacity of Moses rises to the occasion and with a view to staying in the background he asserts that Jews are the Lord's people and it is He who brought them out of Egypt but he does not allow the episode to rest here. As God at this point, intends to consume the Children of Israel with his boiling wrath, Moses cannot afford to lose the opportunity of humiliating Him for establishing his (Moses') own superiority:

He tells God impolitely that He is about to do a wicked thing against His own people and shames Him by asserting what the Egyptians would say. Moses Commands the Lord to refrain from this evil and repent (Ex. 32: 12-14). Here God Surrenders to man! What a blasphemous attitude it is! Yet the Jews claim to be a monotheistic people.

Here Moses depicts his serenity, cool and virtuousness in contrast to the impetuosity, hot-headedness and vicious temper of Yahwe. Thus, he projects himself as the controller who drives from behind instead of leading from the front.

c. Numbers, the fourth book of Moses, narrates yet another episode when the Jews denigrate the Promised Land and want to return to Egypt. Yahwe's wrath, which seems to dwell on the surface and keeps waiting for the smallest breeze of discord, flares up again:

Yahwe, the Jewish God once again feels provoked by His people and threatens to destroy them. Moses steps in and shames Him. God yields to Moses as usual (Numbers 14: 11-20).

Moses the Divine

d. Moses returned to his people after staying forty days and forty nights with the Lord.
The Jews noticed that his face shone; they were afraid to talk to him, and he had to mask his face to alleviate their fears (Ex. 34:30,33).

One must realise that Yahwe has a similar radiant face (Ex. 33:20).

Semitic theory of viceroyalty

The theory of viceroyalty seems to be the crux of the Semitic culture. Instead of declaring that the protagonist is propounding his personal views or prescribing his own principles, he pretends that whatever he says or does, he simply carries out the commands of a supernatural being. Thus he convinces people that he has no personal motive; they easily fall for it especially when the viceroy's teachings and commandments carry a promise of secular or celestial rewards.

Since the supernatural being is, as portrayed by the viceroy (prophet), and cannot be seen or contacted directly by the people, the viceroy and God become one and the same person.

Significance of Mosaic Law to Jews

A divine viceroy possesses super ego and ardently desires to be worshipped. In fact, worship is a form of total obedience to the legal commands of the lawgiver. To make sure that he was eternally adored, Moses created a nation whose identity was founded on the law that was immortal, inviolable and immutable. The Mosaic Law has determined the Jewish vision, vanity and way of life over the last thirty two centuries.
The value of Mosaic Laws should be judged as follows:

a. The purpose of the Mosaic Laws;
b. Relevance of the Mosaic Laws to the Jewish nationhood;

The nature of the Mosaic Laws as a form of legal code.

a. I have already said that the purpose of the Mosaic law was to secure the highest possible position of adoration for Moses. I have explained this point by describing him as the viceroy, and stated that since Yahwe cannot be contacted or traced Moses, who is capable of rebuking and dominating Yahwe, is Yahwe himself but in the cloak of a viceroy.

b. However, I have not as yet touched upon the second part of this assertion i.e. the founding of Jewish nationality on law. The understanding of this point is not possible unless we first realise the significance that the Mosaic law attaches to itself: All those who do not obey the Jewish law literally are cursed as well as those who disagree with this principle (Deut. 27:28).

Not only every comma, full stop and word of the law is binding on a Jew but it is also eternal (Deut. 29:29).
The rise and fall, mirth and misery, honour and dishonour - in fact, the entire Jewish destiny depends upon obedience or disobedience to the law. Chapter 8 of Deuteronomy makes it amply clear.

After this introduction, now I may proceed to describe the Jewish legal nationalism:

Jewish legal nationalism

1. Moses portrays God as Jewish for making covenants exclusively with the Jewish patriarchs - Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He is obviously not interested in other nations:
If the Jews keep Yahwe's covenant, He will exalt them over all other nations and treat them as His treasure (Ex 19:5).
2. His sole, or at least major concern, is confined to the Jews. Why? Because He has chosen them from the rest of mankind. This is the reason that they are the best, the special, the holy and the blessed.
3. Jewish law ensures final victory of the Jews over the insolent Gentiles who will be presented to the Chosen race bit by bit for their total destruction, and whose destiny it is to become the Jewish inheritance (Ps. 2: 8-9).
The true relationship between Jews and Gentiles is that of a master and slave!
4. Jewish law declares the land of the "Canaan" as the "Promised Land" or legal homeland for the Children of Israel.
5. Since God personally went to Egypt and brought them to the "Promised Land", it is distinctly the home for the Jews; they are forbidden to mix with or make covenants with non-Jews (Philistines) who should be expelled from there. (Exodus 23:32-33)
6. Jews must maintain their racial purity by not marrying the Gentiles. (Ex. 34:12-16). Eventually this law was made so fierce that the Jews were required not only to divorce their non-Jewish wives but also disown their own children from such spouses (Ezra 10:2-24).
7. To maintain racial purity, a bastard shall not be allowed to enter into congregation of the Lord even to his tenth generation (Deut. 23:2).
8. Even in foreign lands, Jews must organise themselves as distinct communities for practicing the Mosaic law (Deut. 4:5-6).
9. To make Jews an equitable fraternity, they are forbidden to have Jewish bondmen and bondmaids. Nor are they allowed to rule over one another with rigour. On the contrary, their slaves must be Gentile, and any non-Jew born in the land where Jews dominate, may be treated as a Jewish possession and inheritance (Lev. 25:43-46). To foster this sense of communal belonging, a Jew is not allowed "to lay usury" upon a fellow-Jew (Ex. 22:25).
10. To make Jewishness the central point of law, and thereby the focus of every Jew's dream, the Old Testament declares Jerusalem the Holy City where Yahwe dwells.
Thin in the ferret of Zionism which teaches (Isiah 4:3. 52:1) every Jew to treat Israel as his real home and pine to return, regardless of where he is born.

c. Should I analyse the Jewish code as the law in its national sense i.e. legislative enactment, case law etc.? This is not necessary because the Jewish law like any divine law, is based on faith, and not reason. Thus, it is something which may be adored but cannot be practiced. Let me give you a few examples:

1. It is more concerned with retribution than reform and justice (Ex. 21:24-26).

2. It commands complete rest on Saturday (the Sabbath) and prescribes death even for gathering sticks (Numbers 15:32). Jesus was accused of blasphemy for healing people on the Sabbath Day!
In the modern times, at least 50~o of all Jews shall qualify for divine execution owing to their business activities associated with Saturday.
3. It prescribes death by stoning of a son who does not obey his father or mother. (Deut. 21:18-21)
If this law were applied strictly, how many Jewish children would survive?

Nature of Yahwe

Since Jewish nationhood is based on the laws of Yahwe (as claimed by Moses and prophets), one cannot evaluate the role of Judaism without assessing the nature of Yahwe. It is a highly emotional subject for its psychological connotations, yet it cannot escape scrutiny because of its fundamental importance to the seekers of truth. Let us have a look at Him:

Yahwe, the reluctant God

1. God repented when He looked at the wicked state of the earth and He thought of destroying man along with reptiles, animals and birds. He repented for creating them. However, Noah found favour with Him (Gen. 6:5-8).

God's repentance determines His attitude towards creation which is absolutely negative. Secondly, He did not know what He was doing. Thirdly, He did not have the ability to create righteous beings. It also shows His callous nature - Why destroy animals, fowls and reptiles for man's sins? It also indicates the illogical and simple mind of God. If Adam's children were wicked, how could Noah's children be good? After all, Noah was a descendant of Adam, and hence belonged to the same species.

The fact is that this type of mythology regarding blood, wickedness of man and his destruction had been rife in the Middle East long before the advent of Moses. He simply incorporated these tales in his authorship.

Yahwe the Old Man

2. God is a kind of old man who is liable to forget and cannot remember things easily. Therefore, when He established a covenant with Noah, He set up His bow in the clouds so that whenever He looked at it, it would remind Him of the covenant (Gen. 9:13-16).

3. The biblical narrative about Abraham, the common ancestor of Jews and Arabs is rather distressing. Moslems claim that it is distorted and fake but the Jews who are extremely respectful to their elders, have never denied it.

Abraham and Self-Glory

This is how the story goes:

Abraham, at the age of 100, had a son Isaac, from Sarah, his wife. An Egyptian bondwoman called Hagar also bore him a son, Ishmael. Sarah looked down upon Ishmael for his inferior birth and denied him equal status with Isaac. God sided with Sarah and told Abraham to get rid of Ishmael. To glorify himself in the eyes of God, Abraham did exactly what he was told and left the baby along with Hagar to perish in the wilderness of Beer-Sheba (Gen. 21:12-14).

This story is compatible with the Jewish tradition; they believe in themselves as the superior race, thus implying the inferiority of the Gentile. Ishmael depicted this racial philosophy. It also conforms to the Arabian attitude: their children from concubines never ranked equal to the progeny of their wives.

Ishmael was a baby, an innocent baby. How could God, who created both Isaac and Ishmael, be so partial and unfair? And what about Abraham himself? Would a kind father do such a thing to his baby son under any circumstances? This type of obedience to God shows the selfish nature of the obedient who would go to any length for securing the pleasure of his superior. The fact that Abraham was also willing to murder Isaac to amuse God, proves this point. Again, the God who issues such commands to gratify His own ego, is not worthy of worship because firstly, His commands prove that He possesses an insatiable ego; secondly, His commands set-up evil and unreasonable precedents and thus corrupt mankind, and lastly when He does such things to try the believers, He obviously does not know their mind and thus lacks the much heralded omniscience.

Yahwe, the patron of thieves

4. God is out to patronise the Jews at all costs, even if it involves deceit, dishonesty, and despoilment. This is the reason that some rabbinic interpretations hold that there is no sin if a Jew manipulates a Gentile for his own benefit:

As Jews prepare to leave Egypt, Yahwe commands Moses that he should tell his people to borrow precious things of their neighbours such as jewellery and diamonds. Yahwe softens the hearts of the Egyptians who lend them what they want and then scarper with their hoodwinked possessions. And Yahwe approves of this theft! He should because it is He who organised it (Ex. 11:2 and 12:35-36)

The jealous God

5. Jewish God is infested with jealousy, acts out of spite and rejoices in excessive retribution:
He warns Jews that they must not serve other Gods because He is a jealous God and avenges the iniquity of fathers to the fourth generation of their children (Ex. 20:5 and 34:14).

This is the reason that in Numbers 21: 5-9, we find that God sends fiery serpents to Jews for complaining about lack of bread and water.

6. Jews claim to have made monotheism i.e. oneness of God, as the foundation of the human culture but Yahwe does not claim to be the only God because He forbids them not to assail other gods with abuse (Ex. 22:28). In fact, Yahwe is the God of Israel (though He claims to have creative powers) (Ex. 24:10).

Yahwe, a physical entity

7. Jewish God is a visible and physical entity; He walks and talks; possesses a soul 2, and human characteristics such as loathing and loving, meanness and munificence, kindness and cruelty etc.

No sense of justice

8. Yahwe has no sense of justice: He rewards and punishes people not according to any particular principle. This is fully borne out by the story of Rahab (Josh 6:17).

One good act saves the harlot and all her associates irrespective of their character but the entire city is marked for destruction without any reference to individual investigation! Like all dictators, Yahwe's word is the law, and reason forms no part of it.

Yahwe, the slave of desire

9. Jewish God has desires and dreams like ordinary mortals but there is a difference: an ordinary mortal may check or renounce his desire but God does not; desire to Him is what intense light is to a moth, flower is to a bee, air is to a homosapien or water is to fish.

His greatest desire is to be loved and worshipped. This is all he exists for, and this is the sole reason that He created mankind and the universe. The intensity of such a desire, gives Him a lopsided mind and an extremely selfish ego. Obviously, when the number of worshippers dwindles, he feels derided and His destructive urge descends upon people for vengeance suffused with virulence, vice and vitiosity.

Worship, the lowest form of behaviour

Worship is simply a euphemism for self-degradation which consists of crying, cringing and crawling before someone who is haughty, self-centred and psychologically disturbed. Self-degradation is a sin against one's own sanctity, honour and dignity. The God who loves to humiliate man is not praiseworthy. This renders worship the lowest desire which equates divinity with vanity and all its attendant vices.

Moses declared that the Lord had commanded him to declare His laws. In fact, he claimed to have received "two tablets" containing Yahwe's laws written with His own finger. The truth is that he was a capable nomothete in his own right. He was brought up in the Egyptian court where scribing was considered as one of the noblest arts and law-making was the most sacred priestly function. The fact that the Jewish priesthood went to the descendants of his brother Aaron whose loquacity asserts itself through the pages of the Old Testament, clearly confirms the hypothesis that Moses was a scribe and law-expert.

Yet he chose to declare himself as the Vicar and not God. Why? Because he knew that Akhenaton, the Egyptian monotheistic high priest of God, retained all the trappings of celestial divinty and secular dignity. Why not follow the same approach which was likely to be more fertile, fecund and forceful because the rabble which he led would not have sincerely obeyed a Pharaoh-like God whose tyranny, trickery and torture had reduced them to subhuman level. Again, there had existed the tradition of viceroyalty in the Mesopotamian lands. It declared that God was the real ruler and the king wielded power as His deputy or viceroy.

Egyptian roots of Jews

Moses knew well that there was no hope of winning the Promised Land without welding the Egyptian slaves into an effective and cohesive force. These slaves had been originally deported from the Syrian and Palestinian territories by the conquering Pharaohs. Thus what came to be known as the Jews were originally Palestinians whose social identity was diluted by their Egyptian masters.

The purpose of Mosaic Law

The whole purpose of the Mosaic law was to create a nationality based on supernatural reverence to God who was stern and frightening, yet could shower favours upon those who believed in Him sincerely and obeyed His commands readily. Since all the divine business was to be done through the viceroyalty of Moses, it was more prudent to stay in the background than lead from the front because if anything went wrong, it could be blamed upon God or the people -and the viceroy was always there to intercede for them and claim the credit.

Yahwe, the creation of Mosaic Law

In fact, not only the nationhood of the Jews but the entity of Yahwe, is also the creation of the Mosaic law. I applaud the ingenuity of Moses because it was all in a good cause. Giving the helpless, hopeless and homeless slaves a chance of freedom and self-elevation, is no mean task. The long story of wandering in the wilderness is an integral part of this process. For no fewer than forty years, Moses toughened and trained his people in a certain way of life which eventually came to be known as "Judaism". As the third generation emerges, we find, well-disciplined armies of the "Children of Israel" settling in Canaan as the conquerors.

Faith and unsociality

Orthodox Judaism is a fine example of blind faith which blurs senses and becomes the antithesis of rationality, eventually leading to a total incompatibility between one's beliefs and deeds. In simple language, it represents a way of life which demonstrates contradiction between one's theory (the basic doctrine) and actions because people expect realism in social dealings. Thus, unconsciously, one begins to live in a world of hallucinations. As a result, the life turns into a continuous process of make-believe culminating in a split personality. Since the believer is no longer capable of showing realism in his dealings with others, he develops an ego based on insincerity, hypocrisy and escapism, or alternatively an attitude wishing destruction to those who stand in his way. Fear is the hallmark of this attitude which incites believers to look down upon non-believers; it persuades them to seek seclusion, and become either a community within a community or dominate the rest of the community through mischievous but well-groomed plans of domination. This is necessitated by the fear of losing one's identity, no matter how ugly and inhuman, and provides the motive for reinforcing and inflating it by antisocial measures. In a nutshell, submission to blind faith leads to unsocial behaviour and the loss of the faculty of social adjustment.

Shudras of India and Jews

Faith moulds personality. Take, for example, Shudras of India who accepted inferiority of birth as the foundation of their faith, suffered totally inhuman indignity voluntarily without ever raising a sigh of protest. However, the faith of the Jews was based on self-superiority which actively incited them to look down upon the rest of mankind. This inflated view of self, temporarily gave them national conscience, social cohesion and also high moral piety compatible with their claim as a chosen race but the natural consequences of such a philosophy soon generated the psychological patterns of behaviour, injurious to honourable existence; it turned their national conscience into obsession and bigotry, their social cohesion suffered through a process of dispersion, mainly brought upon by themselves, and their piety suffered from the exotic gales of odium which they frequently encountered in the lands of Gentiles.

Manipulation of Judaism by David

In fact, the Jews as a nation were manipulated by their own heroes who inculcated in them the divine cult of royalty. David, the second king of Israel, who ranks second to Moses, replaced the old relationship of covenant between God and people through their tribal chiefs, with his own divinity, and that of his seed. It was he who in his capacity as the ruler and, the person as a descendant of Jacob, assumed the status of true relationship between God and the Children of Israel. YaLwe was enthroned on Mount-Zion, and at His right hand was seated King David, His anointed, who shared the divine authority as a coregent, i.e. the equal partner. It was, in fact, the existing Jebusite cult of Zion which he adopted for his own advantage.

Messiah ("the anointed one"), the title of the kings of the line of David became the prototype of an awaited Messiah who would return to restore the dignity of the Jews the same way as he had done by nearly annihiliating the Philistines. The return of David which is equated with the coming of David's "son" was ascribed to the advent of Jesus who claimed to have come from the seed of David. By projecting himself a heavenly figure who ranked as the divine mediator, David assumed the role of a deity yet Jews claim to be strictly monotheistic people!

David and Bathsheba

David was human and not divine. This fact is well narrated in 2 Samuel, Chapter 11. One day, staring down from the roof of his house, he noted the figure of a "very beautiful" woman - Bathsheba who was bathing herself. Her tender body froze his glances but warmed his heart. She became the focus of his palpitations, and his infatuation with her persuaded him to ignore the fact that she was the wife of Uriah, the Hittite. David had him murdered, married her and from this union came Solomon, the Wise.

For welding together various parts of his kingdom, David took wives from many tribes. Does a god need indulging in political manipulations? Though the beauty, delicacy and fascination of these women served him well, the fact that most of them were heathen and came from cultures of conflicting values, contributed to the eventual disintegration of the Jewish kingdom. Again, the story of Abishag, a "very fair" damsel (I King 1:1-4) testifies to the humanity of David.

Solomon's anti-Jewish conduct

Solomon, David's son, went even further. His wisdom involved him in the unusual hobby of concubine-collecting. Their number rose to 300, and it was in addition to his 700 wives who came from different nationalities and religions. He ceased to possess a purely Jewish faith because he erected shrines to Chemosh and Milcom, the Moabite and Ammonite gods. Their sancturies were built on the mountain ridge east of Jerusalem (I Kings 11:1-13). Thus the special people of jealous Yahwe came to be governed by Solomon, the idolater, yet Yahwe, the perpetually violent God, addicted to frequent fits of rage and claiming to be allpowerful, could not punish Solomon. It is the natural causes that led to the fall of the Jewish kingdom, and not the wrath of Yahwe.

Decline of the Jewish nation

The eighty-year rule of David and Solomon marks the political apex of the Jewish race but it cannot be termed as an empire in the usual sense of the word. After Solomon, the Jewish kingdom split into Israel (Ephraim) the northern kingdom which contained ten tribes, and Judah which radiated with the heavenly City of Jerusalem. This division showed the inability of the Children of Israel to live as one nation, and was brought about by lack of mutual tolerance and co-operation. The two kingdoms, however, lasted for about two centuries. Samaria, the city of Israel, was captured in 722 B.C.E. by Assyria; it subsequently lost its identity in the Assyrian provincial system. Nobody knows what happened to the ten tribes of Israel. It has been remarked that the people of Kashmir are the descendants of these lost Jewish tribes, and another preposterous statement treats the Red Indians of the United States of America as the progeny of the missing Jews! By 597, Judah was captured by the Babylonians. The revolt of 589 attracted severe punishment leading to the burning and plundering of the Temple and Jerusalem. The era of Dispersion starts with these tragic events - marking the exile of Jews from their homeland.

Diaspora and Jerusalem

Diaspora proved painful to the Jews, not because they did any worse than they had done in their homeland. The source of chagrin lay in their love for Jerusalem, the divine city. It was not an ordinary remorse but tinged with a very deep sense of guilt which declared that their deportation was the result of their gross disobedience to Yahwe. The mere inability to defend the holiest shrine spelt eternal condemnation.

However, the Jewish prophets, whose prestige, prosperity and popularity, depended upon the act of prophecy assured the Children of Israel that the condemnation was not eternal but would last only as long as it took them to repent and mend their ways. It was declared as their destiny to return to Jerusalem, their home, as a reward for their piety.

Ezekiel/Jerusalem

Ezekiel, the priest who was carried away in the deportation of 597 is considered to be the founder of Judiasm. He declared in 593 that he had been required by Yahwe to act as His prophet. He was prophet of both judgement and promise, that is, Jews were destined to discover delight after doom, and delight meant returning home - to Jerusalem where on Mount-Zion, Yahwe was enthroned. This is the focal point of the Messianic message and this is the reason that the Jews in all countries even after so many centuries still think of their settlement as a soujourn. Perhaps, proper interpretation requires to state that the Jewish sojourn abroad is a form of punishment but Yahwe will bring them home as He delivered
Them from Egypt (and Babylon).

Zion, i.e. Jerusalem, is the Holy City and Bride of Yahwe, the Lord of hosts, who is pledged to be her redeemer. Only for a small moment had He forsaken her but would restore her with great mercies.

Was it proper of Yahwe to forsake His bride? He left her again and again but blamed the believers for infidelity. No, the Jews were innocent. They were not gutless. Nor were they impious. No nation has served the Lord with greater fervour and devotion than the Children of Israel yet no nation has ever suffered from the divine wrath one-tenth as much as they have.

Jerusalem and Jewish fate

To a Gentile, Yahwe is just an abstraction whose sanctity and omniscience have been drummed up by the ruling and priestly classes of the Children of Israel to foster their own interests. The Jewish loyalty to the Yahwe's City has been held as the fountain of disloyalty to their lands of settlement. It has been asserted that the Jews have failed to show patriotic respect for their exotic abodes which attract lip reverence only.

This attitude has resulted in the greatest horrors that human mind can imagine. Is there any country where they have not been beaten, bruised and brutally treated, where they have not been molested, mangled and murdered, where they have not been pillaged, plundered and persecuted, where they have not been derided, despised and desolated? During the last 2,500 years, was there a century when their damsels were not raped, when their children were not considered a burden on the host country, when they were not thought of less desirable than animals, when they were not treated with contempt? Denial of human rights, denial of justice, denial of decent neighbourhood and denial of equal social status - formed integral parts of the Gentile attitude which was further inflamed by religious prejudices. In the Christendom, they were despised as murderers of Jesus and in the Islamdom, they deserved no grace as members of the "condemned" race.

However, it will be unfair of me if I fail to add that the Jews suffered all this torture and humiliation in good faith and as a devotion to the Lord. Their loyalty to their ideal has no parallel in history. It ought to be eulogised, yet I hesitate to commend it. Why? Because it is based on blind faith and not reason, because the Jewish mind has been paralysed by the Biblical myth of self-superiority and because the irrational attitudes of every generation of Jews carry the seeds of destruction for their offsprings. The veracity of these statements is borne out by the fact that Yahwe has not multiplied the seed of Israel like the stars of the sky or the dust of the earth. Is He really capable of delivering His side of the covenant?: I have no doubt that the Jews have observed their religious principles with greater piety, zeal and sincerity than any other nation and thus discharged their side of the deal.

History testifies to the fact that the Jews suffered because of fundamentalism, that is, following the biblical commands literally. As I shall show shortly, their social recovery began when some of them made reason a part of their faith. Unfortunately, the majority of them are still not ready to salute the goddess of reason, but practicalities of political sovereignty may bring the Children of Israel around to see things as they really are.

The Jew Bill

Strange as it may seem, the emancipation of Jews is directly linked with the emancipation of the European mind from the Christian dogma as a result of the Reformation. The (British) Plantation Act of March 19, 1740 was the first to treat Jews in the American Colonies as "His Majesty's natural born subjects of this kingdom" but "The Jew Bill" which was enacted in May 1753, had to be repealed a year later as a result of the vehement opposition by the Christian merchants of London.

Cause of European hatred of Jews

This revocation stemmed from the firmly-held belief, as in other European countries, that Jews were an Asian race which deserved anathema for circumcision, odd ways of worshipping the Supreme Being, unsocial attitudes toward the Gentile, as carriers of hereditary corrupt character, for setting up a state within a state, for lacking loyalty to their country of abode and for looking funny owing to their overgrown beards and wearing caftans.

The modern Jews may not have changed their religious principles but they have certainly modified their looks. Their ancestors could not have imagined a Jew with blonde hair, blue eyes and pink complexion!

French advocacy of human rights

However, by 1789, France emerged as the active champion of civil liberties. HE dedication to eradicate inequality and the zest to humanise the human mind whicl has suffered from inhuman deformities such as racial prejudice, religious bigotry sectarian hatred, suppression of individual rights and denial of justice, extender the libertarian charter known as "The Rights of Man and of the Citizen" to emancipate Jewry from the shackles of social taboos and tortures. However suspicion of the Jewry was so great that their admission to the European society was based not on grace but a stringent test which included several questions, raiser in the Assembly of Jewish Notables, held on 29th July, 1806, at the instruction of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Here is the summary of the questions:

French Test - Questions for Jewry

1. Do Jews believe in having more than one wife at the same time?
2. Do Jews believe in divorce, especially when the French law forbids it?
3. Do they believe in intermarriage with Christians?
4. Are non-Jewish Frenchmen considered as brethren or stangers by the Jews?
5. Do the Jews born in France and treated as French citizens, treat France as their country? Will they defend it, and be bound to obey the French laws?
6. Is a Jew forbidden by law to take usury from a fellow Jew?
7. Does the Jewish law allow usury in relation to strangers?

Jewish reaction

The answers that members of the Assembly of Jewish Notables gave contradict the Mosaic tenets through silence, evasion and utterly new interpretations. For example, about usury they said that the Hebrew word "neshekh" had been improperly translated as usury. It meant interest of any sort and not just usurious interest and therefore the existing meaning of the word lacked relevance! Did they, then, lie or deceive? Not at all. For the first time in their long history, they realise that stiff necks break easily but the flexible necks are durable. Their answers were based on wisdom, compromise and the will to modify their faith and the ways of life. This vicissitude transformed their lives completely and the dawn of the 19th century illumined their faculties of knowledge which had been darkened by the forces of ignorance such as bigotry, orthodoxy and social repression. The same people who had been seen fit to live in ghettoes started building mansions and skyscrapers for themselves and made a considerable contribution to the various branches of science, art and literature. This sudden burst of good fortune owed nothing to Yahwe's favours but to the bounteous attitudes of the Western nations that had made considerable strides in all walks of life. The simple proof of this truth lies in the fact that even today the eastern Jews stand at the same intellectual level as their eastern neighbours. While their contributions to the Western civilization are of high value, they lack the pioneering element. The spirit and direction of their achievements has been provided by the free-thinking, libertarian and humane West. Their own traditions brought them nothing but misery, humiliation and never-ending servitude. They are a boastful lot and claim to have civilised the West. It is not the Bible that has civilised the West, it is the West that has humanised the Bible, which provoked crusades through prejudice and bigotry to perpetrate international carnage for 400 years.

Nature of Jewish Covenant with Yahwe

Of course, one thing is indigenous to the Jews, that is, love of money and power. This is the whole purpose of their covenant with Yahwe which says nothing about morality, salvation or heaven, and solely confines itself to the worldly gains! It is for this reason that they believe in the godliness of riches, and devote their entire lives to wealth-creation which makes them tremendous merchants and entrepreneurs. Nothing pleases a Jew more than counting money. It is the possession of money which makes the Jews powerful, and the power brings in its wake vanity, arrogance, ruthlessness and the supercilious attitudes which tempt the powerful to look down upon others. This is something which is acquired as well as drilled into them from the cradle. It is a part of their faith which is founded on consciousness of self-superiority.

Feeling of superiority on the ground of wealth alone is one thing, but when it arises from the belief that one belongs to God's chosen race, and is accompained by personal wealth, it becomes a mania which makes "Mr Superior" extremely self-centred and ignorant of reality; he loses objectivity and indulges in subjectivity which constitutes his entire life. Regretfully, the sense of divine superiority combined with personal wealth, which leads to a vain and ostentatious life style, has become the bane of the Jews. This fact was self-evident during the 20th century when they were persecuted by the Nazi. What was the cause of it? The Nazi jealousy or the Jewish vanity - or both?

Jewish untouchability

It is claimed that the Nazi behaviour was inhuman and despicable because it subjected women and children to torture and sought to exterminate the Western Jewry. Of course, I abhor the Nazi but I cannot indulge in indiscriminate condemnation of the German people who have expressed manly qualities over the last 2000 years and made considerable contribution to civilization through Reformation, and scientific, literary and artistic innovations. Except for a short period when the Germans were misled by the slogans of extreme nationalism, they were God-fearing people who did not practice racism. The fact that the German lands constituted the Holy Roman Empire, and a Christian of any nationality could become the German Emperor, was an achievement of a high cultural order. Their nationalism is a recent phenomenon, indeed, but the Jewish nationality which has existed for at least 3000 years is based on racial superiority sanctioned by God himself. It is to maintain their physical and spiritual purity that they were commanded by their law to shun the company of the Gentiles, and not to eat food prepared by a non-Jew. This untouchability is the fundamental precept of the Hindu Caste system which raised a small section known as the Brahman to the highest social dignity, as their birth right, and created a large menial section of the Shudras, born of impurity. The Brahmans adopted exactly the same attitude towards the lower Indian classes as the Jews were legally required to practice against the non-Jews. I wonder if the Jews are not an offshoot of the Brahman Caste!

I regret to say that Hitler's principles and practices were shaped by:

a. The Jewish philosphy; and
b. The Jewish historical conduct.

Jewish philosophy

a. The basic Jewish philosophy states that God is at the helm of history and natural phenomena. He has chosen Jews as a mark of divine love. Since God chooses the best, the Jews are the superior race and God's people who have been appointed by Him *to turn the wheel of history for executing the divine will which is nothing but the glorification of God through the glorification of the Jews because God has made a covenant with the Jews to raise them above the rest of mankind. All historical events of importance, therefore, must take place through the agency of the Jews and conform to their dreams and dignity, and schemes of splendour and supremacy. Further, Yahwe, the Jewish God, is committed by the covenant to enable the Jews to rule the Gentiles and present all hostile and refractory nations to them, one by one, for their total destruction by the Jews!

As a symbol of their special relationship with God, and racial superiority, they claim that they were personally led out of Egypt by Yahwe who humbled pharaoh through miracles, and manipulated the operation of natural phenomena for theirrelease.

This Jewish philosophy which is extremely rude and offensive to the Gentiles for treating them as inferior, ignorant and ill-fated, and whose ultimate destiny is to wear the yoke of Jewish servitude, has been loudly acclaimed and proclaimed by the Jewish philosophers over the centuries:

Judah teen Samuel ha-Levi (C1075-1141) believed that it is not the contemplation of the cosmos but of the Jewish history which procures the knowledge of God!

Nachman Krochmal preached that the Jewish people have a special relationship with the Universal spirit who is the God of Israel!

Samuel Hirsch declared that in the early times of the Jewish history God revealed himself by miracles and wonders of prophecy but now He manifests Himself through the miracle of the existence of the Jewish people!

Solomon Formstecher held that when eventually the Jewish element in Christianity becomes dominant, it will then be proper for the Jews to give up their isolation!

It is the anti-Gentile philosophy which has become the bane of the Jews who believe to be the superior race under the influence of their religious dogma. The Nazi, who were determined to exterminate the Jews, caught the disease of racial superiority from them yet they have learnt nothing from the horrors of the holocaust.

b. I shall postpone discussion of the Jewish historical conduct to Chapter Nine of this book.
* Revelation leads to brainwashing which restricts believers faculties of reason and moral conscience. Thus its benignant effects are far outweighed by its malignant influences. This truth is clearly bourne out by the Jewish faith which declares that:

a. The Jews are the Superior (Chosen) race.
b. They have the Divine Right to be at the helm of history and, therefore, all major human events take place through their agency.

This is the reason that they want to control every organization for imprinting their own name on events of major significance, and this is why they resent the success of a rising Gentile and conspire to drag him down. Obviously, this is what makes them an ostentatious lot and they indulge in acts devoid of virtue for the sheer hell of keeping a grip on the oars of history. The crazy theories such as Marxism and lethal devices like atom bombs, originate from the Jewish infatuation with controlling human destiny.

It is not that they are more intelligent than other races. Their behaviour is determined by revelation which goads them to be superior and they are trained right from the cradle to be assertive, enterprising, domineering and egotistic. They have been made to pay for their attitudes in every century but they prefer the hallucinatory delights of revelation to the honour of their virgins, safety of babes and dignity of mankind.

Chapter 7: Christianity

Christianity has exploited the human instincts of fear and favour with a skill which is peculiar to itself. It has been declared as the natural religion of mankind by projecting Jesus as the logos and the active revelatory principle of God which existed long before the creation. The medieval scholasticism indulged in balancing reason and revelation. Even in the 18th Century, the enlightenment theology tried to demonstrate Christianity as rational in essence.

Mythology has never been delineated with a greater skill and charm than these statements have done. Christianity is an extension of mythology yet its spiritual fascination has aroused millions of Christians to die for the honour of their Saviour as willingly as a burning lamp incites moths to seek self-cremation.

Christian Articles of Faith

The Christian cult is the most beautiful mythological symposium owing to the aura of divine beguilement that pervades its major constituents, as follows:

1. The Creator God
2. Revelation
3. Virgin Birth
4. Trinity
5. Grace and Salvation
6. Sin (Human Nature)
7. Kingdom of God (Hell and Heaven)

Virgin Birth

3. Having already expressed my views about the Creator God and revelation, I may start this discussion with the third item i.e. Virgin Birth.

None of what we know about the birth of Jesus, can be traced back to himself because neither he left any written account of his life nor the contemporary sources record anything about his existence. The Christian details about him emerged in the Synoptic (parallel view of sources) Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke at least seventy years after his crucifixion, and John's account did not appear until another three decades later. It is also said that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are names only because they were written some two hundred years after the death of Christ to satisfy the needs of the Church and believers!

The evidence for the existence of Jesus himself is very tenuous indeed. He was said to be a learned man. If he really had a mission, it was his foremost duty to put it in writing but he never did. This makes him an imaginary figure, dreamt up by those whose purpose it serves. Small wonder that Christianity has become the largest business on earth.

Parenthood of Jesus

The picture has been further blurred by the Jewish traditions which declare Jesus as the illegitimate son of Panther, a Roman soldier. The Old Testament also seems to have been tampered with by the over-zealous Greek translators:

Commenting on Isa. 7:14, scholars have remarked that the Hebrew word "Alma', has been wrongly translated as "virgin" in the Septuagint because it actually means "young woman".

Despite all the manipulative efforts of the Christian Fathers, whose own sanctity rose and fell with that of Jesus, we can still trace his parenthood in the New Testament without making Jews the target of everything blasphemous and corrupt.

St. Matthew, Chapter One, Verse Sixteen, records the genealogy of Jesus as follows:

Jacob fathered Joseph who was the husband of Mary. She gave birth to Jesus who came to be known as Christ.

Mary was betrothed to Joseph, the carpenter. Since every human, without exception, has a human father, Jesus must also have a human father.

The doctrine of the Virgin Mary is very puzzling, indeed. Mark (6:3? clearly states that Jesus was the son of Joseph, and had several brothers and sisters. If Mary needed a husband to produce all these children, how come that she had no physical father for Jesus? According to the Christian mythology Mary was God's bride but she got married to a man. Obviously, she did not have the ability to stay a virgin. Nor did God care about her virginity. Yet the Christian Church has sung praises of celebacy! John 6:42 further confirms that Jesus was the son of Joseph. Luke 2:48, however, provides the conclusive evidence because Mary herself refers to Joseph as the father of Jesus.

Of course the next verse seeks to contradict it but it is the evidence of the mother that shall be held reliable and final.

Revealed religion is the greatest secular business that has ever existed and its success solely lies in its power to brainwash people with the promise of eternal life, an assured place in heaven and total safety from hell. Such fascinations being supernatural in character, are logically beyond the power of a normal person. Therefore, the merchants of divinity have to create a mythological figure of super-gigantic proportions who must look great and numinous enough to make supernatural promises look natural, and deliver them with the same ease as an eagle shows in capturing a sparrow, an elephant in carrying a bag of cement or a camel in crossing a furlong of desert.

The Virgin Birth is a part of the miracles that Jesus is supposed to have performed in rebuking the sea and winds, exorcising devils, healing the sick, raising the dead, transfiguring in the presence of his disciples, feeding thousands of people with a couple of loaves of bread and fishes and, above all, the resurrection.

Trinity

4. Though Trinity is treated as the basic doctrine of the Christian faith, there is no evidence in the Bible that it is the original principle of Christianity. Reluctant though the Christians are to admit, it is a variant of the Hindu precept: Trimurti which is an expression of the Reality in three forms.

This is a developed concept and was not finalised by the Christians until the end of the 4th century A.D. It grew out of the Great Commission which commands the disciples to convert and baptise all nations in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Math 28:19). In 11 Cor. 13:14 is to be found the apostolic benedictions which also contributed to the growth of this doctrine.

Since Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, though blasphemous according to the Jews, it had to be displayed as based on the strict monotheism of the Old Testament. The Cappadocian Fathers eventually gave it its present interpretation which declares that the three constituents of Godhead are of the same essence In other words, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the three modes of expressing the One God, and are not distinct within the being of God Himself.

Jesus and viceroyalty

The faithful are always inclined to brush the fiction of their beliefs with the varnish of facts, no matter how feeble, fictitious and farcical, but an independent seeker of truth is entitled to look at their scriptures with investigative detachment. When we adopt this approach, Jesus appears to represent what I have repeatedly called "the theory of Divine Viceroyalty" which enables its practitioner to declare his own Godhead in the name of God as His prophet or messenger.

Let us see how Jesus developed this theme:

He propounded that God is one and all powerful; everything is possible for Him and He is love. Having declared that, he told mankind that God wanted to be loved sincerely and passionately.

What was the relationship of Jesus with God? St. Luke (11:49) speaks of a divine system of prophets and apostles who are sent by God to guide mankind. For example' John, the forerunner of Jesus, was a prophet (John 3:27-28). And so was Jesus, People called Jesus ``the prophet of Nazareth". In fact, the Bible depicts Jesus as a prophet who came into the world to establish the truth. He himself made it known unambiguously that it is not he who dispenses salvation but God; what he preaches is God's doctrine and not his; he has come to the earth to do the will of his Father who is greater than he is.

However, this relationship of prophethood and human inferiority starts crumbling when Jesus the man and son, begins to assert his own divinity. It is claimed;

1. Everything has been delivered to the Son by the Father who cannot be known without the agency of Jesus (Matt. 11:27).
2. Everything has to be asked of the Father in Son's name, and it may be granted (John 15:16).
3. Father gives Son the entire power of judgement (John 5:22).
4. All-power in heaven and earth is claimed to be invested in Jesus who commands his disciples to baptise nations "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matt. 28:19).
5. St. John, Chapter One advances the doctrine of God and Word which asserts the co-existence of God and Jesus. In Ch. 10:30, Jesus asserts that he and his Father are one, and verse 38 makes this claim final.
6. Eventually, Jesus dominates God by telling Him to glorify him (Jesus) because he had existed with Him (God) before the universe.
7. Through the device of viceroyalty which initially consisted of prophethood and Sonship, he wanted to establish his own Godhead (John 13:13).

How Jesus sought Godhead

The urge of dominance demands submission; devotion through love and self-debasement (known as worship) is the highest form of submission which is available to gods only. This is the reason that men with a burning dominance-urge seek Godhead.

To start with, Jesus declares:

1. He who is not with me is against me (Matt. 12:30).

2. There is only one way that people can establish their relationship with Jesus, that is, loving him more than anybody else, including one's father or mother and son or daughter (Matt. 10:37).
He goes even further and demands that to be his disciple, one must hate his father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters and even his own life (Luke 14:26).

Bribe to the Faithful

3. The only way to secure salvation is by giving up all one's relations and possessions. In return, one shall get a hundred fold reward and an everlasting life.

What a model of divine love! It advocates renunciation and degradation of all those who have a natural claim on our love and respect, and thus undermines all cultural and spiritual values. Since this is the most difficult game to play.

Jesus places irresistable temptation in the way of those who are equally self-centred and will stop at nothing for the hope of salvation. He tells them directly and through his disciples:

1. The true work of God, is the belief in Jesus (John 6:29).
2. Those who have not seen yet believe, are the blessed ones (John 20:29).
3. A Christian with a grain of faith can command a tree to be uprooted and planted in the sea (Luke 17:6).
It is obviously the least that a Christian can do. Is there one Christian alive today, including the Pope, who can do so? Since there is not one Christian having this capability Christianity calls its own bluff and proves the hypocrisy of faith which is nothing but the extreme form of self-deception.

Grace and Salvation

5. Having pitched sky-high the value and sanctity of blind faith, his disciples struck at the root of law and morality despite the fact that the New Testament upholds the authority of the Mosaic laws, and purity of deeds. They did so to make conversion easy and developed the fascinating trick of Crucifixion for tempting the unbelievers and sceptics to embrace the ravishing idol of faith and renounce the goddess of reason, who is deaf and dumb to the overtures of fools.

The basic approach of this philosophy, though captivating, was simple: why suffer the pangs of deeds when the paramountcy of faith can secure the desired goal? It is the part of man's attitude to love the opportunities that guarantee him reward for doing nothing; man will not toil for food and shelter if he is assured a free and fruitful living. Therefore he is inclined to follow the religion that promises him eternity without moral effort which entails self-discipline and hard work.

The process of salvation through faith and grace is well described in Chapters 4 and 5 of Romans. However, I may draw attention to the following:

a. Christians are not under the law but grace (Romans 6:14).
b. If you confess Jesus to be your Lord you shall be saved (Romans 10:9).
c. Grace to be grace has got to be irrelevant to works (Romans 11:6).
d. The life of a just Christian is based on faith (Gal. 3:11).
e. Law is a curse, and Christ has liberated us from it (Gal. 3:13).
f. Law is not for the righteous but the wicked (I Timothy 1: 9-10).

Chapter 11 of Hebrews also glorifies faith to assure the faithful that they are on the winning wicket.

Working of Grace

Redemption from the curse of the law, contributed to the formation of the Christian principle known as Grace which is the gift of divine favour that ensures salvation of the believer. This grace is given in Christ, and is always initiated by God. Thereafter, man must respond to God and the responsibility to continue l this relationship solely rests upon him. It is believed by the Christians that God's saving grace is bound to the sacraments but it is not guaranteed by them. It is because God is free to grant grace to whom He likes and when He likes. He is not bound by any principle. What good is it to be God and observe a rule of conduct? Aren't God's viceroys and anointed rulers on earth dictatorial, despotic and destructive? Why should He be fair to the non-Christians? Hindus of India and Buddhists of China, when thrown into hell, shall have no right to complain that they did not receive the saving grace because they were born into non-Christian families. Obviously what is grace for the Christians, is disgrace for the nonChristians!

Sin (Human Nature)

6. To give the principle of Grace a magical appeal, the Christian Fathers have devised an extraordinary interpretation of human nature. Genesis 1:26 declares that God created man in His own image, and likeness, and gave him superiority over other creatures.

The Tree of Knowledge

Here, the emphasis that God not only created man in His own image but also after His own likeness, seems to prove similarity between God and man, or at least their basic common nature. If this were true, man could not go astray, regardless of what he might believe in. Yet the Christian Fathers have invented a philosophy which renders man evil by nature and thus incapable of attaining salvation without God's grace. As the biblical story goes (Genesis, Chapter 2), God created man and woman and appointed the Garden of Eden as their abode where there was neither unhappiness nor sickness, nor death. Above all, they did not have to toil for their living. Everything was gratis, and as desired. However, God grew in the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and forbade Adam, the genitor of mankind, to eat its fruit. Being misguided by his wife, Eve, they both ate the (1) forbidden fruit and (2) committed the cardinal sin which became the fountain of human sorrows such as toil of agriculture, the pain of childbirth, disease and death. It is to encounter this sin that God sent Jesus as grace to mankind for saving them from eternal death.

However, if we look deeper into this episode, Genesis 3:22 tells us that God is alarmed by the fact that man becomes like Him by knowing the difference between good and bad.

Forbidden Fruit and its true meaning

1. It clearly shows that God had not created man in his own image and likeness because "man becomes like God" only after he had eaten the forbidden fruit.

2. God must have created man as an animal which had no sense of good and evil. Since the forbidden fruit gave man the knowledge of good and bad and thus increased his chances of self-elevation through moral conduct, i.e. the ability to avoid the evil and pursue the righteous path, God was alarmed by jealousy in case the man attained divinity.

It follows that eating the forbidden fruit was a righteous act because it infused man with moral virtue but the good Lord branded it as a sin! Assuming that the biblical interpretation of sin is correct, even then man is innocent of this charge because:

1. It was wrong of God to expose man to such a devastating temptation which he could not resist
2. God is incompetent to give man an uncorruptable nature.
3. Since God claims to have created man in His own image and likeness, He is as much likely to go astray as man is.
4. Creation of man is just a childish fun for God, otherwise He would not have given man such a perishable nature which could not stand the test of one act of disobedience.

The Original Sin

The creator God is responsible for what He has created, yet man is used as a scapegoat to carry the can of divine follies. This event of eating the forbidden fruit against the express command of the Maker, is termed as the Original Sin. Explaining the Christian steriology, that is, salvation beliefs and doctrines, St. Paul described in his letter to the Romans that even at birth, a child was subject to God's wrath and condemnation for being a descendant of Adam who had committed the original sin. It meant that man's nature, if it was ever clean, had been polluted, and he was incapable of attaining salvation through his own will and skill. His only hope lay in the saving grace of Christ.

Salvation as a business

The lot of mankind would have been much easier, had St. Paul remembered that Adam committed the sin because he did not have the ability to show complete obedience for avoiding what he did. Had he said that it was unfair of God to punish the Children of a thousandth generation for the offence of their parents, it would have served the cause of. justice which man needs so desperately. But such a comment would have led to the dissolution of Christianity, and under such circumstances St. Paul himself would have gone out of apostolic business. After all, there is no business like salvation business because its customers are always willing to pay a disproportionately high price for this most illusive commodity with money, blood and life, and also impatient to crawl before the merchants of divinity.

Crucifixion: Resurrection

7. However, we should remember that the Christian concept of sin transcends the boundary of disobedience to God because it also implies man's subjugation of himself to the devil. Therefore, Christology propounds that Christ was incarnated, that is, appeared in human form as divine grace; he was crucified as an atonement for the original sin and rose again for the resurrection and salvation of mankind (the believers).

"Treasury of the merits of the Saints"

It is the merit of atonement by crucifixion which had made salvation possible At papal level, the philosophy of merits cost the Christians a good deal in money and lives. The Church held that although man is a sinner, he is given by God a measure of grace which he can augment by his own deeds. Thus he may die with a greater credit than he needs for his salvation. These extra credits, not needed by the saved people, constituted, what was called in papal jargon, "the treasury of the merits of the saints". Those who lacked sufficient credit of their own but did not want to suffer the pangs of purgatory, could pay the papal authorities an appropriate sum of money for transferring some credit from the Saints' treasury of merit to balance the sinners' books!

Spiritual Banking: Indulgence

This transfer was called "indulgence" and the sinner had to make a contribution to the Church for it. It was Martin Luther of Germany who first protested against this spiritual banking, effectively. Many a woman had agreed to mortgage her chastity, for the promise of salvation, to the local priest whose celebacy played havoc with him. This was one of the major causes of concubinage in the Christendom.

Examination of Crucifixion
Though the Saints' treasury of merits has been exposed, the merit of Christ's crucifixion as grace for the original sin has not yet been questioned by the faithful. Let us have a rational look at it:

1. Jesus is the Lamb of God who carries away the sins of mankind (John 1:29).
2. Jesus tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9).
3. Jesus died for human sins and rose again for our resurrection (Romans 4:24-25).
4. God loved the world so much that He sacrificed His only son to save the world (John 3:16-18).
5. God is one. Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for mankind, is the mediator between God and man (Timothy 2:5-6 also Matt. 20-28).
6. Jesus, the beloved Son of God, existed before the creation (John 17:24).
7. God redeemed mankind through the blood of Jesus. Everything was created for him, and in him should dwell all fullness (Coloss 1:14-19).

From these paraphrased verses, it becomes evident that:

1. Jesus was the Lamb of God who was crucified as atonement for man's sin.
2. Since he tasted death for every man, he ranks as Grace.
3. Jesus was crucified for human offences and raised up for our justification, that is, to make our resurrection possible.
4. Jesus was God's only begotten son.
5. God crucified His Son to save the world because He loves it most dearly.
6. Whoever believes in Christ cannot perish but shall live for ever.
7. Jesus is the Saviour of mankind through his crucifixion because he was crucified as a ransom
8. God is one. Therefore, there can only be one mediator between God and man - that is Jesus Christ.
9. Jesus existed before the world and was loved by God in the state of preexistence God created everything for Jesus.
10. He is the image of God and represents "all fullness".

Even a cursory look at the above postulates is sufficient to shatter the edifice of Christianity:

1. The concept of Jesus as "Lamb of God" was developed to exploit man's weakness for the sacrificial cult which holds that gods are appeased and pleased when members of the human species or animals are killed as offerings to them.

This custom has been practiced all over the world since inception of history. Though human sacrifice has become extinct with the advance of civilization animal offering is still as rampant as ever, especially in the Islamic lands.

a. Crucifixion was a device of torture and death, used to eliminate the wicked such as traitors, murderers, rapists, robbers and the like. Using such a heinous contrivance to achieve the purpose most holy, negates the value of Christ's death on the cross.

2. Christ's death could not have been Grace because he did not die for mankind. The Christians believe it as a matter of faith and not as fact. Mark clearly states in verses 60-63 of Chapter 14 that Jesus was convicted by the Jews on a charge of blasphemy. Though Pontius Pilate, the governor, believed in his innocence, the Jews were so sure of his guilt that they fully accepted the responsibility for his crucifixion (Matt. 27:25). To them it was the greatest blasphemy (John 19:17).

a. The vice or virtue of an act depends upon the volition behind it. If I join the army voluntarily to defend my country against an aggressor, I am a patriot but if I am enrolled against my volition, then I qualify as a conscript. It goes without saying that though they both serve the same purpose, the difference between a patriot and a conscript is the same as it is between gold and brass or diamond and coal. The Bible bears testimony to the fact that Jesus did not accept crucifixion voluntarily. He was so scared of crucifixion that he fell on the ground and prayed to his Father to relieve him of this agony, knowing full well that it had been predestined for him (Mark 14: 35-36).

b. My assertion that the intention of an act determines its Duality becomes even more significantin this context because the process of history as envisaged by the Bible is based on predestination.

Predestination

I have already stated that Jesus' crucifixion had been predestined by God and, therefore, his prayers could not avert it. Now let us look at the further evidence that the Bible provides on the subject:

God has complete grip over the conduct of every particle and nothing can move without His will (Matt. 5:18).
Everything that has been pre-written about Jesus in the Old Testament must be fulfilled (Luke 24:44 and Luke 18:31).
Christ's life had been determined but he cursed he who betrayed him (Luke 22:22).
Crucifixion was an integral part of the divine plan (John 4:34).
Mercy and condemnation depend upon God's will (Romans 9:18).
Even the number of hairs on a person's head is pre-numbered (Matt. 10:30).
Above all, Jesus knew that it was pre-written for him to be betrayed (Matt. 17:22-23) and he was aware of the identity of Judas who was to betray him (Matt. 26:21-25). He even told Peter how he (Peter) would deny him (Jesus) thrice before the cock crowed (John 13:38).

c. We must remember that our planet which is a part of the universe, is not a Fools' Paradise; all its physical laws as well as our practical lives are governed by reason because we do not respect fantasy as the basis of reality. Unfortunately, however, we accept exaggeration as moderation, the profane as sacred, and the impossible as possible, in the field of religion to provide ourselves with the shield of faith as a protection against the fear of the unknown. It is just a make-believe.

One ordinary event of history will not convince a reasonable person that it can form the foundation of the divine salvation plan. Again, we ought to remember that predestination is the focal point of Christianity. If everything has been precisely determined then both Grace and Crucifixion are a farce. God becomes solely responsible for everything that happens and man plays no part in it. Then, why should he crawl for Grace or seek indulgence?

Secondly, the God who is projected as Love, is a false God if He is so cruel to His own innocent Son. Even Pilate did not want to crucify a guiltless person. It shows that Pilate was far ahead of the Christian God in the field of justice and mercy. Again, if God can be so ruthless with His own son who had done no wrong, how would he treat mankind which is not related to Him by blood, and what would He do to the wrong-doers?

3. The idea of resurrection, as stated in an earlier chapter, had existed in the Middle Eastern countries long before Christ's birth. Declaring himself as the fountain of resurrection through faith, was a masterly stratagem to win over converts. Of all things, death frightens man the most. Attaining eternal life just through faith in Jesus, was the greatest bargain that man could ever dream of. Is it just of God to punish Jesus for the sins of mankind? It is wrong to apprehend A. for the wrongs of B. Justice demands that every one should be held responsible for his or her own deeds. Again retributive punishment is a sign of barbarity, and it is only reformative punishment which forms a part of civilisation or divinity; punishing A for the sins of B. does not reform the latter; it rather encourages him to persist in wrong doing, and, therefore, comes within the category of barbarity. Is God a barbarian?

True meaning of Resurrection

a. The belief that Christ was resurrected after crucifixion clearly proves that he was never really sacrificed in the true sense of the word. If his death had any connection with salvation at all, he would not have been resurrected; his crucifixion must result in his permanent extinction. The myth of resurrection shows clearly that God, neither loved the world enough to save it by sacrificing His "only begotten Son", nor such a sacrifice could have any relevance to salvation.

Business of divinity

A prettier myth than this was never invented. It is good for the divine business because the hope of salvation tempts believers to bow and bend at the priestly altar and place their hard-earned wages at the feet of the ecclesiastical idols as oblation. No wonder that these holy men live in superb homes in a luxurious style without ever thanking the Lord for the manipulative power that He so naively bestowed upon them. On the contrary, the believers intoxicated with the miracle of resurrection indulge in beautiful dreams of the next world without ever complaining about the twists, trickeries and torments of this life.

Is there really any relevance between crucifixion and salvation? How will it revive the dead body of Mark if I kill Anthony? How will it satisfy Arthur who is dying of thirst if I drink a gallon of milk? How will it give me the flying power if I rear a colony of eagles?

An action to be effective, must have a rational link with the purpose it aims to achieve; I can, for example, fly by manufacturing an aeroplane and not by rearing a colony of eagles.

4. If God has a son, he must also have a father, a grandfather, and so on. Such a God cannot be omnipotent or the creator. The true God would not devise the salvation plan - so totally removed from the working of the cosmic phenomenon which is the sole index of the divine purpose.

5. You cannot crucify the ones that you love dearly, especially when they have done nothing wrong. The true love demands that one should give one's own life to save one's beloved and righteous son. Shouldn't God have adopted this path - the only right path? Didn't He use His son as a scapegoat for creating the world which has become so vicious, vain and vindictive? Can such a God be rational, respectable and redeeming?

6. A belief cannot be a substitute for a deed. I believe that food satisfies hunger. Can belief in the satisfying power of food save me from the destructive effects of starvation? I will have to work hard to earn money for buying food. Not only that, I will have to digest it as well, to preserve myself.
It is not the belief but the deeds that can form the basis of hope and eternity.

7. Crucifixion of Jesus as a ransom, raises a tricky question because ransom is always paid to a blackmailer: a kidnapper, a slaver, a thief or an aggressor. Was this ransom paid to God? If He received it, then He is not divine or magnificent but a thief, a trickster and a tormentor. It also jeopardises the sanctity of Jesus himself. What did he do to give his own life in ransom? Finally, if the ransom was paid to the devil, then he is more powerful than God who recedes into second place, and thus ceases to be the Creator, the Omnipotent and the All-Wise.

8. If Jesus is grace, then mediation becomes irrelevant because the former implies mercy whereas the latter means justice.

9. Since God loved the world so much that He crucified His own son to save it, He could not have created the world for Jesus. The world must have extisted before Jesus because he was dispensable but the world was not.
It is not the belief but the deeds that can form the basis of hope and eternity.

10. Jesus is the image of God and represents "All fullness". Does he? The truth is that Jesus, if he ever lived, was a human. To say that he was fathered by God, or he had no physical father, is totally against the natural law. Nobody has ever been born without a father because this is the law of nature. To cover it up, Christians claim that Jesus was God himself in human flesh, and he came into this world to quell evil. This is a Hindu doctrine called Avatara and so is the Trinity - the three in one, which is also the adaptation of the Hindu principle Trimurti, yet the Christians have never acknowledged their indebtedness to India.

When the Christians are questioned on this issue to prove that Jesus had no physical father or he was God-incarnate, they say that it is not a philosophical doctrine but a principle of faith. This is not good enough because in all our serious dealings, plannings and deliberations, we are always guided by reason and evidence. It should be even more so in the matter of faith because the doctrine of life-after death is more serious than anything else. Of course, certain things cannot be proved or disproved conclusively, yet they cannot escape rational scrutiny and only a very tiny part of a problem can be accepted on trust, and that is only if it is not against the established rules of reasoning. Thus faith, unless it is treated as a make-believe or purely day-dreaming, does not qualify as faith - without conspicuous authority of reason. Put it differently, faith is far more a fact and far less a fiction.

When this test is applied, Jesus looks every bit a human. We certainly cannot accept the validity of the train of miracles ascribed to him. If such miracles were true, his vicars, such as pope, cardinals, bishops, etc. must be able to perform them in his name. But this is not the case. Therefore, they cannot form part of any serious discussion and I shall have to draw reader's attention to certain facts which prove he was a man, and not God. Consider the following:

a. As a human, Jesus knew that to err is human. When an adulteress was about to be stoned to death, he expressed his displeasure by stating that let the sinless cast the first stone at her (John 8:7).
b. Like most humans, he loved flattery and praise because he loved being called `'Master" (John 13:13).
c. More than other humans who long for honour, Jesus wanted to be glorified even by God (John 17:5).
d. When Mary, whose brother Lazarus had died, wept with grief, Jesus was so moved by her tears that he also wept. (John 11:35).
e. Jesus inflamed the wrath of the Jews. As they were about to stone him, he escaped. He hid himself and went out of the temple as Jews took up stones to cast at him.
Jesus ". . . would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him".
He was obviously afraid of pain and death like any other human. God is surely immune to such conditions.
f. When he was hungry but found no fruit on the fig tree, he cursed it in a fit of temper (Matt. 21:19).
Cursing trees is not a sign of divinity, it expresses human temperament.
g. He rebuked and swore: angrily called Peter "Satan" and he named Herod a "Fox".
Swearing is a part of humanity, and not of godhead.
h. He possessed a partisan character because he prayed for the well-being of his followers only (John 17:19).
i. When asked if he was the Son of God, he replied that this is what they said (Luke 22:70).
ii. When Pilate questioned him if he was the King of the Jews. He answered "'You have said it" (Luke 23:3).
History has recorded it quite clearly that neither the Jews accepted Jesus as the Son of God nor did Pilate, the Roman governor, acknowledge him as the King of the Jews. In each case, he refused to give straight answers by putting words into the enquirer's mouth.
Is it not human to evade the issue and adopt a circuitous route when convenience demands it?
j. When unclean habits of his disciples were questioned (Matt. 15:2), Jesus defended his disciples in a way which is more than astonishing. Cleanliness has been described as ``godliness" yet Jesus who claimed to be God, did not uphold this tradition. One wonders if he himself was an admirer of water.
k. Jesus was impolite to his mother. One wonders what she had done to deserve this attitude. The man who claimed to be God and believed in the Mosaic laws which command children to respect and honour their parents, ignored this commandment completely. Even if we may have difficulty in agreeing his fatherhood, Mary, without doubt, was his mother in the true sense of the word yet he addresses her as "woman", rebuffs her and seems to disown her (John 19:26).
It is amazing that he acknowledges to be her son, yet he shows her no respect by way of politeness such as calling her "Mother"!

1. He tells people repeatedly that the Mosaic law is binding on all his followers. Therefore, it is incumbent upon him to set a practical example of obeying the divine code, but he openly flouts it. The Old Testament preaches that Yahwe is the only God and has no son. This is the foundation of the Scriptures yet he declares himself to be God or God's Son, depending upon the situation.

m. There is yet another episode in the New Testament which I find disturbing but shall refrain from interpreting it as a deference to the believers:

John 13:21-23 states that when Jesus was about to be crucified, he was in a troubled state of mind: he declared to his disciples that one of them would betray him. As he uttered these words, the disciple whom Jesus loved, lay with his head resting on the bosom of Jesus.

His disciples wondered who it could be, but none of them had the nerve to ask Jesus about the would-be traitor. Simon Peter thinking that the one who lay on Jesus' breast had a special relationship with him, beckoned to him for solving the mystery (John 13: 24-26).

This man who is repeatedly referred to as "the disciple whom Jesus loved", did have the courage to ask him, and he answered.

"The disciple whom Jesus loved" is mentioned again in Chapter 20 when Mary Magdalene finds the stone taken away from the sepulchre. He outruns Simon Peter and reaches the sepulchre first but is the last to enter it. This hesitation shows his effeminate character.

When Jesus had been resurrected, "that disciple whom Jesus loved" was the first to notice the Lord.

During their last encounter, Peter asks Jesus about his beloved disciple as what he was good for.

It is an obvious reference to the worthlessness of the beloved disciple. Jesus' leaning towards this particular disciple was so pronounced that John repeatedly calls him "the disciple whom Jesus loved".

Considering that Jesus was not married and allowed this disciple to lie on his bosom and ask him such questions which other disciples were afraid to ask, leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

What was Christ's relationship with this "beloved disciple" as the other disciples called him?
Let the reader interpret it for himself. I have been reluctant to mention this episode but it is wrong to ignore it in a serious book like this.

Kingdom of God

The concept of the Kingdom of God is probably better described as an extension of the principle of resurrection. Originally, the early Christianity inherited it from Judaism, and it expressed two expectations:

Firstly, an earthly messiah from the house of David was to establish a kingdom on earth with its capital at Jerusalem. The second expectation told of the heavenly messiah, Son of man, who was to inaugurate a heavenly Kingdom which was to be participated by the elected comrades of all times after resurrection.

As time marched on, these two expectations got fused into the concept of the 1000 year or millenial Kingdom, which is founded on the belief that it is a Kingdom of the privileged elect, especially the martyrs and all those who defended Christianity with their blood and bones. It is they who will receive the administrative and judicial posts and thus hold the reins of power. This is the carrot that has kept the Christian mouths watering throughout the centuries.

The concept of the Kingdom of God draws its charm from the age-old doctrine of heaven and hell which has been exploited by gods and gurus to activate human instincts of fear and favour for securing blind submission.

What is Christian heaven?

Heaven being a reward for faith, is a place of rejoicing and excessive pleasures.This is where God lives (Matt. 5: 12 and 16).

From its foundation to the top, it is built with gold and costly stones such as jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyse, sardius, chrsyolite, beryl, topaz, jacinth, amethyst, and so on. The pleasure of heaven is equally balanced by the pain of hell in the New Testament. After all, people are driven both by expectations of fear and favour. What is the Christian hell?

It is a lake of fire and brimstone where the devil, his angels, false prophets and non-Christians shall be tormented day and night (Matt. 5: 22).

After the last Judgement, all non-Christians will be thrown into hell. This is how, through the concept of hell and heaven, Jesus exploits human instincts of fear and favour for securing Godhead!

The Christians

I can indulge in a considerably longer discussion of Christianity but I think I have said enough to expose its basic dogma. A more important reason for not prolonging this argument is that Christians have become highly civilised all over the world and equate Christianity with humanity. They are prepared to argue all religious matters with patience and tolerance, and treat religion as a personal affair; neither they use it to usurp others people's rights nor do they use it as a weapon of persecution and murder. This is an achievement and I salute them openly.

The right to be religious

This is exactly what I believe: religion is a personal affair and must not be the cause of interference in other people's lives, especially by harsh persuasion and violence. Again, it must be a source of tolerence and mutual respect. Under such circumstances, a person is entitled to have any religion he chooses.

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