The
identification of the Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian and Germanic people, as the
surviving members of the tribes of Israel, leaves us with two other questions to
answer. To
answer these questions, we must first define what we mean by Jew. The muddled
thinking of most people on this subject is due to the fact that they never know
just what they do mean by Jew. Sometimes they mean Jew by religion, regardless
of his race, there are Negro, Chinese and Japanese that have been converted to
Judaism. Sometimes people mean a Jew by race regardless of his religion. For
example, Premier Ben Gurion of the Jewish nation in Palestine is a Buddhist by
religion, though a Jew by race.
1. WHO ARE THE JEWS?
2. WAS YAHSHUA A JEW?
Since the question of whether Yahshua
was a Jew by religion, is the easiest to answer, let's answer that question
first. The answer is clearly no. Yahshua had the true religion of the Old
Testament found in the law and the prophets. He constantly rebuked the Jews for
having abandoned the law for Judaism under the Babylonian Talmud, which in
Yahshua's day was called the tradition of the elders. In Matthew 5:17-18 Yahshua
said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not
come to destroy, but to fulfill; for verily I say unto you, till heaven and
earth pass, not one jot or tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be
fulfilled."
Yahshua constantly rebuked the Jews for their apostasy, for
setting aside the laws of Yahweh in favor of the tradition of the elders. This
Talmudic Judaism was very different from the religion, which we find in the Old
Testament. The late Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, chief rabbi of the United States,
expressed it so clearly that I cannot improve upon his words. He said, "The
return from Babylon, and the adoption of the Babylonian Talmud, marks the end of
Hebrewism, and the beginning of Judaism."
Since the religion of the Old
Testament was the religion of the real Hebrews, not Jews, the learned rabbi was
quite right in calling it Hebrewism, and noting that it came to its end when the
Talmud was adopted. This was the beginning of a new religion, Judaism or
Babylonianism, which the Canaanites, Hittites, etc. practiced.
We read
in Matthew 15:1-9, "Then came to Yahshua scribes and Pharisees which were of
Jerusalem, saying, Why do Thy disciples transgresseth the tradition of the
elders? For they wash not their hands when they eat bread. But He answered and
said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of Yahweh by your
tradition? Ye hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophecy of you saying this people
draweth nigh unto Me with their mouth, and honoreth Me with their lips; but
their heart is far from Me. But in vain do they worship Me, teaching for
doctrines the commandments of men." This same incident is also found in Mark
7:5:13.
In John 5:37-46 Yahshua told the Jews, "The Father Himself,
which hath sent Me, hath borne witness of Me. Search the scriptures: for in them
ye think ye have eternal life; and it is they which testify of Me. For had ye
believed Moses, ye would have believed Me; of whom ye say that he is your God:
yet ye have not known Him." In John 15:23 Yahshua said, "He that hateth Me
hateth My Father also." In Matthew chapter 21 Yahshua summed up their position
by saying that even the tax collectors and harlots could enter the kingdom of
Yahweh before the Jews. Surely Yahshua's entire ministry was a complete
demonstration that He wasn't a Jew by religion.
Was Yahshua a Jew by
race? To answer this question, we must trace the racial ancestry of both Yahshua
and the Jews. Yahshua was a pure blooded member of the tribe of Judah, and no
true Judahite was a Jew by race, as we shall see. Yahshua's ancestry is given in
both Matthew chapter 1 and Luke chapter 3. Both of them show that Yahshua was a
descendant of the patriarch Judah, through one of his twin sons Pharez, who was
an ancestor of his mother Mary. He came through the line of David, and Nathan
the brother of Solomon, as traced in Luke chapter 3. Yahshua was a pure blooded
Israelite of the tribe of Judah as Paul tells in Romans I: 3.
Now, let's
trace the racial descent of the Jews, let's note that the Jews were not, and are
not Israelites. Yes, I know that you have been taught that Jew and Israelite
were the same thing, but no greater falsehood was ever taught, as we shall see.
Let's get the first proof of this from Yahshua Himself. In Matthew 15:24 Yahshua
states plainly, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
Therefore Yahshua was sent to those who were Israel, but not to others.
Accordingly, when He sent His 12 disciples, out to preach His gospel, Matthew
10:5-6 records that He told them as follows. "Go not into the way of the
Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not; but go rather to the
lost sheep of the house of Israel." Then He added in Matthew 10:23, "Ye shall
not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come."
The disciples could have gone over all the cities of Judea in a month,
so it was obvious that the cities of Israel, to which Yahshua referred, were the
cities of the so called lost tribes of Israel who had already entered Europe in
their long migration. Take careful note of Yahshua's own words. "I am not sent
but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." If the Jews were part of
Israel, then they would have been some of His sheep, but He says they are not of
His sheep.
In John 10:14,26-27 Yahshua says, "I am the good shepherd and
know My sheep, and am known of Mine." Then Yahshua told the Jews, "But ye
believe not because ye are not of My sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear My
voice and I know them, and they follow Me." Note carefully that Yahshua does not
say that the reason the Jews are not of His sheep is because they don't believe,
and that they could become His sheep just by changing their minds. To the
contrary, Yahshua says that the reason they don't believe is that they are not
His sheep. He knows His sheep, and knows that the Jews are not of His sheep.
Since the Jews aren't any part of the tribes of Israel, then who are the
Jews? Let's trace their ancestry. We find the true line of Yahweh's people must
be kept free from mongrelization with the neighboring Canaanites. Genesis 24:3-4
records that Abraham took great pains to see that his son Isaac, should marry
only a woman of his own people. Likewise Genesis 27:46 & 28:1 record that
Isaac also required that his son Jacob, whose descendants became known as
Israel, should also marry only within his own racial line.
This law of
racial purity had been obeyed for several centuries to keep the racial line
pure. However, one of the sons of Israel, the patriarch Judah, father of the
tribe of Judah, violated this law of racial purity by marrying a Canaanite woman
who bore him three sons. Of the three sons, only Shelah survived and left
descendants, read Genesis 38:1-5. This half-breed, mongrel line must be
distinguished from Judah's pureblooded descendants by his twin sons Pharez and
Zarah. Judah fathered Pharez and Zarah by his daughter-in-law Tamar. Although
they were born out of wedlock they were pure Israel stock on both sides, Yahshua
was descended from Pharez. The descendants of these twins are the real tribe of
Judah.
Genesis 46:12 and Numbers 26:20 record that the half breed son
Shelah, accompanied Judah into Egypt, and in the following centuries left many
descendants. They were in the exodus, and accompanied the armies of Israel into
the Promised Land. However, they bred true to type. They were half-breed
Canaanites, lacking the spiritual insight, which Yahweh gave to His own people,
so these mongrels remained idolaters, Baal worshipers. In I Chronicles 4:21 you
will find them referred to as the house of Ashbea. Ashbea is a corruption of
Ishbaal, meaning man of Baal, and shows they were still idolaters, unable to
perceive the God of Israel. So these Shelahites, half-breeds, formed one of the
people of the land who were part of the Jews in the time of Yahshua.
Another alien racial group who became part of the Jews were the mixed
multitude which Exodus 12:38 records left Egypt with the children of Israel. The
Hebrew word translated here mixed, is the word ereb, meaning half-breed or
mongrel.
During the next two centuries in Egypt, many violated the
divine law against race mixing and this mixed multitude was the result. On the
exodus when the going became hard in the wilderness, this mixed multitude made a
lot of trouble. Numbers 11:4-6 records how they led some of the Israelites into
rebellion. This mongrelized group was still in the land after the return from
the Babylonian captivity. Nehemiah 13:3 lists these mongrels as still being in
the land and still a source of trouble, they were also among the Jews in
Yahshua's time.
Then there were the various Canaanite people who were
still living there. Chief among these Canaanites were the Jebusites, Hittites,
Hivites, Perizzites and the Amorites. When the Israelites were about to enter
the Promised Land, Yahweh gave them specific instructions to completely drive
out or exterminate all of these Canaanites.
Yahweh gave these
instructions in Numbers 33:50-56 and Deuteronomy 7:1-6 & 20:16-18. "When
Yahweh thy God shall bring thee into the land wither thou goest to possess it,
and hath cast out many nations before thee, the Hittites and the Gergashites,
and the Amorites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than
thou; and when Yahweh thy God shall deliver them before thee: thou shalt smite
them and utterly destroy them, thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show
any mercy unto them. * * But of the cities of these people which Yahweh thy God
doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save nothing alive that breatheth:
but thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely the Hittites and the Amorites, the
Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites: as Yahweh thy God
hath commanded thee."
I know it is fashionable among the liberal church
members of today, to look down their noses at Yahweh and say, I just can't
believe in that cruel God of the Old Testament. I think Yahweh will manage very
well without their belief. He always has a good reason for what He tells us to
do. The Bible never argues with you about the reasons for its laws, it just
states the laws. There is always a good reason, if you will look for it.
For about 2,000 years, the Canaanites had worshiped Baal and Ishtar, the
most immoral religion in the world, with the possible exception of some Hindu
religions still practiced today. Part of the worship of Baal and Ishtar
consisted of the compulsory prostitution of all the women. On certain festival
days of the year, all the women of the village had to sit in the field outside
the village gate. Any wandering camel driver who came along could select the
woman of his choice. He would hand her a coin, which she must pay over to the
temple, then he would take her aside and leave her with his syphilis or
gonorrhea, as the case might be.
This practice funneled into Palestine
all the venereal diseases of all western Asia. Any doctor can tell you that one
infection of syphilis not cured, can produce degenerative changes in the
children for as many as four generations. However, the Canaanites had been
replenishing the disease with new infections every generation for 2,000 years.
They weren't physically, mentally, morally or spiritually fit to marry or even
associate with the people of Israel. Therefore Yahweh warned the Israelites to
exterminate them. He warned if they didn't do this, they would have integration.
Their children would grow up with yours as playmates; they will intermarry until
you become as badly polluted as they are. Then Yahweh warned He would have to
destroy Israel as He was commanding Israel to destroy them. The Israelites are
often soft hearted and soft headed, however they did exterminate the people of
Jericho and a few other cities. The Bible records in Joshua 15:63, Judges
1:21,27-35 & 19:10-12 and II Chronicles 8:7-8, that they left most of the
others alive, merely making them pay a heavy tribute tax. For example, the
Jebusites inhabited the city of Jerusalem at the time the Israelites came in.
The Bible records that the Jebusites were neither killed nor driven out, but
continued to live among the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.
Ezra 9:1-2 and
Nehemiah 13:23-29 tells that even after the people of the southern kingdom of
Judah returned from the 70 years captivity in Babylon, the Jebusites were still
in the land and some of the Israelites were intermarrying with them. The Bible
records the same thing as to the other Canaanite people, further proof of this
is found in various places, such as Ezekiel 16:1-3. "Again the word of Yahweh
came unto me saying, Son of man, cause Jerusalem to know her abominations, and
say thus saith Yahweh unto Jerusalem; Thy birth and thy nativity is the land of
Canaan; thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite."
Yahweh
could not have said this truthfully to any true Israelite; however, He was not
saying it to Israelites. He said it to the city of Jerusalem and her people, who
were in large part Jews. They had gained power in the manner by which Jews
usually gain it. Hence, Jerusalem was becoming more and more corrupt, as most of
the prophets record.
These Jews surrounded and became the influential
advisors to the kings of Judah, just as today they surround and are the
principal advisors of our presidents. We find clear proof of this in Isaiah
3:8-9 where he says, "For Jerusalem is ruined, and Judah is fallen: because
their tongues and their doings are against Yahweh, to provoke the eyes of his
glory. The show of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare
their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. Woe unto their soul! For they have
rewarded evil unto themselves."
In China, where the rulers are Chinese,
you couldn't say that the show of their countenance doth witness against them.
Their faces would be just like those of the rest of the Chinese. In Sweden,
where the ruling class were Swedes, you couldn't say that their faces were
witness against them, for they had the same kind of Swedish faces the rest of
Sweden had. However, in Jerusalem the faces of the Canaanite, Jebusite Jews
identified them and were a witness against them, the true Israelites were not
hook nosed.
The ancient kings of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon and Persia were
very vain about their military conquests. They left carved stone monuments
telling how they captured this city and that one. They told how many people they
had killed and how many people they had enslaved etc. On these monuments they
usually had carved, in the stone, pictures of the captive people. Whenever they
showed Israelites, the faces had straight noses and were generally of
Anglo-Saxon type. However, when they showed the Canaanites, the faces were those
of typical hook nosed Jews.
Therefore the faces of the Canaanite,
Jebusite Jews, who had gained controlling power as merchants, bankers, advisors
of the king and as the wealthy ruling class, identified them as separate from
the real Israelites. The show of their face doth witness against them.
These Jews had brought ruin upon the kingdom of Judah. Now go back and
read the many places where Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel condemn the wickedness,
which was found in Jerusalem. Don't you find the same conditions existing in New
York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., where large numbers of the same
people have gained power through their wealth?
We find there were still
large numbers of Canaanites in the land; they were integrated with the real
Israelites and Judahites. These Jews were bringing the lowering of living
standards which integration always brings, look at Washington, D.C. Besides the
Jebusites in Jerusalem, the Bible records that the other Canaanite people the
Hittites, Hivites, Perizzites and the Amorites, were not exterminated, but only
driven out and made to pay a tribute tax. They were left in the land to be
integrated with the people and to corrupt them. These Canaanites were another
element of the Jews in the time of Yahshua.
Remember when the people of
Israel left Egypt, they were accompanied by a mixed, mongrel multitude. The same
is true of the return of the remnant of the people of the kingdom of Judah from
their captivity in Babylon; the books of Ezra and Nehemiah record the return.
The records in these books show the total number who returned to Jerusalem was
42,360. They also show among these were many who were not Israelites of any
tribe. They were Babylonians who had come with them in order to get in on the
ground floor, as the saying goes, and they had even infiltrated into the
priesthood. It says, "These sought their register among those who were reckoned
by genealogy, but they were not found".
When you add up the total of all
these mongrelized and Canaanite people, listed in Ezra and Nehemiah, they equal
8,381 people. This was about one fifth of all the people who returned from
Babylon to Palestine, So they formed another element of the Jews in the land of
Palestine during Yahshua's time.
There is one more group we need to
mention to complete the list, and that is the Edomites. You will remember that
Esau and Jacob were twin brothers. Esau was a man of such low character that we
have Yahweh's own testimony in Malachi 1:2-3. "Was not Esau Jacob's brother?
Saith Yahweh. Yet I loved Jacob and I hated Esau."
Jacob kept racial
purity so Yahweh changed his name to Israel and made him the father of Yahweh's
own chosen people Israel, named for their father. The other twin, Esau, married
two Canaanite wives and one Ishmaelite wife, and left only half-breed, mongrel
children. Read Genesis 26:34-35, 27:46 & 36:2.
As Esau's mongrel
children could not marry into the true Semitic line, he moved out from among
them and went down to mount Sier, the rugged range of mountains southeast of the
Dead Sea. This land was called Edom, or occasionally by the Greecianized form of
the word Idumea. Thereafter Esau's descendants were called Edomites. Read
Genesis 33:16 & 36:1-9.
In this area they had a long and troublesome
history. Esau's grandson was Amalek, father of the tribe of Amalek, who were
such an evil bunch that in Exodus 17:14-16 Yahweh said He would have perpetual
war with Amalek until they were all destroyed. The Edomites constantly harassed
the southern portion of Israel until King Saul beat them off about 1087 B.C.
I Samuel 15:1-26 tells how Saul disobeyed Yahweh's command to
exterminate them, and for this disobedience Yahweh deposed him as king, in favor
of David. Even David didn't exterminate the Edomites and there was a long
history of wars between Edom and Israel and even later with Judah. This history
is recorded in II kings chapters 8 & 14 and II Chronicles chapters 20 &
25. The whole book of Obadiah is devoted to Yahweh's condemnation of Edom's
treacherous attacks upon the kingdom of Judah, when Judah was being conquered by
Babylon.
During the Babylonian captivity of Judah, the land lay
practically empty. During this period, the people of Edom, partly from
opportunity and partly from pressure against them from the east, moved into the
vacant southern half of the old kingdom of Judah. Read the article Edom, in Funk
and Wagnall's New Standard Bible Dictionary, pages 198-199 and Scribner's
Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 1, pages 644-646. From this southern half of the
old kingdom of Judah, the Edomites harassed the little nation, which returned
from Babylon.
By about 142 B.C., the returned exiles of Judah won
complete independence under the Maccabean line of kings. About 120 B.C., John
Hyrcanus, one of the Maccabean kings, conquered the Edomites. He too, instead of
exterminating them, took them into his kingdom, offering them full citizenship
if they would give up their pagan ways and adopt the religion of Judaism. This
they did and from 120 B. C. they were full citizens of this kingdom. Read
Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" book 13, chapter 9, and The Jewish
Encyclopedia, article "Edom", Vol V, page 41.
By 69 B.C., incompetent
leadership and intrigue within the Maccabean monarchy, together with the rising
power of Rome in western Asia, gave opportunity to Antipater (also called
Antipas), an Edomite chieftain, founder of the Herodian family, to rise to
power. By bribery, boldness and military skill, he gained the favor of Rome, and
the Romans made him Procurator (governor) of Judea. Antipater's son, Herod I,
beginning as governor of Galilee, used the same methods to secure appointment as
king of Judea in 40 B.C. By 37 B.C., he had gained complete control of Judea. He
maintained himself in power with extreme ruthlessness and bribery, for which he
taxed the people very heavily. The New Deal, Raw Deal and Great Society are not
so new after all. This is the same Herod who had all the two year old and
younger, male children killed in Bethlehem, trying to murder Yahshua
His
son, Herod Archelaus, held the governorship (the Romans didn't trust him with
the crown) for ten years of astonishingly evil misrule from 4 B.C. to 6 A.D.
After this the Romans convicted him of crimes and removed him. Thereafter Judea
was governed by Roman Procurators; of whom Pontius Pilate was number six.
Nevertheless, the Romans left practically complete power of local government in
the hands of the Herodian Edomites. They had complete control of the temple and
power to enforce all their local laws. It is recorded in John 18:31 how Pontius
Pilate tried to get out of condemning Yahshua, telling the Jews, "Take ye Him
and judge Him according to your law".
These Edomite Jews could say that
Abraham was an ancestor of theirs through Esau, as they did in John 8:33. This
Hebrew blood, through Esau, had been diluted to the vanishing point by 1,700
years of marrying the people of Canaanite racial stock. Therefore Yahshua
rebuked them for falsely claiming to still be of Abraham lineage and therefore
inferentially Israelites. He told them in John 8:44, "Ye are of your father the
devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the
beginning, and abode not in the truth because there is not truth in him."
You should carefully observe John 8:31-47. These were the Jews to whom
Yahshua was speaking, and the Bible identifies them as Jews. In the Jewish
Encyclopedia, the article on Edom concludes with the words, "The Edomites today
are found in modern Jewry".