Ben Shapiro and the Myth of the Judeo-Christian West

Ed.'s note: If America and particularly those Americans considering themselves "conservatives" are going to survive, then they are going to have to get serious about not only dumping "conservatism," but dumping the "Judeo" in Judeo-Christianity. We've already known Ben Shapiro has ideologically corralled Americans into what it means to be conservative and is dominating this discourse. You don't have to be a "conservative" to be an American and you certainly do not have to be a liberal. These toxic ideologies are taught and methodically focused on to divide Americans, not bring them together. And as far as Ben Shapiro's book The Right Side of History is concerned, it was published by The New York Times. That fact alone should alert readers to an agenda. We've known for a long time how Jews like Ben Shapiro are masters of discourse, so the best thing to do is to develop a rigorous pattern of thinking of your own rather than allow someone like Shapiro to tell you what you should think about religion and conservatism. The "left" and "right" charade must come to an end if America is to survive. Catholics themselves should be alerted too on how it was that Malachi Martin was used as a proxy by Jewish rabbis to subvert the Catholic church doctrine at Vatican II that took place in the early 60s.
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Source: The Unz Review

VERNON THORPE • JULY 19, 2019 • 102 COMMENTS

Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Steven Crowder. CC BY 3.0

Ben Shapiro, The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great (New York: Broadside Books 2019)

As the cathedral of Notre Dame burned in Holy Week, Ben Shapiro took time out to tell his vast social media audience that:

"If we wish to uphold the beauty and profundity of the Notre Dame cathedral, that means re-familiarizing ourselves with the philosophy and religious principles that built it."

Shapiro went on to clarify that the cathedral was a "central monument to Western civilization, which was built on the Judeo-Christian heritage."[1]

The term 'Judeo-Christian' is a favourite of Mr Shapiro's and appears with wearying frequency throughout his latest bestselling book The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.

It took an Israeli paper, Ha'aretz to point out the obvious yet unmentionable:

"There certainly seems to be a degree of willful blindness, if not crass manipulation, in Shapiro setting up 12th-14th century France, when Notre Dame was being built, as embodying "Judeo-Christian religious principles," when during that period France's Jews were expelled (twice), their holy texts subject to public book burnings and their property confiscated by the crown (several times). 

Look at the actual tangible built evidence of the cathedral itself, whose west front is adorned with twin statues: proud Ecclesia (the Church) and Synagoga (with head bowed, blindfolded with a snake, her crown at her feet and the tablets of the law falling from her hands), representing Christianity's triumph over Judaism."[2]

The Times of Israel paper recorded elsewhere that a prominent and influential rabbi, Shlomo Aviner, considered one of the leaders of the religious Zionist movement, had suggested that the burning of Notre Dame could be divine retribution on Catholics. The piece reported:

"'The first great Talmud burning happened in Paris, right there at the Notre Dame Cathedral square,' Aviner wrote. 'It was the result of the Paris trial in which Jewish sages were forced to debate Christian sages, and the result was the burning of the Talmud. Volumes of Talmud were brought in 20 carts and burned there, 1,200 Talmud volumes. So [the fire demonstrates] 'there is justice and there is a Judge,' he wrote, the quote a reference in Jewish religious literature to divine justice."[3]

Mass-burnings of the Talmud took place close to the cathedral in 1242 following the debates Rabbi Aviner mentions. The French-born rabbi further elaborated that Christianity

"is our number one enemy throughout history. [They] tried to convert us by arguments and by force, carried out an inquisition against us, burned the Talmud, expulsions, pogroms. Western anti-Semitism draws from Christianity's hatred of the 'murderers of God.' It also had a role in the Holocaust."

The disputations had arisen after another French Jew, Nicholas Donin, had converted to Catholicism and gone to see Pope Gregory XI in 1238 to warn him of the blasphemies contained in the Talmud and the danger the text posed to a Catholic culture. Among the charges Donin levelled against the Talmud was that it crudely blasphemed Christ and denigrated His mother (Notre Dame) and that it was the basis of a new anti-Christian rabbinic religion which was not the Judaism of the Old Testament, but rather a way of wrenching away the message of those books from their true fulfilment in the New. In so doing, the Talmud it deliberately kept Jews from the light of Christ.

This content of the Talmud was a revelation to most people in Christian Europe at the time. Subsequent scholarship, most recently by Professor Peter Schaefer of Princeton University[4] has largely backed what Donin had to say about the animus and blasphemies contained in the Talmud (primarily but not exclusively the Babylonian Talmud), with the Gospel of St John a particular target of ire. Schaefer and others highlight the extent to which these authoritative texts deliberately slander the holiest elements of the Christian sacred narrative.

More generally, Israel Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has done much to establish the conclusion that "The polemic with Christianity that gradually came to dominate the Land of Israel was not conducted openly, but in a convoluted and allusive manner. The Talmuds and midrashim do not explicitly state the name of the rival with whom they are struggling, but the shadow of Christianity nevertheless looms in these rabbinic texts."[5] Long before these debates, St Jerome was well aware of earlier Jewish interpretations of the Old Testament, which he set out to refute with Christian interpretations, producing an authoritative Latin version of the Bible for the purpose of confuting anti-Christian Jewish accounts.

None of this is even alluded to by Mr Shapiro, who goes on to quote the Talmud approvingly and who in the acknowledgements thanks (alongside John Podhoretz and David French, the man Bill Kristol endorsed for President), his "Talmudic study partner Rabbi Moshe Samuels" (Director of Israel Engagement at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York who "recently served as the Director of Tikkun Olam in Tel Aviv-Jaffa a service-learning Masa program, spearheading the field of Jewish peoplehood and leadership training").

It's worth spending some time on this issue, because anyone who talks about 'Judeo-Christian' values, let alone makes the term central to his thesis about the decline of the West, needs to be asked some questions. This is not to deny that the term is sometimes used benignly to signify a willingness to work together with those of another Abrahamic faith on genuinely positive social goals. However, use of the term is suggestive of a political agenda which is in some areas far removed from what a well-informed defender of Christendom will see as worthy of support. As Mr Shapiro is continually hailed as an important 'conservative thinker', it is worth asking what his version of conservatism omits and what lies behind the terminology he promotes.

Judeo-Christian

The term Judeo-Christian has an interesting and varied history. A very early user of the term was Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860) who in his lectures on New Testament theology was concerned to understand how Christianity emerged from the religion of the Old Testament and retained certain features of that 'particularist' religion of the 'chosen people'.[6]

Please go to The Unz Review to read the entire article.
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