Marry! Blame it on the Jews – Not Jesus! The Heavens Forfend!

In this essay, it is asserted that Jesus, most likely unknowingly at least at first, thought he was entitled to be a rabbi; blamed the rabbinical authorities for rejecting his credentials and as a result, invalidated the very underpinnings of the Jewish faith that he was born into as well as the Jews themselves.

It is generally accepted by biblical scholars that Jesus started preaching in his late 20s, leading, invariably, to the question, Why was the period between his birth and approximately 27 CE considered not worth mentionin: was it because Jesus did not achieve anything of note?

The foregoing, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, may well be construed as meaning that he had, perhaps, tried – and failed – to make his mark elsewhere.

There is no apocryphal or canonical account of how Jesus spent the years preceding his emergence as a preacher.

During the three or so short years of his ministry, it is here contended, his knowledge of who was considered eligible to become a rabbi; the morality of his rejection of his mother and siblings, his treatment of Mary of Magdalene and his vindictiveness and subsequent invalidation and delegitimisation of the Jews, should now be seen for what they are.

No Jew, to the writer’s knowledge, has ever caused so much trouble in the world for Am Israel.

Luke, at 2:41-52, testifies that Mary and Joseph found Jesus in the Second Temple when he was seven, so attesting, at the very least, to his identification as a Jew at that age.

It may well be that, from the age of seven to the age of 27, Jesus encountered problems and difficulties, which might explain why he couldnt find out what was necessary to become a rabbi.

Once he started his ministry, however, according to the gospels, his focus, his concern was to preach the tenets of the Tanach. Being immersed in Jewish culture, why did Jesus not accept that he could not, being born out of wedlock according to 1st and 2nd Century rabbinical tradition, qualify as a rabbi (see the reference to his name, Jesus ben Pantura, in the Tosefta). Pantura was a Roman soldier.

Rabbinical Judaism, in the 1st Century CE, accepted that dibbuk existed. Exorcism however could, according to the rabbinical fraterniity, only be practised by its members. So once again Jesus must have wrongly assumed he could don the rabbinical mantle.

Rabbinical tradition, for various reasons, requires a rabbi to marry.

According to the Gospel of Phillip – dated between the 2nd and 3rd Centuries AD, by which time it is now asserted the romantic nature of kissing was accepted – Jesus would often kiss Mary of Magdalen.

Mary of Magdalen, as the Gospels of Luke and Mark would have it, was excorcised by Jesus, but now refer to the Gospel of Philip which source goes on to state that Jesus loved her more than any other disciple. Did Jesus not marry her because he was, by then, aware that her exorcism would ruin his chances of becoming a rabbi?

Matthew’s lines 48:50 recount that Jesus, in effect, ignored his mother and siblings when they appeared at one of his sermons – on the grounds that anyone who does the will of his Father in heaven is his true family.

No mention is made of whose interpretation of who qualified should be accepted, nor who determined what the will of God was.

That aside, what exactly did Jesus intend his followers and the Jews to understand by such contradictory behaviour? Did he love just those who followed his idea of what was right or wrong – his followers – or did he acknowledge that the rabbis’ beliefs and traditions were valid? Was he consciously or unconsciously admitting that the rabbis’ assertions of his mother’s infidelity and those of Mary of Magdalene’s previous history as a prostitute (see Pope Gregory I’s sermon of 591 CE) were true?

Did Jesus assert, when he rejected – as he must have done – the possibility of marriage to Mary of Magdalen, that the moral foundations of his behaviour towards her were superior to hers?

The Last Supper pronouncement by Jesus – that the wine offered at that gathering symbolised a New Covenant between God and man – can only be interpreted as the pinnacle of his attempts to invalidate and delegitimise all Jews and all that was Jewish, including the Torah.

This repudiation set the scene for the world as it was known throughout the following 20 centuries and the world as we know it today.

When the prime ministers of the UK, France and Canada – Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Mark Carney, all major international actors, announce their intention to recognise a Palestinian state, they either don’t realise the threat that such a state would pose to the existence of Israel, or their declared intention is but the expression of an underlying impulse: the delegitimisation of the historic right of the Jews to the state that is Israel; and the delegitimisation of the Jews and all that is Jewish.