In the March 2010 edition of The Edge, Lenni Garin gives a highly suspect rendition of the judicial murder of Jesus as orchestrated by the Jewish religious establishment in ancient Jerusalem. Lenni doesn’t necessarily object to the murder of Jesus (at least she doesn’t say she does), just to the unpleasant way it is portrayed in the (largely historically accurate) Mel Gibson film, The Passion.
Lenni throws up the pseudo-issue of “What if the ‘authorized’ Bible lied?” and then cites Bart Ehrman’s facile observation that, purportedly, there are thousands of translation errors in the “orthodox” [sic] Bible. It would, of course, help if Lenni would tell us which “authorized” Bible she is talking about here – The King James, the Douay-Rheims, the American Standard…what?
Second, neither Lenni nor Ehrman seem to understand the nature of translation. Obviously there is not a one-to-one correspondence between words, grammar, syntax or concepts between one language and another – that’s why there are translations – and to mischaracterize efforts to render one language into another as “translation errors,” especially without proof, is to completely misunderstand the work of a translator. Of course, Lenni very conveniently fails to cite even one example of a translation error in her essay.
If Lenni were sincerely interested in honestly exploding a pernicious religious myth, she should instead set her sights on the fairy tale people have come to know as the Jewish Passover.
Briefly, what Jews celebrate at Passover is the murder – yes, murder – of innocent Egyptian children by their ethnocentric, parochial Jewish God. Furthermore, the whole notion of Jews ever being slaves in ancient Egypt is a canard. The Egyptians were unique in the ancient world in not keeping slaves (unlike the Jews) and the workers on the pyramids were all wage laborers (see John Romer’s book, Testament). I challenge Lenni to rebut my expose of the Jewish Passover and instead acknowledge the Passover for what it is: a homicidal, religious fairy tale that needs to be expunged from respectable, polite, religious discourse. No respectable religion should celebrate the deaths of innocents – Gentile or otherwise.
Yes, Lenni, there was a historical Jesus who was in fact tortured and crucified, but – no, there never was a historical Passover. Face it, the Torah lied.
– Vaughn Klingenberg, Roseville, MN
Copyright © 2010 Vaughn Klingenberg. All Rights Reserved.
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One Comment
Did you forget Yehoshua not Jzeus was a Jew you nut? The Egyptians killed their own first born to their deities. No Torah keeping Jew celebrates the death of innocents. You are a hypocritical nut and you don’t know the first thing about history or the Torah!