“We Don’t Cater To You People”

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

That was the answer from a Hobby Lobby employee when asked where the Hanukkah goods were. The response was explained with a call to the Marlboro, New Jersey store: “Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.” Hobby Lobby is an Oklahoma-based private company founded by David Green, who is known for applying “Christian values” in the running of his company. Christian hatred of Judaism and Jews has many origins, one of which can be found in the New Testament. While the Romans actually crucified Jesus, it is the Jews who have gotten the blame. The Gospels turned out to be good news for the Romans.

The tales of the final days in Jesus’ life are found in the three synoptic gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, the latter two copied extensively from Mark, generally considered to have been written first.

We pick up the trail with Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin, the 71-member supreme court of the Jewish nation, which took place in the home of Caiaphas, the Jewish high priest. This scenario has several problems pointed out by eminent Jewish scholars:

1) The Sanhedrin only met the Chamber of the Hewn Stone in the Temple.

2) The Sanhedrin never met at night, contrary to the 9 PM-10 PM arrest of Jesus after the Passover supper and the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

3) It is simply inconceivable that the Sanhedrin met on Passover. The Sanhedrin had a strict rule of no council meetings on the Sabbath and on religious feast days, such as Passover.

4) The Sanhedrin pronounced the death sentence immediately, instead of waiting the prescribed twenty four hours.

5) Caiaphas accused Jesus of blasphemy for Jesus’ claim to be the “Son of the Blessed One.” However, use of this phrase was no capital crime.

These errors show that the author of Mark knew nothing about the rules regarding the Sanhedrin and it practices, or the crime of blasphemy. The trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin is pure fiction setting up the whitewash of the Roman participation in Jesus’ death.

The whitewash continues with Pilate’s attempt to make use of a custom in which one prisoner, of a crowd’s choice, is released during Passover. There is no historical evidence that such a custom ever existed, it is fiction intended to shift blame onto the Jewish crowd, who chose Barrabas. Barrabas is Aramaic for “Son of the Father,” and is also named Jesus in early manuscripts of Matthew. The freeing of “Son of the Father” and the sacrifice of the real Son of the Father is a literary device about atonement that parallels the Yom Kippur ceremony of Leviticus 16, the Jewish ritual of the scapegoat and atonement.

We next visit the Joseph of Arimathea narrative. Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin, who offered his tomb for Jesus’ burial, from the town of Arimathea whose location is unknown and is nowhere else recorded. As pointed out by historian Dr. Richard Carrier, “Matheia means ‘disciple town’ in Greek; Ari- is a common prefix for superiority.” Arimathea can be read as “best disciple town,” an obvious pun by the writer of Mark. Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character.

The Gospel of Mark is a work of fiction by an author who wanted to shift the blame of Jesus’ death away from the Romans. The only other players in this drama who could be blamed were the Jews. After two thousand years, the Jews are still getting the blame. Any claim that the Jews were a contributing factor in the death of Jesus is not historic. If Christians hate Jews, they’ll have to find another reason.

Click on the Watch on YouTube button to see an amazing video series about the parallels of Mark and Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey:

H/T: Ken Berwitz, Paul Tobin, Peter Kirby, Richard Carrier, PZ Myers.