-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.
“It is one thing to base your life on the teachings and parables in the Bible, it is quite another to take it literally and make business decision based on your interpretation of fiction.” — rafflaw
“God told me to smite Saddam Hussein, so I smote him.” — Former President of the United States (and self-described “born again” Christian) George “Deputy Dubya” Bush
“There is no Palestinians.” — Former Apartheid Zionist Prime Minsiter Golda Meier
Yes indeed, taking religious dogma (especially the Single Spook variteties) literally and making decisions based on such received nonsense can win some tribal fascist votes but will usually ruin many businesses, societies, cultures, nations, and peoples.
As the French mathematicial Blaise Pascal once truly remarked: “No one does evil quite so cheerfully or completely as when he does it from religious conviction.”
Nal,
Dr. Richard Carter is not a neutral academic when it comes to religion … somewhat like Dawkins.
Isn’t it the better practice to find an academic who is not so biased when arguing a point?
I mean, when possible.
Sometimes it is not possible.
I could see if this business was a specialty shop, such as Hindu book store they might not want to carry items of other religions. (brand dilution) but a hobby store is more general. They already have paid for the infrastructure of the store, already paid for the NNN and the employees so comarative cost is little to add extra merchandise. And adding Jewish specific items would bring in an entire market.
Doing so does not consititute any endoresement of the religion. It is serving a market. In the Mexican food section of grocery stores here there are long cylindrical glass candles with motifs of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. It is what this demographic wants, so the store provides it. Nobody accuses Safeway of forcing Christianity on anyone.
This guy is missing the market and embarassing his store in the mean time.
“We Don’t Cater To You People”
“Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he’s a Christian, and those are his values.”
Pointing out that Mr. Green’s values of not catering to “you people” are values built on falsehoods is sometimes called Values Clarification.
Nal presented several facts to back up his clarification of Mr. Green’s values. It will be interesting to see if those who disagree with those facts do so with reason and logic or rely, instead, on temperamental emotionalism.
Larry Fleisher 1, October 5, 2013 at 11:56 am
…
may i remind Dredd of the inquisition. the holy wars. the pogroms. the nazis.( hitler was a christian.) and, just the pure hatred of a people that would not accept your diety and clung to their own. for this they have been persecuted for 2000 years by the followers of the christ. no sir. we do not like , or want, your values.
==============================
And may I remind you of your imagination that directed your comment, because it is inapposite to anything I quoted or linked to as advancing any personal avocation.
You certainly can not tell by those quotes or links whether I am Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Moslem, Athiest, or Agnostic.
It would be like saying a journalist who wrote “today is the Sabbath according to …” is revealing his or her faith.
A fertile imagination of the sort you exhibit is of religious origin and accuracy.
But there is a Godzilla . . .
thank you disgusted on east broadway..welcome to the fold.
there is a lot of dislike for gentiles among secular and non secular jews. may i remind Dredd of the inquisition. the holy wars. the pogroms. the nazis.( hitler was a christian.) and, just the pure hatred of a people that would not accept your diety and clung to their own. for this they have been persecuted for 2000 years by the followers of the christ. no sir. we do not like , or want, your values.
Now, now “Disgusted–”
Let’s not get condescending.
Especially during the high holidays.
The Matthew account says that the people gladly took responsibility for the death:
(Matt 27:24-26, KJV)
Now, now, laserhaas…. condescention is indeed below me…. But respect for Professor Turley prevents me from telling Christ Stains… what I really think of them… Whoops. watch where you’re walking…. you wouldn’t want to step in any ‘christian’………… and by the way… the ”High” holidays are over………. They ended for me more than 40 years ago, when I discovered, THERE IS NO Ghod………..
As a 69 year old person of the Jewish faith, but now an Atheist… I’m familiar with Christian ‘Values’…. Christians. And now, you can take your ‘Values’ and stick them, deeply, where the Sun doesn’t shine…. and please keep those values to yourself, also PLEASE…………..”Christains” don’t darken the Atmosphere around ME and my circle, by trying to spread your ‘values’ around, to people who DO possess a working Brain… Unlike yourselves!!!!
If he turns down a certain “religion of peace” he may face the wrath of their Allah.” Jihad, death to Hobby Lobby.”
As one who has always adored people for what they can be and remained frustrated at the way humankind chooses to be. Who also found out as a hard right Christian that I may be jewish at age 45. It then occurred to me that humankind tends to be traditionalists; instead of free thinkers.
That insight and a guy nicknamed Meteor;
changed my philosophy on the religious reality forever.
What we call religion is nothing more than class warfare to give people a reason to behave, due to the ultimate punishment threat. Whereas all organized religions have to have motivators to encourage its followers to believe they can be blessed upon the norm; if only the followers will stay true to a certain abject philosophy in a hard, dedicated manner.
Organized religion caters to the greatest inherent character vanity trait of sentient beings desire to be special above all others; and usually brings a “superior” person to engage in inferior behavior to prove the point of speciality.
If you believe in G-d (which yours truly does in a fashion) – then you already believe in an alien state of being. Now it may be true that, via the fashion of the universe, there are some salient beings who discovered the eternal life DNA secret (as in Timberlake’s “In Time” melodrama). This would allow such to develop extra-ordinary time to acquire wisdom & knowledge.
However, if one “believes” the gathering of scrolls, letters and such to be a Bible. Then one has to believe we are all bound (including the United States) to go to war with Jewish people once the third temple is built. For the purported Bible has stories of G-d being teased by the Devil; who is a “jealous” G-d. This G-d will choose to eternally punish All sinners in a flaming hell; for the sins upon the earth during a 100 year life span (if they fail to admit that a guy born upon the earth is G-d’s son – when {if the logic is proper} the fact of the matter is we are {purportedly} all born from the incestuous time of Adam & Eve.
Resultantly, if you are to be the blessed, special, perfect “Christian”, where only 144,000 of entire mankind, is going to have heavenly mansions; because G-d saved that many from worshiping the Beast. You will be “raptured” away, while the Beast (Devil) and its followers walk the earth in reign for 1000 years. Until we are “then” purged by fire & brimstone – instead of world wide flooding rains.
So, I have to ask the die hard Bible thumping masses this obvious question. Are the 144,000 that the purported Bible, drafted by the hand of G-d, who are to be spared from worshiping the Beast from the Jewish faith or Christian faith; because Jesus and his followers were not speaking to Romans in their teaching.
They were speaking to the Hebrew nation.
N’est-ce pas!.
Ross,
If Mr. Green was truly concerned about business, wouldn’t he handle goods for any and all major religions in order to sell more products? It is one thing to base your life on the teachings and parables in the Bible, it is quite another to take it literally and make business decision based on your interpretation of fiction.
the problem, as I see it, isn’t that HL doesn’t stock Hannukah-related goods, but rather the response of the employee. Instead of saying, “I’m sorry, but it seems we don’t have what you’re looking for, perhaps you might try another store?” the employee took up an “us vs them” attitude.
My new hobby will be dissing Snobby Lobby.
So because a store doesn’t carry goods that are specific to a particular religion, that means that they “hate” those who are members of that religion. It would seem to follow, then, that if I as a Christian walk into a store that belongs to somebody of another faith, and that store doesn’t carry goods specific to one or more branches of the Christian faith (e.g., rosaries, icons, etc.), does this mean that members of the other faith “hate” Christians? Obviously, this is not true.
Why does the author of this article suppose that a ruling body of a people, whether the Sanhedrin or any other such body (e.g., Congress) would never do anything illegal or irregular? I’ve got news for him. It happens all the time. The attitude of the powerful often is, “If I (or we) do it, it’s not illegal.” Indeed, I think we had an American President who said as much.
How can the Gospel narratives reasonably be read as whitewash of the Romans? My interpretation is that Pilate was a weak & easily manipulated man guilty of judicial murder in order to take care of his own political problems.
Religious bigotry and even hatred is not local to any particular format (Jewish Hostility To Christians). My god is better than your god is a way of saying we are better than them.
Should we all preface every comment w/ “Help.” My always remembering the cry wolf parable says no.
Help! My short comment was eaten w/ biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Thanks for your assistance.
Another reminder of my disdain for organized religion, but still a strong faith is God.