RePortersNoteBook.com: Paul Grubach's Erroneous View of Christianity, Judaism and and the Old Testament

Letter to the Editor
Inconvenient History
http://www.inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2010/volume_2/number_3/christianity_judaism_and_german_national_socialism.php

Paul Grubach's Erroneous View of Christianity, Judaism and and the Old Testament

By Michael Hoffman, Sept. 6, 2010

Paul Grubach's essay "Christianity, Judaism and German National Socialism: Revisionism Confronts the Theology of Susannah Heschel," is wrong on fundamental points and generally an exercise in confusion.

First and foremost among his errors is his identification of the Talmud and Judaism with the Old Testament. This is the rabbinic claim and he accepts it at face value. He imagines Judaism to be what the mendacious rabbis say it is - a monotheism, Biblically based, free of Gnosticism, Hellenistic paganism and Near Eastern religions. He ascribes all of the latter to Christianity, not Judaism!

"Gnosticism, Hellenistic paganism and Near Eastern religions" is a litany which is a good working description of Judaism and a defective and ridiculous caricature of Christianity.

Any paganism Mr. Grubach finds in Christianity is not found in Jesus Christ or the New Testament. These are later corruptions of the church, mostly added under rabbinic influence.

Mr. Grubach claims Christianity came from Judaism but he never defines Judaism. By Judaism does he mean the Old Testament religion of ancient Israel and its prophets? Or by Judaism does he denote the Pharisees and their Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash? In some cases he seems to assert the former. More often he asserts the latter. Judaism supplants and nullifies the Old Testament and represents a radical departure from Scripture and in fact constitutes a new religion.

Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of the Old Testament. He came to fulfill the true, Old Testament law of God, as He Himself said. Judaism arose with the Pharisees, as a subversion of the Old Testament religion, substituting a theology centered on worship of the Judaic male for the worship of Yahweh God.

Mr. Grubach is unaware that the Old Testament, as reflected in the writings of the prophet Isaiah, for example, is anti-Jewish. Isaiah declared that Israel had "unclean lips." The Talmud states that for this supposedly offensive statement, Isaiah the prophet was rightly killed.

In truth, the Old Testament is replete with attacks on Israel and warnings of the terrible fate that awaited these wayward people if they did not reform. National Socialist and neo-pagan nationalist right wing groups have for many decades stubbornly clung to the legend that rabbinic Judaism is the Old Testament religion and that the Old Testament is a book of crowning racial-Jewish chauvinism.

By way of correction, if Mr. Grubach is too busy to read this writer's book Judaism Discovered, he can freely peruse the following brief article, "The Truth About the Talmud: http://talmudical.blogspot.com/

Michael Hoffman
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho